Page 95 of A Queen's Match

“Of course.” Alix understood. Hélène needed to flee, to find a place that didn’t make her think of England.

Hélène’s next words were quiet. “I keep forgetting that he’s gone, you know. I’ll want to tell him something, and then suddenly I’ll remember that I can’t, and the pain of it hits me all over again.”

“Sometimes I still forget that my mother is gone, and I lost her thirteen years ago,” Alix confessed. “When there’s something I want to tell her, that’s what I do. I talk to her.”

“At her gravesite?”

“I talk to her portrait. We have a picture of her in the library.” Alix felt a little foolish admitting this, but Hélène would understand. “Even when I’m not in Darmstadt, I whisper things to her. I always get the sense that she’s listening.”

“I don’t have any portraits of Eddy. I’m sure May does,” Hélène said resentfully.

Alix’s heart ached. “I would say that I’m sorry, but I know it’s a useless thing to say. When people used to tell me how sorry they were about my mother, it made me irrationally angry. As if they shouldn’t just be sorry, they shoulddosomething.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do, Alix, unless you have the ability to turn back time.”

Alix reached for a silver-backed brush, which by all rights belonged on the surface of Hélène’s vanity yet had beenabandoned on a side table. “You know what I can do? I’ll brush your hair. You need it, honestly.”

“Oh, very well.” Hélène shifted, pulling her feet up onto the cushions so her back faced Alix.

They were silent for a while, the only sound the swish of the hairbrush as Alix teased knots from Hélène’s dark mane. Then Hélène said, “You know what else you can do? You can distract me.”

“Distract you?”

“You never told me what happened with Nicholas!” Hélène drew in a breath as if remembering something, then twisted to look at Alix over her shoulder. “I hope you didn’t misinterpret— That is, Eddy told me that he’d seen me with Nicholas on the yacht, and he assumed the worst.”

“I knew that there was nothing between you and Nicholas.” Alix sighed. “Still, it didn’t work out between us.”

“I think you can convince his parents! It will just take time,” Hélène insisted.

Alix shook her head. “Actually, Maximilian of Baden is courting me now.”

“That German man from the regatta?”

“He makes me happy, Hélène.”

“Oh. Well.” Her friend seemed to be struggling to remember Maximilian. Finally she settled on, “Heisrather tall, I recall.”

“He’s more than tall. He’s kind, and earnest, and…” Alix trailed off as Hélène stood and crossed the room to a mahogany cabinet. Light refracted on all the crystal decanters within.

“What are you doing?” Alix demanded.

“Getting us a drink.” Hélène reached for a crystal square-cut decanter full of amber liquid. She poured it into two tumblers, then handed one to Alix.

“Is this brandy?” Alix had only ever had sherry, or wine.

“It’s what Eddy would drink if he was here.” Hélène took a large sip. Alix hesitated before doing the same.

She choked, coughing. The brandy burned her throat.

“I’m all right,” she managed, then took a much smaller sip. It felt less abrasive this time, curling in her stomach like liquid fire.

“You don’t really break the rules, do you?” Hélène almost sounded amused.

“I broke the rules that time with Nicholas,” Alix said unthinkingly.

“Iwonderedwhat happened that night! I assumed you were together, but I wasn’t sure how far things progressed.”

“Oh, they progressed.” Even now the memory of that night brought heat to Alix’s cheeks. “But then I realized that Nicholas would never get his parents’ permission to marry me. That I couldn’t keep waiting for the impossible.”