To her relief, Nicholas cut in. “I’m sorry if you don’t approve of the match, but Alix and I are engaged. We are inlove.”
“In love?” Sasha laughed—a great belly laugh, as if his son had made an uproarious joke. “I’m sorry, are you a peasant now, to marry according to your lusts?”
Minnie shot a warning glance at her husband, the enormous pear-shaped diamonds in her ears swaying with the movement. Then she looked back at Nicholas with what seemed to be an attempt at sympathy. It came out more like a grimace. “Please do not keep saying that you are engaged, Nicky. You have indulged in a bit of harmless flirtation, but that is all.”
“It is not just flirtation! We made a pledge—”
The tsar stepped forward and struck his son across the cheek.
Alix gasped and stumbled back a step, hands flying to her mouth. The tsarina’s expression flickered, yet she made no move to help her son.
Already a red mark was blooming on the tsarevich’s cheek.
In the ringing silence, Minnie cleared her throat. Her eyes were now fixed on Alix. “I hope that a pledge is the only thing you’ve made, Alix. I hope you haven’t been such a fool as to throw away your future on an engagement that can never be.”
Alix blinked. What did that mean,throw away her future?
Minnie spoke slowly, as if addressing an ignorant child. “Have you lain with my son?”
“What?”
The tsarina continued in the same deliberate, dispassionate tone. “Because if there’s a surprise coming in nine months, it won’t change anything. It won’t succeed in tying you to Nicholas. All it will do is ruin you.”
Alix could only stare at the tsarina in bewildered shock.
“Mother, this is beneath you. Alix is a young woman of honor, and I will not allow you to besmirch her reputation!” Nicholas exclaimed.
“But, Nicky,you’rethe one besmirching it!” Sasha interjected. “If you keep saying that you are engaged when you are not, Alix is the one who will suffer. She has already been linked to one prince who didn’t marry her. A young woman whose name keeps being bandied about, with no engagements announced…” He shrugged. “She might never end up marrying at all.”
“Eddy didn’t break things off with me!” Alix couldn’t help herself; it was impossible to hear the tsar’s words and not clarify. “Isaid no tohim!”
Sasha smirked as if he found that distinctly unbelievable. “If you really turned down the future King of England, you’re even more of a fool than I took you for.”
“Nicholas, my darling, we just want what’s best for both of you,” Minnie pleaded.
“If you wanted what was best, you wouldlistento me!” Finally Nicholas reached for Alix’s hand, lacing their fingers in defiance of his parents. “I’m sorry that we fell in love without consulting you, but your objections about Alix are unfounded. Our family has married foreign brides for centuries! Mother, you were a Danish princess before you moved to Russia, and you succeeded in learning our ways. You can help guide Alix, teach her to become a great tsarina.”
A great tsarina.The phrase filled Alix with foreboding, but she told herself she could handle it. It was the only way she and Nicholas could stay together.
As difficult as it would be, finding a way to live with him, she couldn’t bear the prospect of living without him.
“It’s not just Alix’s lack of position that concerns me. I’m sorry,” the tsarina added, “but even in Russia, word has spread of your health problems. I fear that with your weak constitution, you would find the demands of being tsarina simply unbearable. Far better to stay close to home, where you will feel safe.”
Alix went cold; Nicholas cast her a worried, protective glance. Minnie noticed and pressed her lips into a thin line, as if they had just proved her point.
“I don’t know who has been spreading such gossip about me,” Alix forced herself to say. “Surely I’m not the first woman to need smelling salts because my corset was laced too tight.”
“Is that all it was? From what we’ve heard, you are afflicted with something much worse.”
Alix breathed once, twice, trying to think over the skittering of her pulse. She felt the familiar darkness hovering at the corner of her vision like an unwanted guest.
“Nicholas needs someone who can give him strong, hardy heirs. Not a wilting German flower,” his mother went on.
“I’m not—”
“The primary duty of a tsarina is to provide the next tsar,” Sasha said bluntly. “The ceremonies, the public appearances—none of that is as crucial as the future of our family. And frankly, young lady, I’m not sure that you can handleanyof it. You will never marry Nicholas, not while I have breath in my body.”
Shame flooded Alix, white-hot and corrosive. Her eyes stung, but she blinked away the tears.
