Nicholas cleared his throat. “Enjoy your tea.”
“You’re not staying?” Alix blurted out, then winced. Her second violation of protocol in two minutes. She wasn’t acting like herself.
Nicholas smiled, unbothered by her lapse in manners, and Alix’s stomach tugged at the sight. He glanced at Minnie. “I’d love to join, if you don’t mind, Mother?”
“Oh, very well.” The tsarina waved at a footman, who hurried to bring over another antique chair.
Alix took a seat, her heart fluttering strangely when the tsarevich sat next to her.
A steaming gold samovar of tea stood at the center of the table. The porcelain dishes held a mishmash of traditional English foods—scones, clotted cream, bread and butter—and others that must be Russian delicacies: crystal bowls of nuts, poppy-seed cakes, unfamiliar crescent-shaped cookies.
“I’m so glad you two are here,” Ella exclaimed, smiling at her siblings. “I can’t believe it’s been five years since you last came to Russia. To think that you haven’t visited since my wedding!”
Alix had longed to come sooner. She would have visited every year if her father had allowed it, but he and Grandmama had insisted she wait.Sergei won’t want his new wife’ssister underfoot. Wait until they’re no longer newlyweds,Alix’s father had told her.
In royal circles, a couple was usually considered newlyweds until the birth of their first child, but so far Ella hadn’t gotten pregnant. Alix wanted to bring it up with her sister, but she feared it was a sensitive subject, so she never mentioned it in her letters.
“Your wedding was so beautiful. I think of it all the time,” Alix replied.
To her surprise, the tsarina looked over. “You do?”
“I miss Ella; she feels so far away. And of course the wedding ceremony was breathtaking,” Alix hurried to add.
Her sister had seemed like a princess from a fairy tale, dressed in a white dress sewn with pearls, the Romanovs’ famous pink diamond tiara on her head.
“We had the most magical time on that trip,” Ella agreed. “Walking in the gardens, staying up half the night waiting for the sun to set over the water.”
“Russia is at its best in summer, isn’t it?” Nicholas chimedin.
Alix nodded. “I’ve never seen skies like that. It felt like they would keep glowing all night, like it would never turn dark at all.” Dimly, she noted that the rest of the table had detoured into another conversation, leaving her and Nicholas in a temporary bubble of intimacy.
There was that smile again, the one that lit up his whole face. “ ‘In the afternoon they came unto a land in which it seemed always afternoon,’ ” he quoted softly.
“You read Tennyson?” She hadn’t expected that.
“I find that reading poetry helps me practice my English.My father disapproves, though. He considers poetry a waste of time.”
“Does he feel that way about all the arts?” Alix wondered how someone too impatient for poetry could own so many spectacular paintings and sculptures.
“My mother collected most of the things in this palace,” Nicholas replied, guessing the direction of her thoughts. He lowered his voice. “She’s the one who helps me get books of English poetry, too. Aunt Alexandra slips them into the packages that Eddy and George send from England.”
Alix blinked. It was disorienting, hearing Nicholas talk about Eddy, but royalty was a very small circle. Especially at these elevated levels. And, after all, Eddy and George were Nicholas’s cousins: their mothers, Minnie and Alexandra, were sisters.
She wondered if Nicholas had heard anything about her and Eddy. What if he had some mistaken idea that she and Eddy were planning to marry? Could she find some tactful way to let him know it was nothing—that they’d each only written a single letter since her departure from England?
“We have nothing like Tennyson in Russian,” Nicholas was saying. “And the few poems we do have…they don’t capture that same sense of quiet peace.”
“Recite one for me.”
“A Russian poem?”
“Yes,” Alix pleaded, just wanting to hear his voice.
Nicholas spread his hands on the table before him and began to speak. The Russian language sounded harsh at first, almost guttural, yet the longer his poem went on, the more Alix sensed something else to it. A fluidity underneath allthose rasping consonants. A feeling of melancholy, perhaps even wistfulness.
“That was very moving,” she said, after he’d finished. “What is it?”
“An old folk song about a man who goes away to war. When he returns, his wife has run away to join the tree spirits. I heard it during my time in the army.” He shot a glance across the table, to where the tsarina and Ella were laughing at something Ernie had said. “My mother says it’s demeaning for me to know peasant songs, but I believe there’s value to it. As monarchs we should understand what motivates our people, the things they hope and fear.”
