Chapter Three Alix
Chapter Three
Alix
“Can I join you?”
Alix of Hesse set aside the sketchbook she’d been holding. “Of course,” she told her brother, who dropped down to sit next to her. Insects buzzed in the air around them, which was filled with the fresh growing scents of spring, tender green shoots peeking up through the earth.
“How long have you been out here?” Ernie asked.
“A few hours?” When she’d come into the gardens, the sun had hovered above the ivy-covered brick wall; now it was nearly overhead.
But then, Alix was always losing track of time.
She would fall headfirst into whatever she was doing, a novel or a sketch or a piece on the piano, and the hours melted away like candle wax.
That must be one of the reasons she’d made a poor impression at the Russian court. Everything there ran on such a regimented schedule: meals served at the stroke of the hour, appointments carved into little thirty-minute blocks. It was maddening.
Ernie leaned over to study her sketch. “Did you start this last night?”
Belatedly, Alix realized that she’d drawn the scene before her with heavy strokes of charcoal. Moody shadows crept across its surface, a bruised sky looming overhead—nothing like the sunny garden that surrounded them.
“I wanted to draw a stormy day,” she replied, though Ernie wasn’t fooled. He knew the reason her mind felt turbulent, alternating between hope and despair.
Alix hurried to change the subject, nodding in the direction of the stables. “Were you out riding this morning?”
“Oh—no,” Ernie said, almost evasively. “But I might go later, if you want to join.”
“Maybe.” Alix fiddled with her charcoal stub, leaving gray streaks across the back of her knuckles.
Her grandmother—Queen Victoria, the most powerful monarch in all the world, except, perhaps, the Russian tsar—would have scolded Alix for her messy hands.
But Grandmama and all her advice, not to mention her meddling, were far off in England.
Church bells clanged from the Stadtkirche just across the road.
Alix always felt at ease here in Darmstadt, with its cobblestone streets and gabled roofs.
Her family’s “palace” was really just a spacious home, no more ostentatious than any of the massive residences in London’s new fashionable neighborhood of Mayfair.
But then, as grand duke of the minor German territory of Hesse, Alix’s father wielded little political influence.
Ernie was staring at the row of linden trees along the far wall.
He looked so much like Alix; they both had their mother’s blond hair and sky-blue eyes.
But their similarity was more than physical.
It was a dreaminess in their expressions, the distracted way they both moved through the world, as if their interior dialogues were more interesting than what others had to say.
“Don’t move,” Alix commanded, crossing her legs beneath her dress in a distinctly unladylike manner.
Ernie gave a beleaguered sigh. “Must I be your model now?”
“I’m sorry, did you have other plans for the afternoon?” Alix had already pulled out a new sheet of paper.
“My plans involved napping.” Ernie leaned back so that he was lying on the sun-warmed grass, folding his arms behind his head. “If you insist on drawing me, it will be like this. You can title it Arthurian Knight in an Enchanted Sleep.”
Alix snorted. “Arthurian knight? More like, Prince Ernest of Hesse, Sleeping Through the Sermon at Church.”
“I only did that once! And you must admit, Father Anton is excruciatingly dull.”
“What does it matter if he’s dull? It’s church, not the music hall. You aren’t there for entertainment.”
Ernie huffed in drowsy protest and shut his eyes.
Silence fell as Alix’s pencil darted over the paper.
She had no burning artistic ambition; she’d learned the basics of drawing, like any other well-bred young woman.
But she’d always found something soothing in the ritual of it: sitting, arranging the pencils in a neat row, quieting her mind.
Looking at a person and reducing their face to a study in line and form and shadow, rather than fretting over their opinions of you.
Soon the paper was covered in swooping pencil marks that captured Ernie’s eyelashes, the lock of hair falling onto his forehead.
After a few moments he began to snore. A breeze rippled the surface of the water in a nearby fountain.
Years ago the fountain had held live goldfish, which Alix and her siblings would scoop up with their hands, giggling at their sliminess.
Their mother, Alice, would laugh, encouraging their daring.
They’d had such fun here: playing games of blind man’s bluff, packing fresh-baked pies or bilberries and cream and picnicking out on the grass.
Sometimes they would pile into a cart and ride out into the countryside, delivering baskets of bread or medicine to the sleepy little villages, where fields of poppies waved next to acres of golden corn.
Alix had lost her mother when she was six years old, yet some memories remained achingly fresh in her mind.
She recalled how she used to slip into Alice’s dressing room on the nights her parents went out.
Here, try it on, Alice would urge, helping her daughter into oversized gowns and furs, threading jewels into her bright blond hair.
Look at you, her mother would murmur, pressing a hand to the center of Alix’s chest. You are so beautiful on the outside, but most of all you are beautiful here. In your heart.
“Miss?”
