“Be reasonable, Hélène. You can’t run away with me.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a princess!”
“I’m the princess of nowhere,” Hélène shot back. “What does it matter if I run away? My parents have no country torule!”
“Aside from the fact that you’re not allowed in France—”
“No one there even recognizes me!”
“If your parents caught us together, they would kill me!” Laurent exclaimed.
“That’s not true; it isn’t the Middle Ages. They would just have to accept the inevitable.” Give up on whatever foreign prince they had hoped to match her with.
Laurent shook his head fiercely. “They would accuse me of abduction! I would go to prison at the very least. And besides, you would be ruined!”
“I already am ruined, and I don’t care!”
“But no one knows it!” he said hoarsely. “We have to stop, now, while we still have a chance. Whileyoustill have a chance.”
Hélène reached up to brush tears from her eyes. There was sense to his words, though she wasn’t ready to hear it. “Don’t leave me. We can figure this out. We can figureanythingout, because we love each other.”
Laurent’s silence spoke volumes.
The realization hit her then, in all its bleak ugliness. He didn’t love her. He was fond of her, yes; he enjoyed her company on horseback—better yet, when Hélène was onherback. He probably got a thrill out of breaking the rules with her. But what they shared wasn’t love.
“I see,” she said slowly, her voice cold. “Then I suppose this is goodbye.”
“I really am sorry, Hélène.” Laurent started toward her, as if to embrace her one last time, but Hélène flung up a hand in warning.
“Don’tuse my Christian name. You forfeited any right tothat when you decided to leave.” Some long-buried regal instinct prompted her to tip up her chin, hold back her tears. “I am an Orléans, and to you I’m Your Royal Highness.”
Laurent hesitated, then bent forward into a low, courtly bow. “Your Royal Highness,” he said heavily.
She turned on one heel, the great volume of her skirts spinning around her like a bell, so that the last thing he saw would be her retreating back. She was Hélène d’Orléans, and she refused to let any man be the one to walk away fromher.
Her movements were taut with anger as she stomped to the stables and asked one of the grooms to saddle her mare, Odette. The horse gave an impatient huff, her ears flicking forward and then back again.
The groom cleared his throat. For a moment Hélène thought he might criticize her for using the regular saddle rather than a sidesaddle, but he was frowning at the horizon. “Mademoiselle, may I suggest you stay close to the house. It’s going to rain.”
Hélène glanced at the storm clouds, low and ominous. “I’ll be fine. That looks several hours away, at least.”
Before the groom could reply, she vaulted onto Odette and gave a kick of her heel. The mare jerked eagerly into the wooded parkland.
Wind raked through the trees that lined the path. It whipped at the fabric of Hélène’s skirts, which were balled up around her waist, spilling over her left leg and leaving her right stocking shockingly bare. It didn’t matter. No one was ever out here to see.
When she was little, Hélène used to wear her brother’s breeches and ride in a boy’s saddle, until her governess locked the breeches away. Hélène, undaunted, had figured out a wayto ride in skirts. It was why her daytime dresses were always cut so wide. Sidesaddle was a useless position, invented by men to keep women off-balance—to prevent them from riding quickly, or really, from ridingaway.
Of course, a princess should knowhowto ride, but she wasn’t meant to enjoy it the way Hélène did. A princess wasn’t expected to enjoy much of anything, not food or alcohol or a raunchy joke, and certainly not sex.
Perhaps that was Hélène’s problem. She took too much pleasure in everything, the way a man would.
Hélène urged Odette faster, her thighs and calves straining pleasantly. The thudding of the horse’s hooves echoed the frantic pulse of her blood. For a moment she imagined running away, just riding Odette on and on through the countryside until she reached the coastline, boarding a ship to Greece or Istanbul and never looking back.
But there was nowhere for Hélène to go; not really. The boundaries of Richmond Park pressed in on her, constricting the air from her lungs. Droplets of rain began to cascade onto the surrounding parkland, yet she pushed Odette onward,through the mud.
Laurent had never loved her. The realization stung. Except…had she loved him?
