9. Chapter 9
Nikolay
By dusk the estate had gone dim in that old, aristocratic way I had always loved—light lowered not because darkness demanded it but because the house believed illumination should be earned.
I had dressed with more care than the occasion warranted, then spent the walk to the dining room instructing myself not to behave like a man awaiting judgment.
I had ordered the breakfast that morning before reason could interfere.
Not publicly. Not through any grand pronouncement.
Quietly, with the chef, after remembering with humiliating precision the exact expression Maddie had made weeks earlier at Obsidian when cream cheese French toast and strawberries had been set before a late staff meal.
She had taken one bite and gone still, eyes half-closing as if simple pleasure had struck her somewhere sacred.
I had remembered that stillness far more vividly than any decent man should have.
I reached the doorway just as Tilden, all perfect posture and snowy cuffs, leaned slightly toward Maddie where she sat at the long table and said in his careful, deferential cadence, “His Highness Prince Nikolay requested this morning that the chef prepare this breakfast specifically for you, Miss Baucaum.”
I nearly stopped walking.
Tilden had served this house long enough to make discretion look hereditary. Under ordinary circumstances, he would sooner have swallowed silver than embarrass a member of the family. Which meant he likely believed he was being helpful. The realization did not improve matters.
Maddie’s gaze lifted over the steward’s shoulder and met mine in the doorway.
For one excruciating beat, I considered retreating like a coward and trying the scene again in another century.
Instead, I schooled my face into calm, entered as though nothing at all had gone amiss, and said, “Good evening.”
A platter of cream cheese French toast rested between us on a warmed silver stand, each thick slice layered and dusted, the strawberries on top ripe and glistening, their juices beginning to blush against the cream and powdered sugar.
Beside it sat the white pastry box tied with simple twine, cheerful in a way that looked almost irreverent against the estate’s inherited solemnity.
The logo on the side—Buttercream and Blessings—was unmistakable.
Maddie’s eyes went straight to it.
Of course, they did.
Her chin lifted slightly, and something in her face changed—recognition first, then caution, then the beginnings of amusement.
She wore a soft cream sweater tonight instead of her club blacks; the color deepening the warmth in her skin and making her whiskey-colored eyes look even richer in the candlelight.
Her chestnut hair fell loose over one shoulder in thick waves.
She looked less defended than she had at Obsidian, though not by much.
There remained in her posture that faint readiness I had taught her to keep around me.
Tilden, satisfied apparently that he had discharged both duty and revelation, withdrew with a bow precise enough to belong in another century.
I moved to the chair opposite Maddie and sat.
“Your steward,” she said, voice even, “is real subtle.”
I exhaled through my nose. “He usually is.”
“Mm.”
The pastry box remained between us like evidence. I reached for it first because inaction had become impossible. With deliberate casualness, I untied the twine and opened the lid.
Inside, the pastries sat in neat rows beneath wax paper: lemon-iced crescents, sugared twists, strawberry hand pies glazed so brightly they looked lacquered, small round cakes dusted in fine sugar.
“I had heard the bakery had a reputation,” I said. “I wanted to try them myself.”
Maddie looked at me for one suspended second.
Then her mouth curved.
Not the polite little smile she used on patrons. Not the barbed one she gave me when she wanted to draw blood. A real smile. Soft, sudden, helplessly bright. It transformed her face so completely that I felt it as a physical event.
“Sure you did,” she said.
Before I could devise any better falsehood, she reached across, pulled the box toward her, and took a lemon pastry without ceremony. The ease of it loosened something in my chest that had been clenched for days.
“That one’s the right choice,” she said after her first bite, closing her eyes briefly in shameless appreciation. “If you’re going to lie, at least lie while bringing excellent pastry.”
“I stand corrected.”
I served her French toast before she could object, then served myself.
Coffee followed. The whole scene should have felt absurdly formal: candlelight, polished silver, old wood, and us seated across from one another like diplomatic rivals being coaxed into civility by cream, strawberries, and pastry.
For a few minutes we ate in a quiet not yet comfortable, but no longer armed silence.
Maddie broke it first.
“I miss baseball,” she said, almost idly, though the note beneath it was not idle at all. “Not even just going. I miss knowing it’s happening. I miss checking scores. Miss the rhythm of a season. Summer has passed and I’ve missed game upon game.”
