No such luck. When a key twisted in the lock, and the wooden door swung heavily toward me, my anxious stomach surged and heaved, emptying bile onto the painted floor tiles.
“Wash that in haste,” a velvety voice commanded the door guard.
I glanced up into the sunlit features of Nicholas the Ironheart. Immediately, I slid away as if looking directly at him would kill me right there. I felt his brilliant, deadly eyes assessing me.
“Go away…just go away,” I whispered lifelessly. I resisted the urge to puke again as the guard scrambled in with a bucket and cloth. Nick stood with his arms crossed, glaring at the guard, who gave the spot a token cleaning before escaping again. The king charged at the door, heaving it shut before twisting a key in the lock.
I finally found my voice. “Get OUT!” I screamed. How dare he show his face to me? I was so physically livid that I could feel my skin burning and my teeth grinding.
Nick held out a shaky palm. “I bid you to be calm.” It took me back in time to the similar words he’d said when we’d first met, when I was a prisoner in the Tower of London last time. “Be calm,” was the first thing he’d ever said to me. We’d officially come full circle.
I opened my mouth to reply, but the torrent of abusive things that I wanted to yell became confused in my throat. My jaw clenched until it hurt. Even if Nick had sorted out his messed-up head and was here to issue an eleventh-hour pardon, it was too late. I’d been publicly shamed and sentenced to die as a traitor, a witch, and an adulteress. Not even the king had the power to turn back the clock on that.
“How could you do this to me?” I eventually gasped. I wanted to shout the words, but my throat was too choked, my eyes too thick with tears.
“I pray that you hear me,” said Nick, sinking to his knees until our faces were level. “You must know the cause of mine actions.” His visible regret flooded me with more rage.
“You do feel bad,” I realized with horror. “You feel guilty about what you did to me in one of your insane tantrums, and now you want me to forgive you so you’ll feel better after it’s over. You’re off your freaking rocker!”
When he opened his mouth again, I cut in first.
“Why didn’t you just let me go?” I pleaded, my voice shredded. “No one would have looked for me in the gardens at night. I’d have just fallen asleep. I’d have disappeared. There were so many ways you could’ve swept my memory under the rug and moved on. I gave up everything for you—my entire life! Why would you punish me like this?” My face crumbled with more stinging tears. Worse than the punishment itself was the thought that Nick had instigated it…that had always been the most painful part.
“Forgive me…I bid you to cry not,” he said throatily, reaching for me. I jerked away so violently that his hands shot up in defense.
“Don’t you ever tell me what to do,” I spat. “And don’t you ever touch me again. Just get the hell away from me!” I crossed my arms over my knees, forming a tight ball. I’d stay that way until they dragged me down to the executioner’s block. I was no longer human. I was ready to die.
A thundering of raging voices surged from a distance below, wafting through the window that was slightly ajar.
The crowds are already waiting for me. My nightmare is coming true.
I tried to shut out the hideous chants with my hands over my ears but to no avail.
Nick had moved to the window. “Do you hear that?” he said.
I threw him my most colorful foul-mouthed response.
Despite the modern language, I could tell he grasped the sentiment. He bit his lip and edged the windowpane further open with his elbow. “Listen closely,” he said, watching me.
He actually wanted me to hear the bloodthirsty Emmie-haters crying for my head. What kind of sicko was he? Before I could reply, the drumming of feet from afar was chased by three cries of “God save the king!”
Nick swallowed tightly. “It is now done,” he said.
“What’s done?” I could’ve slapped him.
“The traitor, Henry Howard, has been beheaded.”
“What?”
I didn’t think I’d heard right. The room was whirling in all directions.
Nick stepped closer to me, his voice thick. “Last night, Henry Howard was tried, charged, and convicted of high treason against the King of England for launching a plot of rebellion and for plotting the poisoning of Mistress Lucinda Parker.”
He took a shaky seat beside me on the bed. All I could do was gape at his ashen face, his soft scent of roses infuriatingly close to my nose. I hated myself for how much I still wanted to touch him. Why couldn’t I be free of that at least before he killed me?
A shimmer of tears coated Nick’s eyes. “Emmie, I did not permit you to vanish from the garden the night of your arrest because I was in need of time. I had to make new a record of my last will and testament so I could make no error in naming the Princess Catherine Tudor as my successor. Kit was plainly my heir apparent, but I needed to make the line of succession certain if I am to surrender my kingship. I was also in need of time to gather the evidence to ensure that Henry Howard would be convicted of treason.” His distressed eyes could hardly meet mine. “I pray you will forgive me. You needed to believe it to be true as much as my subjects or their faithless army may have killed you in haste. I had to make certain there was no suspicion of any plotting between us.”
I lowered the arm that had covered my eyes as if it could protect me from Nick’s insane words. My voice was a faint line. “What on earth are you talking about?”
