Page 91 of A Queen's Match
“How long have I…?”
“A few days,” Hélène said with false lightness. Eddy suspected it was longer, a week at least.
“And you’ve been here the whole time?”
She hesitated. “I’m not here, technically speaking. I’ve been staying with the Wyclifs. But I’ve come to see you as much as possible.” When he didn’t reply, she valiantly kept talking. “I’ve kept busy, you know. I’ve been wandering the grounds, planning a surprise project for Her Majesty. I was thinking we could make a Scottish garden here, with some thistles, bluebells, sweet violets.” She kept talking, explaining that she’d already sent to Balmoral for seeds, that the gardeners had festooned off a corner of the greenhouse to start. Her words were quick and almost frantic, as if she might fend off what he had to say next.
An uncharacteristic calm had settled over Eddy. He knew, with grave certainty, that he wouldn’t live to see the Scottishgarden.
He wouldn’t live to see any of it. All the things he had barely let himself dream of: Hélène in her wedding gown, meeting his gaze with a knowing smile as she walked down the aisle. Traveling with her, somewhere wild and unexpected like Udaipur, where they would sail the cold mountain-locked lakes, eat naan in sandstone palaces. The children they might have had. Oh, what troublemakers those children would have been, half-French and half-English—or really, half Eddy and half Hélène.
Eddy had hardly begun to want all these things, and now they were slipping out of his grip.Everything changes,his grandmother always said.That is the one thing you can count on, constant change.But he hadn’t expected that change would mean loss.
“Hélène,” he said weakly. “I would ask something of you.”
“Name it.”
“You need to let me go.”
Her grip on his hands tightened. “What?”
“You must promise that when I am gone—”
“Stop! Don’t say such a thing!”
He forged resolutely ahead, mustering all his strength. “Promise that you will not mourn me too long. You must go on and live your life.”
The room was very still, the only sound the deceptively cheerful crackling of the fire. “Eddy.” Hélène’s voice broke. “You are my heart’s desire. I will never love anyone else.”
“That’s not true.” It was so hard to say these things, yet Eddy forced himself to, for Hélène’s sake. He loved her somuch it hurt. He loved her enough to want her to find someone else, to find happiness without him.
Never had he imagined that such a love was possible.
“You have a wonderful heart, with so much love to give. Someday you’ll meet a man you’re ready to share that love with. Of course, he will have to be quite special, to be worthy of you.” Eddy attempted a smile through the cracking of his heart. “Adventurous, and brave, and kind, and strong. Someone who makes you laugh. When you meet that person, I want you to give him your love wholeheartedly. Don’t hold any back out of respect for me, all right?”
“You can’t speak like this.” Tears streamed down Hélène’s cheeks. “I don’t want to meet someone else. I want you!”
“Promise me.” Eddy’s voice was urgent. “You deserve a wonderful, long life, full of all the joy that the world has to offer. You deserve toseethe whole world. And if you can’t do it with me, I need to know that you will still do it, even with someone else. You must promise.”
The force of his command seemed to echo in the room. Miserably, resentfully, Hélène nodded. “I promise. But I’m angry with you for extracting such a promise while you are ill and I have no choice but to say yes.”
Negotiating to the bitter end. Eddy loved her for it. He felt such pride in that moment that she had been his, if only for a short while.
What a formidable Queen of England she would have made.
“I love you,” he told her. “Never forget that.”
“I love you, and I always will.” She sniffed, holding his hands so tight that he could barely feel them. “Always.”
There was so much more Eddy wanted to tell her, but thewords flitted like restless birds around his mind. George…That was one more goodbye he needed to say. He wanted to tell George how sorry he was for leaving him with a burden he’d never expected. And wait, wasn’t there something he wanted to warn George about? May. That was it. He wanted to tell George about May’s true nature, how cruel she had been to Hélène and Alix and Ducky. George needed to be wary ofMay….
He would call for his brother in a moment. For now, Eddy needed to close his eyes. That conversation with Hélène, extracting that promise from her—it had been taxing. Dreams swirled in his vision, beckoning him back to the warmth of the orangerie, the night she’d agreed to marry him. And further back, to his childhood, when he still hadn’t understood what it meant to be a future king. Now it would be George’s turn….
“We humbly commend the soulof thy servant, Prince Albert Victor, into the hands of a faithful Savior….”
There was the sound of weeping. Eddy sensed that people were holding both of his hands. One was in the familiar grip of his mother, but who had the other? It was a woman, but not Hélène.
Hélène. He tried to form her name with his lips, but no sound came.
