CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Hélène
“ARE YOU CERTAIN THIS IS a good idea?” Hélène whispered to Eddy, as their carriage pulled up to Buckingham Palace. He had explained the purpose of today’s meeting, and the rather disconcerting fact that Her Majesty was expecting Alix, not Hélène.
Somehow Hélène doubted that the queen would take kindly to the last-minute change in leading lady.
“We were going to need Grandmother’s permission eventually,” Eddy insisted. “I know it’s risky, springing everything on her like this. But it’s also our best shot.”
The butler who greeted them cast Hélène a curious glance, but said nothing as he led them upstairs. It felt like they passed through endless corridors, a series of doors opening soundlessly before them until they finally paused before Her Majesty’s personal sitting room.
The butler rapped on the heavy wooden door. “Your Majesty, His Royal Highness Prince Albert Victor—”
Oh no, Hélène thought, but it was too late; he announced her too.
“—and Miss Hélène d’Orléans.”
It was a bit galling to be announced that way, but her royal status wasn’t officially recognized in England, no matter how often people referred to her as a princess.
The door swung open and there was Victoria, seated in a stiff-backed chair and wearing her customary black gown and white widow’s cap. At the sight of Hélène, her lips pursed; then she deliberately turned to her grandson.
“Eddy, thank you for coming to see me. Where is dear Alix?”
Though she hadn’t been acknowledged, Hélène sank into her most reverential curtsy and stayed there, frozen like a statue, until her knees felt like they might lock.
Eddy stepped forward. “I am sorry that I didn’t send word, but Alix is not joining us today. I asked Hélène to come instead.”
“And what are you doing here, Miss d’Orléans?”
“I am the one who begged her to come; it was all my idea,” Eddy interjected, with surprising ardor. “Please, Grandmother, there is something Hélène and I are desperate to discuss with you.”
Victoria nodded imperceptibly in Hélène’s direction, which Hélène took as permission to stand.
Eddy walked over to his grandmother and sank to one knee, bowing his head like an Arthurian knight. “Hélène and I are in love, and have come to ask for your blessing on our marriage.”
“Your marriage?” Now the queen’s voice was distinctly cold.
Eddy remained kneeling, his words tumbling out in broken sentences as he explained that they had not planned any of this, that they had been swept away by the utter force of their emotion.
In his words, their relationship was a chivalric love story—as if he and Hélène had fallen in love properly, at a respectful distance, by dancing together and sharing some laughter at Balmoral.
Certainly he gave no indication of how scandalous their relations really were.
Hélène wished she could say something, but she knew that this was all better coming from Eddy. He was Victoria’s heir.
“I must admit, I’d hoped you might come to feel this way about Alix,” Victoria said at last. “She is a much more appropriate match.”
Hélène had expected as much, but the queen’s words still hurt.
“Alix and I are in agreement. We do not wish to be engaged,” Eddy said firmly.
Victoria steepled her fingers, which were covered in silver rings. “If there is really no chance of you and Alix, then I hoped you might consider Marie of Anhalt. Or perhaps the youngest princess of Saxe-Altenburg—”
“I don’t want to marry a German princess I’ve never met! I’m in love with Hélène!” Eddy cried out.
Well, now he’d done it. He’d broken one of the cardinal rules of royalty: you never talked over the monarch, and you certainly never shouted at them. Hélène winced, bracing herself for their dismissal.
At that, the queen gave a ponderous sigh. “You may as well stand, Eddy.”
He rose to his feet and reached instinctively for Hélène’s hand, lacing his fingers in hers. Victoria’s eyes flew to the gesture.
“What do you have to say about all of this, Miss d’Orléans?”
Hélène swallowed. “Your Majesty, surely you remember what it is like to be young and in love. If you have any sympathy for our plight, please help us find a way to be together.”
The queen stared at her as if taking inventory.
Hélène had agonized over what to wear today, and she was glad, now, that she’d chosen this gown: a simple plum-colored dress trimmed in matching velvet.
Hélène had never been one for ribbons or fringe or endless lace flounces, and she sensed that Victoria wasn’t, either.
Still, she hadn’t been able to resist a single adornment—an antique gold brooch shaped like a flower, the center studded with pearls.
It was three hundred years old, and had supposedly belonged to the Marquise de Montespan.
She needed Victoria to remember that Hélène wasn’t just some nobody. The Orléans family might not have a country to rule, but they still had a legacy, a dynasty.
