For a moment she worried she’d overstepped, but Maud nodded in agreement. “Why don’t you come over next week? Mama receives on Tuesdays at three.”
An invitation to Marlborough House, after just a single duet at the piano?
If she had known it would be this easy, May would have attempted it long ago.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Alix
IT FELT SURREAL, ALMOST MAGICAL,wearing black to a formal party. Staring around the ballroom of the Winter Palace, Alix thought that the world had been temporarily leached of all color, the entire scene drawn in shades of white and black, shadow and light.
She reached for Ella’s hand and squeezed it. “I can’t believe I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“It’s gone by too fast!” There was the slightest quaver to Ella’s voice as she added, “I’ll miss you and Ernie so much.”
They both glanced at their brother, who was whirling about the dance floor with one of the Romanov cousins, looking quite debonair in his black tailcoat and bow tie. There were no mirrors in the ballroom, just gilded tracery on the walls and a profusion of flowers—imported at great expense from the Crimea—on every surface. But Alix could look at Ernie and know that she was the same: the dark fabric making her blue eyes glow, turning her long hair into a blaze of gold.
“Thank you for lending me the dress,” she added softly. She hadn’t brought anything black because she wasn’t in mourning; all her evening gowns were bright with color.
“Abal noir,” Ella mused. “Isn’t it a unique idea, makingeveryone wear the same color? I only wish it weren’t black,” she added, in a rare display of disloyalty to her in-laws. “Think how enchanting this might feel if we all dressed in white. Orred!”
Alix smiled softly. “If you throw such a ball, I promise to come back for it.”
“Even in the winter?”
“Especially in the winter.”
Having grown up in Darmstadt, Alix thought she knew cold, but she’d never felt anything like a Russian winter. The bitter wind off the Neva River sank its claws through her layers of fur, bit searingly at her skin. Yet Russians didn’t let the temperature slow them down. At home in Germany, and in England, the social season stretched over the summer months; Alix was used to spending the winter in bed, with a hot water bottle at her feet.
Yet this was the height of St.Petersburg’s Season, which began on New Year’s Day and lasted until the start of Lent. Night after night, at Ella and Sergei’s urging, Alix and Ernie had bundled into their furs and gone out in a sleigh, skimming over the snowy streets to the theater or the opera, to balls and banquets.
Every aristocrat in Russia must have spent a small fortune hosting parties that Season—on entertainment, on groaning tables of food, and most of all on the fuel: wood for the stoves and gas for the chandeliers, not to mention the long wax tapers that burned in silver candelabra. It was as if they thought they could hold the long Russian nights at bay if only they had enough light. Often Alix and Ella didn’t come home until dawn streaked the sky, though Alix resolved never to tell Grandmama this fact.
“Oh, here comes Nicholas,” Ella said brightly.
Alix’s heart skipped at the sight of the tsarevich, who was moving unmistakably in their direction.
She’d seen him a little over the past six weeks, though she wished it had been more. As the heir to the throne, he had other demands on his time, other people flocking about him asking for favors or advice. Whenever his eyes met Alix’s, he would flash her one of his rare, brief smiles, and she would glow from within.
When Alix was lucky enough to be seated near Nicholas, she inevitably threw etiquette to the winds and ignored the partner on her other side so that she could talk to him. He was full of stories—lighthearted ones that made her laugh, like the time he and his brother Misha had climbed onto the roof of the Winter Palace and gotten stuck there, as well as serious ones about his time in the army, or his grandfather. He made a point of asking Alix about herself and always listened with careful attention.
He was so achingly handsome, but that wasn’t what drew Alix to him. Nicholas was wholly and completely himself, without the bluster or bravado that characterized most men. He made his opinions after much gathering of facts, and then, when he acted, his movements were consistent with those opinions. He was like an arrow, straight and true.
“Alix,” Nicholas said when he’d reached her. “Would you like to dance?”
“I— Of course.”
She placed her palm in his and let him tug her to the center of the ballroom, where couples swirled over the polished wood floors. Normally, Alix tried to avoid dancing; no matterhow gracefully she waltzed with her dance instructor, she inevitably tripped or forgot the steps in public.
Dancing with Nicholas would be just as bad as it had been when she danced with Eddy in London. Already she could feel everyone staring at her, whispering about her.That awkward German girl,they were probably saying,she’s nowhere as stylish or confident as her sister….
Nicholas’s left hand clasped her right, his other arm settling around her waist. The feel of him was steadying. As they launched into the first steps of the dance, Alix tried to focus on that—the sensation of his hand, separated from her skin by only a few layers of fabric. But the old panic began to stir in her chest.
“Are you all right, Alix?”
She attempted a smile, though it came out wobbly. “I’m all right.”
The ballroom was a black-hued blur. The cacophony of gossip and music receded in her ears, replaced by the haunting sound of childish laughter.
