CHAPTER FIVE
Hélène
IT WAS SUCH A SHOCK, seeing Laurent walk into her family’s formal dining room, that at first Hélène didn’t process it.
The mahogany table before them was scattered with their breakfast plates: baguettes sliced in half, terrines of butter, carafes of steaming cocoa. Her parents had never converted to the heavy British breakfast of cold ham and venison pies.
“Majestés.” Laurent bowed to Hélène’s father, then to her mother. They seemed pleased by the gesture; out in public, in England, they were so rarely addressed as king and queen.
“Are you leaving?” her father asked cheerfully. He was speaking in French, which he considered the language of everything elegant and dignified.
Hélène stared at Laurent, who looked painfully out of place in the rococo dining room, with his callused hands and his simple collared shirt.
Laurent kept his eyes trained on Hélène’s parents, ignoring her. “I want to thank you again for the many opportunities you have given me. It has been an honor to work for you. I have trained Michel as much as I can, and I know he will do an excellent job.”
“What are you talking about?” Hélène exclaimed.
Hélène’s mother, Marie Isabelle, frowned from across the table. “Hélène, you know better than to interrupt anyone who is speaking, even—” She broke off before saying even a servant and turned to the coachman. “Laurent, I take it you haven’t shared your news with the princess?”
Laurent stared resolutely at the space above Hélène’s shoulder. “I’ve been offered the position of Master of Horse for the Marquis de Breteuil.”
“All the way in France,” Hélène said flatly. Her parents both sighed with longing and a touch of envy, because France, of course, was the one place they couldn’t go—not unless the Third Republic changed the terms of their exile.
“It’s a great opportunity for me,” Laurent replied.
The position was undoubtedly a step up in the world; as the Orléans family’s coachman, Laurent shepherded them around town and managed their eight horses.
But as Master of Horse—especially for someone like the Marquis de Breteuil, who kept a massive stable—his life would be far bigger in scale.
He would attend horse auctions and manage a team of grooms and stable hands; he wouldn’t sleep on a mattress up in the eaves but would be granted a real room in the servants’ quarters, perhaps even a cottage of his own near the stables.
This was clearly the news he had meant when he’d said that he had something to tell her.
She waited in a trancelike state as Laurent and her parents exchanged more pleasantries. Finally, when he started to leave, Hélène stood with him.
“Laurent, would you escort me to the stables before you go?” She fought to keep her voice even, though hurt coursed through her veins. “It’s such a lovely day; I was thinking I might ride.”
It was gray and overcast, not a lovely day at all, but Philippe and Marie Isabelle were too distracted to contradict their daughter. Laurent visibly flinched as he followed Hélène down the hallway and onto the back lawn.
“So. You’re moving to France.” She marched with angry steps, the heels of her boots digging into the grass. “When did you make this decision?”
“I’m sorry, I should have told you sooner. But you must agree that this is for the best,” he breathed. “Things were getting too risky.”
Hélène drew to a sudden halt. Not caring that they were in full view of the kitchens, she whirled to face Laurent, grabbed his shirt with both hands, and tipped her face up to his.
“Take me with you.”
He blinked at her. “What?”
“I’ll come with you. I’ll use a new name.
” The words tumbled out of her, fierce and insistent.
“We’ll tell everyone I’m your wife. Better yet, we’ll get married at some small country church along the way and I really will be your wife!
Then we can live together, like we always wanted—you, me, and a stable full of horses—”
“No.”
The finality in Laurent’s tone was like the crack of a whip. He detangled Hélène’s hands from his shirt and stepped away, putting a healthy distance between them.
“Be reasonable, Hélène. You can’t run away with me.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a princess!”
“I’m the princess of nowhere,” Hélène shot back. “What does it matter if I run away? My parents have no country to rule!”
“Aside from the fact that you’re not allowed in France—”
“No one there even recognizes me!”
“If your parents caught us together, they would kill me!” Laurent exclaimed.
“That’s not true; it isn’t the Middle Ages. They would just have to accept the inevitable.” Give up on whatever foreign prince they had hoped to match her with.
Laurent shook his head fiercely. “They would accuse me of abduction! I would go to prison at the very least. And besides, you would be ruined!”
“I already am ruined, and I don’t care!”
“But no one knows it!” he said hoarsely. “We have to stop, now, while we still have a chance. While you still have a chance.”
