He hesitated. “Are you sure? This party will last for several more hours.”
“Which means we have several hours to ourselves.” Hélène smiled, a bit wickedly. “As I said, I don’t feel well. I need to be taken straight to bed.”
An unfamiliar emotion—confusion, or maybe regret—flickered over Laurent’s face, but then he nodded and opened the carriage’s gilded door.
When they reached Sheen House, Laurent steered the horses past the main front drive, heading directly to the stables. Hélène opened the door herself and went eagerly inside.
Laurent stared at her for a moment, eyes wide. “You look very…royal.”
She realized that he rarely saw her like this, fully dressed as her princess self. Her bright blue gown was embroidered with shimmering silver thread. Diamonds blazed at her ears and throat, and her unruly dark hair had been coaxed into an intricate knot, atop which sat a tiara.
She reached for the pins that held her tiara in place and tugged it off, then set it on a hay bale. Sunshine sliced through the open window to catch on the diamonds, sending a spray of light over the walls.
“How about now?” Hélène tugged at her hair until it fell in a wild tumble over her shoulders.
Laurent swallowed. “There’s something I need to tell you…that is, I…”
She started up the narrow staircase that led to the loft. “Tell me after you’ve helped me out of this gown.”
He clattered up the stairs after her. They fell back onto the mattress he kept in the corner, beneath the swooping wooden rafters where small birds built their nests. Laurent’s fingersfumbled with the intricate hooks and fastenings of her elaborate court dress, until Hélène impatiently yanked it, causing a delicate pearl button to fly into the hay. Oh well—Violette would have to sew it back on tomorrow.
She tugged Laurent’s gold-braided jacket over his shoulders and flung it impatiently to the floor, then reached for his belt buckle. He was saying her name over and over, and the desire in his voice felt so thrilling; it felt right. Hélène tightened her arms around him as he fisted a hand in the curtain of her hair. She was aware of different sensations all at once: the brush of Laurent’s stubble against her cheek, the strength of his torso as he settled over her. Warmth seemed to ignite everywhere he touched, spreading from her limbs and collarbone to spool deep in her core.
Up here in the loft, Hélène wished her life could always be this simple. That there were no obligations or restrictions, no gowns or tiaras—nothing but her and this man who held her, who loved her.
She felt certain that he loved her, even if neither of them dared speak the words aloud.
It wasn’t until later, when Hélène lay nestled in the warmth of Laurent’s arms, that she remembered.
She propped herself up on one elbow. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”
Laurent’s lips twitched, as if he was about to speak, only to decide against it. “It’s not important,” he assured her, and leaned over to kiss her again. His hand crept beneath the blanket to skim over Hélène’s body, and she stopped thinking about whatever confession he’d decided not to make. There was room in her mind for nothing in that moment but him.
CHAPTER THREE
Alix
THE NEXT MORNING, ALIX VICTORIAHelena Louise Beatrice, Princess of Hesse, forced herself to smile as she glanced around the patio of Marlborough House.
The reception last night had been hard enough, and now Princess Louise was having a send-off breakfast, too? Why did these weddings involve so many events?
Everyone else seemed to be in a jubilant mood. The sky was a brilliant blue overhead, the table bright with smiles and laughter as twenty-odd guests—only close family, not the extended cousins and foreign royals who’d been at yesterday’s wedding—toasted the newlyweds.
“I can’t believe you and Ernie are leaving so soon,” said Prince George, who was seated across from her.
“I know. I’ll miss you.” Alix had always been especially fond of George, who was similar to her in so many ways. Perhaps he, too, was ready for the endless social rounds of this wedding to be over.
Though she doubted that his reasons for hating crowded events were anything like hers.
Her gaze drifted down the table to where her own brother, Ernie, sat with Prince Eddy and Alexander Fife, Louise’snew husband. The three of them were laughing uproariously at something Eddy had said. Eddy shifted in his seat and stretched his long limbs, the movement lazily graceful, as if he were a panther settling itself in the sun.
“It’s nice that Lord Fife gets along with the family,” she observed.
There was a flash of hurt in George’s smile. “Yes, he and Eddy are two of a kind, aren’t they?”
Poor George, forever forced to come in second place. He and his brother had been inseparable as children: born hardly a year apart, they’d been effectively raised as twins, with the same tutor and same governess. During the (admittedly brief) interlude when they’d both served in the navy, they had even been staffed on the same ship. Alix had always thought that George would have made a perfect second son in medieval times, back when they sent the spare into church service. Now he was doomed to live in Eddy’s shadow.
Alix used to be that inseparable from her older sister, Ella. But it was different for them, because she and Ella were both princesses—or at least they had been until Ella married Sergei, one of the Russian Grand Dukes. Whereas Eddy and George were forever set apart by the single, crucial thing that divided them: Eddy was the future King of England, and George was not.
