CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hélène
HéLèNE WISHED SHE HADN’T COME to this stupid fancy-dress party.
She’d done such a good job avoiding Eddy since that day at the photography exhibit: she’d ignored the notes he sent to her house—which were on unmarked stationery, though her parents had never screened her mail as some young women’s did—and had stayed home from any events he might attend.
But there he was, wearing a navy tunic with a cape and a wide-brimmed hat, both decidedly French in style.
Hélène felt him trying to catch her eye and deliberately ignored it, dancing with one nobleman after another without registering their names.
As usual, Eddy was surrounded by admirers of his own; the women around him were constantly batting their eyes or thrusting out their chests in their ridiculous spangled costumes.
Hélène wished she could prowl circles around Eddy like some kind of territorial jungle animal.
Back off, she wanted to tell them all. He is mine.
Except he wasn’t hers, and never had been. He was Alix of Hesse’s.
“Is that Hélène? My god, it’s been too long!” The booming voice of Prince Constantine sounded behind her. He held out a hand, grinning. “Please, say you’ll dance with me.”
Dance with Eddy’s cousin, known in the newspapers as the “rake of Greece”?
“I would be delighted.” Hélène just hoped that Eddy was still watching. If he felt jealous, all the better. Maybe he would begin to understand what it was like for her, constantly watching him with Alix.
She and Tino swept onto the dance floor. The Greek prince looked wickedly handsome in his slashed doublet, as if he’d stepped straight out of a Titian painting. He nodded appreciatively at her plum-colored riding habit.
“Look at you, attending a fancy-dress party dressed for a hunt. You remind me of an ,” he declared. “One of the beautiful ones, of course, from the statues in our garden in Athens.” He winked in a way that somehow implied he meant nude statues.
Normally Hélène would have laughed at that; she’d always liked Tino. He was easygoing in the way that men so often were but women never seemed to be. Because women could never afford to be.
Instead she stole a reflexive glance across the ballroom to where Eddy stood. He was watching her.
Something shivered between them, a flash of heat so palpable that Hélène almost worried the other guests might sense it.
Eddy tilted his head toward the terrace in a slight but unmistakable gesture.
Hélène knew she shouldn’t follow, yet without a second thought she mumbled an excuse to Tino and turned away. It was as though Eddy were the sun, exerting a bodily gravitational pull on her.
She stepped through the double doors and saw that he was heading into the grounds, his head tucked down beneath his hat to avoid notice.
Hélène hesitated for only a heartbeat before following in his wake, edging along the manicured garden with its neatly trimmed parterres.
Groups of people strolled along the gravel paths, which were lit by torches every few yards to maintain the illusion, at least, of propriety.
Though Eddy and Hélène were sticking to the shadows along the far wall.
Ahead lay the orangerie, an enormous stone structure topped with a glass cupola. Eddy cast another glance back at Hélène before opening the door.
The air inside felt damp, heavy with the scents of earth and water and growing things.
Vines and climbing plants trailed up the walls.
Potted palms stood near the entrance, giving way to trees that grew in blithe disorder, their branches lacing overhead.
It felt lush and erotic, pulsing with heat, completely unlike the rigid gardens Hélène had just walked through.
When he saw her, Eddy swallowed and pulled off his hat, running a hand through his hair. The warm lights drew out its tawny notes, making him look younger than usual.
“Have you read my letters?”
When she shook her head, he sighed, seeming unsurprised. “I want to talk to you—”
“I don’t think we should be speaking at all, not when you’re going to marry Alix,” Hélène cut in.
“But that’s just what I want to talk to you about! I want to marry you instead!”
His words reverberated wildly through the space, echoing off the trees, the fallen leaves. Hélène stared at him mutely.
“I’m sorry, I’m doing this all wrong.” Eddy cursed under his breath, then sank to one knee, right there in the damp earth. “Marry me, Hélène.”
Hélène had always felt dismissive of women who needed smelling salts, but right now she felt as dizzy as any society lady. She gave Eddy’s hands a gentle tug, trying to draw him to his feet.
“Eddy…” Her voice broke before she could say more.
After a painful moment he stood and let go of her. Hélène was acutely, achingly aware of the empty air between her body and his.
“Marry me,” he said again. “I know there are obstacles, but I also know that I won’t be happy with anyone but you.”
Obstacles was putting it mildly. They were more like enormous boulders blocking the path forward: her religion, his position, her lack of a position.
“When was the last French and English royal marriage?” she prompted. Eddy frowned, puzzled, and Hélène answered her own question. “Four hundred years ago! When Catherine of Valois married Henry V!”
