Chapter Twenty-Three Hélène #2
Hélène shuffled to one side and bowed her head, but she needn’t have worried. Agnes didn’t notice Hélène. She was too busy tugging the neckline of her dress lower over her breasts until she showed a healthy amount of cleavage.
Of course. The type of person capable of such cruel blackmail was also the type to look past domestic servants as if they were furniture.
Hélène waited until Agnes’s footsteps clattered down the staircase. She glanced in both directions, then darted through the door Agnes had emerged from.
The bedroom inside was all rococo gilding and swirls, with mirrors on every wall, as if Agnes needed to constantly look at herself from every possible angle.
The bed was hung with tasseled silk curtains, and the footboard was carved with AIE, presumably Agnes’s initials.
It was all a bit ostentatious for a bed that was supposedly not visited by any gentlemen.
Just as she’d done with May’s room at Osborne, Hélène began searching as quickly as she could, starting with the most obvious hiding places: drawers in the side tables, the space underneath the mattress, the liner of the cushioned window seat. Nothing.
When she opened the armoire, her eyes were immediately drawn to a locked wooden box bolted to the shelf. It could, of course, be Agnes’s jewelry. Yet something told her that it was more.
“What are you doing, Violette?”
Hélène whirled around to see Annie in the doorway.
“Please, let me explain. This isn’t what it looks like,” Hélène hurried to say.
Annie hesitated, which Hélène took as a good sign. At least she wasn’t shouting Thief!
“Really? Because it looks like you snuck into this house, disguised as a maidservant, in order to steal.”
“Well, yes,” Hélène admitted. “But the thing I’m stealing is mine! Your mistress took something from me, and I need it back!”
Annie stepped farther into the room, pulling the door shut behind her. “You’re not a maid, are you.” She didn’t phrase it like a question.
“Please, Annie,” Hélène’s words were rushed, frantic. “Have you ever been in love? The thing Agnes stole—it’s not jewelry, or money. It’s a love letter. If I don’t get it back, I will lose the man I love forever.”
Hélène’s heart pounded. Then, to her relief, the maidservant nodded.
“We have a few minutes. Miss Endicott is busy with a Spanish duke downstairs.”
“An Italian duke, actually,” Hélène told her. “He’s my friend.”
Annie’s eyes widened at that. She turned and gestured to the locked box. “Your instincts were good; this is probably where Miss Endicott keeps your letter. But she has the key on her person at all times.”
Disappointment flooded Hélène. She had come so close.
Was there any way to steal the entire box—but it was bolted into the armoire itself, and even if she managed to pry it free, someone would see her absconding with it.
Could she attempt to steal the key from Agnes’s pocket?
Or did she wear it on a ribbon around her neck?
She blinked, realizing that Annie had reached beneath her bonnet to withdraw two hairpins.
“Are you—”
“Shh!” Annie hissed.
Hélène held her breath, watching as the maidservant stuck the pins into the lock, tugging them back and forth, periodically ducking closer and listening. Finally she gave the lock one last turn, and it sprang open.
“American machine-made locks,” Annie said dismissively. “They’re so easy to pick. Our old handmade British locks are much better.”
They both peered eagerly into the dark interior.
There were a few jewelry boxes, but mostly the box contained a disorganized sheaf of papers: scribbled notes, newspaper clippings, old invitations. And there, crisply folded on top, was Laurent’s letter.
Finally, after all this time—after months of heartache, of scheming against May and failing, of nearly giving up hope—Hélène had succeeded.
She snatched the letter, unable to stop herself from scanning it.
Scattered phrases jumped out at her—the first night you came to me, when it was raining and Remember that day in the carriage—and she winced.
How could Laurent have been so foolish as to put all this to paper?
It was even more incendiary than she’d realized.
“Thank you,” she breathed.
“You helped me. It’s only right that I do the same.” Annie gave a weary shrug. “That’s how I knew you weren’t a maid. It’s everyone for themselves in this house.”
Hélène folded the letter, tucking it into her bodice. “Annie…do you wish to leave?”
“More than anything, but I need work.”
“Go to Sheen House. The housekeeper is Mrs. Archer. I’ll tell her to look for you.”
“Sheen House,” Annie repeated. Then she gasped. “Wait, does that mean you are—”
“Thank you, Annie.” Hélène smiled and ducked into the hallway.
It took all her self-restraint not to run down the back stairs two at a time. When she was safely in the alley, Hélène allowed herself to fully breathe at last. Her blood pounded with the thrill of success.
I did it, she kept thinking, in a wild, delirious refrain. She could have Eddy back. He was engaged to May, yes, but royal engagements had been broken before. Surely he would brave any scandal, once he knew that she still loved him. Once she told him all the reasons for what she had done.
A few minutes later, Emanuele emerged through the Endicotts’ front door, accompanied by Agnes, who seemed to cling to him with the determination of a barnacle. Emanuele detached himself from the American as gracefully as he could, then finally made his way to the street.
“You look happy,” he observed, falling into step alongside Hélène. “I take it our endeavor was successful?”
“I need to telegraph Eddy!”
