CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hélène
HéLèNE HAD ALWAYS LOVED THE races at Epsom Downs. She was aware that few women shared her opinion; they preferred the social parade of Ascot, where no one seemed to care about the horses at all. It was just a fashion show to them, an excuse to gossip about everyone else in the Royal Enclosure.
Epsom Downs was positively shabby by contrast. The stands surrounding the racetrack were constructed of simple white deal board; even here in a box, the only sign of exclusivity was the fringed red baize that swagged along the walls.
Hélène braced her palms on the railing of Lord and Lady Hardwicke’s box, vaguely listening to the chatter of the guests behind her, including her parents.
Down on the course, men with brooms and shovels were smoothing out the divots made by yesterday’s racers.
The first race would start soon; she could see grooms walking the horses behind the starting gates.
“Who do you favor?”
A thrill shot through Hélène as Prince Eddy came to stand next to her. In the sultry heat of early June, he wore a gray morning suit like all the other gentlemen, yet to Hélène he shone as if lit by a spotlight.
“I wasn’t sure I would get to see you today,” she said under her breath. Eddy was always at Epsom—his father was a racing enthusiast, or more accurately a gambling enthusiast—but it was hard to know whether Eddy would be able to sneak away at events like this.
“And miss the chance to watch the race with the one person whose opinion I value?” Eddy’s mouth lifted in a smile. “You haven’t answered my question. Which horse do you favor?”
“Galahad,” Hélène declared.
“Really? My money is on Orlando.”
“The Earl of Sackville’s horse? But Sporting Life magazine ranked him near the bottom of the entrants!”
Eddy chuckled at her admission of having read a men’s magazine. “Well, I disagree with the Sporting Life editors. Orlando was sired by Mortimer,” he added, naming a famous racehorse from ten years ago, “and lineage inevitably plays a role when it comes to racing.”
Not just racing, Hélène thought. Her own lineage seemed to cause her nothing but problems.
Out of unspoken agreement, she and Eddy had drawn farther along the railing, away from the crowds that would soon begin to press forward.
He stepped closer, his shoulder brushing hers in a movement that might have looked accidental to a bystander.
“Are we agreed upon a wager, then? Orlando versus Galahad?”
“I suppose it depends on the stakes.”
Eddy lifted an eyebrow. “What are you suggesting?”
“Oh, I’m sure I can find a way to make you pay off your debts,” Hélène replied, her tone deliberately, deliciously, vague.
But Eddy’s next words weren’t light or teasing at all. “If I win, will you come to Balmoral with me?”
Her heart skidded. “What?”
“I can’t actually host you at Balmoral Castle,” Eddy explained. “But I asked Louise if you could stay with her, and she agreed. She and Alexander are close by at Mar Lodge.”
He had involved his sister? “Eddy. What did you tell Louise?”
“The truth. That I can’t face Balmoral without you there.”
When Hélène stared at him, he hurried to add: “We can trust Louise, I swear. I wouldn’t have dreamed of mentioning this to Maud or George, but Louise and I…we’ve always understood each other. She supports us.”
Hélène’s heart seized at the searching, pleading look in his eyes. He leaned a hip against the wooden railing in a deceptively casual gesture, but his attention wasn’t on the racetrack. It was on her.
“Eddy,” Hélène whispered. “Turn around.” The trumpeters were gathering near the starting gates; the race would begin soon.
“Just—tell me what you’re thinking,” he insisted.
She was thinking that things had escalated further than either of them had anticipated. That seeing Eddy in London, illicitly, was nowhere near as risky as sneaking around under his family’s noses.
“You will love Scotland, Hélène!” Eddy had turned to face the racetrack, but his hands gripped the railing with uncharacteristic tightness.
“I want to show you everything—the hills so steep that you can only navigate on horseback, the loch where I learned to swim, the way the brush looks at twilight.”
Oh, this was dangerous. If they were ever exposed, she was the one who would suffer for it, not him. She stood to lose so much.
When she’d begun their affair last year, she’d never dreamed that it would go on this long. Or that the stakes would grow so high.
“I will come,” she heard herself say, and Eddy broke into a smile. Hélène realized, then, just how much she adored those smiles—how thrilled she was to be the cause of them.
So much had changed since the first night they had met in secret.
Hélène had waited until the house was still: the fires in the kitchen banked, footsteps creaking along the upstairs corridor as the last few maids went to sleep.
