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grandest piece of jewelry she had ever held. Fifth-born princesses from minor German districts did
not customarily wear such items about the house.
“Granny will never let me accept it,” she whispered, glancing about. They were the only two
seated at their end of the enormous table. Her grandmother had already departed the breakfast room
but quite a few members of the imperial family remained, dawdling over their sausages and soft
boiled eggs. From the corner Ella was watching them like a hawk, but Alix knew her older sister
would completely approve if she chose to accept the brooch from Nicky. In all likelihood, Ella had
been the one to pick it out.
“You don’t have to wear it publically or at least not when she is present,” Nicky said. “Just
keep it and know…” He trailed off here, as if this was the one part of the speech he had not
rehearsed. “It is a gift,” he finished weakly. “Nothing more.”
But gifts have meaning, Alix thought, closing her fingers around the diamond and noting that the
brooch was entirely too large to be concealed in her hand. Sometimes the things a woman accepted
from a man marked her even more clearly than the things she gave to him.
Nicky smiled, as if the very fact she held onto the brooch rather than letting it clang to the floor
like a wayward fork, was somehow proof of her answer.
“Meet me in the graveyard at five,” he whispered. “No one will look for us there.”
The Winter Palace - The Guest Quarters
10:50 AM
eggs.
At another breakfast table, down another hall, Davy was finishing up his story along with his
“I feel like a fool,” Rayley said. “I sat talking with the man for hours in the smoking room and