Chapter Forty-Two Hélène
Chapter Forty-Two
Hélène
“Perhaps we should rejoin your parents?” Violette walked alongside Hélène, valiantly attempting to hold a parasol over her mistress’s head, but Hélène was moving too quickly.
“Just a bit farther. I want to see the ships headed to America.”
The docks at Genoa were hardly the sort of place a young lady should stroll about, but then, Hélène had never been like other young ladies. She felt a restless flutter in her chest that only movement could dispel. Which wasn’t surprising, after the events of the previous week.
“Move along!” barked a man, ducking past her as he held one end of a heavy wooden crate.
Along the docks, massive steamships loaded and unloaded their cargo: boxes labeled in Italian or French or English, trunks monogrammed with their owners’ initials.
Hélène saw crates of chickens and livestock on lead ropes.
Travelers hurried to nearby inns or onto ferryboats that would take them upriver; sailors clustered in groups to smoke cigarettes, gossiping in half a dozen languages.
Everything was rowdy and dirty and wonderfully full of life.
It felt so cosmically unfair that she was here without Eddy. He would have loved this, would have been running ahead of her, eager to show her around.
“Hélène?”
She turned around in surprise, shrugging deeper into her heavy cloak. “Emanuele?”
Violette drifted aside to give them privacy, stubbornly taking the parasol with her.
“What are you doing here?” Emanuele looked just the same as when she’d last seen him, when he and Hélène had been sneaking around Agnes’s house. Had that really been just six months ago?
“My ship leaves in an hour. My parents are at the albergo, where they are almost certainly complaining about the wine selection.” Hélène tilted her head in the direction of the dockside inn. “We were in Germany earlier this week, at the wedding of Prince Ernest to his cousin Ducky.”
Emanuele smiled softly. “Ah, yes. There are not many ports near Hesse.”
Hélène’s parents had been startled when she suggested they attend Ernie and Ducky’s wedding. They had nodded eagerly, exchanging a hopeful glance, clearly thrilled that she wanted to be in society again. Hélène’s only thought had been of Alix—until she’d seen May at the wedding.
Of everything she’d expected—vitriol, accusations, perhaps even shouting—she’d never imagined that she would see the version of May she had encountered: deflated, defeated. For so long Hélène had dreamed of confronting May; and in the end, it hadn’t been worth the fight.
In the end, she’d felt sorry for May.
Emanuele gestured toward the harbor. “You’re not traveling on the Himalaya, by chance?”
“As a matter of fact, we are.” Hélène paused before asking, “Are you also headed to Rome?”
“I’m actually not disembarking there. I’m staying on board all the way to Alexandria,” Emanuele told her.
Alexandria. The word broke through the haze of grief that Hélène had been shrouded in for months. It conjured up visions of adventure, of wandering through cobblestone streets, visiting the lighthouse that had guided travelers since Caesar. Sailing up the Nile, past crocodiles, to see the pyramids.
“If you’re not busy, would you like to accompany me?”
For a moment Hélène thought that Emanuele was inviting her to Alexandria.
She was seized by a bizarre impulse to say yes—but then she realized he was gesturing to his shoes.
One of them was in tatters, its sole peeled back from the stitching.
A rather remarkable amount of bright red stocking was visible through the leather.
“As you can see, I’m in dire need of a cobbler. I’m told there’s one two streets away,” Emanuele remarked.
To her surprise, Hélène fell into step alongside him. “Surely you don’t travel with only a single pair of shoes?”
“Oh, I had others, but I lost them in a game of cards,” he said airily.
“You gambled for shoes?”
“Of course I did. It’s only a sin when you gamble for money,” Emanuele joked. “Besides, I was playing against the crew. Shoes seemed like the great equalizer, the one thing all of us had.”
“Until you lost yours.”
“Sailors are alarmingly good at whist. All those hours out at sea, you know.”
Hélène chuckled. “Gambling away your shoes—that’s something Eddy would have done.”
The moment the words left her mouth, she froze. Had she really just done that, just spoken about Eddy with laughter?
