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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 years

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We Were Something, Don’t You Think So? [Chapter 11: Buckingham Palace]

You are a Russian grand duchess in a time of revolution. Ben Hardy is a British government official tasked with smuggling you across Europe. You are hopelessly and tragically in love with each other.

This is a work of fiction loosely inspired by the events of the Russian Revolution and the downfall of the Romanov family. Many creative liberties were taken. No offense is meant to any actual people. Thank you for reading! :)

Song inspiration: “the 1” by Taylor Swift.

Chapter warnings: Language, mentions of war and violence, sexual content (not graphic).

Word count: 6.5k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @imtheinvisiblequeen @okilover02 @adrenaline-roulette @youngpastafanmug @m-1234 @tensecondvacation @haileymorelikestupid @rogerfuckintaylor @yourlocalmusicalprostitute @im-an-adult-ish @someforeigntragedy @mo-whore @mellowfellowyellow @peculiareunoia @mischiefmanaged71 @fancybenjamin @anne-white-star @theonlyone-meeeee @witchlyboo @demo-wise

💜 💜 💜 Stay tuned for the series finale, coming soon (hopefully)! Thank you for reading! 💜 💜 💜

I’ve dreamed about my family more times than I could count since leaving Tobolsk, and after I learned of their murders I dreamed of nothing at all; but tonight I’m not sure what my dreams are made of. There’s water, or rather the sound of water, immense and roaring against steel. There’s my palm gliding over a metal railing with flaking paint. There are pulsing, anonymous crowds pushing me down cobblestone streets. There are gardens full of plants I’ve never seen before, and an old woman’s voice tells me their names: eastern redbuds, blue mistflowers, scarlet beebalms, Carolina springbeauties, cinnamon ferns. There’s something sweet and ice-cold and strangely biting washing over my tongue. There are flashing bulbs of light that make the stars invisible.

I wake with no answers but deeply rested, as if I’ve slept for a thousand years. Ben is already gone, which is clever of him; cool autumn sunlight—grey with cloud cover, etched with the shadows of brittle leaves—spills in through the windows, and by now there will be butlers and maids moving through the house. I rise to find my body roped with soreness, but it’s a good sort of soreness, gratifying, accomplished: muscles I haven’t used before strengthening, corporal memories demanding to be kept. It reminds me of how I felt as a child after my first rowing lesson on the Black Lake with Papa, or after falling from a horse on my thirteenth birthday, or after carrying Alexei around on my back all day so he wouldn’t be left out of our games. Such pain has a way of making small moments indelible, and belongs just as much to the flesh as it does to the soul.

I go to the window. Above there are rainclouds rolling in from the North Sea; below there are children hurrying to school, bearded men strolling in top hats and wool coats, street vendors selling newspapers and bouquets of flowers, women pushing baby carriages. There was a time when I would have barely seen these people at all. They would have been as flat as paper, nameless, transitory, vanishing the second my eyes left them. Now I am aware—so cuttingly aware—that each has a past and a future and a family and friends, each has dreams like I do, each believes wholeheartedly that they know the story of the world. They don’t, not really, because no one does; we each know only one piece, one strand thinner than a spider’s thread, and we cling to it all our lives without ever seeing the web.

In the full closet that the Lees have generously provided, I push past skirts and trousers to find dresses, lace and silk and chambray. It’s more thought than I’ve put into my clothes since I arrived in London. I have to look more like a grand duchess today. I have to look like the girl that the king remembers.

When Ben knocks, I’m sitting at the vanity in a lace dress not unlike the one I left Tobolsk in, except that this dress is black. Black is appropriate for mourning, and across the globe there are plenty of reasons to mourn at the moment. “Come in,” I call, brushing out my hair.

Ben opens the door but doesn’t cross the threshold. He doesn’t look particularly rested; in fact, he doesn’t look like he’s slept at all. His eyes are red and his hair in disarray. He’s holding the green velvet pouch containing my family’s jewels in one hand and keeps rubbing his face with the other. “Hi,” he says from the doorway.

“Hello.” I glance at him briefly and then turn back to the mirror.