Then she’d slipped into one of her simplest gowns, a charcoal-colored one that laced up the front instead of the back, and padded on silent feet down the servants’ staircase.
It was eerily similar to what she used to do when she’d visited Laurent, except that instead of turning toward the barn, Hélène started toward the front of the house.
In her dark gown, a heavy cloak swirling around her, she was as fleeting and insubstantial as the wraiths her old governess used to tell stories about.
The carriage Eddy had sent was waiting around the bend in the road. When Hélène slipped into it, the driver said nothing, just clucked at the horses and started off.
The apartments he took her to were surprisingly simple: just a room that served as both kitchen and footman’s quarters, which led to a massive bedroom.
Hélène darted her gaze from the four-poster bed with gold-fringed hangings that dominated the space.
The purpose of these apartments was abundantly clear, especially now that Hélène had seen how smoothly it all went—the carriage pickup, the bottle of red wine waiting on a side table with two glasses.
Eddy was in an armchair by the stone fireplace; at the sound of her footsteps he hurried to stand.
“Hélène. You came.”
“Yes,” she said softly, twisting her hands together to fiddle with her rings. Eddy’s gaze drifted from the gesture to the pulse that must be fluttering wildly at her neck. He took a step forward and caught one of her hands in his, lacing their fingers.
“You’re nervous,” he observed.
Hélène’s protests died in her throat. She was nervous, a ridiculous emotion since this was hardly her first time, yet this felt more monumental than anything she’d done with Laurent. Eddy was a future king.
He let go, and Hélène resisted the urge to snatch his hand back; somehow she felt braver and more centered when he was touching her. He poured two glasses of wine and handed one to her, then gestured to the opposite armchair.
Confused, she glanced toward the bed. “You don’t want to…”
“Would you mind if we sat for a moment?” He phrased it as if she’d be doing him a favor, though she suspected that he was slowing down for her sake. “And I should have asked—when do you need the carriage to take you home?”
“The kitchen maids wake at dawn. I just need to be upstairs before that.”
“Perfect. Dawn is hours away.”
Hélène leaned back and took a sip of her wine. Already this encounter was drastically different from her hurried, frantic couplings with Laurent. If she hadn’t known better, she might have said that Eddy was wooing her, but she was already here, ready to bed him, so that didn’t make sense.
To her shock, the prince leaned down to grab one of her feet. He tugged it up onto his lap, and then—slowly, with great gentleness—unlaced her boot and tossed it aside.
Hélène went very still as his hands skimmed beneath her dress, all the way up to her inner thigh. She let out an involuntary gasp of pleasure, yet Eddy didn’t venture higher. He grabbed her garter and peeled off her stocking.
“What are you doing?” Her words came out in a whispered gasp.
“Setting us both at ease.” Eddy began massaging the arch of her foot, almost absently. His eyes gleamed in the firelight.
“I hardly think this is setting you at ease.” It should have been impossible for Hélène to relax, with a prince massaging her feet the way a lady’s maid would after a long evening. Yet the tension was, in fact, seeping from her body.
“I don’t make a habit of taking women to bed when they’re wary of me.”
Hélène couldn’t hold back the giggle that escaped her lips. “I’m not a skittish horse, Eddy. You don’t need to groom me before you ride me.”
A lady should never have thought such a sentence, let alone spoken it aloud, yet Eddy just gave an appreciative laugh.
“I never underestimate the importance of grooming. Sebastian—my father’s Master of Horse—taught me how to stable my ponies when I was five.
He said that if you can’t care for an animal, you have no business being its master. ”
“My father’s groom said the same thing! He was always trying to teach my brother how to pick out hooves or use a round brush. Philippe never had the patience for it, but I did. I was sneaking out to the stables and braiding the horses’ tails long before I learned to ride.”
Eddy’s expression softened. “Do you miss France?”
It was the type of question that no one ever asked in society, because no one ever talked about anything real.
Yet Eddy had cut straight to the paradox that dominated Hélène’s existence.
France was everything to her, yet at the same time nothing at all—a cipher, a symbol, a repository of half-forgotten memories that often felt like they belonged to someone else.
“Sometimes,” she admitted.
Eddy waited for her to continue. He’d pulled his chair closer and let his hands slide higher, gently massaging her calf muscles. His fingers were rougher than she would have guessed, scratchy with calluses, but his grip was warm and certain.