CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hélène
“EDDY!”
Hélène thundered after him, her horse’s hooves kicking up dirt as they galloped around the pine and birch trees.
In the distance rose heather-covered hills that turned to mountains, their craggy peaks still capped with snow.
Emerald lochs gleamed in the afternoon sunshine, occasionally narrowing into the frothing ribbon of a waterfall.
The rest of the group—the Prince and Princess of Wales, Princess Louise and Alexander Fife, and a few neighbors from the surrounding countryside—had gone uphill, hoping to scout locations for tomorrow’s stag hunt.
Hélène and Eddy had drifted away from the others and met up down here, far below the rest of the group.
Hélène loved riding alone with Eddy. It was thrilling, getting to race as fast as she could—which was surprisingly fast, given that she had to ride sidesaddle in polite company.
She felt unbound and electric, as free as if she’d released every last hook in her corset and let the whole wretched thing fall to the floor.
Finally Eddy slowed to a walk, and she followed suit, letting her mare amble alongside his. Both horses were breathing heavily through their nostrils, their necks gleaming with a sheen of sweat.
“I’m so glad you agreed to come,” Eddy declared.
“Me too.” Hélène had been here a week, and already the trip was slipping by too quickly.
Eddy had been right when he’d claimed she would love Scotland.
It was wonderful and harsh, with a wildness that called to that answering wildness within Hélène: to that part of her that she always tried, unsuccessfully, to keep hidden.
So far the Fifes had proven ideal hosts.
They wanted to spend each day outdoors, and didn’t stand on ceremony for meals.
It made Hélène wonder why she and the Princess Louise—now Duchess of Fife—hadn’t been friends before.
Louise was bright and exuberant in a way that young women rarely were, an avid participant in the typically male pursuits of hunting and fishing.
And while she’d never said anything to Hélène, she kept finding ways to leave her alone with Eddy: pairing them together on the hunt, or asking Eddy to show Hélène the paintings in the gallery, though he clearly had no idea who the paintings were of.
Hélène couldn’t help wondering, sometimes, whether Louise would be so indulgent if she knew the extent of their affair—because of course Eddy hadn’t told her everything, just that they’d fallen in love despite Queen Victoria’s wishes.
Louise may have loved someone unbefitting her station, but Hélène doubted the princess had given her virginity to Alexander Fife before they were married, let alone that she’d slept with anyone else.
Hélène and Eddy had only discussed Laurent once—and even then, she knew better than to admit the whole truth. It came up one night while they lay in bed, her palm on Eddy’s chest, feeling it rise and fall with his breath.
“Who was he?” Eddy had asked, very softly. When Hélène flinched, he turned on his side to study her with those intense blue eyes. “I’m sorry; you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. It’s just…I have been worrying that you…”
“What?” she had whispered, confused. Eddy had known all along that he wasn’t her first; that had been clear from the beginning, hadn’t it?
“Was it of your choosing, everything that happened between you?”
Hélène blinked, and Eddy drew in a nervous breath. “You’re experienced, but you’ve never even been engaged. If you were harmed…”
Hélène found that she was oddly touched by his protectiveness, by the careful but determined way he’d brought up the subject.
“We did not part amicably, but no, I was not harmed. Everything that we did, I wanted to do,” Hélène assured him.
Eddy relaxed. “I’m glad. I was about to offer to have him killed, and that would have been messy to deal with.” He was teasing now, but she heard the affection beating beneath his words.
Hélène strove to match his light tone. “No need. And anyway, he’s French, which would make killing him rather complicated.”
She immediately longed to swallow back the words—what was she thinking, revealing any kind of detail about Laurent? But Eddy only laughed softly.
“That’s hardly fair. I can’t compete with some French prince who wooed you with macarons and chateaux.”
“I assure you, neither of those was involved—”
“Does he have a mustache? I bet he curls it with tongs, and wears heeled shoes, and—”
Hélène reached for a pillow and began pummeling Eddy before he could say more. She was laughing, a bright, easy laugh that fizzed up from her chest like champagne, and to her delight Eddy was laughing too.