Ben waits for me to say more, to set the tone for him to follow. I don’t say anything. After a while he asks: “Do you need help? Want me to braid your hair for you?”

“No, that’s alright. I can do it.” And I can; he taught me how.

“Okay.” But Ben doesn’t leave. He leans against the doorframe and watches me, bewildered. I don’t understand why he can’t see how painful this is. I don’t understand why he thinks we can pretend it’s yesterday. At last he says: “There was a call from Buckingham Palace. I’ve been summoned to meet with the king this afternoon. Which means you have too.”

“Today?”

“At 3:00. They’re sending a carriage.”

What is this that I’m feeling? I don’t have words for it in any language. I’m nervy and tranquil and proud and cowardly, I’m so young yet so old. And each time I look at Ben, I’m starving for him. I keep my eyes on the mirror. “At last.”

“At last,” Ben echoes softly.

“3:00, was it?” I ask. “They certainly aren’t in a hurry.”

Ben smirks, shrugs. What can you do? That look says. And the answer is nothing. Royalty will behave however they want to. Something about that truth bothers me; it catches in my mind like a thorn in skin. “I suppose it’s time for me to give these back to you.” Ben sets the green velvet pouch on the floor of my bedroom. He still doesn’t step inside, and I suspect that’s more for my own benefit than his. We shouldn’t be unchaperoned while the staff are roaming the halls. We shouldn’t risk my reputation. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” Ben tells me as he leaves.

I go to the pouch and open it. Inside, like the still-glistening organs of a gutted animal, are the jewels that once belonged to the Romanovs. I sift through them—chains of silver, strings of gold, sapphires, rubies, amethysts, emeralds, topazes, diamonds, pearls—conjuring no memories of my family, feeling only the weight of a planet mined raw by other people’s hands.

