Chapter Thirty-Five Alix
Chapter Thirty-Five
Alix
Alix headed to Sheen House the very afternoon she arrived in London. She felt anxious to see Hélène, to tell her friend that she wasn’t alone in her grief—that someone, at least, knew what Eddy had meant to her.
London was unlike Alix had ever seen, the entire city shrouded in mourning.
Windows were hung with black crêpe, church bells echoing through the silent streets.
A massive pile of flowers had formed at the gates of Marlborough House, and was growing by the minute; weeping strangers kept stopping by to add their own arrangements.
Alix knew they weren’t really grieving Eddy.
How could they, when none of them had known him?
They were thinking of someone else who had died too young—a daughter they had lost in childbirth, a friend who’d gone to war and never come home.
Eddy became that person for all of them.
His funeral would be an outpouring of national grief, and yet it wouldn’t be about him at all, because that was the point of the royal family—to let people channel their emotions somewhere.
To give them a focal point for their joy or anger or heartbreak.
When she reached Sheen House, she asked the butler to please announce her to the Princess Hélène.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered, “but mademoiselle is not at home—”
“Alix? Is that you?”
Hélène stood at the end of the hall. She looked pale, her eyes shadowed. Her dark hair floated in a tangled cloud around her head.
“I just got to London this morning. I wanted to see you,” Alix said hesitantly. She wasn’t sure whether her friend was ready for company.
“Come in, then.” Hélène turned without preamble and headed down the hall, leaving Alix to follow.
The sitting room they entered felt stale; there was a pale green coverlet tossed on the sofa, and various glasses of water and bowls of uneaten food on the coffee table.
“I’ve been sleeping in here.” Hélène flopped down on the sofa.
“My room is…Well, Eddy was in there, at least, in my dressing room. Not long before he died.”
“Oh, Hélène.” Alix sat next to Hélène and pulled her into a hug, wrapping her arms around her friend’s body. She felt thin, almost frail.
“Excuse me, miss.” A maidservant ducked into the room and began stacking glasses with quiet efficiency.
“Annie! It is my job to look after mademoiselle!” hissed a French lady’s maid, hurrying into the room after the maid. Hélène waved them both away.
“I’m fine, really.” When they had left, she looked at Alix with a pale smile. “The two of them are like a pair of hens, clucking over a single egg. I can’t get rid of them.”
“I’m glad someone is looking after you. Where are your parents?”
“They’re making preparations for us to leave.”
“You’re going away?” Alix asked, startled.
“Right after the funeral. There’s nothing left for me in England,” Hélène said heavily.
“You’re welcome to come see me in Darmstadt—all of you,” Alix offered, but Hélène shook her head.
“Thank you, but I need to go farther afield. Italy, or perhaps Turkey. Somewhere warm, where it doesn’t rain.”
“Of course.” Alix understood. Hélène needed to flee, to find a place that didn’t make her think of England.
Hélène’s next words were quiet. “I keep forgetting that he’s gone, you know. I’ll want to tell him something, and then suddenly I’ll remember that I can’t, and the pain of it hits me all over again.”
“Sometimes I still forget that my mother is gone, and I lost her thirteen years ago,” Alix confessed. “When there’s something I want to tell her, that’s what I do. I talk to her.”
“At her gravesite?”
“I talk to her portrait. We have a picture of her in the library.” Alix felt a little foolish admitting this, but Hélène would understand. “Even when I’m not in Darmstadt, I whisper things to her. I always get the sense that she’s listening.”
“I don’t have any portraits of Eddy. I’m sure May does,” Hélène said resentfully.
Alix’s heart ached. “I would say that I’m sorry, but I know it’s a useless thing to say. When people used to tell me how sorry they were about my mother, it made me irrationally angry. As if they shouldn’t just be sorry, they should do something.”
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do, Alix, unless you have the ability to turn back time.”
Alix reached for a silver-backed brush, which by all rights belonged on the surface of Hélène’s vanity yet had been abandoned on a side table. “You know what I can do? I’ll brush your hair. You need it, honestly.”
“Oh, very well.” Hélène shifted, pulling her feet up onto the cushions so her back faced Alix.
They were silent for a while, the only sound the swish of the hairbrush as Alix teased knots from Hélène’s dark mane. Then Hélène said, “You know what else you can do? You can distract me.”
“Distract you?”
“You never told me what happened with Nicholas!” Hélène drew in a breath as if remembering something, then twisted to look at Alix over her shoulder. “I hope you didn’t misinterpret— That is, Eddy told me that he’d seen me with Nicholas on the yacht, and he assumed the worst.”