Then he flipped his body atop hers, and they both fell silent.
“Don’t give him another thought. I never do,” Hélène had whispered.
Now Eddy reached over to lay a hand on her horse’s reins, interrupting her thoughts. “Should we stop?” He gestured ahead, to where an offshoot of the River Dee trickled over uneven stones.
Hélène nodded and slid down from the saddle.
“You look like the goddess Diana,” Eddy observed, which made her smile.
“And what does that make you, a hunter attempting to seduce me in a woodland grove?”
“I’m not the most assiduous pupil of mythology, but I’m quite certain that Diana was never seduced. If anything, she did the seducing.”
“Is that so?”
They stood next to each other at the edge of the water, their horses’ heads lowered to drink. Eddy reached to lace his fingers in hers.
“For the record, I’m happy to be seduced,” he said softly.
Hélène tugged him closer, letting her lips brush lightly against his. The kiss was languid at first, her blood pulsing contented and slow through her veins.
But it took only a moment for their kisses to grow feverish.
Eddy’s nearness sent a flood of heat through her body, making her feel molten and shivery, a delicious contrast to the cool air on her skin.
It had been far too long since she’d felt the simple pleasure of touching him.
After all, she was a guest in his sister’s house right now; there had been no sneaking around late at night.
Hélène reached for Eddy’s shirt and tugged it impatiently from his belt, then slid her hand beneath its hem and up over his skin.
Who knew how far things might have gone. They might have tethered their horses and made love right there in the forest of Ballochbuie, except that they both went still at the same moment, their hunter’s instincts on sudden alert. They were no longer alone.
When she saw the creature a short distance to their right, Hélène gasped.
The horses had turned to living statues; even the huff of breath from their nostrils seemed to have stilled. Their eyes were trained on the majestic gray figure that stood atop a boulder, watching them.
In the mottled shade of the forest, the wolf’s eyes glowed a fierce amber. Hélène felt pressure on her wrist: Eddy was grabbing her in silent warning, urging her to stay still, not that she needed any convincing.
The wolf drew her lips back in a growl. Hélène wasn’t sure why she felt so convinced it was a female, but she would have put money on it. They all stayed as frozen as figures in a tableau.
Finally, the wolf nodded in something resembling acknowledgment, then turned and darted off in the opposite direction.
With that, the spell was broken. The sounds of the forest seemed to descend around them again: the horses whickered nervously and stomped their feet, and birds resumed their chirping in the trees.
Hélène glanced to Eddy. His expression was alight with wonder.
“I can’t believe that just happened. It’s so uncommon to see a wolf in the middle of the day; they usually only come out after dusk.” Eddy shook his head. “In medieval times people would have considered it an omen. The question is, what kind of omen—a good one, or bad?”
“She nodded to us. It must be a good omen,” Hélène declared.
“You think so?”
“Who cares! We live in modern times; we can make our own luck.”
“That’s what I love about you: the sheer force of your convictions,” Eddy told her. “When you get passionate about something you are so…”
“French?” Hélène offered, with a laugh.
“You are wondrous.”
Hélène drew in a breath, startled by the sincerity in Eddy’s voice. It was the first time either of them had used the word love—That’s what I love about you, he’d said, even if it wasn’t I love you.
To hide her confusion, she walked over to her horse and reached for the reins. Eddy came to stand next to her, bending over to lace his fingers into a makeshift stirrup.
“I don’t need your help getting into the saddle,” Hélène pointed out.
Eddy smiled, boyish and mischievous again. “I’m aware.”
She rolled her eyes but placed her boot in his hands, allowing him to lift her. “If you wanted to look up my skirts, all you had to do was ask.”
Eddy barked out a laugh. Within moments they were cantering, heading toward the mountains where the rest of the group had disappeared. Hélène urged her horse faster, her body pulsing with adrenaline, her heart still thrumming in the aftermath of Eddy’s words.
A WEEK LATER, SEATED IN the grand salon at Balmoral, Hélène clung tight to those words.
