Page 32 of A Queen's Match

Princess Alix of Hesse,read the card on her door.

Alix pulled Nicholas inside, then turned the lock behindhim. The sound of the bolt falling into place felt oddly final. As if she’d turned some corner, reached some decision within herself, that would forever change things.

Nicholas wandered over to the window, which looked out over the eaves of the roof. He released the latch and lifted the windowpane, letting in the cool night air. They both stared out at the wine-dark sky.

“Misha and I used to climb on the roof of the Winter Palace,” he mused aloud.

“Really? Ernie used to do the same, but I was never so brave. Not after Frittie.” Her younger brother who’d fallen out of a window. A ground-floor window, but a window just the same.

Nicholas instantly started tugging the window shut. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think.”

“It’s all right.” Alix was tired of being afraid, of living with regrets. She ducked her head out the open window.

Then, before she could think twice about it, she lifted the skirts of her gown and clambered outside.

“Alix! What are you doing?” Nicholas tried to pull her back, but her feet were already on the slate tiles.

“Come on!” she insisted. Nicholas smiled softly and joined her outside, sliding down to a flat section of roof that was several yards square. They settled next to each other, staring at the moonlit harbor, their hands clasped.

“What did you and Misha do on the roof of the Winter Palace?” Alix asked. “Were you hiding from your tutor, or did you play pranks, as Ernie did? He loved to throw stockings full of water on unsuspecting people.”

“Misha had his fair share of pranks, but I spent most of our time on the roof trying to plot how to leave.”

“What?” Alix looked over at Nicholas, startled.

“My tutor taught me the basics of navigation: how to calculate one’s location by triangulating the distance between two points, how to use the sun, that sort of thing. I had told him I wanted to be an explorer.” Nicholas’s voice was rough. “My tutor used to take me down to the shipyards. I peppered the workers with questions—how did they hammer the metal plates of the hull together, how did the propellers work? When the ship increased in speed, could you feel it? That’s part of why I find it so perplexing, staying on a yacht that’s anchored in a harbor,” he added with a humorless laugh. “I prefer to be on a boat with a destination.”

“Why didn’t you serve in the navy instead of the army?” Alix asked.

Nicholas turned to her then, his expression resigned. “My father, of course. When he learned what was going on, he fired my tutor. Said it was unseemly for a future tsar to be out mixing with commoners, asking them questions, as if I was not God’s appointed ruler and above them all.”

“I’m so sorry, Nicholas.”

“Father told me it was a foolish wish, wanting to be an explorer. That there was nothing left to explore, because we know every last corner of the world now, anyway.”

“ ‘And Alexander wept, for there were no lands left to conquer,’ ” Alix murmured.

Nicholas let out an amused breath. “That’s not what Plutarch wrote, actually. It was misquoted.”

“In an English translation, I know.” Alix smiled. “I prefer the misquote, though. It sounds rather poetic. The English are good at that.”

“At getting things wrong or sounding poetic?”

“Both, probably.”

Alix looked at Nicholas’s hand, still clasped in hers. She felt as if he’d reached that hand up into the twist of her blond curls, pulling them loose from their pins, and then she would tip her head back and bring her mouth to his—

She blinked. Her imagination was playing tricks on her.

Or perhaps her mind was skipping ahead of her body, which had every intention of actually doing all those things.

Suddenly she understood why Hélène had risked everything to sneak around with Eddy.

“I think we should go inside,” she declared.

Nicholas rose to his feet, then held out a hand to help her up. “Of course. It’s getting cold, isn’t it?”

“I meant, let’s go into my bedchamber. Together,” she said clearly.