He glanced up at me, and our eyes seared together, drawing heat to my cheeks. Nick’s breath wavered as he spoke. “The instant that I learned of Howard mounting his assault on the castle—meaning to take you from me—I was certain that I would boil alive every last one of them. Not only the men, but their brothers…their fathers…their sons.” His cheeks reddened with shame. “I cannot bear to handle this beast I have inside me. You know there is true darkness in me. But the blacker the darkness, the brighter the light that shines upon it.” He slid closer, his presence rattling me from the inside out. “I have tried to forget you, more than once. I did consider removing you from my world that night in the garden—bidding you to leave with my blessing—but all I see without you is intolerable darkness.” His forehead tilted so close to mine that I could taste the mint on his breath. “Therefore, if you must take leave of this kingdom and I cannot bid you to stay, then—with your consent—I will leave with you.”
He dug into the folds of his coat and presented a flash of brilliant blue. Both our fingers trembled as he gently glided the blue-diamond ring down my thumb.
Without letting go of my hand, Nick laced his warm fingers into mine. “I bid you take me with you, Emmie. Can you forgive me for these past weeks? I have thought of naught else but the countless errors of my judgment through all of this. My lady, I beseech you to forgive me. The loss of your person would truly put an end to my heart. Forgive me for all my sins.” His head bowed with shame and torment, his long fingers sinking into his messy curls.
I could hardly speak through the boulder in my throat. The last few weeks had been the most chilling of my life. Nick’s secret plan to condemn me so he could freely orchestrate his departure from Tudor England was shockingly dangerous, hideous for me, and thrown together in a moment of panic, but he’d done it all to save our relationship.
I’d been wrong. He never wanted me to die, he wanted to come with me…to give up his kingdom for my small life in modern-day America. That’s why he didn’t let me go when I was in the gardens; he needed time to defeat Henry Howard and ensure that his sister Kit was safe.
He wasn’t Nicholas the Ironheart, he was just…Nick. He hadn’t stopped loving me at all.
“What about Kit?” I said, still spinning. The thought of all this being another trick was too much to bear.
He squeezed my fingers tightly. “Lord Warwick and his wife will heartily care for my sister, which
I have made clear. Francis shall be a worthy Lord Protector, and when Kit is of age, I have full belief that she will be as gracious a queen as her mother Elizabeth.”
“And you?” I added, tears dripping onto my cheeks. “What about all this? You said you could never leave this place.” I shook my head at the Tudor world that surrounded us from all sides…his kingdom, his duty.
“I will learn to live without it,” he said in a strangled voice. He nodded with assurance, but I could feel his heart breaking.
“But Nick, I’m—I’m no royal.” I thought of the decadence that followed him at every turn. “You’ve seen where I live. We eat cheese on toast; we—we clean our own houses. Well, unless you’re my mom. Cleaning isn’t her strong suit.”
“Say not such things,” he said, his hands finding my cheeks and pulling my face close to his. He wrapped both his legs around me in a protective circle. “You have you. You are my choice. You.” He dropped his forehead to mine again, and I breathed him in.
Nick’s heartfelt words filled me with shame. At one time, he’d been my choice before things went south. I’d then tried to break off the relationship and go home. Surely he deserved the same chance: to try living in my time but be able to come back here if things didn’t work out.
“I have to tell you something,” I said as he pressed his soft lips to my tear-stained cheek. “The soothsayer that I saw also told me that the enchanted ring was never meant to be used more than once, especially by two people.” Lines appeared in Nick’s brow as I delivered the bad news. “The ring barely functioned when I went back to get medicine for Lucinda Parker. When I tried to use it in the garden the other day—before I was arrested—I already had a plan. If the ring failed, I was going to go back to that soothsayer to try to get her to re-curse it.”
Nick’s shoulders had stiffened. “What are you saying?”
My fingers loosened in his, preparing for the worst. “I’m saying that this ring might not work anymore. And if it does, and we travel to the modern world to live there, the chances of you getting back here could be zero. If you come with me now and you don’t like it there…if you regret it and you want to come home—you might never be able to.”
Nick leaned backward with a heavy sigh.
My mind was racing. “Could we just go to that soothsayer near Robin House now?” I suggested. “Maybe she can curse it again—like, recharge it—before we even try using it.”
Nick’s fingertips tugged at his bottom lip in thought, but he soon shook his head. “I cannot reverse what occurred at your trial. I could assuredly pardon the execution in favor of another punishment, but I cannot be seen to be taking you from here. Men would believe it to be the makings of a plot between us. At such a troubled time, the Privy Council may move to depose the Tudor line. Kit would be imprisoned, or worse. It is too dangerous.”
“So to disappear is a better option? You think it’s better for the king to just vanish with the former queen on the day of her execution?”
“Not to vanish…to die.”
I stared at him. “Come again?”