Things had changed the morning after she and Eddy saw the wolf, when Alix and May arrived.
Now each time Eddy tried to come out hunting, his grandmother insisted he do something else instead—take a carriage ride to a nearby town, have tea in the garden—always with Alix at his side.
Just yesterday Victoria had tasked Eddy and Alix with fetching bluebells from the fields, though the entire castle was already bursting with bouquets.
Hélène glanced around the grand salon; its furniture had been rearranged for tonight’s theatricals, chairs lined into rows before an empty rug that served as a stage.
As she watched, Louise emerged from the next room wearing a set of priest’s robes.
They looked genuine, making Hélène wonder if they’d been borrowed from a local curate.
Normally that sort of request might have been sacrilegious, but of course, no one would deny the head of the Church of England.
These amateur performances—vignettes, Queen Victoria called them—were yet another of the inscrutable traditions tied to this house.
Eddy had explained that they did them every year.
One summer they had re-created classical paintings; another, they had reenacted famous moments in British history.
That was my favorite, Eddy recalled; I got to play Wellington at Waterloo, slashing about with a wooden sword.
Who was Napoleon? Hélène had replied, and Eddy laughed.
Louise, of course. She kept cursing at me in French because, of course, curses are the only words she really learned.
This year, the theme was some kind of tribute to Prince Albert, with a different theatrical sketch for every letter of his name.
A for abundance had been a harvest scene, with Maud dressed in a toga-like gown as Demeter; L stood for leisure, a scene where Eddy and George had napped on a tiger skin from India.
Thank heavens only Queen Victoria’s grandchildren were forced to take part in this. It struck Hélène as bizarre, and a bit childish, like when Amélie used to flounce about the house in their mother’s dressing gowns, the embroidered hem trailing after her.
“Our next letter is B,” Louise announced, as if no one in the room knew how to spell Albert.
Hélène tried to catch her gaze, hoping to coax a conspiratorial smile, but Eddy’s sister was looking pointedly away.
“For bride,” Louise finished.
Something hot and sticky twisted in Hélène’s stomach as she realized what was happening.
Eddy emerged from the door to the hall and came to join his sister, who stood at the front of the room like a priest at a wedding. And then Alix began processing toward them.
Oh god. This was a fake wedding—with Eddy as the groom and Alix as the bride.
Someone had acquired a costume for Alix, a genuine Scottish peasant’s dress made of simple cream-colored fabric with red detail, and in her hands she clutched a bouquet. She walked slowly, unsmiling, her back straight and her color heightened.
“Dearly beloved,” Louise said, a bit awkwardly, “we are gathered here in the sight of God, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony….”
In a nearby armchair, Alexander Fife leaned toward the Prince of Wales. “Painfully obvious, isn’t it?” he murmured to his father-in-law.
“You know how Her Majesty can be.” Bertie chuckled and spread out his hands in a gesture of amused surrender.
Hélène gripped her hands tight around the chair’s armrests. She wanted to run away, to escape to the stables or her bed—she would even take the ladies’ lounge right now—anywhere but this drawing room, where she had to watch this ridiculous wedding play out before her.
“Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband?” Louise was asking Alix. “Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honor and obey him, in sickness and in health?”
“I will,” Alix mumbled.
Eddy fumbled in his pocket for a ring (there was a ring?
Hélène thought wildly) and slid it onto Alix’s finger, his jaw tight.
Hélène’s breaths felt shallow against her stays, her blood pounding.
But she forced herself to keep watching, because she might as well get used to it.
Alix was Eddy’s future, not Hélène. A fact that she had conveniently let herself forget.
Hélène wasn’t wearing a costume, yet she had engaged in a game of pretend far more dangerous than the theatricals onstage, imagining that her affair had no consequences. That it wouldn’t cost her.
Because that was all it was—an affair. She had known precisely what she was getting into, Hélène reminded herself. This was always supposed to be a meaningless distraction.
Yet, without her realizing, it had begun to mean something.
Far too much, actually.