I looked up.
The subject was unexpected enough to undo me a little. Of all the pathways our longest unguarded conversation might have taken, I had not anticipated Major League Baseball. Yet the instant she said it, some old part of me lit up.
“Yes,” I said before caution could intervene. “It does.”
Her brows lifted. “You know baseball?”
“I know history,” I said. “Baseball merely insists on being treated as one of its more peculiar branches.”
That brought the ghost of another smile.
“Oh, Lord,” she said. “You’re one of those.”
“One of what, exactly?”
“The kind of man who can turn a ballgame into a lecture on civilization.”
I leaned back slightly. “That depends. Are we speaking of baseball as sport, as statistical obsession, as ritualized nostalgia, or as one of America’s more successful efforts at myth-making?”
The delight that moved across her face then was immediate and wholly genuine. “You really do know baseball.”
“I know its origins were less tidy than its legends. I know it spent years pretending to be simpler than it was. I know no nation sentimentalizes itself through a summer game with quite such efficiency.”
She laughed softly. “Okay, professor. Who’s your team?”
“The Phillies,” I said.
“Of course they are.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What precisely does that mean?”
“It means you live in Philadelphia and dress like a European prince even at breakfast. There was never any chance you were going to say the Mets just to keep things interesting.”
“God forbid.”
She took another bite of pastry, then pointed at me with it. “Well, for your information, I am a Texas Rangers girl till I die.”
“A noble declaration,” I said. “Historically inconvenient, but noble.”
Her mouth fell open a fraction. “Did you just insult my team over French toast?”
“I merely acknowledged the record.”
“Excuse you. We have a record.”
“Yes,” I said. “That is the difficulty.”
She laughed again, and this time the sound moved through the room like heat.
I found myself leaning forward without realizing it, forearms settling lightly near my plate. “If we are discussing Texas, I will grant you this much: there is something deeply American in the Rangers as an institution. Expansion, reinvention, sun-baked endurance, periodic heartbreak.”
“Periodic?” she said. “That is rude. We’ve been to the World Series three times, sir. And won it once!”
“Accurate.”
She tipped her head. “You gonna stand there on behalf of the Phillies like they’ve never suffered humiliation?”
“I would never insult them by denying it. Their historical record includes spectacular collapse as a recurring character trait. But they also possess seniority, national mythology, and enough catastrophe to make loyalty almost devotional.”
Her eyes sharpened with interest. “You really mean that.”
“Of course I do. Baseball is one of the few sports that understands suffering properly. Its emotional architecture depends on repetition, hope, superstition, and statistically supported disappointment.”
“Now that,” she said, laughing into her coffee, “is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard anybody say about baseball.”
“I was not attempting romance.”
“No,” she said, looking over the rim of her cup. “I can tell.”
The line could have unsettled me. Instead, it landed lightly between us, teasing rather than cruel.
I let myself answer in kind. “Then perhaps you will be charitable and explain the Rangers to me as only a devoted partisan can.”
That pleased her. I saw it in the way she sat up a little straighter, one hand curling around her coffee cup while the other moved as she talked.
So she did.
She spoke of summer heat and radio broadcasts and the strange comfort of seasons that felt like warm memories of childhood instead of sport.
She talked of the joy of finally winning the pennant only to lose the series twice, then finally crossing over to the promised land of winning the World Series only to suffer in mediocrity once again.
Of how baseball made room for memory because there were always enough games for one to attach itself to whatever had happened in the rest of your life at the time.
I answered where I could, and often more than I should have.
“I am only saying,” I replied, “that romance with a franchise does not exempt it from statistics.”
“Statistics doesn’t know a damn thing about vibes.”
“Vibes,” I repeated.
“Yes, vibes.”
“I see.” I reached for my coffee. “Then your case is stronger than I realized. No serious scholar can withstand vibes.”
“Glad you’re learning.”
The pastry box diminished between us as we talked. She took another lemon pastry. I discovered that the strawberry hand pies were absurdly good. Somewhere in the house, evening gathered itself more fully around the old walls.
And because I had spent three centuries cataloging useless and useful information alike, once encouraged I could not seem to stop.