For the first time, I wonder what exactly jewels like these might be worth.

~~~~~~~~~~

The vast dining room table, to my dismay, is strewn with all the trappings of a Full English Breakfast. Before I can make myself a plate—taking a polite portion of each component and nothing more, perhaps pretending to forget about the blood pudding—Ben emerges from the kitchen with a platter of thin pancakes topped with butter and cherry preserves. They’re his version of blini; they’re his version of a Russian breakfast. Ben sets them down in front of me and then sits at the opposite end of the table. Joe’s eyes leap between us as he sips a cappuccino.

Ben and I speak to everyone except each other. Mr. Lee talks about how much he is going to miss having us here. Mrs. Lee tells us about Australia, kangaroos and koala bears and endless golden beaches, and she implores us to visit her homeland one day if we can. I’ll almost certainly see Australia in my lifetime. It’s a part of the British Empire, after all.

In Italian, Joe says to me: “You must promise that you will come to New York someday, Lana bella donna. You will come and you will dine at my pizzeria and I shall become outrageously famous and wealthy. You must not forget us, because we will not forget you. You must come to New York. Do you promise?”

“Si, lo prometto,” I reply, knowing already that I’m lying, and Joe knows it too. No British monarch has ever set foot in the United States, not even when they were still colonies. Who says that I could be the first? Who says that I could have any choice in the matter at all?

I can’t just sit around all day waiting for the clock to strike 3:00, so after breakfast I take a walk to see Kroshka in the stable several blocks away. Ben trails after me—quietly, hesitantly, from a distance, like he did on the ship we left Saint Petersburg in—crunching rust-colored fallen leaves beneath his boots. In the stalls I find Thoroughbreds and Hackneys and Cleveland Bays, dignified Oldenburgs and arrogant Arabians and one massive Suffolk Punch. I give them each a fond yet fleeting scratch on the forelock before continuing on to Kroshka. She has been given the smallest stall, a dark little cubby hidden away at the end of a row. She is meant to be invisible. Kroshka doesn’t seem to mind; she dozes and chews on a mouthful of hay as I glide my palm down the length of her plain, honest face.

“Who’s a lovely mule?” I murmur. Kroshka’s long scruffy ears perk up. “You’re a lovely mule, yes you are.” I glance back to where Ben stands a few stalls away. “What will happen to Kroshka when you go to New York? You can’t leave her behind. Someone else might not understand. They might abuse her, might even send her to slaughter. She needs you.”

Ben stares at me like he’s seen a ghost, then shakes it off. “She’s coming to New York too, no need to worry.”

“Good.” Kroshka’s nose twitches beneath my hand. I offer her the sugar cubes I took from the Lees’ kitchen, and her velvety lips gobble them up. Everyone else is going to the New World. Everyone else is starting over.

“I thought you didn’t approve of the unattractive mule,” Ben says.

“She’s grown on me.”

“Animals have a way of doing that.”

“So do people.”

On the periphery of my vision, I can see him watching me, curious. He waits for me to continue. He waits a long time.

Still stroking Kroshka’s muzzle, I speak without looking at Ben. “All I ever wanted from you—from the second Mother told me you were coming—was for you to like me. Not just for being a grand duchess, but for who I was as a person. And I just assumed you would like me, that it was inevitable, like gravity or time or waves on the ocean. But then you didn’t. And you didn’t just not like me…you made me feel idiotic and unwelcome and small, so vanishingly small. I couldn’t wait to get away from you. I would have clawed through the earth with my bare hands to get away from you. But then…then…” I turn to him, tears burning in my eyes. “Ben, you made me feel alive. And truthful. And understood. And wanted. Wanted for everything I am but also everything I’m not, like every sliver of empty space, every piece of the human experience that I’m missing was an opportunity for you to teach me something new, to watch me grow, to spend time with me, infinite and cherished time. All I ever wanted was for you to like me. And now you do. But somehow that just makes all of this worse.”

“I don’t like you,” Ben says.

I smile. “No?”

He smiles back, the most hopeless smile I’ve ever seen. “No.”

Last night hangs in the air between us like spiderwebs, like a noose. We could touch it, but we don’t dare. “So I guess you’ll have a few nice things to write about me in your article.”

“There isn’t going to be an article.”

“What?” I exclaim, almost shout at him.

“I’m not going to profit from your family’s murder,” Ben says resolutely, like he’s known it for weeks. “I’m not going to profit from your heartbreak. I’m not going to spill salacious gossip that will give the world more reasons to hate you. I’m not going to be yet another person who expects you to sacrifice for their professional advantage. I’ll find something else to write about. And if I can’t, then maybe I don’t deserve to be a writer.”

