Anastasia Romanov: The Last Grand Duchess #10 Read Free Page A

pointing to one wall. “St. Petersburg, Crimea,” he said, pointing to two other walls.
    The fireplace was so tall that there was only a sliver of wall above it, and that had a coat of arms painted on it.
    Alex disappeared and Maisie went after him.
    She stepped into a small kitchen.
The source of that cabbage
, she thought.
    A plump woman with a wrinkled face, bright blue eyes, and gray braids peeking out from beneath a colorful kerchief smiled a toothless smile at the three children.
    Felix heard Alex say:
“Babushka, vstrechayus’ druz’yami.”
    Instinctively, Maisie’s hand went to the shard hanging around her neck on a piece of yarn. That shard had let her understand and be understood in languages from Tagalog to Italian. She had forgotten to take it off last night, and now she could understand and be understood . . . in Russian.
    So Maisie heard Alex say: “Grandmother, meet my friends.”
    â€œNice to meet you,” Maisie said, remembering her manners for once. “I’m Maisie Robbins.”
    Alex gaped at her.
    â€œYou speak Russian?” he gasped.
    â€œUm,” she said. “Just a little.”
    Alex’s grandmother was hugging her and telling her how well she spoke the mother tongue.
    Felix, who had taken his piece of the shard off and put it carefully away in his underwear drawer, shook his head. How weird was it that Maisie spoke Russian? Alex could tell the whole school, and then what?
    â€œIn fact,” Maisie was saying, “that’s about all I can say. I learned how to say that same phrase in lots of languages back in first grade.”
    Alex narrowed his eyes behind his glasses.
    â€œCan you guys say it in Swedish?” he asked her. “And what other languages? Dutch? German?”
    Maisie laughed nervously. “We’ve forgotten most of it, I guess.”
    Babushka released Maisie long enough to hoist an enormous silver platter of food onto her own shoulder and waddle out to the dining room.
    â€œDavayte yest,”
Alex said, keeping his eyes on Maisie, who understood perfectly that he’d said, “Let’s eat.” But she just laughed and shrugged.
    â€œLet’s eat,” Alex said.
    â€œThat I understand,” Maisie said.
    Although Felix didn’t like the cabbage-stuffed
pirozhki,
the
blini
reminded him of crepes. They were stuffed with mild cheese and topped with black cherries in thick syrup. He filled his plate with those, and sat at the big dining-room table, which was covered with a white tablecloth complete with a heavy ornate silver candelabra. The house seemed Old World somehow, as if they had traveled back to a fancier, more formal time. But this wasn’t time traveling. This was just Alex and his babushka, a woman who had left Russia long ago.
    Alex translated everything his grandmother said, adding his own details. Even though Maisie could understand the Russian, she was careful to pretend she couldn’t, and she nodded only after Alex spoke. Still, she thought Alex watched her a little too closely so she tried her hardest to keep her face blank.
    Apparently, the last Tsar, Nicholas, had not wanted to become Tsar.
    â€œIn fact,” Alex told them, “he was third in line. But his oldest brother died young, and his next-older brother suffered from tuberculosis and was not fit to rule.”
    When his father died suddenly, Nicholas had no choice but to take over what he referred to as the job he’d feared his entire life. He hastily married Alexandra, a German duchess who was distrusted by the Russians.
    â€œSome say she was just shy,” Alex translated, “but most thought she was cold and looked down on the Russians, like she was better than them. Of course,” he added on his own, “she did provide an heir. Not that it mattered.”
    Maisie chewed her bottom lip.
What terrible thing happened to the Tsar and his family?
It was something bad enough for