“Then it sounds like we’re overdue for one.” When Hélène didn’t smile, Eddy abandoned the attempt at levity. “Look, I’m not pretending that it won’t be difficult, but surely we owe it to ourselves to try?”
This was not how a princess’s engagement should be decided.
It should have been debated by her parents, in a drawing room, with her dowry and trousseau negotiated down to the last lace handkerchief.
If her fiancé proposed at all, it was supposed to be a stiff and formal question, posed somewhere public like a garden party.
It should not be anything like this: a question asked in warm, sultry darkness by a man you had already been to bed with, his face lit by flickering torchlight. There were small marks on Eddy’s trousers from where he’d knelt on the ground.
In his fancy-dress ensemble, Eddy looked almost ordinary, but it would be foolish to think that there was anything ordinary about him.
“No matter what we do, they may not let us marry,” she warned.
“Then we’ll elope,” Eddy said swiftly. “Actually, it’s not a bad idea—we could do it tonight, find a local priest and get married in a chapel somewhere, with a few witnesses from a tavern to sign the certificate!
Instead of asking my grandmother for her permission, we’ll give her an existing marriage—a done deal.
What is everyone going to do,” Eddy added indignantly, “insist that I divorce you? No, once it’s binding and legal, they’ll have no choice but to live with it. ”
Hélène couldn’t help thinking back to a year ago, when she’d said much the same thing to Laurent: that she wanted to run away and elope, and to hell with the consequences.
How odd that she’d wanted to elope with someone she didn’t truly love, and now that she was in love, she couldn’t go through with it.
“You know we can’t,” she said softly.
Eddy’s expression darkened. “Why not? Just because we’re royal, we have to be bound by laws and precedence?”
“In this instance, yes.”
“You sound like Alix! I thought you were braver than this.”
“I love you too much to pretend that I’m ashamed of you!”
Eddy drew in a breath. He realized as well as she did that it was the first time either of them had said I love you.
“Oh, Hélène. Surely you know that I love you too.”
He held his arms open and she stepped forward, letting him fold her in an embrace. Hélène rested her cheek against his chest, reassured by the steady thump of his heartbeat.
“You still haven’t given me a real answer,” he said, his voice a rumble in her ears. “Will you marry me?”
The significance of this moment struck Hélène like a thunderbolt. Her reply would change everything. It’s too complicated, she should tell him, except that every atom of her being wanted to shout instead, What took you so long?
She couldn’t lie to him; it would be like trying to lie to herself. There was only one answer to give.
“Of course I will.”
Eddy broke into a relieved smile. Hélène expected him to kiss her, but instead he tugged her deeper into the orangerie, as if hungry for more time alone. She pulled off one of her gloves and laced her fingers in his, relishing the sensation of touching him.
To their left was a bed full of plants she didn’t recognize, with spiky leaves that stretched toward the glass ceiling. Following her gaze, Eddy asked, “You like pineapples?”
Was that what a pineapple plant looked like? Hélène had only ever seen the inner fruit, cut into golden segments on a dessert platter. Pineapples were a rare delicacy, imported from the colonies for the very wealthy.
“They’re so ugly,” she blurted out, at which Eddy laughed.
“I don’t know if I would say ugly. They’re sharp on the outside and sweet within. Not unlike a French princess I know.” Before Hélène could argue, he’d reached for one of the spiky fruits and plucked it.
“Eddy!” she hissed. “You can’t steal one of the Earl Cadogan’s pineapples!”
“Why not? I highly doubt he’ll notice.” To her surprise, the prince pulled a small penknife from the pocket of his doublet. He expertly cut and cored the fruit, then held the knife toward her, a segment of pineapple speared on its tip.
Hélène lifted an eyebrow. “Impressive.”
“I picked up a few tricks in the navy.” He was back to his usual cheeky, mischievous grin. “Let it never be said that I don’t provide for the woman I love.”
Hélène leaned forward to bite the pineapple off his knife. “It’s magical,” she murmured, though she wasn’t sure to what she was referring.
Eddy took a bite, too, then let the rest of the fruit fall into the dirt.
He tucked back a loose strand of Hélène’s hair and cradled her face in his hand.
At the tenderness in his eyes she couldn’t take it anymore; she tilted her chin up and kissed him.
Eddy tasted warm, and sweet like the pineapple, and beneath it all something else, something that was indefinably him.
“We’re getting married,” he declared, when they finally pulled apart.
Laughter bubbled up out of Hélène, and she shook her head wonderingly. “We’re getting married,” she repeated.