“I knew that there was nothing between you and Nicholas.” Alix sighed. “Still, it didn’t work out between us.”
“I think you can convince his parents! It will just take time,” Hélène insisted.
Alix shook her head. “Actually, Maximilian of Baden is courting me now.”
“That German man from the regatta?”
“He makes me happy, Hélène.”
“Oh. Well.” Her friend seemed to be struggling to remember Maximilian. Finally she settled on, “He is rather tall, I recall.”
“He’s more than tall. He’s kind, and earnest, and…” Alix trailed off as Hélène stood and crossed the room to a mahogany cabinet. Light refracted on all the crystal decanters within.
“What are you doing?” Alix demanded.
“Getting us a drink.” Hélène reached for a crystal square-cut decanter full of amber liquid. She poured it into two tumblers, then handed one to Alix.
“Is this brandy?” Alix had only ever had sherry, or wine.
“It’s what Eddy would drink if he was here.” Hélène took a large sip. Alix hesitated before doing the same.
She choked, coughing. The brandy burned her throat.
“I’m all right,” she managed, then took a much smaller sip. It felt less abrasive this time, curling in her stomach like liquid fire.
“You don’t really break the rules, do you?” Hélène almost sounded amused.
“I broke the rules that time with Nicholas,” Alix said unthinkingly.
“I wondered what happened that night! I assumed you were together, but I wasn’t sure how far things progressed.”
“Oh, they progressed.” Even now the memory of that night brought heat to Alix’s cheeks. “But then I realized that Nicholas would never get his parents’ permission to marry me. That I couldn’t keep waiting for the impossible.”
Hélène seemed to consider that thoughtfully; then she huffed out a breath.
“It’s funny, isn’t it? That we were engaged to both of them at different times?”
“Both of them?” Alix repeated.
“Eddy and Nicholas! We made quite a tangle of things, didn’t we? The only way it could be messier is if May had been engaged to Nicholas, too.” Hélène rolled her eyes. “Honestly, if she could have figured it out, I’m sure she would have been.”
Alix surprised herself by taking another sip of brandy. When had Hélène refilled her tumbler? The alcohol was seeping into her mind, loosening her limbs, casting everything in a golden glow. “I don’t think my engagement to Eddy should really count,” she protested.
“Your grandmother considered it real enough.”
“And you were never actually engaged to Nicholas!”
“True. We could barely manage a pretend courtship.” Hélène pulled the green coverlet onto her lap, glancing over at Alix. “All I’m saying is that it’s amusing, that you and I were connected to the same two men. Especially because we are so different.”
“We are certainly different,” Alix agreed. “But perhaps that’s why we are friends. Perhaps friends who are too similar come into conflict.”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have any female friends, except my sister. And you,” Hélène declared.
“Me too. Just you and my sister,” Alix murmured.
Hélène tilted her tumbler, letting the liquid slide from one corner to the other, lost in thought. “I suspect most women wouldn’t become friends the way we did. Sharing fiancés, fake courtships, secrets.”
“I don’t know how most women make friends,” Alix admitted. “It’s not really covered in the etiquette books.”
“Because society doesn’t want us to work together. We are taught to think of each other as enemies. As competition in the marriage market.”
Hélène’s words saddened Alix, primarily because they were true.
“Tell me more about this Maximilian,” Hélène declared, changing the subject. “How long has he been courting you?”
Alix recounted the story of Maximilian’s courtship, how easy and bright it had all felt.
She told Hélène how his family adored her, how Maximilian had seen her in the throes of an attack and helped her manage it.
How they both wanted the same things from life: a simple home in Germany, full of books and children.
“You said a lot of words, just now,” Hélène replied at last. “None of them were I love him.”
“We haven’t been courting all that long!”
“So?” Hélène pressed. “How long did it take you to fall in love with Nicholas?”
Alix said nothing. She had loved Nicholas from the very first visit, probably the very first moment.
Hélène sat up straighter, gesturing to Alix’s expression. “See! That look on your face—you didn’t look like that when you were talking about Maximilian, not once! Instead you kept telling me how nice he was, and that if you married him you would live near Darmstadt.”
“What’s wrong with nice?” Alix demanded. “At least if I got engaged to Maximilian I would be better off than Ernie! At least I would have a chance of loving Maximilian someday!”
She immediately winced; she shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have hinted at Ernie’s secret, even in the vaguest of terms.