As the queen’s eyes flicked over her, Hélène had the frightening sense that Victoria understood all of this. That she read the intent in Hélène’s outfit, and her actions, with uncanny insight.
The queen rose with stately calm, surprising them both. “Miss d’Orléans. Join me on a walk.”
Eddy stiffened. “Grandmother, may I—”
“I would like to speak with this young woman alone, Eddy. You shall wait for us here.”
He had no choice but to nod and step back. Hélène waited for Queen Victoria to move toward the hallway, her ivory-tipped cane clutched in her hand, before following at a discreet distance. She wasn’t such a fool as to speak without being spoken to.
The footman outside the door stood to attention. Ignoring him, Victoria turned down a corridor lined with oil paintings and statues. She paused before a bank of windows to look out over the lawn. The lake at its center glittered in the sunlight, a few water lilies scattered over its surface.
Hélène braced herself for a barrage of accusations, even insults. What she didn’t expect was for the queen to say, “My dear Albert designed the lake. It’s man-made, you know.”
“I hadn’t realized, Your Majesty,” Hélène said quickly.
“He brought in the swans, too. The black one was specially procured from a forest in Germany. Albert said we should always have at least one black swan in residence—that it was insufferably dull having only white swans to look at.”
Hélène hadn’t noticed, but the queen was right: all the swans floating on the lake were white, save a lone black one. “It’s beautiful,” she replied, still puzzled. Was she the black swan in this analogy, the one who didn’t belong?
“Albert was always keeping busy like that: replanting the gardens, giving speeches at universities, sponsoring scientific research. I suspect that if these new automobiles had existed in his time, he would have learned to drive one.” Victoria’s smile faded.
“He didn’t have it easy. Being married to the monarch—being a queen consort, or a prince consort as my dear Albert was—is a difficult job, perhaps the most difficult job in the world.
It involves all the hard work, yet none of the recognition. ”
“Your Majesty, I am a princess,” Hélène said softly. “I have known since I was a child that I would marry a prince. I assure you that I am up to the task.”
The queen turned her back on Hélène and resumed her walk down the corridor, the only sounds the tap-tap of her cane, the rustle of her heavy silk skirts.
“Eddy says he is in love with you,” Victoria went on, as Hélène caught up. “But he is a future king. His marriage is an affair of state, not a matter of personal preference.”
With daring boldness, Hélène replied, “I should hope that the two might go hand in hand, as they did in your own marriage, Your Majesty.”
Victoria lifted an eyebrow. “And you love Eddy?”
“Yes.”
“But he is far from perfect. Eddy has always been impulsive, easily distracted. He failed miserably at his studies with his tutor. The woman who marries him will need inner strength and conviction, in order to forge him into the king that England needs.”
“Eddy is smarter than you give him credit for!” Hélène knew she shouldn’t speak this way to Her Majesty, but she was tired of Eddy’s family undermining him.
“He may not be intellectual the way George is, but he is thoughtful, and empathetic. If he only had the opportunity to take on some responsibilities, you would see that—”
The queen held up a hand and Hélène fell silent, chastened. Then she noted with surprise that Victoria was smiling.
“You are defending him; I am glad of it. The primary job of a queen consort is to assist the king in all things. To quietly magnify his greatness without detracting from it. Why do you think I wanted Eddy to marry Alix? I knew there was no affection there,” the queen admitted, with shocking frankness.
“Alix is thoughtful, demure, soft-spoken. The qualities one should search for in a queen consort.”
Hélène could hardly claim to be soft-spoken or demure. “Perhaps those qualities should only be sought for a certain kind of king. Perhaps Eddy requires a different sort of partner to balance his personality.”
She held her breath, hoping she hadn’t overstepped.
Victoria looked out the window again, her profile stoic. “You may be right. I had such great hopes for Alexandra, when I selected her for Bertie—I thought her quiet patience was just what we needed, the perfect counterpoint to his lack of focus. Yet marriage never seemed to change him.”
Eddy is not his father, Hélène wished she could say.
“If you are serious about marrying my grandson, then you need to be prepared for everything that you must endure.”
“I know,” Hélène said quietly. Then she said again, in a firmer voice, “I love him.”
Victoria’s expression seemed to soften. “As a grandmother, I am not unsympathetic to your cause. But I am a sovereign, too, and must think in those terms. Our future king, allying himself with the daughter of a former royal house?”