Hélène pressed her hand against her bodice, where the letter made a reassuring crinkling noise. She felt positively giddy. A childlike joy was bubbling up out of her, making her want to twirl right there in the street.
“Excellent.” Emanuele held out an arm. “To the post office, then?”
Hélène started to protest that they couldn’t be in public without a chaperone; then she remembered that she wasn’t dressed like herself. Today she was a maidservant, and the ordinary rules were off.
“I suppose Violette can cover for me a little bit longer.”
For once the London weather—normally fickle and disagreeable—seemed inclined to match Hélène’s mood.
They strolled toward a grassy area at the end of the street, where a few nurses pushed babies in perambulators.
Several older boys were flying a kite, its crimson color vibrant against the robin’s-egg blue sky.
Hélène was well aware how mismatched they looked, her in the maid’s uniform and Emanuele in the full trappings of prince attire, the better to awe Mrs. Endicott.
People probably thought she was his mistress.
Hélène didn’t care. She was planning exactly what she would say to Eddy. She would have to be circumspect; the telegram would almost certainly be read by someone else before it reached him. She just had to trust that he would know her intent, no matter how she phrased it.
“London is prettier this time of year than anyone gives it credit for,” Emanuele mused, admiring their surroundings.
“Don’t let today fool you. Usually at this time of year, it’s rain and more rain.”
“You haven’t seen Siam in the rainy season. It’s relentless,” Emanuele teased, and Hélène’s bubble of joy deflated ever so slightly.
“You’re right,” she said softly. “I haven’t seen Siam, and I probably never will.”
“Oh, but surely you’ll go with Eddy someday?”
Hélène doubted it. Even if this plan worked, and she got Eddy back, their future would always be confined. He was the future King of England.
“Any travel we do will be similar to what I recently did with my parents,” Hélène admitted. “Venturing from one royal court to another, repeating the same conversation at every dinner, with different hosts.”
They turned onto one of Mayfair’s high streets; the black awning of the General Post-Office loomed at the corner. Hélène felt Emanuele slow his steps, as if he wanted to prolong their walk. She matched her pace to his.
“It’s impossible to escape, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.
“Our families?”
“All of it. The tangle of relations and connections that keeps drawing us in.” Emanuele shook his head. “It’s why I hope that things will stay as they are, that I will never be king. I want to extricate myself from the web, not become one of its major axes.”
“My feelings exactly,” Hélène remarked.
He cast her a sidelong glance. “And yet you fell for the Prince of England.”
“All the more proof that I love Eddy for himself. I love him despite his position, not because of it.” It felt strange, and at the same time a relief, to speak about her feelings for Eddy. She hadn’t been able to really talk about him since she’d seen Amélie all those months ago.
They walked for a few more moments in silence. Emanuele seemed lost in thought. Hélène found herself curious as to what was distracting him.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest just now.” Emanuele sighed. “In truth…there are times I also feel the opposite. That I do want to be an axis in the web—that I want to someday be king.”
His confession seemed to hang in the air between them. Hélène started to reply, but before she could quite find the words, Emanuele kept talking.
“It’s a terrible thought, obviously. I love my cousin. And when I catch myself feeling this way, I am so ashamed, because I am wishing his death—”
“That’s not true! You are merely wishing to play a greater role in things. It’s not your fault that monarchy is set up this way,” Hélène said resolutely. “It’s a ridiculous system, really, that the heir to the throne must always be waiting for his predecessor to die.”
The corner of Emanuele’s mouth twitched upward. “Don’t tell me that you, a French princess, are secretly a republican.”
“I just don’t want you to take personal blame for an entirely understandable feeling!” Hélène exclaimed. “You know, when I was little, I used to dream of my father becoming King of France again.”
“And now that you are a future Queen of England, you no longer dream of such a thing?” Emanuele supplied for her.
Hélène shook her head. “I no longer dream of it because I’m not sure my father would actually like being king.
” It was shocking of her to say this aloud, and she would certainly never voice such words to her father, but that didn’t make them any less true.
She sighed. “My father is a good man, and I love him dearly. But he has trouble deciding which jacket to wear to a social outing. How on earth would he ever make decisions about a country? If all the monarchist plotting actually came to fruition and he found himself on the throne—I don’t think he would have the slightest idea how to rule France.
No,” she mused aloud, “he is well suited to the life he leads.”
“And what about you? Are you well suited to the life you lead?”
It was a rather personal question. But then, she and Emanuele had entered strange territory, collaborating on breaking into someone’s home.
“I wish being a princess allowed for other things,” Hélène admitted.
“Seeing the world. Meeting people—real people.” Not just the ones in the narrow circle of her existence, so proud of the heraldic emblems on their carriages, of their six-foot-tall footmen in livery, of their gowns and yachts and tiaras.
“I hope that you will think of me as a real person,” Emanuele replied, surprisingly earnest.
Hélène stopped, then, and turned to face him. “I don’t know how to thank you for what you did today. You were incredible.”
“As I said before, I’m Italian. We are constitutionally required to help damsels in distress.” Emanuele winked, but she knew that his bravado masked a very real kindness.
Smiling from ear to ear, Hélène pushed open the door to the post office. She had defeated May at last.
And now it was time to bring Eddy back.