Page 10 of Bred By the Tsar

He catches my face turning. "Where did you just go?"

"Nowhere," I lie, and smile. I’m sure he doesn't believe me, but for once he lets it be.

7

Konstantin

By breakfast the whole house knows exactly what has happened..

Her things are already moving from the east wing into mine — I gave the order before she woke, and I watched two footmen carry that one sad little suitcase down the corridor like pallbearers for a life she won't be needing. I had a place set for her at my table, at my right hand, where no nanny in the history of this house has ever sat.

I want it seen. I want it minuted. Let the staff whisper. Whispering is just the truth getting where it needs to go.

She comes down pink and uncertain, hovers at the door when she sees the table, looks at the place setting and then at me.

"Sit," I tell her. She sits. The word still works on her and I will never tire of it.

Misha is delighted. He bangs his spoon and demands she look at every single thing on his plate, and she does, gravely, like each item is a wonder. Lena watches her over the rim of a teacup with the flat assessing stare of a small auditor — but she's stopped pretending to read at the table, which from my daughter is nearly a declaration of love. Hazel reaches over without thinking and steadies Misha's cup before it goes, and tucks a napkin into Lena's lap with a murmured something that earns her, almost, the ghost of a smile.

"Are you going to leave like the others?" Lena asks, into a lull, with the brutal directness of a child who has decided the worst thing in the world is not knowing. The table goes still. Misha's spoon stops halfway to his mouth.

Hazel doesn't flinch, and she doesn't lie. "I'm not planning to," she says. "But you don't have to believe me yet. You can just watch and see. I don't mind being checked on."

Lena considers this with the gravity of someone three times her age. Then she goes back to her toast, and the set of her small shoulders has changed fractionally. I know exactly what I'm looking at.

My daughter has decided to risk hope. It is the bravest thing anyone at this table has done, my own conduct included.

I watch the four of us sit at one table in the grey morning light.

This. This is what I want. Not a treaty bride. Not a political match chosen for her bloodline and her family's votes. This — the warm chaos of it, her small certain hands managing my children, the place at my right hand filled at last by someone who looks at me like I'm a man and not a monument.

I'll marry her. The rest is logistics.

"You're staring," she says, not looking up from Misha.

"Yes."

"People are going to talk."

"People are going to do considerably more than talk." I drink my coffee. "I find I don't care. I've spent three years being careful. I'm finished."

She does look up then. Before she can speak, the door opens.

My mother.

Small and black-clad and immovable as a cathedral, jet necklace at her throat, the same diamonds she's worn since before I could walk catching the grey morning light. The Dowager Tsaritsa takes in the table in a single sweep: the seating, the suitcase-shaped absence in the east wing she's surely already heard about, the American girl sitting where a queen should sit. Her face does not change at all, which is how I know she is furious.

"Konstantin." A glance, cool as the window glass, slides over Hazel and away, as though she were a draft. "When you have a moment. There's the matter of the Lindqvist visit. Their daughter arrives Thursday."

"Cancel it."

The smallest pause. "It would be unwise to cancel it."

"Then it can go ahead without me, because I won't be choosing anything from it." I set down my cup. "You hired me a nanny, Mother. You should be pleased. She's exceeded every expectation I had."

For one heartbeat the mask slips, and I see it and then the smile returns, gracious, terrible, the smile that has outlasted three Tsars.

"How nice," she says, "that you're happy," and the way she says happy makes Hazel go still beside me, makes the word sound like something with a short shelf life.