When was the last time I saw him scribbling in his leather-bound notebook? Saint Petersburg? That feels like forever ago. Several lifetimes, at least. “Where’s your notebook, Ben?”

“At the bottom of the Gulf of Finland.”

“Ben…you can’t…you can’t just…I thought you…what about…?”

“The decision is made. That’s it. I appreciate your concern, I really do, but this isn’t something you get a say in.”

Across the stable from him—in the midst of horses nickering, hooves stomping, eaves creaking when the wind blows, the bleak autumn air sharp like a razor—I am shellshocked. What about his career in New York? What about the money he needs? “You should write about yourself, Ben,” I say eventually. “Your life, your family, your people. They have stories worth telling. You have stories worth telling.”

“Maybe,” he replies, but he doesn’t seem particularly interested. He doesn’t think that’s something customers would care to read about. He really hasn’t thought of a new plan yet. I find that equally heroic and horrifying. What’s going to happen to him? What’s going to happen to me?

We leave the stable together, walking without speaking but our steps in tandem. Outside there’s a street vendor braying about newspapers and candies and flowers. “Last of the season, last of the season!” he cries, waving bouquets in the air. “Get your mum or your sweetheart something nice. Buy yourself out of the doghouse. Last of the season! Last of the season!”

Ben points to flowers laid out in haphazard piles on the cart. “That’s valerian,” he tells me, making conversation so we have a reason to look at each other. “And zinnias, and helenium, and over there are calla lilies.”

I smile warily at him. “I know, Ben. We grow all of those in Russia.”

“Oh. Right.”

“The gardens at Tobolsk were crawling with calla lilies.”

“What color?”

“White, mostly. Mother called them snow lilies.”

Most of the calla lilies on the street vendor’s cart are deep purple or burnt orange or a pale listless blue, but Ben buys a white one, just one single flower. He weaves its stem through my braid until it is secured there, until the curling, vase-like petal rests behind my ear.

“How do I look?” I ask Ben. “Adorable? Formidable? Regal? A woodland faerie princess?”

“A woodland faerie grand duchess. After last night, are you even still allowed to wear white…?”

I laugh and shove him, gently, playfully. Ben chuckles and drags me into him and slings an arm around my shoulder. I breathe him in: the darkness of smoke and cologne, the light of his latent optimism. Because Ben is an optimist way down deep, he must be. You have to be an optimist to jump at the chance to start over on a new continent with nothing. You have to be an optimist to carry others’ burdens on your shoulders believing that it will, in some infinitesimal way, make the world a less violent place.

We go to Hyde Park and sit on a bench in the midst of spiraling leaves and blade-sharp wind—saying nothing, thinking everything—and listen to Big Ben strike noon, and then 1:00, and then 2:00, time receding from us like a broken fever.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the small travel trunk, I pack my copy of Tarzan of the Apes from Tobolsk, the book about British monarchs that Ben gave me, and the green scarf I bought in Moscow. The silver-thread bears shimmer as I fold the fabric once, twice, again, and then tuck it away safely. I don’t have much to bring with me to Buckingham Palace. Nothing I’ve been wearing is suitable for a princess.

I peer down at the bed, still unmade and rumpled. I go to the side where Ben slept last night and peel off the white pillowcase. When I press it to my face—tentatively, fearfully, bracing myself for no remnants of the night before—it smells just like him. And then I’m beaming without even realizing it. I pack the pillowcase in the travel trunk, then turn to the pouch containing my family’s jewels. It’s still waiting there on the hardwood floor. I close the trunk lid, secure the clasps, and wait for Ben to collect me.

He appears in the doorway just a few minutes later, grim like storm clouds. “Are you ready?”

“Almost.” I pick up the pouch of jewels. “Come inside and close the door.”

Ben does, but diffidently. “Aren’t you going to pack those…?”

“As it turns out, I’m not.” I hand the green velvet pouch to him. “I want you to have this.”

Ben is so shocked he nearly drops it. “You…you…? Want me to…?”

“You need money,” I say simply. “You won’t have a bestselling New York Times article about me to launch a career off of. It will take you longer to find your footing. But the jewels will help.”

“I…you…” He opens the pouch and blinks down at the gleaming metal and gemstones. “I can’t take these from you. No. Absolutely not.” He tries to give the pouch back to me. I refuse it.

“I owe you my life, Ben. This is the very least I can do for you.”

