Alix paused, uncertain. “I’m still leaving tomorrow.”
“So you rejected him?”
Below in the orchestra, the aria swelled to a loud crescendo. “Not exactly,” she admitted. “I suppose we’ll be courting from a distance?”
May’s eyes darted to Queen Victoria, who was seated at the opposite end of the box with Aunt Alexandra. Somehow, Alix sensed that May knew what had happened—that Alix had tried to get out of the courtship, and that Victoria had refused to hear of it.
The entire theater burst into applause as the curtain fell. Audience members began to stand, eager to stretch their legs or visit neighboring boxes.
“Alix.” Eddy came behind her, bracing his hands on the back of her chair. There was something casually proprietary about the gesture that irritated her. “Shall we head to one of the other boxes? The Lansdownes are in number twenty.”
He’d phrased it as a question, but it hadn’t been intended as one, had it? Alix was supposed to sayoh yes, of course.To be led from one box to the next like some kind of show pony, quietly signaling to the world that she was his.
Well, she wasn’t his—not yet, anyway. And Alix found that she wasn’t ready to let their courtship start in earnest.
In an uncharacteristic gesture of defiance, she twistedaround and shook her head. “Why don’t you go without me? I’m going to stay and catch up with May.”
There was a momentary break in conversation around the rest of the box. Alix looked over at her grandmother, but Victoria was pretending to study her program, as indomitable as ever in her opera glasses and black gown.
Eddy shrugged good-naturedly and turned to Ernie. “Care to join me in the lounge?”
As their steps retreated into the hallway, Alix turned back to May. A heated sensation was building in her chest, which she strove valiantly to ignore. “I must admit, I’ve never seenLa Traviata,” she chirped. “We don’t often make it to the opera, except once in Vienna.”
Thankfully, May understood her need for small talk. “In Vienna! You don’t mean with Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Sisi? I’ve always wanted to meet them.”
Alix nodded, grateful when May kept talking, some nonsense about the empress’s legendary skin-care routine. To their left, May’s mother began asking questions of the queen while the Princess of Wales stared in stoic silence out at the theater.
Every modern princess knew the story: how, as teenagers, Alexandra and her sister Minnie had been legendary beauties, sought by every foreign court. One of them had married the Tsar of Russia, the other the future King of England. The two princesses of Denmark, somehow sitting on the world’s two greatest thrones.
Alexandra was still as stunning as ever, but Alix couldn’t help feeling that there was something tragic about her beauty now—something quiet and long-suffering. Like a flower that had been pressed between wax paper and dried up.
Was that what would happen to Alix if she married Eddy?
She felt feverish, as if a thousand spotlights were trained on her skin. People were staring, weren’t they? They had seen the way Eddy leaned over her chair and were already speculating, gossiping. The old paralyzing sensation grabbed hold of Alix, fear slinking like a sordid worm into her insides.No,she thought, trying to stave it off.
When the house lights finally dimmed and the music started up, signaling the end of the entr’acte, Eddy and Ernie still hadn’t returned.
The episode came on slowly, as it always did.
It started with a prickling over Alix’s arms, spots dancing at the edge of her vision. This had happened to her for years, ever since her brother Frittie had died of the bleeding disease, something no one in her family was permitted to speak of. In the months afterward, these dark spells had begun to haunt her. At first her family thought they were nightmares, except that they struck when Alix was awake.
She felt dizzy and weak and at the same time she pulsed with adrenaline, as if some primordial monster were chasing her, raking its claws over her skin. Alix looked at her hand, half expecting to see blood. But her skin was unblemished.
May glanced over. “Are you all right?”
Alix stumbled to her feet in a murmur of silk. “I…I’m feeling faint. I think I should head home.”
“Do you want my mother to come with you?”
In her swirl of panic, Alix hadn’t even thought of a chaperone. She momentarily hated society. Just this once, it would be so nice to behave like a man—to get into a carriage after dark and let the driver take her home, without worrying about her sullied reputation.
“I’ll find Ernie,” she gasped, then hurried through the inner box and out the door.
The hallway that curved around the boxes was mercifully empty, save a few guards outside the royal box, who shot her curious looks. Alix stumbled onto a bench upholstered in shining red damask. Tears pricked at her eyelids, and her chest heaved.
She sank her head into her hands and closed her eyes. The darkness that roared at her was an old darkness, pulled from the very depths of her. The kind of darkness that came from doing something unforgivable and having to live with the consequences. The kind of darkness born of searing regret.
She tried so hard to fight it off, but the memory wrapped its tentacles around her mind, dragging her back to that warm May afternoon. She heard a childish giggle, saw the sunlight streaming in through the open window. Her brother reached for her with his chubby toddler hands….
