When he saw her, Eddy swallowed and pulled off his hat, running a hand through his hair. The warm lights drew out its tawny notes, making him look younger than usual.
“Have you read my letters?”
When she shook her head, he sighed, seeming unsurprised. “I want to talk to you—”
“I don’t think we should be speaking at all, not when you’re going to marry Alix,” Hélène cut in.
“But that’s just what I want to talk to you about! I want to marry you instead!”
His words reverberated wildly through the space, echoing off the trees, the fallen leaves. Hélène stared at him mutely.
“I’m sorry, I’m doing this all wrong.” Eddy cursed underhis breath, then sank to one knee, right there in the damp earth. “Marry me, Hélène.”
Hélène had always felt dismissive of women who needed smelling salts, but right now she felt as dizzy as any society lady. She gave Eddy’s hands a gentle tug, trying to draw him to his feet.
“Eddy…” Her voice broke before she could say more.
After a painful moment he stood and let go of her. Hélène was acutely, achingly aware of the empty air between her body and his.
“Marry me,” he said again. “I know there are obstacles, but I also know that I won’t be happy with anyone but you.”
Obstacleswas putting it mildly. They were more like enormous boulders blocking the path forward: her religion, his position, herlackof a position.
“When was the last French and English royal marriage?” she prompted. Eddy frowned, puzzled, and Hélène answered her own question. “Four hundred years ago! When Catherine of Valois married Henry V!”
“Then it sounds like we’re overdue for one.” When Hélène didn’t smile, Eddy abandoned the attempt at levity. “Look, I’m not pretending that it won’t be difficult, but surely we owe it to ourselves to try?”
This was not how a princess’s engagement should be decided. It should have been debated by her parents, in a drawing room, with her dowry and trousseau negotiated down to the last lace handkerchief. If her fiancé proposed at all, it was supposed to be a stiff and formal question, posed somewhere public like a garden party.
It should not be anything like this: a question asked inwarm, sultry darkness by a man you had already been to bed with, his face lit by flickering torchlight. There were small marks on Eddy’s trousers from where he’d knelt on the ground.
In his fancy-dress ensemble, Eddy looked almost ordinary, but it would be foolish to think that there was anything ordinary about him.
“No matter what we do, they may not let us marry,” she warned.
“Then we’ll elope,” Eddy said swiftly. “Actually, it’s not a bad idea—we could do it tonight, find a local priest and get married in a chapel somewhere, with a few witnesses from a tavern to sign the certificate! Instead of asking my grandmother for her permission, we’ll give her an existing marriage—a done deal. What is everyone going to do,” Eddy added indignantly, “insist that I divorce you? No, once it’s binding and legal, they’ll have no choice but to live with it.”
Hélène couldn’t help thinking back to a year ago, when she’d said much the same thing to Laurent: that she wanted to run away and elope, and to hell with the consequences.
How odd that she’d wanted to elope with someone she didn’t truly love, and now that shewasin love, she couldn’t go through with it.
“You know we can’t,” she said softly.
Eddy’s expression darkened. “Why not? Just because we’re royal, we have to be bound by laws and precedence?”
“In this instance, yes.”
“You sound like Alix! I thought you were braver thanthis.”
“I love you too much to pretend that I’m ashamed ofyou!”
Eddy drew in a breath. He realized as well as she did that it was the first time either of them had saidI love you.
“Oh, Hélène. Surely you know that I love you too.”
He held his arms open and she stepped forward, letting him fold her in an embrace. Hélène rested her cheek against his chest, reassured by the steady thump of his heartbeat.
“You still haven’t given me a real answer,” he said, his voice a rumble in her ears. “Will you marry me?”