He is aghast. “Look, I get that you don’t really understand how money works, but even if I take these it’s not like I can walk into a bank with them and leave with cash. People are going to notice. They’ll probably think they’re stolen.”

“You can break them apart, can’t you?” I say. “Pry the stones out of the metal. Sell them one piece at a time. Someone will buy them from you, surely. Someone will pay quite a lot for them. They’ll last you years, I suppose. Perhaps decades.”

“But…but…” Ben shakes his head. “I ripped up the photograph. I didn’t get you to London in time to save your family. These are the last pieces of them that you’ll ever have.”

“My family isn’t in these jewels, Ben,” I say, my voice quiet, my eyes slick. And for once, I feel like the wise one. “They’re gone. They’re just gone. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

There is silence, and stillness, and then Ben embraces me. He doesn’t try to kiss me. He doesn’t offer any words. He just holds me until we hear clopping hooves and carriage wheels slowing to a halt on the grey cobblestones outside.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ben loads the travel trunk and then steadies me as I find my footing on the single thin, metal step. The driver is a middle-aged, mustached man who says little to us. Ben and I are left alone inside as we roll towards Buckingham Palace, each of us gazing absently out our own window.

Ben murmurs, his eyes on the streets of London: “Well, you said you wanted a carriage.”

At first I don’t know what he means, and then I remember, laughing wildly. It’s difficult to imagine being that girl who left Tobolsk in the back of a mule cart. She feels more like a sister than me. “This is the last time you’ll see me without having to bow,” I tease, trying to make Ben smile. It doesn’t work.

He rests his forehead against the cool window. His breath paints fog on the glass. “I’m never going to see you again.”

“No?” A desperate, frantic sort of distress seizes me. “We might cross paths. You can sail back to visit sometimes. I’ll arrange everything. Surely we’ll keep up correspondence, at least.”

“You don’t understand,” he says. “I can’t speak to you. I can’t be around you. I can’t wake up every morning wondering if I’ll get a postcard or a letter. If I do, I’ll never move on from this. I’ll never burn you out of me. Every woman I’ll ever meet will be standing in your shadow.”

“So after everything that’s happened, I’m going to lose you too.”

“I was never yours and you were never mine and that’s exactly how you wanted it.”

“I’ll be able to help people, Ben,” I plead softly, pained. “As a princess. As a queen.”

“Yes. When they let you, and in the ways that they let you.”

“This is really the end of us?” I can’t comprehend it. “The very end?”

“I’m sorry,” Ben whispers, still unable to look at me.

He’s beautiful like that, sad and introspective and wise because he’s had to be; and as he wills himself to forget, I force myself to remember. I commit every scrap of him—voice, scent, edges, tenderness, wrath—to my memory like permanent bruises trapped beneath skin. I study his cheekbones and the crinkles around his eyes. I count the freckles I can find on his face. I wish I had more pieces of him to take with me; I wish I had a single thread to bind us together. I wonder if David Windsor will one day be able to dull the pain of losing Ben, or if my children will, or perhaps some new man—a secretary, a guard, a Master of the Horse—with whom I’ll tumble into some blithe infatuation that my chivalrous husband will pretend not to notice. I wonder if I’ll have to learn to pretend I hate Ben in order to survive losing him…but even as the thought sweeps through me I doubt it. I can’t hate Papa for the mistakes—all those dreadful, lethal mistakes—he made as tsar. I can’t hate Mother for her weakness and her apathy. I can’t hate my siblings for being born wealthy and naïve and adored. I love them in a way that is bone-deep and immutable, without conditions, without rationality. It is the same way I will always feel about them, I believe wholeheartedly. It is the same way I feel about Ben.

“We’re here,” he says, breaking my contemplation like a flute of champagne. I startle; indeed, outside my window is Buckingham Palace.

We pass Queen Victoria’s memorial and proceed through the iron gates. There is a swarm of guards and servants waiting for us there. They spirit me out of the carriage and into the palace, Ben battling to keep pace. My single small travel trunk is carried away and disappears up a flight of stairs. I think of its contents: the scarf, the pillowcase, the book of bloodletting kings and chained queens, the novel in which Tarzan renounces his rediscovered birthright and leaves to give Jane a chance at a better life with some kind, passionless, impeccably normal man. There’s a sequel to Tarzan of the Apes, isn’t there? I think dizzily as I’m rushed through cold, gorgeous rooms. I’ll have to read it someday. I wonder what happens next.

