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slender chest. “The last time we had a ball at the palace,” he said, “it was the birthday of one of the<br />
girls who had been invited. Everyone wanted to dance with her. All the men, I mean. Of course it<br />
was the men who wanted to dance with her.”<br />
Alix nodded politely, as if this were a perfectly logical sequence of thought, to move from<br />
stories of ancestral murder to recollections of the latest grand ball.<br />
me.”<br />
“And so I lined up with the others to take my turn,” Nicky said, “and later my father berated<br />
Alix notably swallowed and Emma became abruptly aware that she was gaping at the two<br />
young lovers and turned her gaze back to the street. It was terribly wrong that they could not even<br />
have this brief exchange – nonsensical as it seemed to be – without witnesses, but then again she<br />
supposed that royalty never has true privacy and neither Alix nor Nicky seemed embarrassed by the<br />
presence of outsiders. To his credit, the guard wasn’t eavesdropping at all, but was rather focused on<br />
the action outside his own window, where the potato cart had now overturned and the vendor was<br />
waving at the carriage to wait while he scooped up his wares from the cobblestone street.<br />
“Why did he berate you?” Alix asked.<br />
The guard is worried, Emma thought, sensing the tension which moved throughout the man’s<br />
body. The overturned cart could be a ruse, some way to disrupt the progress of a carriage with the<br />
Romanov eagle painted so conspicuously on its side.<br />
“For standing in line with the others,” Nicky said. “Papa told me that the future tsar of Russia<br />
does not wait for anything. That if I am going to rule a great land that I must learn to take what I<br />
want. He said I should have walked directly up to the girl and claimed her, pulled her from the other<br />
men and led her to the dance floor.”<br />
The carriage began to move. Slowly, and swaying unevenly as it crushed the heaps of potatoes<br />
still in the street. Emma watched the infuriated face of the vendor slide from view as they passed.<br />
“Why do you tell me this?” asked Alix.<br />
this?<br />
Yes, thought Emma, shifting slightly as the guard settled back in the seat, why do you tell her<br />
“Not to make you jealous, my love,” Nicky said quickly, leaning towards Alix, bringing his<br />
head closer to hers. “It was a special day for the girl and I was simply trying to show her courtesy. I<br />
don’t even recall her name. I tell you this story only so you understand that I wish to be a tsar in the
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