Your friend,
May of Teck
The words were blurring in Hélène’s vision. She braced a hand on the silk cushion to steady herself and quickly looked at the enclosed page, on plain rough paper.
She didn’t actually know Laurent’s handwriting—they’d never had cause to write to each other—but the note was unmistakably from him. She recognized the urgent pulse of his voice, his use of French colloquialisms. Her heart plummeted when she saw that he mentioned one of their more reckless afternoons, when they had nearly been caught in the back seat of her parents’ carriage.
Queen Victoria couldnotsee this letter. Hélène could always claim it was a forgery, that someone was trying toblackmail her by spinning falsehoods…but stories like the carriage were frighteningly specific, and hard to disbelieve.
She hadn’t imagined that May of Teck was capable of such cruelty. Why, just last week they had shared a moment of understanding at the Princess of Wales’s receiving hours. Hélène had actually been foolish enough to think of May as a possiblefriend.And the whole time, the other girl had been plotting her downfall!
I came into possession of this letter quite by accident,May had claimed. Hélène wasn’t so foolish as to believe that. May had obviously figured out about Hélène and Eddy—perhaps she’d seen them together at Balmoral? So she’d gone digging, and uncovered the truth about Laurent, even going so far as to intercept hisletter.
Clearly, she thought she could edge Hélène out of the way and marry Eddy herself.
Hélène drew in a breath with such anger that Eddy looked up, startled. “Did you receive some bad news?”
The worst.“I’m fine,” Hélène said, and though it took every ounce of her willpower, she managed a smile. It must have been convincing enough, because Eddy nodded and changed the subject.
“I was wondering, how would you feel about announcing our engagement at Sophie and Tino’s wedding next week? Most of our families will be there, and—”
“No!”
It came out too sharply; Hélène winced and tried to recover. “It will be Sophie’s big day. I don’t want to overshadow her with our news.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right, of course,” Eddy said ruefully.
Jean-Baptiste reentered the room with a pitcher of tea and began officiously refilling their cups, giving Hélène a much-needed chance to think. She shoved May’s letter under the pile of other letters and stacked them all on a side table. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t dare let Eddy see it—didn’t want to involve him in any of this until she had a plan.
It seemed unbelievable that quiet, demure May of Teck would stoop so low as toblackmailher.
Some girls would go to any lengths to wear a crown.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Alix
“ARE YOU READY?” NICHOLAS ASKED,with a smile that betrayed his nervousness.
No,Alix thought wildly. Of course she wasn’t ready to tell the tsar and tsarina about their secret engagement.
Last month, after Nicholas proposed at Marlborough House, he’d suggested that they share the news with their families at Sophie and Tino’s wedding. Or more accurately, they would share the news withhisfamily, since Alix’s father was sending Ernie to the wedding in his stead. Alix had agreed, because what other choice did she have? This sort of thing needed to be discussed in person, and the wedding provided a perfect chance to do so.
Yet now that the moment was here, a cold panic had sunk its hooks into her flesh. The tsar and tsarina were stern under the best of circumstances; Alix couldn’t imagine how they would react when told that their oldest son, theirheir,had gotten engaged without their knowledge.
She just had to hope they would accept the match once they realized how happy it made Nicholas. They loved their son; surely they would want him to love his wife, too.
“I’m ready if you are,” she told Nicholas.
He nodded and began leading her through the crowded reception hall. Skirts hissed over the marble floors as guests exchanged gossip, their heads whipping avidly toward the entrance with each new arrival. Through the windows, the colorful houses and towers of Athens were silhouetted against the golden sky.
They were at the Greek royal palace, which had been filling up all week as foreign kings and queens arrived in town. Nicholas and his parents were lodged in the palace itself; but King George and Queen Olga simply couldn’t host everyone, so lower-ranking guests—like Alix and Ernie—were shuffled into the homes of various bewildered aristocrats. Apparently King George had even commandeered carriages and extra servants from his court. Alix had already heard Emperor Wilhelm of Germany snickering about the footmen’s mismatched livery.
But what the Greek royal palace lacked in size and scale, it made up for in antiquated ceremony. Alix and Ernie’s carriage had pulled through the wrought-iron gates amid the fanfare of trumpets. A pair of footmen had then sprung forward to marshal them through the front doors, up a sweeping staircase into the great receiving rooms.
Nicholas found his parents near the windows, surrounded by a cluster of other, less important guests. The tsar was as sullen as Alix remembered; he stared imperiously around the room, as if this palace belonged to him rather than to King George. Next to him, the tsarina nodded in assiduous agreement with whatever he said.
Alix felt the room growing hazy. No, she thought fiercely, she could not afford to faint now, in front of all these people.She focused on physical sensations, trying to anchor herself in the present—the feel of her leather gloves over her palms, the smell of the salt air, which seemed to permeate Athens, even indoors.