Hélène reached up to brush tears from her eyes. There was sense to his words, though she wasn’t ready to hear it. “Don’t leave me. We can figure this out. We can figure anything out, because we love each other.”
Laurent’s silence spoke volumes.
The realization hit her then, in all its bleak ugliness. He didn’t love her. He was fond of her, yes; he enjoyed her company on horseback—better yet, when Hélène was on her back. He probably got a thrill out of breaking the rules with her. But what they shared wasn’t love.
“I see,” she said slowly, her voice cold. “Then I suppose this is goodbye.”
“I really am sorry, Hélène.” Laurent started toward her, as if to embrace her one last time, but Hélène flung up a hand in warning.
“Don’t use my Christian name. You forfeited any right to that when you decided to leave.” Some long-buried regal instinct prompted her to tip up her chin, hold back her tears. “I am an Orléans, and to you I’m Your Royal Highness.”
Laurent hesitated, then bent forward into a low, courtly bow. “Your Royal Highness,” he said heavily.
She turned on one heel, the great volume of her skirts spinning around her like a bell, so that the last thing he saw would be her retreating back. She was Hélène d’Orléans, and she refused to let any man be the one to walk away from her.
Her movements were taut with anger as she stomped to the stables and asked one of the grooms to saddle her mare, Odette. The horse gave an impatient huff, her ears flicking forward and then back again.
The groom cleared his throat. For a moment Hélène thought he might criticize her for using the regular saddle rather than a sidesaddle, but he was frowning at the horizon. “Mademoiselle, may I suggest you stay close to the house. It’s going to rain.”
Hélène glanced at the storm clouds, low and ominous. “I’ll be fine. That looks several hours away, at least.”
Before the groom could reply, she vaulted onto Odette and gave a kick of her heel. The mare jerked eagerly into the wooded parkland.
Wind raked through the trees that lined the path. It whipped at the fabric of Hélène’s skirts, which were balled up around her waist, spilling over her left leg and leaving her right stocking shockingly bare. It didn’t matter. No one was ever out here to see.
When she was little, Hélène used to wear her brother’s breeches and ride in a boy’s saddle, until her governess locked the breeches away.
Hélène, undaunted, had figured out a way to ride in skirts.
It was why her daytime dresses were always cut so wide.
Sidesaddle was a useless position, invented by men to keep women off-balance—to prevent them from riding quickly, or really, from riding away.
Of course, a princess should know how to ride, but she wasn’t meant to enjoy it the way Hélène did. A princess wasn’t expected to enjoy much of anything, not food or alcohol or a raunchy joke, and certainly not sex.
Perhaps that was Hélène’s problem. She took too much pleasure in everything, the way a man would.
Hélène urged Odette faster, her thighs and calves straining pleasantly.
The thudding of the horse’s hooves echoed the frantic pulse of her blood.
For a moment she imagined running away, just riding Odette on and on through the countryside until she reached the coastline, boarding a ship to Greece or Istanbul and never looking back.
But there was nowhere for Hélène to go; not really. The boundaries of Richmond Park pressed in on her, constricting the air from her lungs. Droplets of rain began to cascade onto the surrounding parkland, yet she pushed Odette onward, through the mud.
Laurent had never loved her. The realization stung. Except…had she loved him?
Or had she just wanted to love him, infatuated with the idea of being in love?
Hélène realized with a start that it had grown dark; storm clouds curled overhead like black ink spilling onto parchment. The rain was so hard it stung her bare skin. Around her, the forest was a sodden blur.
She wiped the rain from her eyes, exhilarated. Something about the storm made her want to tip her face up to the thunder and shout a reply.
A dim shape rose up on the path before them.
She yanked at the reins, but it was too late; Odette was lurching wildly to one side.
Hélène managed to slip her boots from the stirrups as the world flipped brutally on its axis.
For a moment everything seemed to freeze—disorientingly, the ground was overhead, and hurtling closer.
She closed her eyes as someone cried out in alarm—
HéLèNE BLINKED. DARKNESS SWIRLED AROUND her. She wiped at her eyes, and it resolved itself into the rain-soaked darkness of the storm, not the heavy black of unconsciousness.
“Are you all right?”
She looked up, startled, into the brilliant blue eyes of Prince Eddy.
So it hadn’t been a deer that spooked Odette. Hélène struggled to sit up and immediately gasped, emitting a string of curses that would have made her roguish great-uncle Henri proud.