Page 114 of A Queen's Match
Violette drifted aside to give them privacy, stubbornly taking the parasol with her.
“What are you doing here?” Emanuele looked just the same as when she’d last seen him, when he and Hélène had been sneaking around Agnes’s house. Had that really been just six months ago?
“My ship leaves in an hour. My parents are at thealbergo, where they are almost certainly complaining about the wine selection.” Hélène tilted her head in the direction of the dockside inn. “We were in Germany earlier this week, at the wedding of Prince Ernest to his cousin Ducky.”
Emanuele smiled softly. “Ah, yes. There are not many ports near Hesse.”
Hélène’s parents had been startled when she suggested they attend Ernie and Ducky’s wedding. They had nodded eagerly, exchanging a hopeful glance, clearly thrilled that she wanted to be in society again. Hélène’s only thought had been of Alix—until she’d seen May at the wedding.
Of everything she’d expected—vitriol, accusations, perhaps even shouting—she’d never imagined that she would see the version of May she had encountered: deflated, defeated. For so long Hélène had dreamed of confronting May; and in the end, it hadn’t been worth the fight.
In the end, she’d felt sorry for May.
Emanuele gestured toward the harbor. “You’re not traveling on theHimalaya,by chance?”
“As a matter of fact, we are.” Hélène paused before asking, “Are you also headed to Rome?”
“I’m actually not disembarking there. I’m staying on board all the way to Alexandria,” Emanuele told her.
Alexandria.The word broke through the haze of grief that Hélène had been shrouded in for months. It conjured up visions of adventure, of wandering through cobblestone streets, visiting the lighthouse that had guided travelers since Caesar. Sailing up the Nile, past crocodiles, to see the pyramids.
“If you’re not busy, would you like to accompany me?”
For a moment Hélène thought that Emanuele was inviting her to Alexandria. She was seized by a bizarre impulse to say yes—but then she realized he was gesturing to his shoes. One of them was in tatters, its sole peeled back from the stitching. A rather remarkable amount of bright red stocking was visible through the leather.
“As you can see, I’m in dire need of a cobbler. I’m told there’s one two streets away,” Emanuele remarked.
To her surprise, Hélène fell into step alongside him. “Surely you don’t travel with only a single pair of shoes?”
“Oh, I had others, but I lost them in a game of cards,” he said airily.
“You gambled forshoes?”
“Of course I did. It’s only a sin when you gamble for money,” Emanuele joked. “Besides, I was playing against the crew. Shoes seemed like the great equalizer, the one thing all of us had.”
“Until you lost yours.”
“Sailors are alarmingly good at whist. All those hours out at sea, you know.”
Hélène chuckled. “Gambling away your shoes—that’s something Eddy would have done.”
The moment the words left her mouth, she froze. Had she really just done that, just spoken about Eddy withlaughter?
Emanuele clearly saw her shock, because he said, very gently, “He would want you to think of him with happiness.”
Hélène nodded and took a deep breath, not trusting herself to speak. The salt air felt somehow calming. Out in the harbor, gulls wheeled and dived among the foam-capped waves.
She knew, deep down, that Emanuele was right. Eddy would want Hélène’s grief to be balanced by joy.
Something was shifting within her, like tectonic plates moving and resettling. Perhaps it was because of what Queen Victoria had said when she’d given her Eddy’s wedding ring; or perhaps it was the end of her years-long feud with May. But for the first time since Eddy’s death, she felt like she could breathe again.
She would always miss him. Yet it was nice to know that she could think of Eddy with laughter, and not just tears.
“I worry that I am losing him,” she admitted, so quietly that Emanuele had to lean forward to hear. “That I am forgetting him.”
Already Eddy’s features were blurring in her mind. There were photos of him, of course, but they were so painfully official: he was always in uniform, his jaw set, expression neutral. Hélène didn’t miss Eddy, the Prince of England. She missed therealEddy: his wicked smile, the impatient way hetucked back his hair when it fell forward, the irreverent edge to his humor. The boldness in his voice when he spoke of the things he truly cared about. The light in his eyes when he caught sight of her.
At night, in her dreams, Hélène would see Eddy with perfect clarity—and then she woke up, and the images would drift away like smoke, no matter how hard she tried to clutch at them.
