Page 2 of A Queen's Match
Eddy is looking at this very same sun,Hélène thought, and instantly felt ridiculous. That was the kind of sappy thing that heroines of operas sang about—right before they died of a broken heart.
“It was Prince Eddy,” she heard herself say.
Amélie’s mouth fell open in surprise. “Prince Eddy, as in the future King of England?”
“We don’t know any other Prince Eddys. So, yes.”
It was a sign of Amélie’s shock that she didn’t chastise Hélène for the sarcasm. She just stared at her, droplets ofwater gathering in her dark eyebrows. “All those letters you got were fromhim?”
Eddy knew Hélène well enough to guess she would run to her sister. He’d written a series of letters to her in Portugal, begging her to change her mind.
If only Hélène could risk a reply.
“You’d better start at the beginning,” Amélie said incredulously. So Hélène told her.
She explained how last year, she and Eddy had begun seeing each other in secret. They met up late at night, at the rooms he kept in London for that exact purpose, or at crowded parties, where they stole away for a few illicit moments. Eddy wasn’t the first man Hélène had been involved with—earlier, she’d had an affair with Laurent, her family’s coachman.
“Laurent?”Amélie interrupted. “I had no idea!”
“It started after you were married.” Hélène waited for Amélie to scold her, but her sister just lifted a hand from the water, gesturing for her to continue.
Eventually, Hélène and Eddy had realized that their relationship was far more than a fling. They loved each other. When Eddy proposed, Hélène had been elated—except that Eddy wasn’t free to marry. At least not according to his grandmother Queen Victoria, who had already matched him with Princess Alix of Hesse. And Her Majesty’s opinion was the only one that mattered.
Eddy’s request to court Hélène had been met with laughter at first. As his grandmother had reminded him, Hélène was a princess without a country, a princess whose value on the marriage market was a matter of constant debate. Butthen Hélène had done the impossible, and convinced Queen Victoria to give them her blessing.
Until May of Teck ruined everything.
Somehow May had intercepted a letter from Laurent to Hélène. She was now using it as blackmail, threatening to show the highly incriminating letter to Queen Victoria unless Hélène ended things with Eddy.
So at the wedding in Athens, Hélène had told Eddy that she’d changed her mind, and couldn’t convert to the Church of England, as she’d promised. As a future Queen of England would need to do.
Eddy hadn’t flinched. He’d just reached for her hand and said,I’ll renounce my place in the line of succession.
He’d offered to give up the throne for her, and still Hélène had turned him down.
She wanted so desperately to tell him the truth. But she feared that it would ruin everything—that Eddy’s impulsive temper would get the better of him, and he would confront May head-on. He might succeed in exposing May’s cruelty, but in the process, he would inevitably expose Hélène’s secret. And then she could relinquish any hope of marrying him; because a formerly Catholic queen was one thing, but a queen who was not a virgin…Queen Victoria wouldneverallow it.
No, Hélène needed to keep this mess to herself, and let Eddy go on thinking that she’d left him. It was their only hope of ever being together.
When she finished her story, Amélie was silent. Hélène braced herself for her sister’s judgment. She doubted that her sister had evenkissedCarlos before their wedding night, letalone slept with him—and as for Laurent, Amélie wouldn’t have dreamed of it.
But to Hélène’s surprise, her sister swam forward and flung her wet arms around Hélène’s shoulders, her tiptoes perched on the ocean floor.
“You cannot keep blaming yourself,” Amélie murmured. “Do not regret anything you did out of love, all right?”
Hélène’s eyes stung. It must be from the salt water, because she couldn’t be shedding any more tears over her mistakes.
When Amélie drew back, her hair had utterly fallen from its knot, damp tresses floating like seaweed over the waves. “I can’t believe May did such a thing! You know, I used to feelsorryfor her, showing up at parties in those awful old dresses. When, the entire time, she wasn’t just a shy relation of the Waleses; she was a—a lying, two-facedsnake!”
Hélène was a bit startled to hear such vehemence from Amélie, who rarely spoke ill of anyone. “Now you understand why I can’t go home.”
“But that’s exactly why you must. Did you hear what you just said? You called Englandhome.”
Hélène hadn’t even registered her own words. She had lived in England since she was fourteen, yet she’d never thought of it as home until now. Until she fell in love with Eddy.
It hurt, thinking of him—of how his eyes lit on hers across a crowded ballroom. The impatient warmth in his voice when he said her name. The sensation that the world had become sharper, or brighter, or somehow vaster, simply because he was in it.
“You love him,” Amélie observed, watching Hélène’s face.
