Hélène glanced around the grand salon; its furniture had been rearranged for tonight’s theatricals, chairs lined into rows before an empty rug that served as a stage. As she watched, Louise emerged from the next room wearing a set of priest’s robes. They looked genuine, making Hélène wonder if they’d been borrowed from a local curate. Normally that sort ofrequest might have been sacrilegious, but of course, no one would deny the head of the Church of England.
These amateur performances—vignettes, Queen Victoria called them—were yet another of the inscrutable traditions tied to this house. Eddy had explained that they did them every year. One summer they had re-created classical paintings; another, they had reenacted famous moments in British history.That was my favorite,Eddy recalled;I got to play Wellington at Waterloo, slashing about with a wooden sword.
Who was Napoleon?Hélène had replied, and Eddy laughed.
Louise, of course. She kept cursing at me in French because, of course, curses are the only words she really learned.
This year, the theme was some kind of tribute to Prince Albert, with a different theatrical sketch for every letter of his name.Aforabundancehad been a harvest scene, with Maud dressed in a toga-like gown as Demeter;Lstood forleisure,a scene where Eddy and George had napped on a tiger skin from India.
Thank heavens only Queen Victoria’s grandchildren were forced to take part in this. It struck Hélène as bizarre, and a bit childish, like when Amélie used to flounce about the house in their mother’s dressing gowns, the embroidered hem trailing after her.
“Our next letter isB,” Louise announced, as if no one in the room knew how to spell Albert.
Hélène tried to catch her gaze, hoping to coax a conspiratorial smile, but Eddy’s sister was looking pointedly away.
“Forbride,” Louise finished.
Something hot and sticky twisted in Hélène’s stomach as she realized what was happening.
Eddy emerged from the door to the hall and came to join his sister, who stood at the front of the room like a priest at a wedding. And then Alix began processing toward them.
Oh god. This was a fake wedding—with Eddy as the groom and Alix as the bride.
Someone had acquired a costume for Alix, a genuine Scottish peasant’s dress made of simple cream-colored fabric with red detail, and in her hands she clutched a bouquet. She walked slowly, unsmiling, her back straight and her color heightened.
“Dearly beloved,” Louise said, a bit awkwardly, “we are gathered here in the sight of God, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony….”
In a nearby armchair, Alexander Fife leaned toward the Prince of Wales. “Painfully obvious, isn’t it?” he murmured to his father-in-law.
“You know how Her Majesty can be.” Bertie chuckled and spread out his hands in a gesture of amused surrender.
Hélène gripped her hands tight around the chair’s armrests. She wanted to run away, to escape to the stables or her bed—she would even take the ladies’ lounge right now—anywhere but this drawing room, where she had to watch this ridiculous wedding play out before her.
“Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband?” Louise was asking Alix. “Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honor and obey him, in sickness and in health?”
“I will,” Alix mumbled.
Eddy fumbled in his pocket for a ring (there was aring? Hélène thought wildly) and slid it onto Alix’s finger, his jaw tight. Hélène’s breaths felt shallow against her stays, her blood pounding. But she forced herself to keep watching, becauseshe might as well get used to it.Alixwas Eddy’s future, not Hélène. A fact that she had conveniently let herself forget.
Hélène wasn’t wearing a costume, yet she had engaged in a game of pretend far more dangerous than the theatricals onstage, imagining that her affair had no consequences. That it wouldn’t cost her.
Because that was all it was—an affair. She had known precisely what she was getting into, Hélène reminded herself. This was always supposed to be a meaningless distraction.
Yet, without her realizing, it had begun to mean something.
Far too much, actually.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
May
MAY HAD RESENTED THIS RIDICULOUSevening from the start.
Several days ago, Queen Victoria had asked her grandchildren to perform “amateur theatricals,” pointedly leaving May out of the assignment. May knew she was being snubbed, forced to sit in the audience with the likes of Bishop Cameron and Hélène d’Orléans while the Wales children and Alix were onstage.
And that wasbeforeMay had seen the fake wedding. It was almost laughable, the lengths that Victoria would go to in order to push Alix and Eddy together. Except that May was in no mood to laugh.
She glanced around the drawing room, which was heavy with all the scents so distinctive to Balmoral—woodsmoke and leather and something else that might have been old wood, or old stone, or old everything. The theatricals had just ended, and the “actors” were still in costume, making them stand out awkwardly from the other guests. Uncle Bertie might have found the whole display as frustrating as May did, because he’d immediately retreated to smoke on the terrace; but everyone else was milling about near the fireplace, clutching glasses of brandy or sherry.
