“I’m Emmeline Grace from Hatfield,” I said clearly. “The nurse Carol Grace’s daughter.” Jane made a flinch of understanding. The blue-diamond ring was safely tucked away in my pocket. When I mentioned the ring to Jane once, she went ballistic and spurted half-nonsense about evil and heretics. The last thing I wanted was to resurrect that side of her.
Yet, I had to find out whether she was Alice’s missing mother, Susanna Grey. It wasn’t like I had a selfie with Alice from the Tudor world to show her, so there was really no choice except to ask point-blank.
My voice dropped to a whisper. “Lady Grey?” I said. Jane’s sallow brow crinkled. “Is your real name Susanna Grey?”
Her milky-brown pupils expanded, revealing copper edges. In a flash, I recognized that her eyes were the same color as Alice’s sister, Violet’s.
“Madam, it is I, wife to Sir Thomas Grey,” she said without flinching. “May God save you.”
13
My chest emptied of breath. Beside me, in a faded floral armchair, sat Alice Grey’s mom, Susanna Grey…the wife of the former chief advisor to King Nicholas the First. I could’ve hugged her, but I didn’t want to freak her out—or break her.
Blankness seeped back into Susanna’s face and her knobby fingers fumbled with the hem of her shirt as she watched a man with a walking frame shuffle past us.
Hesitant to push her, I silently helped her eat her lunch, which was two scoops of mashed potato topped with ground beef and gravy. She wanted to hang onto the empty bowl, but the kitchen lady gently pried it from her fingers with a knowing smile.
Ajay glided by again and suggested I take Susanna for a stroll outside in the back garden. She didn’t say much as we meandered along a short but pretty path that circled the rear of the rest home. I pointed out the fuchsia flowers, and Susanna seemed to understand—even smiled at times—but she never asked why I’d called her by her long-lost name of Susanna Grey. If I brought her back to Tudor England, would it reverse some of her inertia, or was it permanent?
I wasn’t exactly pumped to return to the musty recreation room with the florescent lights, and Susanna seemed happy enough to sit on a bench warmed by the sun. A plastic straw was impaled in the flowerpot beside us, and she plucked it out and slid it into her shirt pocket.
“You are in need of lodging, dear?” she eventually said to me in a withered voice. Her cloudy eyes had fallen back into confusion.
My chest constricted as the words cascaded out. “No, my lady. I am Mistress Emmeline Grace, the Marquess of Pembroke. I’m a friend of your daughters, Mistresses Alice and Violet Grey.”
Susanna’s face brightened with clarity. “Lottie,” she said. I’d heard her say that name before, but only then did I realize it’s what she called her daughter Violet.
I set my hand on hers. Her skin was warm and startlingly soft. “Lottie and Alice are at Hampton Court Palace,” I said. “They’re both well and are in His Majesty’s favor.”
OMG, if Ajay could hear this.
Susanna Grey’s fingers froze beneath mine, her eyes glistening with recognition. I decided not to mention anything negative, like Violet losing her husband, or any of that stuff I’d been told about Susanna Grey once plotting against the king.
“Your husband, Sir Thomas Grey, is also well,” I said. “He has withdrawn from the king’s service and is living in your manor in Northamptonshire. I just visited there a few weeks ago on progress with the king, and everything is as exactly as you left it.”
Susanna’s eyelashes darkened with tears. I patted her hand and watched for any sign of reproach after mentioning King Nick, but her face disclosed only relief. She wiped her cheeks and hunched forward, her papery eyelids falling closed. I’d exhausted her.
We slowly made our way back to the recreation room. A nurse with braids of black hair wheeled a trolley of medicines from one resident to the next.
A protective instinct triggered me to guide Susanna the other way. She didn’t need drugs; she needed her family back. When I asked her if she knew how to get to her bedroom, she nodded at one of the U-shaped corridors. We headed down it, past a series of half-open doors that offered glimpses of colorful patchwork bedspreads and framed family photographs. Susanna’s bedroom looked more like a hospital ward, with unadorned walls and stock-standard sheets. The number ‘23’ was pinned to the door.
An unexpected shiver of apprehension scrambled up my spine. Susanna Grey was only in the twenty-first century because she’d fallen asleep wearing an enchanted ring that was supposed to curse my beloved fiancé to die. How was it my right to bring a treasonous conspirator back to Tudor England? God, what would Nick do to her if he found out? I could never tell him about Susanna’s past.
She sat on the bed and drew her legs inside the thin sheets that smelled like antiseptic. No matter the cause, Susanna Grey was trapped in the wrong century with zero family here. She’d probably live out her days in this bleak rest home, perhaps paid for by the forced sale of her house in Hatfield. I didn’t know how she came upon that house or why the previous owner left it to her in his will, but boy was I glad she’d lived there. Without Susanna, without that ring, I would never have met Nick Tudor. The thought of life without him left me feeling suffocated with loss. Why had I let us push each other away so quickly?
“Lady Grey, would you like to go home?” I asked gently. “Do you want to go back to Northamptonshire, to Sir Thomas, Alice, and Lottie?”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Oh, blessed Alice…my Lottie. I pray that God shall bring me to their grace. Have mercy on me, eternal Father.” She closed her eyes.
I took that as a yes.
“Then please wait here a moment and don’t go anywhere,” I said like she’d suddenly lurch up and dance the Charleston out the door. I slipped into the surprisingly spacious bathroom, psyching myself up to steal a resident from a rest home. I swallowed one of Mom’s sleeping pills in my pocket and gulped water from the faucet, slipping the blue-diamond ring back onto my thumb. I poked my head around the door. Susanna lay on her side, drawing slow, steady breaths.
Making a split-second decision, I pulled my phone from my pocket and shut the bathroom door. I sat in the shower chair and pressed Mom’s number. She answered right away.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, already jittery at the sound of her voice. “I’m in Boston. Dad drove me all the way in.”
“Oh, did he? How did it go with Mia?”
“Yeah, all good…thanks.” I scrunched my face. Mom would probably give Mia a call and ask her for feedback on my mental state.
No more lies.
“Actually, I didn’t see Mia,” I added, my voice echoing off the tiles. “I chickened out.”
She sighed. “Emmie.”
“It’s cool. I decided that I didn’t want to lie to her anymore, and she can’t know about the Tudor stuff. Can you imagine if something like that got out? You can’t tell Mia, ever. Or anyone, okay? Please.”
“I won’t.” The phone rattled like Mom was scratching her ear. “How did things go with your dad?” Her voice always crept up an octave when she mentioned him.