The last time I was in Buckingham Palace there was a dusting of snow on the earth and a towering Christmas tree in the ballroom and sprigs of holly in my hair, and my parents were still alive and my sisters were giggling with me about all the eligible royal bachelors and Alexei was eating sticky toffee pudding until he had to be carried off to bed groaning but still wearing a triumphant grin on his drawn, smug, pale little face. Now everything looks different. Everything feels different. I can’t seem to wrap my head around it. It’s like returning to a place that had been so vast and magical when you were a child only to find it dull and confining and somehow…in every way…less. I wish I had never been born into royalty, or that I had never glimpsed life outside of it; I wish I was not this misfit patchwork of experiences that condemns me to belong nowhere. I wish I’d never heard the name Benjamin Hardy. I wish he was a country I’d never visited instead of a world I can’t seem to leave.

“My darling,” the Prince of Wales croons when he comes into view. He is standing beside a closed door, tall and lean and tidy and pristine, wearing an immaculately tailored suit and grinning widely, wolfishly. I had never really known what Tati meant when she complained about men being brutish and beastly and…and…hungry. Now I think I understand.

I take the prince’s hand when he offers it to me. He presses his lips to my knuckles. The hallway goes quiet. Everyone else leaves, vanishes through doorways or corridors; everyone but Ben, that is. “David,” I say.

“Your Imperial Highness.” He looks me up and down. “Good heavens, what’s happened to your hair? Father won’t even recognize you.” He yanks the tie out of my hair, unravels my braid, plucks out the calla lily and tosses it casually away. Some servant will pick it up later, surely, some servant whose name David wouldn’t be able to recall. They’ll snatch it up off the floor and take it outside with the rubbish and forget about it entirely. I wonder how long it will take me to forget about it, about the man who gave it to me. “There, isn’t that better?”

“Where…?”

“His Majesty will grant you an audience in the Throne Room.”

“Now?” I hope my voice doesn’t quiver. I hope David can’t see the panic in my eyes. Ben is still standing beside us, tense and silent and watchful.

The Prince of Wales only has eyes for me. He beams. “Now.”

He twists one shining golden knob. The door sweeps open. The Prince of Wales enters first and then beckons me inside. As I step through the doorway, I have a sudden vision of Mother radiant with pride, her face glowing and striped by shadows in the amber lamplight; I can see Papa puffing contently on his pipe by a roaring fireplace with a newspaper in his hands; I can imagine flesh and nerves and blood vessels knitting back together to cover their scattered bones as the promise of my legacy, my descendants, my fulfilled responsibility brings them new life. And then, following immediately, I see a different sort of vision, not the future but the still-lingering past: Ben whispering to me, all over me, inside of me, but not until I was trembling and gasping and begging him for it. I can still feel how eager and yet careful he was; I can still feel the mystifying absence of any pain. I can’t imagine a better initiation into lovemaking than that. I have no fear of it now, no shameful curiosity, no timid trepidation. I’d like to believe that Mother could forgive this indiscretion if it meant I would spend the rest of my life cradled tidily in the footprints she left for me.

The Throne Room is gold and red, a vivid bloodlike red. The Prince of Wales shows me where to stand. He smiles idly as he fidgets with my hair again to bring it forward over my shoulders, as he brushes a few stray horse hairs from my black lace dress. He is making me presentable. I wonder what my wedding night would have been like with him as my first lover: polite kisses, prissy words, that inevitable hissing pain that marks a woman as virtuous, an emptiness afterwards instead of a dreamlike peace. I wonder what my sisters’ wedding nights would have been like had they lived to marry princes and dukes and emperors. I can picture Olga shuddering with anxiety, Anastasia slapping unwanted hands away, Tati locking herself in the bathroom and sinking to the cold tile floor and hugging her knees to her chest. I think of all the women—girls, really—who have been sent, oblivious and fearful, into the bed of a man they barely knew. I think of their soft vulnerable flesh being roughly uncovered, prodded, invaded, reaped like wheat at harvest. And I realize, with a nauseating stab to my gut, that I will be expected to raise my own daughters to endure the same. All so that the bloodline can continue. All for the sake of royalty.

Ben is here in the Throne Room with us, lurking by the door we came in through. Why hasn’t he left yet? Because no one has told him to. Because they barely see him at all. And perhaps because he’s not ready for this to be the end of us either.

