“My father is most merry in the countryside, Your Majesty,” Alice said carefully, capturing every eye in the room. “Who would tend to the village sheep, should he return to court?”
Everyone laughed except Francis, who tossed back his last inch of wine.
When Nick squeezed Thomas’s shoulder and suggested they discuss the Spanish threats in private, I glanced at Francis. Jet-black curls hung over his face as he looked away, humiliated by the king who also happened to be his best mate. When Nick and Thomas withdrew to the drawing-room without inviting Francis, the earl blasted his way out the back door before they’d made their exit—a classic Lord Warwick tantrum. I sympathized with Francis; Sir Thomas Grey not only cast a long shadow, but from what I could remember, he also enjoyed criticizing the impulsive earl.
Alice excused herself to follow Francis, but Violet was already slipping through the archway. Alice’s surprise gave way to a look of distress. I understood why; When Alice and Violet were kids growing up at court, they’d shared Francis as a best friend. Violet soon fell in love with Francis, and he proposed to Violet before abruptly dumping her. He only did that because he secretly desired Alice, but the three of them had never sorted out this triangle. Now Violet was single again, but in the meantime, Alice had also fallen for the dashing earl.
“Want to go outside?” I said to her. “I’d like to see your dad’s gardens before it gets dark.”
“The gardens belong to my mother, and Father merely tends to them in the hope for her short return,” she said a little faintly, but she led me outside to the inner courtyard. Our square heels clopped along the cobblestones as we cut through an archway leading to the walled garden.
Francis and Violet were sitting a stone bench several yards away, their legs so close together that her skirts bunched into his breeches.
“Perhaps wasted hope is a Grey family custom,” Alice said to me with a sigh.
“You must be thrilled to see Violet,” I said, lightly knocking her leg with mine. “I can’t even imagine what she’s gone through. You’re not going to let Francis get in between you two, are you?”
Francis’s jaw jerked toward us. He slid away from Violet faster than we could blink.
“We wished to inquire whether you are well, Lord Warwick,” Alice said stiffly. “You took leave of my father’s feast so rudely, and as his house guest, no less.”
“Did your father not take leave of his own banquet so rudely?” Francis replied, crossing his arms. “No less?”
Alice huffed. “Why is your every intention to vex me? I pray to God that we return to larger grounds in haste.”
He paced toward her. “That is plainly absurd, given you have not wished to leave my side since Windsor!”
Alice made an ‘as if’ snort. “And yet, here you are, with your lecherous manner toward my sister, who is in mourning. After you shamed her once already!”
Francis stepped so closely to Alice that they shared the same breath. “Who says I am lecherous! Madam, you offend me as if it is a sport. I will suffer it no longer.”
“I will pray for it, then,” she snapped. Had he leaned forward an inch, his mouth would’ve met hers.
“I beseech you both!” said Violet, stepping between them with her arms splayed.
As she launched into an appeal for a ceasefire, I caught sight of a mess so unseemly for a Tudor manor that I zoned out. Edging the pristine garden was a chaotic mound of decaying wicker baskets, tattered saddles, broken wagon wheels, and other junk spilling onto the cobblestones. When I moved closer, I realized it was surplus clutter from a barn so stuffed with crap that you couldn’t see into the windows.
“Emmie!” Alice called behind me. “I bid you stay away from that unsightly serpent’s nest; there are many dangers.”
“What is all this?” I said, the haphazard jumble of broken ladders and planks of wood evoking a memory that felt light-years away.
“Our mother’s things,” Violet replied in a weak voice. “I have bid Father to be rid of them many a time.”
Alice moved beside me. “Father fears that our mother may one day return and feel a stranger without them. It troubled her heart to be rid of anything, but this is plainly a burden.”
Blood rushed to my face, leaving me lightheaded. Only a classic hoarder could have this much garbage piled up at home. A hoarder like Jane Stuart—the eccentric lady who’d once lived on Bayberry Street in Hatfield, back in my time. Her garden had been a scrapheap of hoarder’s junk, which was where I found the time-traveling ring that brought me to this century in the first place. A cursed ring that was created in Tudor England and last seen with Alice’s mother, Susanna Grey, before it ended up in my world.
It just had to be.
I spun toward Alice’s face. Her caramel eyes were set with an almost permanent frown—the evidence of too many years of worry and uncertainty. Past her shoulder stood Violet—Susanna’s other daughter—who’d lost not only a mother but now a husband.
“Is something amiss, Lady Pembroke?” said Francis, stepping forward.
“I’m okay,” I said, short of breath. This family had been through too much suffering.
As I zeroed in on Alice’s worn face, I made her a silent promise: I was going to go back to my time to find Jane Stuart and figure out if she really was the missing Susanna Grey.
And if she was, I would bring Alice’s mom home.
11
In the few days we spent in Northamptonshire, I got to know Violet a bit better, who was endlessly polite and unassuming. It felt like a mean thought, but I could see why Violet never had a shot with Francis while Alice was around. Alice was as sharp, witty, and charismatic as Violet was naïve, serious, and hard to make compelling conversation with. I felt for Francis, who’d blown up the romantic headway he’d made with Alice by merely sitting beside Violet on a bench.
When I gently reminded Alice that I was sure that Francis had feelings for her instead of her sister, she insisted that she only cared that he didn’t hurt Violet again. I hoped that she wasn’t sacrificing her own happiness out of some misguided theory that Francis could be the one to restore Violet’s heart—that’d be a classic Alice Grey move.
There was no chance to talk to Nick about any of it. He’d spent days locked in council meetings until the early hours and had stopped visiting me late at night. When our procession departed for Buckinghamshire, I was downgraded from the king’s coach to the one housing my handmaidens so Nick could sit with Francis and talk shop. At first, I thought the king was pissed with me about the Kit disagreement, but all his councilors sported the same dazed gazes and unshaven edginess. Something grave had happened, and I prayed it wasn’t more war threats from the Spanish.
When Nick’s coach ahead of ours made a squeaky turn toward the town of Aylesbury, my stomach clenched. Bridget’s cousin, the soothsayer Agnes Nightingale, lived in Aylesbury. Now that I wanted to go back to my time and find out if Jane Stuart was really Susanna Grey, I felt more determined than ever to get some answers about the blue-diamond ring that was still carefully locked inside my traveling chest.
Peasants jogged alongside our coach as it lumbered through the gates guarding the township. Guards used their pikes to block beggars from entering as we were eaten up by swarms of spectators scrambling for a rare sighting of their king. Bored babies fussed on the shoulders of men in tattered hats, while mothers gripped the grubby hands of little girls in tiny coifs. I considered unclipping my pearl earrings and tossing them down to a scrawny street urchin who beamed up at me, but I was worried she’d get trampled for them.