My shoulders felt rigid as he wrapped his arms around me. “By God’s grace, be safe,” he said, nestling his soft lips into my neck. “My heart remains here in your hands.”
Tears sprang to my eyes without warning. Nick Tudor was about to leave for France on a primitive sailing ship that could sink at the first sign of a storm. What if he came home with a renewed marriage alliance with France—or worse—never came home at all? Before I could gather my words, he was already striding away from me, the blue-diamond ring glinting from his third finger.
The next day, I woke to the rich smells of roasted meats that reached my bed from my dining chamber, more lunchtime aromas than breakfast. I must’ve slept late. My toes disturbed the creaky floorboards, and Bridget burst into my room to dress me, explaining that one of my new lady attendants was waiting in the next chamber.
“Oh, you should’ve woken me.”
“I was commanded to leave you at rest,” she said, tying on my sleeves. Her tight coral-colored gown accentuated her generous curves.
“Next time, you can wake me,” I insisted, a little frustrated that Nick now wanted to control my sleeping schedule. I would’ve liked to have at least been up before dinner, which—to be fair—was at ten o’clock in the morning in this place.
The dining chamber greeted me with fragrant wafts of cooked rosemary and lemon. I stiffened as Alice Grey glanced up from the circular mother-of-pearl table. She rose to curtsy at me.
“My lady, may I present your new lady of the bedchamber, Mistress Alice Grey,” said Bridget. “She is the daughter of the—”
“I know Alice,” I cut in with a chuckle. But the woman who had been my closest friend at court refused to meet my eyes.
We all sat down, and I appraised the spread of roasted chicken and lamb, a tower of meatballs, at least twenty white bread rolls, and a platter of carrots carved into Tudor roses. The perfect breakfast for a lion, or perhaps a Neanderthal man.
Alice washed my hands in a bowl of rosewater, a nervous tremble between our fingers. “It is rather strange,” she said evenly. “Queens usually choose from their own relations for their households. But, then again, Mistress Grace is not yet the queen.”
The words hit with the punch of an insult, which wasn’t like Alice at all. I dropped a chicken leg onto my plate that I couldn’t imagine eating, and not because I’d just woken up.
Bridget’s painted eyebrows fluttered with excitement. “According to the Lord Chamberlain, a third maiden has been called to court to attend to your household but has not yet arrived.”
“Have mercy on us if the Sackville ladies should be forced upon us,” Alice replied, scratching beneath her hood.
Bridget giggled. “Did you hear what occurred this winter last between the Sackvilles and the Lennards?”
Alice nodded with a grimace.
I bit into a peppery meatball, working hard to keep a smile on my face. It was hard to watch Alice and Bridget chat about the upper-class connections they had in common, reminding me how lowborn I was and out of place here.
“I do wonder who the new maiden shall be,” said Bridget. “Perhaps somebody with a devilishly handsome brother?” She spun to me. “My lady, may I ask when you came into favor with his most gracious Majesty?” She blinked with what looked like pure envy.
I instinctively glanced at Alice for help, but she rested her chin on her palms, watching me.
“The king and I got together this summer,” I replied, my face a furnace. “We kept it on the down-low for a bit.”
Alice finally chimed in, but it was far from a rescue effort. “You may recall that Mistress Grace purported to be visiting Whitehall on behalf of her father in the summer,” she said to Bridget. “Mistress Grace took pleasure in flirtations with several noblemen—Viscount Hereford was the first, if I remember—before climbing the tallest tower in all of Christendom and snatching the king from the arms of the Princess of France. It is truly a tale for the theatre.”
Bridget smiled politely through fuchsia cheeks. My gaze fell to my plate until the browned chicken skin and carrot chunks began wobbling through my swelling tears.
“Excuse me, I just need some air,” I said, sliding my chair back and making a beeline for the drawing-room. I shook open my folded coat, wrapped it around my shoulders, and headed outside to the courtyard.
A war with Spain, threats from the Duke of Norfolk, the expectations of becoming an accomplished Tudor queen, and now my best friend Alice Grey turning against me. Coming back to 1580 was starting to feel like a mistake.
4
I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if Alice had followed me, but only a pair of brooding guards trailed me through the stone corridors bordering the clock courtyard. Most of the courtiers had vanished upstairs for dinner, so I grabbed my chance to explore more of the palace without the constant stares and scrutiny.
Strolling along twisting galleries, I paused to admire paintings of Nick’s achievements and magnificent biblical tapestries threaded with gold. I passed a gallery of canaries in ornamental birdcages to reach a library with leather-bound books stacked horizontally. Two men who were evidently late for dinner sat arguing on a bench beneath a stained-glass window. Their troubled eyes deflected to me—probably thinking I was a poor exchange for Princess Henriette of France—and I escaped back outside. Carpenters and bricklayers milled about the courtyard, swinging planks of wooden scaffolding into place. Was this where my new apartments were being built? I shivered. It was too weird to think about Hampton Court Palace being redesigned because of me. How would that change the future?
I breathed through my tense stomach, becoming irritated by the guards who wouldn’t get off my back. They lingered in my peripheral vision like goons from a mafia movie.
Nick! No one’s going to attack me in broad daylight.
Ducking into a windowed corridor near the palace entrance shook the guards off my tail—at least until they located me again. Relieved to be free of them for now, I stepped into a smaller courtyard crowded with wagons, pack horses, and servants clothed in cheap leather doublets. The sour stink of rotting vegetables attacked my nose. Horses’ hooves clopped along the cobblestones while servants unloaded sacks of sugar and barrels of cabbages and cauliflower. The trademark Tudor opulence was gone, and I’d clearly crossed into an area of court where I didn’t belong.
With the main passage obstructed by an enormous cart carrying a mountain of firewood, I proceeded down a thin, doglegged passage that opened into a sunless corridor. Now it was the stench of fish that sent my palm to my mouth. I lurched toward the more bearable smells of roasting meats in the next building.
I felt the intense heat of the raging fires before I saw their furious flames snapping the air, practically searing my skin. A sweaty servant fanned smoke toward the windows as I registered the sequence of blazing fireplaces, each one gigantic enough for me to stand inside. Perspiring cooks in sooty aprons sat beside the open hearths, turning massive spits threaded with chunks of meat.
A man whose pleated coat failed to cover his ample belly slid sideways through the trestle tables to reach me. “Good morrow to you, my lady. May I be of help?” he said, wiping his hands on the frayed ribbon supporting his hose.