CHAPTER FIVE #2
“Miss d’Orléans?” Eddy asked, surprised. “What are you doing out here?”
Hélène realized, a bit angrily—which was a stupid emotion in light of the circumstances—that Prince Eddy hadn’t recognized her at first. Though she didn’t look like much of a princess with wet hair plastered to her face.
And even though they periodically crossed paths at parties, it wasn’t as if she and Eddy spent any meaningful time together.
“You’re hurt,” he observed.
Hélène ignored him, twisting despite the pain. “Odette…”
“Your mare? She’s hurt, too. Just a sprain, I think,” Eddy said swiftly, at Hélène’s expression. “But I doubt she can carry you back right now. Not that you’re in much shape to ride.”
Hélène followed his gaze to her legs. Her skirts were still twisted to one side, revealing a dangerous amount of bare stocking, but she had bigger problems. Her right ankle was swelling rapidly, already the size of a small melon.
She braced a hand on the mud behind her, trying to stand, and Eddy gave a huff of protest. “You can’t put any weight on that.”
“Then I suppose I’ll hop back on one foot,” Hélène snapped. The rain was coming down harder now, but there was no use trying to find shelter when she was already soaked through.
“Let me help.” The prince hooked his hands beneath her armpits and hoisted her to her feet.
Hélène tried to hobble a few steps, leaning her weight on Eddy and using only her left foot. He moved slowly, letting her set the pace—until lightning shot through the night-dark sky. An instant later, thunder cracked, loud enough to make them both jump.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Eddy muttered. Before Hélène could react, he reached a hand beneath her knees and swept her into his arms.
She was so shocked that she said nothing at first, just blinked up at the Prince of England as he held her to his chest. A very firm, solid chest. He smelled of damp wool and soap and, underneath, something else: something indefinably masculine and warm.
Then the reality of her situation sank in, and Hélène tried to wriggle from his grasp. “What are you doing?”
Eddy tightened his grip. “I’m trying to help you, not that you’re making it particularly easy. If I lift you up, do you think you can ride?”
“Yes,” Hélène said sullenly. The rain was already abating. Typical English fickleness. At least in France the weather picked a side, good or bad, and stayed there for more than an hour.
They started toward Eddy’s horse, a massive bay that had been waiting to one side of the path, untethered. “Ares!” he called out, and the stallion trotted over, obedient as a dog. Hélène made a mental note to practice that with Odette.
“Ares?” she repeated drily. “You named your horse after the god of war? What, because you’re both so intimidating and strong?”
“Are you always this grateful when accepting help from gentlemen?”
“I wouldn’t know. I never need help.”
“Of course not,” Eddy muttered. Ares came to stand next to them, and the prince set her gingerly on her left foot. Hélène gritted her teeth.
“Ready for me to lift you up?” Eddy asked. She nodded, and he settled his palms around her waist.
For a foolish moment, it seemed to Hélène that they were suspended in time. There were droplets of rain in Eddy’s lashes, trailing down his jaw, on the corner of his lower lip: which, on closer inspection, was full and sensuous.
Then Eddy lifted her into the saddle, and Hélène arranged herself on his massive horse with both legs to one side. The moment she sat back, she winced. It wasn’t easy trying to ride sidesaddle under the best of circumstances, with a proper saddle, and now with her swollen ankle…
“Don’t ride sidesaddle on my account,” Eddy observed. “It looks painful, especially with your injury.”
He was right, of course; her right ankle was pressed against the tooled leather of his saddle in an unnatural position. “Are you suggesting that I ride astride?” She tried to sound horrified at the suggestion.
A smile tugged at the corner of Eddy’s mouth. “I saw you earlier.”
Well, there was no use playing coy. Hélène tucked her skirts up around her knees and swung her right leg over the side of his horse. Her ankle felt so much better that an involuntary moan of relief escaped her lips.
Eddy looked over with curiosity, and something that might have been interest. Hélène bit her lip.
That moan had been too raw, too intimate a sound for a lady—the sort of sound that Hélène used to make with Laurent, when their bodies had been wound together.
It wasn’t the sort of sound a well-bred girl should even know how to make.
As he looped her horse’s reins around a branch, she frowned. “Are you sure we should leave Odette here?”
“We’ll send the grooms back for her. Right now we need to get you home. You’re shivering.”
“It’s too far for you to walk,” she said dubiously, and Eddy barked out a laugh.
“I’m not walking. I’m riding with you.”
Hélène spluttered. “You can’t—I wasn’t—”
Eddy hooked a foot into the stirrup and vaulted up behind her, looping an arm around her torso to pull her against him. “Ready?”
When Hélène nodded, he nudged his horse into a slow canter. Hélène tried not to think about the feel of his thighs behind her, shifting against the leather of the saddle as he guided Ares down the forest path.
“What is it?” he asked, after a few minutes.
She whipped her head around, and Eddy’s lips grazed her wet curls with the movement.
Mon dieu. This entire situation was woefully indecorous, even for Hélène: worse than what she’d done with Laurent, in some ways, because Eddy was the future king.
And she was currently touching him in so many places—his long lean thigh pressed against the length of hers, her buttocks flush against his groin, the back of her head tucked beneath his chin as if they were lovers.
When she said nothing, he jerked his head in the direction of Sheen House. “I’ll drop you near your stables, if you think you can manage to get inside.”
“Hopping on one leg?” Hélène asked, though she understood what he meant. No one could know they had been out here, alone, together.
Eddy was clearly fighting to keep the laugh from his voice. “They might believe you made it all this way on your own. I get the sense that you’re rather stubborn.”
Hélène’s traitorous body was softening in response to him. There was something disarmingly nice about this sensation—feeling like she was cocooned in a warm, steady strength. Like she was safe.
It was just the feeling of being held, Hélène reminded herself. She’d certainly felt it often enough with Laurent. Before he abandoned her.
“What were you doing out here, anyway?” She meant it as a question, but she was hurt and irritable and it came out like an accusation.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Prince Eddy replied.
“I live here.”
His hands tightened on the reins. “Richmond Park is a royal hunting ground, so I have as much right to be here as you do.”
“I haven’t seen you riding here before.”
“I have a lot of royal hunting grounds to choose from.”
Hélène stiffened. Just when she’d thought that Eddy might not be as arrogant as she’d assumed, he had to make an entitled comment and confirm all her worst suspicions.
“And you came out here alone?” She waved a hand to indicate his surprising lack of groom or attendant. “I thought princes always traveled with an entourage.”
“You sound like you’re talking from experience. Have you met a great number of princes?”
“Enough to develop an opinion on them.”
She felt Eddy shrug against her back. “Then you must know how rare it is for princes to be alone. I’m sure you can relate.”
“But I’m not a princess, not really,” she reminded him. “Haven’t you heard? The French got rid of us.”
There was a strange note in Eddy’s voice as he replied. “I don’t think losing your throne makes you any less of a princess. Royalty is a permanent condition. When you’re born to it, there’s no changing or undoing it, not even if your family is living in exile. Not even if you wanted to change it.”
Before she could reply, he drew to a halt.
“This is where I leave you,” Eddy announced, sliding off Ares. He reached to help Hélène down.
Her heart gave a confused thud as he let go of her and stepped back. For a moment their eyes locked.
“Thank you for helping,” Hélène mumbled.
As she hobbled back to the barn, she sensed the weight of his gaze, as warm as the brush of his skin had been when his bare palm touched hers.