Page 93 of A Queen's Match
“There are many things you don’t know about me. Mothers don’t tell their daughters everything. Perhaps we should,”Marie Isabelle mused as she pulled up alongside Hélène. “I kept things from my past from you, but you are not a girl who needs to be sheltered. You are a woman. And perhaps if I’d told you of my mistakes, you would not have repeated them.”
Hélène’s hands tightened on the reins. “Eddy was not a mistake.”
“I’m not saying he was,” Marie Isabelle said evenly. She waved in Hélène’s direction. “But riding alone in the dark, at top speed, when Odette could stumble over an obstacle she can’t see—that is a mistake. Come home with me.”
Hélène’s lips pressed together, but she tugged Odette’s head around, starting back toward Sheen House. Her mother fell into quiet step alongside her. The sun had set; Marie Isabelle’s profile was more shadow than person. It was easier this way, perhaps. Hélène could ignore her mother and pretend she was alone. Or better yet, pretend that Eddy was the one riding alongside her.
“It’s all right to cry, you know,” her mother finally said. “Don’t keep it bottled inside the way these Englishwomen do; the pain festers and turns to poison, burns you from within. You need to let it escape your body. Even if you must scream again.”
“You heard that?”
“I was tempted to join in,” Marie Isabelle said flatly. “You think you’re the only woman who’s ever screamed into a forest? I am a daughter of Spain. My ancestors, when they grieved, used to shout into the Pyrenees with such anguish that people thought dragons lived there.”
“Eddy and I were engaged.” Hélène was surprised to hearherself speak. “We had reconciled and were once again planning to get married. We were about to ask permission from his grandmother.”
“Oh, Hélène. I’m so sorry.” They walked in silence for a few moments, and then her mother added, “I suspected that there was no lovers’ quarrel. That something else was going on, something you couldn’t tell me.” She paused, offering her daughter the opportunity to speak if she so chose. But Hélène wasn’t ready.
“I loved him so much,” she said simply.
“I know.”
They walked quietly in the direction of the stables. The horses sensed that they were almost home; they grew restless, tossing their heads, their hooves prancing lightly over the ground.
Hélène’s mother let out a breath. “I will not do you the disservice of saying that everything will be all right. I love you too much to tell you a lie.”
Startled by her mother’s words, Hélène looked over. Marie Isabelle was staring into the distance. “A loss like this…It cleaves your life in two. There will be the time before and the time after. I wish I had a way of making it easier. If I could trade my life for Eddy’s, I would.”
That last had been spoken simply, without drama, as if Marie Isabelle had been remarking on the weather. Hélène knew her mother loved her, but to hear her say such a thing—it made that love fiercely, wildly clear.
“You will always carry him in your heart, and it will always hurt. But eventually the pain will lessen. Eventually, someday, you will be able to smile again.”
Hélène couldn’t imagine wanting to smile ever again. Her very soul felt splintered in two.
“After the funeral, I want to leave London,” she told her mother.
“I assumed as much. Your father and I have already started making the arrangements.”
Hélène nodded, aware that she should be grateful, but her gratitude was buried too far beneath the pain.
“I was wondering if we could go to Rome. I’d like to enter a convent.”
At that, Marie Isabelle looked over sharply. “Hélène, no. You aren’t serious.”
“I won’t marry, all right? I refuse to do it! Youcannotmake me!” Hélène’s voice had become wild, erratic.
Her mother leaned out of her saddle, reaching across the shadowed distance to put a hand on Hélène’s arm. “I won’t ask you to get married. But, Hélène, you would hate being anun.”
“It sounds like a relief, escaping from the world. Living in quiet isolation.”
Marie Isabelle made a skeptical sound. “All those rules and restrictions, bells chiming at all hours, labor with no reward? You would hate it.”
As if marriage wasn’t all about rules and restrictions, and labor with no reward. But Hélène hadn’t minded any of that, back when she was marrying Eddy.
Everythinghad felt different with Eddy. He made the entire world seem brighter, livelier, full of promise. Hélène couldn’t begin to imagine how she would move forward without him.
She felt grief sinking its claws into her. As if some feralanimal had awoken in her chest and wanted to shred her heart from the inside.
“I cannot even publicly mourn him,” she said helplessly. “I was his fiancée, hisrealfiancée, and instead everyone is grieving with May!”
