Anastasia Romanov: The Last Grand Duchess #10 by Ann Hood Page B

seemed to Felix that Maisie was obsessed with just how imperial the Imperial Family was. The size of their yacht. The personal sailors for the Grand Duchesses. The balalaika orchestra. The navy escort. All of it made her feel that maybe the people of Russia were not getting fair treatment. After all, she argued, if the Tsar had so much, what did everyone else have?
    Felix tried to listen. He really did.
    But he had other things on his mind.
    First of all, he liked Anastasia. A lot. And all this complaining about the royal family made him uneasy.
    And second of all, the egg that they’d brought with them was sitting on a mantel back at Livadia. Which meant they could not go back home. Even if they wanted to. Which, Felix had to admit, was something he most certainly did not want. Still, he knew from experience that he might
have
to go home. Anything could happen at any time, sending them headlong into danger.
    Felix knew they needed that egg.
    But he decided not to tell Maisie where it was. She was so worried about injustices to the people of Russia, she appeared to have forgotten all about the egg anyway.
    Even though Felix enjoyed his time on the
Standart
, spending his days much as he did at Livadia—walking in the woods or on the beach, writing and performing plays, sleeping under a starlit sky—he did wonder when they might go back to Crimea.
    The Empress’s friend Anna Vyrubova had joined them, and she and the Empress spent much of their time together knitting or playing the piano. The sounds of Tchaikovsky often filled the afternoon air. They did appear at teatime, and listened to the music of the brass band or the balalaika orchestra as the Grand Duchesses showed them the things they’d collected on their walks.
    â€œThey lead a boring life,” Maisie whispered to Felix one day after they’d been cruising along the Finnish coast for a few weeks.
    â€œIt’s not boring,” he said. “It’s just different from ours, that’s all.”
    Maisie rolled her eyes.
    â€œI bet the Russian people are out working in fields and factories while their leaders collect sea glass,” she said with a huff.
    One day the Dowager Empress arrived via her yacht,
Polar Star
, and that was the excitement for the next forty-eight hours. The Dowager Empress had been the empress before her husband, Tsar Alexander, died suddenly. She hardly ever lived in Russia anymore, and everyone was all excited to have her aboard.
    The only person who didn’t appear was Alexei.
    He stayed in his room, or with his mother, out of sight.
    When the Dowager Empress was aboard, Maisie saw her go into the Tsarevich’s stateroom, but try as she might, Maisie couldn’t catch a glimpse of the boy.
    After two months cruising around the fjords of Finland, Anastasia announced to Felix that they were leaving the
Standart.
    â€œBack to Livadia?” he asked hopefully.
    â€œNo,” she told him. “We spend August in our hunting lodge in Poland.”
    And so on they went to Spala, the Imperial hunting lodge in the heart of Bialowieza Primeval Forest. They arrived there on September 1, riding in a line of grand carriages, each drawn by two horses dressed in fancy headgear. In Newport, the mansions were called
cottages
by their original owners. Spala was kind of like that, an enormous mansion that the royal family called a
hunting lodge
.
    When they walked inside, Felix gasped. The walls of the entry hall were covered with animal heads. The heads stared down at them with glassy yellow eyes, the antlers and horns jutting from the tops.
    â€œYou mean you really hunt here?” Felix asked, trying not to make eye contact with any of the dead animals staring at him.
    Anastasia laughed. “
We
don’t, silly. Papa does.”
    She began pointing to each head and naming what it was.
Or what it had been
, Felix thought, feeling even creepier.
    â€œStag. Stag. Bison. Boar.