Another door, the one closest to the throne, opens. King George V strides in wearing full regalia, his medals and his ribbons and his cords. He clangs and rustles when he walks. He doesn’t seem surprised to see me. Instead, his eyes glisten as he smiles and opens his arms. “My dear,” he sighs with great sadness, and I soar across the room to him.

“Uncle George,” I sob as I delve into him, ribbons jostling, medals cold against my cheeks. He looks so much like Papa that it’s almost like being able to touch my father again, being able to atone for not saving him. It is a homecoming that knocks the breath out of me.

“You’re alive,” the king marvels softly. He kisses the top of my head. “David told me. I had understood it. But it is quite another thing to feel it firsthand.” He lifts my chin so he can look at me as the Prince of Wales observes us approvingly with his hands clasped behind his back. “You poor thing, you’ve been through so much. I can read the grief on your face.”

“My family…” I can’t finish; I choke on the words as they burn in my throat.

“They would be so proud of you, my dear,” the king says. “So very, very proud.”

I hope this is true. I hope it with every drop of blood in my veins that escaped the blades of revolution. “Thank you,” I wrench out in a jagged whisper.

“I had always hoped…Nicky and I had always planned…and now, at last, against all odds, here you are. The last Romanov. The only remaining heir of a great house. The recipient of the pity of all mankind.” He studies me meditatively. “Yes, I can think of no better match for David. I can think of no brighter future for the British monarchy.”

I belong here. I belong here. This is the only place I will ever belong. If I repeat this enough, surely it will begin to feel real. Time is whirling blindingly forward and yet standing still.

The king notices Ben for the first time. “And who might you be?” Then he recalls, boredly, like it’s an awkward logistical afterthought. “Oh, yes, the press attaché. My secretary will meet you in the Green Drawing Room. You will be given a handsome reward as a gesture of our appreciation.”

Ben should bow and dismiss himself, but he doesn’t. He stares at me, doubtful, immoveable. He’s waiting for me to tell him it’s okay to leave. He’s waiting until he knows I’m alright.

“Uncle George,” I say, regaining my composure. He does look so much like Papa, but there are small differences. The king is slightly shorter. His flesh is leaner, harder, less yielding. And while Papa’s eyes were dark and gentle and warm, the king’s are a clear and glacial blue. David Windsor has the same eyes. Perhaps one day my children will too. “I would like Ben to stay for just a moment longer. I have a few requests to make before I agree to marry into your house, and some of those requests concern him.”

The king furrows his brow and smirks, as if it is amusing that I have requests of any sort. “Alright. Go ahead, my dear.”

“Ben has a brother serving on the Western Front. His name is Franklin Hardy. I believe he’s currently in Passchendaele. I want him honorable discharged and brought home immediately.”

The king nods uncertainly. “As you wish.”

“I want Great Britain to accept Russian refugees,” I say. “There are millions fleeing the revolution. We can take some here, and perhaps France, Italy, Canada, Australia, and the United States can each match our commitment. We cannot save them all, but we can save many.”

“It will have to be discussed with the prime minister and Parliament, but I believe something like that would be possible. It would certainly make us appear more compassionate, more…sympathetic. It is a wise suggestion.”

“I want to be a patron of settlement houses that assist such immigrants.”

Now the king is no longer amused. His smile is dying like unfanned coals. His eyes are hardening like ice. “The children must come first, but yes…I suppose you may have some spare time to devote to charitable causes.”

“On the subject of children,” I say, steeling myself, making my final request. “I want permission to name my firstborn son Alexei. And my first daughter Tatiana.”

George V—King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Emperor of India, cousin to a slain tsar, father to a shallow prince—chuckles and waves a hand dismissively, as if this is the most ridiculous thing he has ever heard. “The children will have British names, of course.”

His flippantness, his amusement…it sends a bolt through me like lightning. Why isn’t he just as desperate for some way for my family to live on? Why isn’t he still mourning like I am? Like I will be for the rest of my life? Suddenly, the king looks completely different to me. He doesn’t look like Papa at all. I ask him, my voice sharp and unwavering: “Why didn’t you save us?”

“What?” the startled king replies. The Prince of Wales recoils. Ben’s eyes widen as he covers his mouth with both hands.

“Papa, Mother, Tatiana, Alexei, Anastasia, Olga, Maria, me, why didn’t you save us?”

