CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Hélène
EDDY LEANED BACK ON THE sofa opposite her, one arm flung carelessly across its top.
“Grandmother wants us to hold the wedding ceremony in St. James’s Palace; it’s where she married Grandfather.
Though she also said that we could use Westminster Abbey.
I assumed you might prefer that, since it’s a cathedral?
” he added, phrasing it like a question.
“I would love that. Thank you,” Hélène replied, touched by his thoughtfulness.
With its soaring Gothic arches and stained-glass windows, Westminster Abbey looked more like the Catholic churches of France than it did the post-Reformation British chapels of Christopher Wren.
Which made sense, since it had been a Catholic church for four hundred years before King Henry VIII seized it as Crown property.
Eddy was trying to make things at least somewhat familiar for her, since she would be converting to his religion. A detail that she still hadn’t shared with her parents.
Last week, Queen Victoria had invited Hélène’s father to Buckingham Palace to discuss the engagement.
He’d come home hours later, ruddy-faced and jubilant, crowing that he wanted to open the finest champagne in the house and toast his daughter.
Queen of England! I never imagined you could do such a thing, he kept saying, almost reverently.
Hélène knew what he meant. It had been achievement enough when Amélie married the future King of Portugal.
Philippe had never imagined that his other daughter—the stubborn, willful one, who refused to ride sidesaddle and hardly acted like a princess at all—might make an even more illustrious marriage.
When he failed to mention the issue of religion, Hélène realized that Queen Victoria hadn’t shared Hélène’s promise to convert.
It was considerate of her, letting Hélène be the one to tell her parents, but Hélène dreaded that conversation.
Their Catholic faith was one of the strongest forces in her parents’ lives.
She just had to hope that their ambition was stronger.
Eddy grinned and leaned forward to take an iced madeleine from the coffee table—his third in the course of half an hour. “These are wonderful, by the way.”
She rolled her eyes, amused. “You speak as if you’ve never had French pastries before.”
“Not like these, I haven’t. Forget scones; these are far better.”
“Don’t let your grandmother hear you speak such treason.” Hélène fought back a smile.
It was surreal, hosting Eddy in her family’s sitting room in broad daylight: not sneaking around his bachelor apartments or stealing a moment at a crowded event, but inviting him over in his official capacity as her suitor.
He had left his jacket and hat with their butler, and rolled up his sleeves before tucking into his tea, so that his bare wrists showed.
There was something deliciously intimate about seeing him like this, more intimate in some ways than all their secret nights together.
Hélène’s hand strayed to her pocket, where she’d tucked the yellow wildflower that Eddy had given her at Balmoral.
It made her feel like a fairy. The flower was dead now, and too crumpled even to be useful as potpourri, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away.
Perhaps she would sneak it into her wedding bouquet.
She sighed in contentment, happy to just sit here in his presence.
No one had ever told her that things could get this way.
That after the frenzy of infatuation, your feelings for someone might deepen into something heavier and headier, the way a fine wine became more substantial the longer it remained in the bottle.
Footsteps sounded from the hall, as they had every twenty minutes since Eddy arrived.
Hélène had been surprised when her parents allowed her and Eddy to sit here alone, though they had kept the double doors wide open in a nod to propriety—and kept sending their butler, Jean-Baptiste, to check on the couple.
“Your Royal Highness. Mademoiselle.” Jean-Baptiste bowed to Eddy, then nodded in her direction. “May I bring you anything?”
“Just more tea,” Hélène answered, wearily amused. He would be back in another twenty minutes for the same exact routine, but oddly, she didn’t mind.
Jean-Baptiste held out a silver platter laden with envelopes. “Your mail, mademoiselle. I shall return with the tea.”
Hélène scooped the letters off the top and began shuffling through them.
“Anything interesting?” Eddy asked, watching her affectionately.
“The usual.” Most of the notes were invitations—addressed by social secretaries, whose handwriting was never as loopy or irreverent as a lady’s—or bills in brown paper envelopes. But when she saw an unmarked letter, Hélène paused.
