Chapter Twenty-Six Hélène
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hélène
Hélène was seated at her vanity, Violette running a brush through her hair, when she heard Prince Eddy in the hall.
“I know she’s here!” he cried out.
Hélène and Violette exchanged a glance in the mirror, and then Hélène shot to her feet, stumbling forward.
She heard a harried footman trying to stop Eddy’s progress. “Your Royal Highness, if you’ll please wait in the parlor, I shall summon mademoiselle. It is quite early.”
It was indeed early; Hélène hadn’t yet dressed for the day, and was only in a chemise and loose dressing gown. She was halfway to the door when it flung open, and Prince Eddy strode into her room.
“I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” the footman stammered, averting his eyes. “I tried to stop him, but he insisted on, well…”
“It’s all right.” Hélène’s gaze was locked on Eddy as she said, “Violette, you may go.”
The lady’s maid hesitated, clearly aware of the impropriety of leaving them alone, and with Hélène half-dressed. Then she curtsied and walked out, muttering something about too many princes showing up unexpectedly these days.
“Eddy. You came.” Hélène’s heart was pounding wildly.
“What did you mean by that telegram?” He took an angry step forward.
Hélène’s dressing room was small, with gilt blue wallpaper and a Louis XVI mirror.
The vanity was covered in crystal scent bottles, pots of rouge, the silver-backed hairbrush that Violette had abandoned.
There was something discordant about seeing Eddy here, his crackling male energy sucking all the air from the room.
“I meant exactly what I wrote. That I wanted to speak with you,” Hélène said softly.
“So you could torture me some more? Whatever game you’re playing, I want no part in it.”
“I assure you, it’s not a game to me—”
“Then why do you keep playing with my feelings?”
“Because I had no other choice! I love you!”
Eddy’s expression didn’t shift; he might have been staring at Hélène across a battlefield. And in fact, his ancestors had been her ancestors’ enemies five hundred years earlier.
“I love you,” she said again, fiercely. “And I will fight for us with every last breath in my body. That is, if you still want me.”
“How can I believe anything you say? You gave up on us,” Eddy said accusingly.
“I gave up on us?” she repeated, incredulous. “You’re the one who went and got engaged! And to May of Teck, of all people!”
“I thought I was engaged to you!” Eddy broke into a cough for a moment, hand to his mouth.
His voice was raspy and hoarse when he spoke again.
“Then, without any warning, you decided you couldn’t be with me anymore.
I offered to give up the throne for you, and you told me to walk away and forget you! ”
“It looks like you had no problem taking my advice, given how quickly you moved on!” she shot back.
“As if you didn’t move on to my cousin!” Eddy crossed his arms over his chest. “Were you already sleeping with Nicholas when you ended things with me?”
Hélène drew in a sharp breath. “Nicholas and I were never even formally engaged. It was all just pretend.”
Eddy didn’t seem to have heard her. “I saw you two together, that morning on the yacht! You weren’t exactly subtle about it, Hélène. Embracing right there on the deck, for anyone to see.”
Oh no. Hélène’s heart ached at how fundamentally he had misunderstood. “There was nothing romantic about it, Eddy. Nicholas is my friend, and embraced me because I was crying about you. As I said, we were only pretending to court.”
“Pretending?” Eddy paused, seeming less certain of himself. “But the night before—I thought—you two left the party at Osborne House early. Together.”
“We did leave the party early, but Nicholas and I both snuck back into the house. He went to see Alix, and I snooped through May’s room,” Hélène said softly.
Eddy frowned. “May? As in my May?”
“Your May?” Hélène repeated testily. Oh, she hated that phrase.
“You know what I meant! May of Teck, the woman I’m supposed to marry! What does she have to do with anything?”
“Quite a lot, given that she blackmailed me into leaving you!”
Eddy stared at her, stunned. He placed a hand on the back of her chair, a small feminine thing tucked up to her vanity, and held it so tight his knuckles turned white.
“What do you mean, May blackmailed you?”
“She had proof of something I had done, something indecorous, and was holding it over my head. I thought it best not to tell you,” Hélène said haltingly.
“I was worried that if you knew, you might confront May, and then she would expose me. I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out a solution,” she added more softly, “but I never thought you would get engaged to someone else.”
“I only got engaged to May because I’d seen you with Nicholas that very morning.” Eddy cursed under his breath. “Come to think of it, May was with me when I saw you two together. She’s the one who pointed out that you’d left the party together, who made me think that you had…”
Why am I not surprised? Hélène thought wearily. Somehow May had gotten her tentacles into all their lives, influencing their very thoughts.
“Eddy. I would never betray you like that,” she said intently.
“Nicholas and I let people think we were courting, but only because it benefited us both. I wanted May to stop considering me a threat, and Nicholas used me as an excuse to see Alix. We’ve already told our parents that there will not be an engagement. ”
“You had me convinced,” he said, voice raspy.
“I needed to be convincing, to throw May off the scent! It destroyed me a little bit every day, pretending that you meant nothing to me. Trust me when I say that I never stopped loving you.” Hélène’s voice broke; tears threatened to slide down her cheeks, but she needed him to hear this.
“I will never stop, for all the days of my life. There is no one for me but you, Eddy.”
Eddy ran a hand over his features, then looked back up.
His eyes flicked around the room as if seeing it for the first time.
He seemed to finally register that they were alone in her dressing room—that Hélène was standing before him, her bare legs visible through the sheer skirts of her dressing gown.
The distance between them was only a few feet, and yet at the same time it felt impossibly vast.
“There is no one for me but you, either,” Eddy finally said, then stepped forward to pull her into his arms.
Hélène tipped her mouth eagerly up to his, her hands wrapped around his shoulders.