“You couldn’t possibly understand,” the king says patiently, as if I am a child who doesn’t know any better. “Our house, our dynasty…we are not so secure ourselves these days. The people resent our wealth in times of conflict and scarcity. They are suspicious of our German ancestry, of the fact that so many of our nearest relatives are on the other side of this Great War. They lose sight of our vital importance to their pasts, their futures. I could not risk inciting their outrage. And Nicky, though I loved him so fiercely…though I advised him otherwise…he made so many mistakes. He made so many enemies. The British people could not have stomached him.”

“It wasn’t the prime minister at all,” I realize with dawning horror, with swelling rage. “It was you who chose to abandon us.”

“My dear, I swear to you, no one believed that the Romanov children were in danger—”

“But you knew that Papa and Mother were,” I pitch back at him. “And you left them to be butchered.”

“There was nothing else to be done,” the king pleads with me. “There was no other option.”

“If your circumstances had been reversed, Papa would have saved you, your wife, your children. Nothing on this earth could have stopped him.”

“Yes, Nicky was famously weak. And that’s exactly how he ended up where he is now.”

“He trusted you,” I seethe. I can feel scalding heat in my cheeks. I can feel Ben gaping at me, not knowing what to do. “I trusted you. I loved you, I placed all my hopes in you!”

“And you have put them in the right place,” the king insists. “You are safe now. I can keep you safe. The people will accept you, they will cherish you, you are an innocent who cannot be blamed for any of the horrors that have befallen our world. When they look at you, they will see widows and orphans and wounded soldiers returning home, they will see themselves. You will inspire heartfelt sympathy. They will love you, my dear. And they will love us for saving you.” The king reaches out, strokes my cheek, gazes adoringly down at me. “The very last child of a great dynasty. The very last Romanov.”

In his cold blue eyes, I see the lifetime that awaits me if I stay here. I see duty and dispassion and opulence and hollowness. Papa wouldn’t want this for me. Mother wouldn’t want this for me, not if she really knew what it entailed. Everything in me shifts, readjusts, clicks into a new rhythm. I look across the Throne Room at Ben. He stares back, not understanding. “Yes, I am the last Romanov,” I say. I step back to where the king cannot touch me. “There will be no others after me. My children—if I have children—will not be royals. They will know nothing of my bloodline. They will not build their lives on the backs of servants and slaves. They will not kill to keep their thrones. And they will not be fathered by a prince, not here and not anywhere.”

“What do you mean?” the king asks, confounded.

“I am leaving,” I say. “I am leaving the palace now. Forever. With Ben.”

“With who?” The king peers around in confusion. “With…the press attaché…?!”

“Yes.” I glance at Ben. He is too stunned to say anything, too stunned to move. The Prince of Wales blinks stupidly at Ben, as if becoming aware of him for the first time.

The king’s eyes dart to Ben, slide back to me, and then narrow suspiciously. “Are you still intact?”

“No. I cannot count all the pieces of myself that I have lost since Papa’s abdication. But none of them were taken by Ben. He has taken nothing from me. He has only given.”

“You…you…you are a disgrace!” the king sputters. “You are a humiliation. You would be better off dead with the rest of your family. At least then you would still have some dignity.”

“Then let me be dead,” I say. “Let the world think I died in Russia. I was never here. I never rejected this offer of marriage because it was never made. I am not a grand duchess. I am a typist named Lana Brinkley. I am a nobody. And I am crossing the Atlantic with Ben to build a new life in New York City.”

“You…you…you’re what?”

“You’re what?!” the Prince of Wales echoes, shrill and petulant like a little boy.

“Let me go,” I demand of King George V. “Let me go and no one will know that it was you who left my family to be slaughtered. There are other royal women for your son to marry. And I assure you, for your purposes, I am already ruined.”

“Not ruined,” Ben says. He has appeared beside me and taken my hand.

The king is repulsed, furious, incredulous. His eyes are a wasteland, a tundra that freezes and starves. “Get out of my sight. Both of you.”

“Father…” the Prince of Wales nudges.

“Out!” he shouts at us, all three of us. The Prince of Wales departs from one door. Ben and I leave through another. The king, perhaps the richest man on the planet, is left completely alone.

All the way out of the palace—down the hallways, through the ballroom, past the ogling servants and guards—Ben never drops my hand. He doesn’t speak, but he knows exactly where he’s going. Our palms skate down golden staircase railings, our shoes pound against hardwood floors, our eyes flash under the bright electric lights of Buckingham Palace. And when I steal a glimpse of Ben’s face, he is smiling.

Outside in the brisk October air, the entire world is dying so it can begin again. I am half-terrified; I am entirely free.

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