The lack of return address wasn’t unusual in itself; plenty of society women trusted their embossed stationery to indicate who they were. Yet something about the missive lifted the hairs on the back of Hélène’s neck. A shadowy, ominous intent seemed to cling to it in a way she couldn’t articulate.
Hélène stood and walked to the escritoire, where she found an enameled letter opener in the top drawer. She sliced open the envelope with a flick.
Hélène,
It pains me to write this letter, yet I cannot ignore the dictates of my conscience. As your friend—I hope you will think of me as a friend—I feel compelled to warn you.
I know about you and your former coachman, Laurent Guérard.
If you doubt my word, only see the enclosed page, one of several in Laurent’s letter to you. I assure you that I came into possession of this letter quite by accident, but now that I have it, I have no choice but to speak.
Surely you realize the immorality of what you have done, as well as the danger. If you are reckless enough to move forward in your relationship with Prince Eddy, or worse, to announce an engagement, then people will start looking through your past. I fear that the truth will come out.
Don’t you think it better to break things off now, before it’s too late? You can still retreat from this situation without any scandal. You might even be able to marry someday, perhaps a Continental relative, someone with a less prominent position.
After all, the last thing you want is to become a cautionary tale like Marie of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Not to mention what it would do for your family’s reputation.
If you do not end things with Prince Eddy before Princess Sophie and Prince Constantine’s wedding, I shall be forced to conclude that you have made the wrong decision.
And, as much as it grieves me, I will have no choice but to show the rest of Laurent’s letter to Her Majesty.
She deserves to be warned of this scandal before it reaches her through some other avenue.
I hope it will not come to that.
Your friend,
May of Teck
The words were blurring in Hélène’s vision. She braced a hand on the silk cushion to steady herself and quickly looked at the enclosed page, on plain rough paper.
She didn’t actually know Laurent’s handwriting—they’d never had cause to write to each other—but the note was unmistakably from him.
She recognized the urgent pulse of his voice, his use of French colloquialisms. Her heart plummeted when she saw that he mentioned one of their more reckless afternoons, when they had nearly been caught in the back seat of her parents’ carriage.
Queen Victoria could not see this letter. Hélène could always claim it was a forgery, that someone was trying to blackmail her by spinning falsehoods…but stories like the carriage were frighteningly specific, and hard to disbelieve.
She hadn’t imagined that May of Teck was capable of such cruelty.
Why, just last week they had shared a moment of understanding at the Princess of Wales’s receiving hours.
Hélène had actually been foolish enough to think of May as a possible friend.
And the whole time, the other girl had been plotting her downfall!
I came into possession of this letter quite by accident, May had claimed.
Hélène wasn’t so foolish as to believe that.
May had obviously figured out about Hélène and Eddy—perhaps she’d seen them together at Balmoral?
So she’d gone digging, and uncovered the truth about Laurent, even going so far as to intercept his letter.
Clearly, she thought she could edge Hélène out of the way and marry Eddy herself.
Hélène drew in a breath with such anger that Eddy looked up, startled. “Did you receive some bad news?”
The worst. “I’m fine,” Hélène said, and though it took every ounce of her willpower, she managed a smile. It must have been convincing enough, because Eddy nodded and changed the subject.
“I was wondering, how would you feel about announcing our engagement at Sophie and Tino’s wedding next week? Most of our families will be there, and—”
“No!”
It came out too sharply; Hélène winced and tried to recover. “It will be Sophie’s big day. I don’t want to overshadow her with our news.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right, of course,” Eddy said ruefully.
Jean-Baptiste reentered the room with a pitcher of tea and began officiously refilling their cups, giving Hélène a much-needed chance to think.
She shoved May’s letter under the pile of other letters and stacked them all on a side table.
She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t dare let Eddy see it—didn’t want to involve him in any of this until she had a plan.
It seemed unbelievable that quiet, demure May of Teck would stoop so low as to blackmail her.
Some girls would go to any lengths to wear a crown.