A dumbfounded laugh spurted from my lips. Hundreds of words I could’ve shouted at him gathered on my tongue, but none fired. He picked up a scroll from a side table and began leisurely reading it. I couldn’t stand being in this room another second. The smoke wasn’t the only toxic thing.
“In case you didn’t know, I missed you like crazy,” I said without looking at him. “All I’ve done is wait for this day, longing to see you back home and safe. But, once again, this is not at all how I imagined it to be. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I felt the heat of his eyes burning my back as I barged through the doors.
Smearing away tears with my fingertips, I power-walked to my chambers while looking any passersby dead-on in the face. I was officially over mentally apologizing for upsetting the nobles’ ambitions by marrying the king. Come at me, trolls! I wanted to shout. I’ve seen the freaking future, so yeah—I win.
My chambers smelled like the stinky herbs my friend Mia’s mom used to boil, but at least Lucinda wasn’t alone. My crepe-pink bell sleeves brushed past the sunken cheeks of Alice, Bridget, and a few other well-wishers as I made my way through to Lucinda.
Doctor Norris was seated beside the bed, dabbing black liquid into the corners of her mouth. It pooled there before oozing down her chin. The gold wine cup beside him confirmed that the liquid was my wine-infused activated charcoal. I moved closer to appraise its effects, but there didn’t seem to be any. Lucinda wasn’t even able to swallow the stuff. Her eyes were closed, and her skin was an unearthly shade of gray.
Norris grunted as he straightened, a blackened cloth hanging by his side. “I shall call in the minister,” he said, vacating the stool for me, but I felt too unsettled to even move.
Mom had warned me that the charcoal would be too late, and she was right. I’d had one chance to seek out help from the modern world and returned with something totally useless. Was there more I could’ve done?
I blinked away tears. Alice slid beside me, falling to her knees and clasping her hands together. Bridget slipped beside Alice, weeping again, and my legs buckled. I sank to the woven mat and joined them in prayer. I didn’t come from a religious family, but as I sat there hearing nothing but Lucinda’s shallow breaths, I outright begged for her life.
My eyes sprang open, meeting the silky edge of the bed sheet. This wasn’t the first time I’d pleaded for the life of an innocent girl in this century. Nick’s sister Kit had been destined to die in Tudor England until I manipulated things to stop it from happening. I’d literally inserted myself into a world where I didn’t belong and saved the life of a girl who was fated to die at the age of eight.
My stomach crashed to the floor. Did lex talionis—an eye for an eye—mean that another life now had to be taken? Was Lucinda’s life an exchange for Kit’s?
Velvet slippers scuffed the matting behind us. The minister had stepped into the room, motioning for the rest of us to vacate the chamber.
“Are you wearied from your journey, my lady?” Bridget said to me in the drawing-room. Her eyes were so puffy from crying that it was a wonder she could see.
“Hungry?” added Alice, touching my sleeve.
I shook my head. I didn’t know why they were so worried about me—all I could think about was the brilliance of Lucinda’s smile…of her sitting on her usual stool across from me, stitching tiny butterflies with perfectly arched wings.
An abrupt stiffness swept over the chamber, everyone gasping and bowing.
I glanced behind me into Nick Tudor’s heart-stopping stare. He towered in the doorway like the embodiment of kingly presence, a black coat elegantly draped over his doublet.
“Emmeline, will you share a walk with me?” he said. He’d never called me by my first name in front of so many people.
For a few moments, I didn’t move. I was beyond furious with him.
His light eyes softened as they lured mine, his cheeks crimson where his dimples deepened. He felt guilty about earlier, I could tell. Plus, we had an audience, and publicly challenging the king in this world was a fast-track to even more disgrace.
I rose to accept his outstretched hand, my fingers folding into the tingly heat of his skin. We strode right past the guards with the untouchable authority that only the king enjoyed.
The snow had finally melted, but the air remained icy as we began to cross the courtyard. I dropped Nick’s hand and folded my arms over my chest. He shrugged off his ebony coat embroidered with gold stars and crescent moons and laid it over my shoulders. I was too cold to resist, but I didn’t let him see how much the touch of him soothed me. My heart still hurt over how he’d treated me in his bedchamber after having being parted for months.
“Aren’t you cold?” was all I said as we strolled in the direction of his private gardens.
He shook his head. “Here feels a great deal warmer after the wretched north.”
While the days had become longer, I noticed a sandy-yellow light haloing the exterior palace walls, like extra torches had been lit tonight. Nick looked only at his feet.
“Where did you want to walk to?” I said flatly. I wanted him to know that I was still fuming.
“Perhaps you might tell me, Emmie; you appear to be in command nowadays.”
I paused at the gatehouse leading to the privy garden. “Okay, you need to tell me what’s wrong,” I said, already trembling. “Because it’s been pretty horrible here these past few months, and you being cranky with me about something is not helping.”
He crossed his thick arms. “Cranky?”
“Pissed off,” I explained. “Angry…mad…rude. That’s it—the way you’ve been toward me today is rude. And I don’t care if we’re married or that you’re the king—you don’t treat me that way.”
“You left me,” he blurted, his voice carrying over the wind. He opened his mouth to say more, but his lips shut again. He looked away like he was too upset to speak.
“When?” I said, dumbstruck. “All I’ve done is sit here and wait for you like a dutiful Tudor wife!”
He seemed to tower over me, a pillar of strength, but his face held the wounds of a child who’d been abandoned. “For many weeks, Emmie, I have suffered in ways you would believe not. The high north is a place of utter lawlessness, rife with savages who deny the will of their king and willingly seek the fate of high treason. The villages are infested with the pox and plague, and there were complaining soldiers and apostates at every turn. Then the traitor Henry Howard retreated, and I knew not where he was until he was sighted on the roads toward Robin House. All I could think of was you being there without me, and how Howard wishes us both dead. I made straight for Robin House until I received word of your return to Hampton Court. You cannot imagine my relief when I learned that you were safe here at the palace, and well—”
“Yes, actually, I can imagine that relief,” I cut in.
“However, when I arrived here,” Nick continued, “I found you to be gone entirely, with no letter or word of any kind and no sign of the enchanted ring. When my gentlemen informed me that you had been lodging in my bedchamber, I sat there in wait for countless hours, believing with every stroke of the clock that you would not ever return to me…and perhaps with my son and heir in your belly!”