We bumped across a bridge decorated with Roman busts and passed through the towering gatehouse into a stony courtyard enclosed with redbrick walls patterned with black diamonds. As we stepped out of the coach, my eyes trailed a diving flock of birds to a servant in breeches washing the ground with a broom. He bowed to the king and scampered away with his sloshing bucket. The wall lanterns still glowed with fire, but the rising sun was brightening the courtyard by the minute.
Nick didn’t hesitate to make a beeline for the next gatehouse with Francis following a few paces behind us. I hugged myself beneath my cloak. I’d forgotten that sixteenth-century England was cooler than my time.
“You cannot begin to imagine how heartened I am to have you here,” Nick said to me as we passed a stone fountain. He nudged my shoulder affectionately.
I tilted into him but sensed Francis’s eyes on my back. “How much did you tell Lord Warwick?” I whispered. “Does he know about time travel?” The thought of someone else here knowing the real me would’ve actually been a relief.
“Heavens, no,” said Nick. “I simply informed Lord Warwick of my desire to bring you back to court and that I planned to do it alone, commanding him to wait in the stable for my return.” He leaned into me. “Our return.”
My heart squeezed. Being back in Tudor England, this time by Nick’s side, had to be worth all the unnerving parts, like convincing the locals I was queen material.
An imposing building with a gabled roof dominated the next, smaller courtyard. My gaze traced the battlement ridges, searching for archers, although Hampton Court’s tall windows made it clear this was a pleasure palace rather than a fortress castle. Behind us, a gigantic gilded clock reflected a ribbon of early morning sunlight. It was bizarre to think that I should’ve been arriving at college in twenty-first-century London at that same moment. I pushed that thought away.
Nick’s face tightened as he turned to Francis. “Lord Warwick, you will see Mistress Grace to her chambers. She may lodge in Princess Catherine’s rooms until her own apartments are constructed, for which I favor the south side. You will also nominate a lady’s maid until appropriate ladies of the bedchamber are appointed. Inform the Lord Chamberlain.”
Francis bowed. “Forgive me, Majesty. You are constructing new apartments? For Mistress Grace.” I tried not to take offense at his stunned tone.
“Mistress Grace is to become your queen,” Nick said coolly.
Francis’s eyes widened, every inch of him stiffening. The opinionated earl wasn’t exactly raising the roof with excitement over our decision to get hitched—quite the opposite. A dart of alarm struck my stomach.
Nick’s steely voice carried a warning. “You will arrange a feast for this night to present our promised queen to the nobles. I have no patience for any slander about Mistress Grace’s attendance at court. I expect the utmost heights of magnificence, of which our lady is worthy in every measure.”
“A feast tonight?” I said, but my voice didn’t cut through the growing tension between the two best friends.
Francis’s narrowed eyes met the king’s daunting stare. “Your Majesty, may I enquire after Mistress Grace’s kin for her presentation at the feast? I will wager her father has not yet visited court.”
“Mistress Grace’s father has gone to God.”
Nick draped a protective arm around me and kicked off an elaborate lie to Francis about how my entire family had just died of consumption in my hometown of Worthing. He explained that it was the reason I’d been called away from court for the past few weeks, and why the Duke of Norfolk—who everyone at court thought was my distant uncle—would formally present me to the nobles on my family’s behalf.
My stomach tensed. The Duke of Norfolk was the most powerful man in England, second only to the king. We’d never even met, but Nick clearly trusted the duke to perpetuate the lie about me being his niece.
Francis bowed, but his voice stayed taut. “I am honored to fulfill my king’s every command as his most humble servant.”
Nick snapped something in French that sent the earl stumbling back a few paces. When Francis was out of earshot, the king cupped my elbows and slid me closer, stilling the quiver in my belly. He was so different here: stressed and almost scary. But when he gazed at me with those devoted eyes the color of a shallow sea, I was liquid caramel all over again.
His forehead touched mine. “It will not be like last time,” he breathed, smelling more like a rose garden than a riverbank. “I will build you the finest chambers you have ever seen with a chapel, rooms for music and dancing, libraries—any such thing you desire. With all my heart, I wish for your happiness here.”
I ran my fingertips down the knobby gold stitching in his doublet. It was so weird to think that the dirt on his elbows came from the banks of the Connecticut River.
“I love you,” I said, the words softening Nick’s face. “Even though you just killed off my entire family,” I added with a cheeky smile. “I guess that having them move to a tropical island would’ve been too much?”
His brow crumpled. “Forgive me, I intend only to make less trouble for you. Forget not that your true family has not yet been born.”
“Well, by that logic, neither have I.”
He chuckled and sighed simultaneously. “I slept but a few hours by a river. Do not make my head sorer than it already is.” He pulled me closer, my hips brushing his hard thighs. “You must know that my heart is full to bursting.”
My arms glided around his back and squeezed the silky velvet, wanting him to hug me back, but early-bird courtiers were beginning to surface on the edges of the courtyard. Nick unlocked himself from me with visible reluctance and stepped backward.
“I give you leave,” he called, a cue for Francis to draw nearer again. “Please sleep awhile,” Nick said to me. The boyish smile decorating his face as he backed away liquefied my legs.
Francis called for guards, and a flurry of red coats appeared like a magic trick. They chased after the king through a Gothic stone archway at the next gatehouse.
Francis seemed irritated, and we barely said a word to each other on the way to my new chambers, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part. The earl and I had locked horns before, and this time I wanted us to get along. But all I could get out of him was that he was now the king’s chief counsel after the retirement of Sir Thomas Grey. I swallowed an urge to laugh and fist-bump him at the same time. I wasn’t sure Francis had the temperament to help run a country, but his new position as the king’s right-hand man was all the more reason to get him back on my side.
The chambers that were usually reserved for Nick’s little sister Kit were at the rear of the palace, behind the main chapel. We crossed a quiet, square-shaped courtyard to a three-story building, where Francis used a monster-sized master key to unlock a pair of arched doors.
Stepping inside was like leaving a monochrome world for the Land of Oz. Francis hunted through a drawer for a tinderbox and lit a candle, its glow dancing up the walls draped with vibrant tapestries that disappeared into a ceiling gilded with geometric shapes. After staggering over uneven cobblestones, the woven rush matting felt like clouds.
Francis muttered to himself as he tipped the flickering candle to light the remaining wicks. “Damn orders. Leaves me to sleep on a damn stump while he rides into the damn night. Pay no heed to thieves and assassins, mind.”