She wished she could stay here forever, inhabiting this moment—this kiss—for the rest of her life.
Heat coursed through her, and she knew that Eddy could feel it too: how well they fit together. How utterly right it was.
When they finally broke apart, Eddy tucked her head into his shoulder. “God, Hélène, how I’ve missed you.”
That evening, the two of them were intertwined in bed, in the rooms Eddy kept in north London.
As much as Hélène would have loved to do this at her parents’ house, she knew better than to push her luck.
After their conversation this morning, Eddy had slipped quietly away.
They had agreed to meet up at night, as they used to.
Hélène had forgotten how good this felt.
Not just physical intimacy, but afterward: when you could drape yourself over your lover’s body, letting your head rest on his bare chest. Listening to the steady and reassuring beat of his heart.
All the pins had been tugged loose from her hair, which fell about her shoulders, wild as a lion’s mane.
“You said May used something you had done and blackmailed you,” Eddy began, lacing his fingers with hers. “What happened?”
So Hélène started from the beginning. She told him how she’d had an affair with Laurent years ago, before she and Eddy were ever involved—and then, when she and Eddy were secretly engaged, how she’d gotten a threatening note from May.
“What?” Eddy sat upright, his expression thunderous. “What did the note say?”
“She told me that I needed to end our engagement ‘before it was too late,’ or else she would tell the queen about me and Laurent! She had a love letter that he wrote me,” Hélène added, her cheeks flaming.
“That American friend of hers, Agnes, tricked Laurent into writing it. So May had proof. Even back then, she was clearly planning to swoop in and marry you herself.”
Eddy wasn’t really listening anymore. He slid out of bed, reaching for his shirt as if he meant to storm White Lodge at that very moment. “How dare she. I’m going to tell her exactly what she—”
“Eddy, I have the letter!” Hélène sat up. “Just relax for a moment, all right? I stole it back!”
Reluctantly, Eddy sat back on his bed and listened.
Hélène told him how she’d been in Rome when she wrote Laurent, how he’d sent his reply back to the Quirinal Palace. How Emanuele had come to London, and helped her break into the Americans’ rented house in Mayfair. Eddy listened in silence, his expression unreadable.
“You seem upset,” Hélène said at last, twisting the sheets in her lap. “Are you angry that I didn’t tell you any of this?”
Eddy sighed. “It certainly would have made the last year more bearable, knowing the truth instead of thinking that you had stopped loving me.”
Hélène placed a hand tentatively on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she told him, knowing how utterly inadequate the words were. “I worried that if I told you, you would have revealed it to May, and she would have shown the letter to Her Majesty. Then we never would be able to get married.”
“But now I’m publicly engaged to May,” he said flatly.
Well, yes. Hélène hadn’t imagined that he would take such a drastic action so quickly.
Eddy shifted farther back on the bed, tucking an arm around Hélène’s shoulders and pulling her next to him.
“You were probably right not to tell me. We both know I don’t exactly have a delicate touch when it comes to things like this.
” He shook his head. “I just…I keep thinking of all the time we lost. We had finally gotten my grandmother’s blessing, and then to lose it because of May… ”
“I’m sorry,” Hélène said again, and Eddy turned, brushing a kiss on her temple.
“Don’t apologize. I’m just relieved to have you back.”
They sat like that for a moment in silence, her head nestled into the crook of his shoulder. Then Eddy asked, “So who is this Emanuele character, exactly?”
Hélène felt a laugh bubble out of her. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous. You, the future King of England, cannot envy an Italian prince who is second in line to the throne.”
“I can be jealous when you’re off scheming with him, telling him secrets you didn’t even tell me.”
“I promise you needn’t worry about me and Emanuele,” Hélène assured him.
“It might seem strange that I shared so much with him, but I really do trust him. He’s back in Italy now, anyway.
What would it benefit him to tell anyone that May was blackmailing me?
He doesn’t even know what the blackmail was about. ”
“I still don’t like it.” Eddy let out a frustrated breath. “In any case, I should request an audience with Grandmother, and let her know how wrong she was about May. Once she knows exactly what May has done, she will agree that we need to call off the engagement.”
Hélène hesitated. “Are you sure that’s the best plan?”
“Why else did you go to all the trouble of getting the letter back?” Eddy’s voice faltered. “That is—you still want to marry me—don’t you?”
“Of course I do!” Hélène pressed a swift kiss to his brow.
“I just worry about your grandmother. You know she’ll demand the whole story, in all its ugly detail.
You can’t tell her that May wrote me a threatening note and leave it at that.
Which means that she’ll end up learning about me and Laurent anyway.
” And Victoria wouldn’t be nearly as forgiving of Hélène’s indiscretions as Eddy had been.
“What other options do we have?” Eddy asked, confused.
“We can go to May, confront her face to face. If we offer her a dignified retreat, we might all escape this mess unscathed.”
“Then she’ll get away with it!”
“I don’t care if she does, really. As long as I get to be with you.” As much as Hélène would have loved to destroy May, she wanted to marry Eddy far more than she wanted revenge. There was no use setting May’s life afire if Hélène would be caught in the flames.
Eddy nodded slowly. “I suppose you’re right. Actually, I’m supposed to see May tomorrow, to sit for our first official portrait.” He made a face. “I think I’ll show up late. I don’t exactly trust myself not to shout the moment I see her.”
“I’ll come with you,” Hélène promised.
Eddy turned to Hélène with a wicked gleam in his eye. “Good. Now, I want to hear more about the disguise you wore at the Endicotts’ house. You really pretended to be a French maid?” He grinned. “Do you still have the outfit, by chance?”
“You’re incorrigible!” Hélène started to laugh, but then Eddy’s mouth was on hers again, and she was far too distracted to laugh about anything.