Alix put down her pencil and glanced up in surprise. A few feet away stood Johann, the new footman, holding a pile of envelopes in his gloved hand. His eyes flicked to Ernie before he flushed and addressed Alix.
“Pardon me, miss, but you requested that I bring the day’s mail to you at once. It just arrived.”
“Thank you.” Alix nearly jumped to her feet, reaching for the mail so eagerly that she knocked Johann off-kilter.
“Anything from Russia?” Ernie lifted himself onto one elbow, rubbing sleepily at his eyes, but his question was serious.
Johann bowed and retreated. Alix fanned through the mail, but there was only a letter marked with Hélène’s typical scribble. Not the handwriting she was looking for. “Nothing from Russia,” she said meaningfully.
Alix didn’t know how she and Nicholas would ever get his parents’ permission to marry. It felt so impossible, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to give up hope. Not entirely.
She hadn’t meant to fall for the Tsarevich of Russia.
Things would have been so much easier if she could have been happy with Eddy, the prince everyone expected her to marry.
But the moment she’d seen Nicholas last year, standing outside the Winter Palace to greet her carriage, Alix had been a lost cause.
It was like she’d been struck by some new illness—Alix was no stranger to ailments of the body—except that instead of making her weak, this one strengthened her.
Loving Nicholas made Alix feel acutely alive, bright and wondrous and full of possibility.
When he’d proposed, Alix had said yes with hardly a moment’s hesitation.
His parents, however, had been less than thrilled at the news. You will never marry Nicholas, not while I have breath in my body, the tsar had roared at Alix, at the wedding in Athens last fall.
Devastated, Alix had run outside, where she’d found Hélène in similar distress. It turned out they had the same problem, both unable to be with the man they loved. We’ll fight for them, Alix had told Hélène that night. But…how? It seemed impossible.
Then Alix had returned to Darmstadt, and the letters had started to come.
Nicholas couldn’t write regularly, but the notes he did manage to send were so utterly him—so intelligent, so thoughtful—that Alix felt like he was right there with her.
Even if he was thousands of miles away. We will change my parents’ minds, Nicholas repeated in each letter.
I know we will find a way forward, as long as your feelings for me haven’t changed.
Of course they hadn’t changed. Alix cherished his letters, reread them so often that they tore at the creases. She loved Nicholas so much that it frightened her.
The possibility that she might lose him frightened her more.
“I’m sorry, Alicky,” Ernie said quietly. “I know how hard it is.”
“It’s all right; I’m sure he’ll write again soon.” Alix paused as her brother’s words registered. “Wait—what do you mean, you know how hard it is?” Was Ernie also in love with someone he couldn’t be with?
“Just that all this pressure to marry is awful,” Ernie said quickly, and smiled.
“Really, Alix, I need you to find a way to marry Nicholas so that Grannie will stop pestering me. She and Papa keep demanding that I marry, insisting that the duchy needs an heir. Speaking of which…” He held out a letter in Alix’s direction. “Grannie wrote.”
Ernie and George were probably the only grandchildren who’d ever called Queen Victoria Grannie. Even Alix had always used Grandmama.
“I assume she wants to plan our summer trip?” Alix asked.
The prospect of going to England again, as she and Ernie had done practically every year of their lives, felt suddenly wearying.
There was no question of her marrying Eddy anymore; perhaps she could stay away for a year, let Hélène fight for Eddy as best she could.
“Grannie says that Uncle Bertie and Aunt Alexandra are having a party for their silver wedding anniversary. She wants us there.” Ernie glanced over. “I think we should go, for your sake.”
“For my sake?” Alix asked, confused.
“Grannie didn’t exactly send me the guest list, but the tsar and tsarina will surely be invited.”
The Tsarina of Russia and the Princess of Wales were sisters, the two princesses of Denmark who had married princes of the world’s two greatest nations. Which meant that Eddy and George were Nicholas’s first cousins.
“I doubt they’ll make it,” Alix pointed out. The tsar didn’t leave Russia for anything less than a state occasion. A wedding, a coronation, perhaps even a funeral; but not an anniversary. No matter how much his beloved wife begged him to.
“Exactly my point. They won’t be able to go, but someone needs to attend as the Romanov representative,” Ernie pressed.
Alix’s heart leapt. “You think Nicholas might be there?”
“Grannie didn’t say as much in her letter, but then, she wouldn’t.” Ernie knew how much Queen Victoria disapproved of Alix’s feelings for Nicholas. He gave Alix a nudge, nodding at Hélène’s letter. “Now, what does mademoiselle have to say?”
“You’re so nosy,” Alix scolded, amused. She scanned the letter and looked up sharply. “Hélène says she is heading back to England!”
“Which means she’ll probably be at the party, too,” Ernie observed.
Alix stood, brushing off her long skirts. A smile stole over her features at the thought of seeing her friend—and the prospect, however slim, of being with Nicholas. “Very well, write to Grandmama and tell her yes. We’re going back.”