CHAPTER SEVEN
Hélène
THE OPERA WAS EXCRUCIATINGLY BORING. Not the music, which spoke to an unnamed yearning in Hélène’s soul, but the people. At every performance they were the same—the same families shuffling into the same boxes, recycling the same stories, trading the same rumors and petty complaints.
Hélène tried to ignore them. She draped her elbows over the brass railing of her parents’ box, closing her eyes as the sounds of the orchestra reverberated in her body. Until Clothilde, her mother’s lady’s maid, came over and tapped her with a fan.
Princesses were not supposed to lean. They were supposed to sit with their hands clasped demurely in their laps, silent mannequins to hang jewelry and tiaras on.
“Sit up straight,” Clothilde hissed. “And stop staring at the royal box.”
The royal box? Hélène hadn’t even glanced that way. Unlike most people, she was here for the show onstage rather than the sideshows playing out in all the society boxes. But for once, the mention of the royal box piqued her curiosity.
She looked over, only to find that Prince Eddy wasn’t there.
Of course he wasn’t. He probably had no tolerance for something as high-culture and serious as opera.
But his mother was seated next to the queen, along with Princess Alix and May of Teck, both looking as stiff and proper as Hélène was supposed to be.
She’d felt strange and restless all day, probably because of Laurent’s betrayal. Hélène still couldn’t believe he’d left her, just walked away from their relationship as if it meant nothing at all.
Except that it had never been a relationship, had it? It had been a liaison, an affair. Hélène repeated the word again in her mind: affair. It sounded tawdry and yet, oddly thrilling.
Perhaps that explained why she wasn’t all that sad about Laurent’s departure. Since she clearly hadn’t meant anything to him, she refused to feel anything at his loss.
When her restlessness became an itch she couldn’t ignore, Hélène murmured to no one in particular that she was going to the ladies’ lounge. Clothilde sniffed in protest, but Hélène’s parents, busy entertaining Lord and Lady Fleming, hardly noticed.
The hallway that curved like a horseshoe around the private boxes was empty. Everyone was seated right now; Hélène had walked out in the middle of the second act, instead of waiting for the entr’acte, when most people socialized.
She had no real desire to visit the ladies’ lounge, a crush of warm perfumed bodies and rustling fans. Perhaps she would just walk the length of the hallway and back again. She started forward, only to pause at the sounds of sobbing.
Hélène turned back the other direction, then gasped.
Princess Alix of Hesse sat on a bench, her hands balled into fists as she sucked in heaving mouthfuls of air. The folds of her gown were crumpled around her like a pitiful flag of surrender.
“Your Royal Highness!” Hélène swept forward, alarmed by Alix’s stillness.
When the other girl said nothing, Hélène tentatively sat next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. She felt Alix flinch, but after a moment she relaxed, her breaths steadying.
“Shhh,” Hélène murmured, the way she might soothe a skittish horse. “Shhh, it’s all right.”
Slowly, as if she’d been carved from a block of ice and was melting, Alix moved again—her hands first, then her head. Warmth returned to her skin.
“Thank you,” she whispered at last. “And…I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for!” Hélène scanned the hallway with wary eyes. “What happened? Did someone hurt you?”
“Not really.”
“But the way you were moaning just now…”
“It’s nothing like that. I just—I get this way sometimes.” Alix flushed, and Hélène knew she hadn’t meant to reveal something so intimate.
Hélène softened as understanding dawned. “My maman used to suffer from the same thing. She called it her malaise. She said it felt like fear had seized hold of her body and paralyzed her, that she couldn’t move until the dark spell passed.”
It happened less often these days, but Hélène caught glimpses of it every now and then, usually when the Third Republic extended her parents’ exile.
Her maman wasn’t as homesick as her father—she’d been born a princess of Spain, after all—but she still longed to get off this rainy, dreary island, back to the civilization of the Continent.
Every time Hélène’s father got another letter rejecting his plea to come home, Marie Isabelle would descend into her malaise—gasping for air and going frighteningly quiet, as Alix had done.
Alix looked pale, but she nodded. “What did your maman do to get rid of the malaise?”
“I don’t know if she ever found a way to get rid of it. Only to get through it.”
The German princess said nothing in reply. She just stared down at her gloved hands, pensive.
“Shall I walk you back to the royal box?” Hélène offered.
“No!” Alix cried out, then lowered her voice. “No, I just want to leave.”
