Page 1 of A Queen's Match
Chapter One
Hélène
“Come on, Amélie!” Hélène shiftedher weight, her feet warm on the platform’s wooden boards. Bathing machines were like carriages designed for discomfort. Or perhaps they were more like closets on wheels? Behind them, plodding toward the shore on a sleepy-looking dray horse, was the coachman who’d driven their bathing machine into the surf. A lot of work, all so that the Orléans sisters could swim without compromising their virtue.
As if Hélène had any virtue left to compromise.
It was maddeningly slow, being bundled into that ridiculous machine and dragged into the ocean. But Hélène had swallowed her complaints. Amélie’s husband, Carlos, the Crown Prince of Portugal, had tried to be thoughtful by arranging this outing. And it was hardly his fault that men were allowed to stroll around the beach in one-piece bathing costumes while women had to keep themselves hidden.
Hélène lowered herself onto the top step of the ladder and shivered. The water was chillier than she’d expected.
“They should make these costumes warmer,” Amélie grumbled, nudging open the door of the bathing machine. Like Hélène, she was dressed in a white camisole and bloomers: notthe beautiful silk bloomers they wore under their gowns, but a simple pair made of cotton.
“You’ll warm up once you get in the water,” Hélène fibbed.
Amélie lifted a skeptical eyebrow, wrapping her arms around herself in the ocean breeze. So Hélène dived in.
The water closed over her head, cold and dark. It was so blissfully quiet that she couldn’t hear anything but the far-off roar of the surf, murmuring like a distant heartbeat.
Here in the water, Hélène could forget it all. The mistakes she’d made, the secrecy and the joy and the unbearable pain she’d endured over the past year and a half: when she had fallen in love with Prince Eddy, then lost him.
As she broke the surface, Hélène looked up. Amélie was still standing on the back platform, watching her closely.
“I’ll join you,” Amélie declared, and began descendingthe ladder built into the back of the machine. The water wasn’t deep; Hélène could dig her toes into the sandy bottom.
Amélie drifted toward her, moving her arms in circular motions to keep her head above the surface. “You look like a little mermaid with your hair all wet,” she teased.Une petite sirène,she’d said; the sisters were speaking French, as they always did together.
Hélène bristled at the phrase; it made her think of that awful Hans Christian Andersen story. “I don’t like the little mermaid.” What a foolish decision, to give up everything for a man. Small surprise that the prince had left the mermaid the moment her back was turned, breaking her heart forever.
Though, to be fair, Hélène’s heartbreak came from the fact thatshewas the one who’d leftEddy.
“You’re right, of course. You’re more like Mélusine than the little mermaid,” Amélie amended.
Mélusine, the water spirit who had married a mortal man, a beloved French children’s story. The ancient House of Anjou had claimed her as their ancestor; and since the Anjou were earlier French kings, succeeded by the Valois, then by the Bourbons, then by Hélène’s own family, the Orléans—well, perhaps she was an ancestor of Hélène’s, too.
Though Hélène was really a princess in name only. If history had played out differently, her father, Philippe, might have sat on the French throne; but France was a republic now. The Orléans family lived in exile in England.
“It’s been so long since I went swimming,” Amélie said eagerly. “Remember when we all used to go into the canal?”
“Philippe pretended to be an eel.” Hélène elongated her body to mimic her brother’s movements, pleased when Amélie smiled. “That feels like so long ago,” she added softly. She didn’t miss France, exactly, but she missed the simplicity of childhood. She missed those summers at the château in Normandy, before her family’s exile.
Swimming like this—without heavy lace dragging her steps, without a corset constricting her movement—she felt a bit like a child again.
Hélène plunged beneath the surface and stayed submerged as long as she could, until her lungs were in agony.
When she emerged, her sister sighed. “Are you ready to tell me what’s wrong?”
Hélène kicked her feet above the surface, staring at the pale half-moons of her toenails to avoid Amélie’s gaze. “What do you mean?”
“You’re hiding from something. And as much as I love having you here, you’ll have to go back eventually, and face whatever—orwhoever—it is.”
Hélène had been with her sister for months, since Prince Constantine and Princess Sophie’s wedding in Athens. The morning after the wedding, Hélène had asked her parents if they could stop in Portugal to visit Amélie and her baby. Her parents had been surprised; they knew that Hélène was secretly engaged to Prince Eddy of England. Didn’t she want to return to London and make a wedding announcement? But Hélène had been adamant. She needed her sister.
After a few weeks in Lisbon, Marie Isabelle and Philippe had returned to England, but Hélène had lingered. Now it was April, and she still had no plans to return.
Eventually, Amélie had suggested that they go to Albufeira, on the southern coast, so that Hélène could “see the Mediterranean.” As if her sister hadn’t just been at a royal wedding in the Mediterranean. Clearly, Amélie had sensed that something was amiss, and hoped that the ocean air, and solitude, might help.
Hélène kept floating, buffeted by the sway of the waves. The air smelled of salt and lemons. Overhead, the sky was a brilliant blue.
