No,she thought.Not now. Not again.Yet no matter how hard Alix tried to wrestle it into submission and lock it away, this memory always found a way to the surface.
And then it broke her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hélène
THE OPERA WAS EXCRUCIATINGLY BORING.Not the music, which spoke to an unnamed yearning in Hélène’s soul, but the people. At every performance they were the same—the same families shuffling into the same boxes, recycling the same stories, trading the same rumors and petty complaints.
Hélène tried to ignore them. She draped her elbows over the brass railing of her parents’ box, closing her eyes as the sounds of the orchestra reverberated in her body. Until Clothilde, her mother’s lady’s maid, came over and tapped her with a fan.
Princesses were not supposed tolean.They were supposed to sit with their hands clasped demurely in their laps, silent mannequins to hang jewelry and tiaras on.
“Sit up straight,” Clothilde hissed. “And stop staring at the royal box.”
The royal box? Hélène hadn’t even glanced that way. Unlike most people, she was here for the show onstage rather than the sideshows playing out in all the society boxes. But for once, the mention of the royal box piqued her curiosity.
She looked over, only to find that Prince Eddy wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t. He probably had no tolerancefor something as high-culture and serious as opera. But his mother was seated next to the queen, along with Princess Alix and May of Teck, both looking as stiff and proper as Hélène wassupposedto be.
She’d felt strange and restless all day, probably because of Laurent’s betrayal. Hélène still couldn’t believe he’d left her, just walked away from their relationship as if it meant nothing at all.
Except that it had never been a relationship, had it? It had been a liaison, an affair. Hélène repeated the word again in her mind:affair.It sounded tawdry and yet, oddly thrilling.
Perhaps that explained why she wasn’t all that sad about Laurent’s departure. Since she clearly hadn’t meant anything to him, she refused to feel anything at his loss.
When her restlessness became an itch she couldn’t ignore, Hélène murmured to no one in particular that she was going to the ladies’ lounge. Clothilde sniffed in protest, but Hélène’s parents, busy entertaining Lord and Lady Fleming, hardly noticed.
The hallway that curved like a horseshoe around the private boxes was empty. Everyone was seated right now; Hélène had walked out in the middle of the second act, instead of waiting for the entr’acte, when most people socialized.
She had no real desire to visit the ladies’ lounge, a crush of warm perfumed bodies and rustling fans. Perhaps she would just walk the length of the hallway and back again. She started forward, only to pause at the sounds of sobbing.
Hélène turned back the other direction, then gasped.
Princess Alix of Hesse sat on a bench, her hands balled into fists as she sucked in heaving mouthfuls of air. The foldsof her gown were crumpled around her like a pitiful flag of surrender.
“Your Royal Highness!” Hélène swept forward, alarmed by Alix’s stillness.
When the other girl said nothing, Hélène tentatively sat next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. She felt Alix flinch, but after a moment she relaxed, her breaths steadying.
“Shhh,” Hélène murmured, the way she might soothe a skittish horse. “Shhh, it’s all right.”
Slowly, as if she’d been carved from a block of ice and was melting, Alix moved again—her hands first, then her head. Warmth returned to her skin.
“Thank you,” she whispered at last. “And…I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for!” Hélène scanned the hallway with wary eyes. “What happened? Did someone hurtyou?”
“Not really.”
“But the way you were moaning just now…”
“It’s nothing like that. I just—I get this way sometimes.” Alix flushed, and Hélène knew she hadn’t meant to reveal something so intimate.
Hélène softened as understanding dawned. “My maman used to suffer from the same thing. She called it her malaise. She said it felt like fear had seized hold of her body and paralyzed her, that she couldn’t move until the dark spell passed.”
It happened less often these days, but Hélène caught glimpses of it every now and then, usually when the Third Republic extended her parents’ exile. Her maman wasn’t as homesick as her father—she’d been born a princess of Spain, after all—but she still longed to get off this rainy, dreary island, backto the civilization of the Continent. Every time Hélène’s father got another letter rejecting his plea to come home, Marie Isabelle would descend into her malaise—gasping for air and going frighteningly quiet, as Alix had done.
Alix looked pale, but she nodded. “What did your maman do to get rid of the malaise?”