“Fair enough. I can’t stand the final act of La Traviata, either.
” Hélène attempted to sound lighthearted.
“Why is it that all operas end with the woman’s death?
I don’t mind tragedy, but it’s never the man who dies in these stories.
Probably because they were all written by men,” she added ruefully.
For a moment it seemed like Alix might smile at that. Then she seemed to recall where she was, and sighed.
“I’m waiting for my brother Ernie to return from the gentlemen’s lounge. He’ll escort me to Buckingham Palace.”
“I can find him for you. Just…wait here.”
“Thank you.” In the dim light of the hall sconces, Alix’s eyes had turned a deep, mercurial shade of violet.
Hélène hurried down the hallway toward the gentlemen’s lounge. There was no placard on the door, nothing to distinguish this room from a broom closet, except for the fact that everyone in this building knew precisely what it was.
She lingered outside for a few minutes, foot tapping as she waited for a man to emerge. From within she could hear the low roar of voices, the tantalizingly indistinct sounds of clinking glassware and raucous laughter.
Eventually her impatience got the better of her, and she threw open the door.
It was exactly as she’d always imagined.
Men in jackets and cravats reclined in armchairs or bent over card tables, gambling.
On the walls hung portraits of even more men, who looked eerily similar to the ones they frowned down upon, save the occasional addition of a hunting dog.
At a bar in the corner, a white-haired man poured amber liquid into a pair of tumblers.
The entire scene was cast in the glow of bronze lamps, a haze of cigar smoke hanging over it all.
Hélène’s heart leapt. This was nothing like the ladies’ lounge, where everyone perched on settees with their backs ramrod-straight and spoke in low voices. Here, the room crackled with laughter and lewd jokes and thrilling male energy. This room felt alive; it felt…fun.
“Miss!” A portly, red-faced man near the door gasped in horror. “The ladies’ lounge is at the other end of the hall. This room is reserved for gentlemen only.”
He stepped forward, using his massive bulk to herd her toward the door as if she were an unruly farm animal, but Hélène dug in her heels.
“I’m not lost. I’m looking for Prince Ernest of Hesse!
” She called out the name, craning her neck as she searched for Ernie in the crowds.
More gentlemen turned toward the door, curious as to what had caused this unprecedented and highly inappropriate female intrusion.
“Miss, you really cannot be inside,” the attendant protested. He clearly longed to drag Hélène outside by the wrists, yet manners forbade him from touching a lady without her express permission—a fact that Hélène would use to her advantage. She deftly sidestepped the man and raised her voice.
“Prince Ernest, are you in here? Your sister is looking for you!”
“Hélène?” called out an all-too-familiar voice.
Obediently, the men in the room parted to reveal Prince Eddy.
“Your Royal Highness.” Hélène inclined her head but didn’t bother curtsying, though technically, since they were in Eddy’s country, she should have. He smirked, seeming amused by her breach of protocol.
A young man next to Eddy stepped forward, and Hélène blinked, noticing him for the first time. He had the same blond hair and pale blue eyes as Alix.
“Prince Ernest of Hesse, at your service,” he said quickly. “You said that Alicky sent you here? Is she all right?”
Hélène heard the nickname for his sister, the concern and affection in his voice, and immediately warmed to him.
“She’s not feeling well, and wants you to escort her home.
” Not feeling well hardly did justice to the vortex of panic gripping Alix, but Ernie’s eyes flashed in understanding.
He’d obviously seen this happen to his sister before.
“Thank you.” He nodded to Eddy and left.
Hélène stole one last glance around the forbidden male sanctum of the gentlemen’s lounge, since she would never get another look. Then she turned back into the empty hall, her skirts snapping around her ankles.
“Hélène! Wait!” Prince Eddy trotted to catch up. Hélène tried to quicken her steps but nearly tripped on her hurt ankle.
“Careful,” Eddy exclaimed, grabbing her elbow to steady her. Hélène sucked in a breath, and he let go.
“I’m sorry. Can we talk?”
“I don’t know what we possibly have to talk about.” She felt prickly and defensive; somehow, she couldn’t shake the sense that their meeting in the woods had put her at a disadvantage.
Or maybe she just didn’t like showing weakness before anyone.
“I would like to spend more time with you.” Eddy didn’t seem to have noticed her rejection. “May I ask your father for permission to court you?”
“You…what?”