Emanuele clearly saw her shock, because he said, very gently, “He would want you to think of him with happiness.”
Hélène nodded and took a deep breath, not trusting herself to speak. The salt air felt somehow calming. Out in the harbor, gulls wheeled and dived among the foam-capped waves.
She knew, deep down, that Emanuele was right. Eddy would want Hélène’s grief to be balanced by joy.
Something was shifting within her, like tectonic plates moving and resettling.
Perhaps it was because of what Queen Victoria had said when she’d given her Eddy’s wedding ring; or perhaps it was the end of her years-long feud with May.
But for the first time since Eddy’s death, she felt like she could breathe again.
She would always miss him. Yet it was nice to know that she could think of Eddy with laughter, and not just tears.
“I worry that I am losing him,” she admitted, so quietly that Emanuele had to lean forward to hear. “That I am forgetting him.”
Already Eddy’s features were blurring in her mind.
There were photos of him, of course, but they were so painfully official: he was always in uniform, his jaw set, expression neutral.
Hélène didn’t miss Eddy, the Prince of England.
She missed the real Eddy: his wicked smile, the impatient way he tucked back his hair when it fell forward, the irreverent edge to his humor.
The boldness in his voice when he spoke of the things he truly cared about.
The light in his eyes when he caught sight of her.
At night, in her dreams, Hélène would see Eddy with perfect clarity—and then she woke up, and the images would drift away like smoke, no matter how hard she tried to clutch at them.
“You are not forgetting him,” Emanuele assured her. “Not in the way that matters. That is the thing about losing people; even if their faces blur in your memory, you will retain the important thing: the love you shared.”
“I know,” Hélène murmured.
“It is because you loved him so dearly that you hurt so much. But also, this great capacity to love is what will heal you.”
Hélène shot him a look. “You sound very wise.”
“Oh no,” Emanuele said swiftly, the old irreverence returning to his tone. “I just make a point of seeming that way.”
He was right, though. Hélène knew that she would never forget the important things about Eddy, no matter how much time had passed.
“I’m coming, too,” she declared.
“Thank you. It really is quite chivalrous of you, given the circumstances.” Emanuele’s shoe was now in such disrepair that he was half hobbling. He winked at Hélène. “If I don’t get this fixed soon, I may spend our entire voyage with bare feet, which would really cause a scandal.”
“I’m sure you can win your shoes back,” she replied. “But I wasn’t just talking about this visit to the cobbler. I’m coming to Alexandria.”
A slow smile spread over Emanuele’s face. “Really?”
“I’ll have to convince my parents, but I’m sure I’ll find a way. I can be very convincing when I need to.”
“I have no doubt of that.” There was a huskiness to Emanuele’s voice that made her look over at him, but he was turning onto a side street, where vendors sold things from temporary stalls or from the tops of overturned barrels.
They shouted their wares in rough voices—bolts of cloth, rope, honey, wax.
Eddy would have loved all of this, Hélène thought. Already it hurt just a little bit less, remembering him.
She glanced back over her shoulder at the harbor. The ocean seemed to stretch out forever, limitless and wild and full of possibility.
“Hélène!” Emanuele stood at a cobbler’s stall. Atop the makeshift counter, Hélène saw rows of men’s shoes, all ruthlessly durable and meant for travel, all the same practical shade of brown.
“I need your help deciding upon the color. Brown, or brown, or…dare I suggest brown?” Emanuele asked.
Hélène made a show of deliberating. “I must say, the brown is quite handsome.”
There was something about Emanuele that reminded her of Eddy. They were both devilishly handsome, though Emanuele’s hair and eyes were darker, his grin a little bolder. No, it was more than that: it was the way they inhabited each moment to the fullest, no matter what other people thought.
Eddy had asked her to live. To explore new cities, and climb more trees, and continue to defy convention. She would do all of that, for his sake.
And perhaps someday—not soon, but eventually—she might even love again. For the first time since Eddy’s death, such a thing felt possible.
But there was no rush. For now Hélène felt the world unfurling before her, vast and wondrous and ready to be explored.