Nick nodded at the window. “I have the key to open the bars, and the Council will come to determine that we have willingly plunged to the bottom of the river. Kit will not suffer if I am thought to have taken my life, but she will pay for it if I abandon the throne and go into hiding with a queen convicted of treason and heresy. I have prepared a letter which declares that I could not live without you after all, and I will leave it in this room.” He produced a folded piece of parchment from his coat. “The lords may wish to see our bodies to believe it completely,” he added uneasily. “To that end, there shall remain suspicion over my fate, but I can think of no better alternative.”
All the pieces slotted into place like a puzzle. Nick wanted us to feign a double suicide so the crown could pass to Kit.
I paced to the window, considering the plan. When the frame was open, the space was just wide enough for someone of Nick’s size to slip through at an angle. The towering outside wall was impossible to scale. If we both disappeared from this locked chamber, and the window was left wide open, people would possibly believe that we jumped.
My voice was barely audible. “What are we waiting for then? If you’re really sure.”
Nick leaped forward to hug me tightly. I squeezed his shoulders, burying myself in his embrace as he used his free hand to unlock the window and swing the frame of bars out into the biting cold wind. There wasn’t enough time for us to make up properly now. In my heart, I also knew it’d take time to get the image of Nicholas the Ironheart forsaking me out of my head. But in my world, we’d have plenty of time to talk through what had unfolded and set things right.
“We’ll fix the ring,” I assured, holding his forearm. “We’ll find a soothsayer in my time, and we’ll have it enchanted again. You will be able to get back here if you want.”
A sad smile touched his lips. “Self-murder means the damnation of the soul, Emmie. If I am believed to have taken my life before God, I can never return. Once I leave this way, I am finished with this world.”
“And Kit?” I reminded him again, tightening my hold on his wrist. After all that he’d done to protect his sister…could he really just abandon her?
He shook his head at me, his despairing face shutting the question down. He couldn’t talk about it. A new wave of pain engulfed my heart. Kit was going to be Nick’s most difficult sacrifice of all. But the last few months had proven that he couldn’t keep both her and me, and now he was choosing me. Except that, unlike when I’d been given the same choice, Nick knew there was no way back. His sacrifice would be irreversible.
I wrapped my arms around his neck again and held him, feeling his heartbeat merge with mine. Surely becoming Queen of England would be a better fate for Kit than having married that French aristocrat. That had to be an upside. Nick leaned into me, stroking my arms with the tips of his fingers. A flock of seagulls squawked as they glided over the Thames, signaling the full break of dawn. Through the window, the rallying calls of the Tower Hill spectators gathered in volume, ready for the second execution of the day…mine. We had to hurry.
Nick unfolded the note he’d written and placed it on the chipped floor tiles near the door.
“Come in haste,” he said, sliding into the bed. I was curious to read what he’d written in the note, but we both had to fall asleep before the guards came knocking, and I didn’t want to waste a moment of time. Plus, I’d come to Tudor England ready to don my best pair of rose-colored glasses and make the most of it, but now, I couldn’t wait to get home to the modern world.
I lay beside Nick and slid into his waiting arms. He took one sniff of the blanket and pushed it away, removing his black leather coat and draping it over me instead.
He wrapped an arm around me, clasping my hand wearing the blue-diamond ring so we were securely connected.
“What do we do if the ring doesn’t work, and we can’t get out of here?” I whispered into the linen pillow.
After a pause, he nodded at the window. “I suppose we will have to jump in truth.”
Fear crushed my stomach like a soda can as Nick tightened his embrace. The heaviness of his arm soothed me like a weighted blanket.
I shut my eyes and prayed silently for sleep and for the ring to work.
“I’m wide awake,” I hissed with rising panic. The executioner was waiting for me, and if the guards came in and found us in bed together, both Nick and I could end up headless.
A sudden memory shot me upward like a bullet. I clicked open the enchanted ring’s hidden compartment. “I forgot that I’ve got one sleeping pill left!” I said, wanting to kiss the little blue tablet. I snapped it into two halves.
“What is this?” Nick said as I dropped one piece into his palm and swallowed the other half.
“It’s medicine from my time that will help you go to sleep quickly.”
He brought the pill closer to his face. “A sleep remedy such as the poppy-see
d or lettuce in the milk of a lady?”
I tried not to chuckle at his old-school lactation therapies. “I’m not exactly sure what this pill is, but it will work…you can swallow it, it won’t hurt you.”
“I trust you with my life,” he said nervously before downing the pill and wincing at the aftertaste. He lay back down beside me and took my hand, lacing our fingers together.
After a few moments, he spoke quietly, his nervous breath tickling the back of my shoulder. “Emmie, you know I will have no manner of princely splendor in your world. I will have naught to give you: no jewels, no cloth, no horse, no feasts, no lands, no—”
I silenced him with a gentle shush. “I don’t want those things,” I said. “I want to make my own jewelry, with wire and pliers, just like I used to. I want to make dinners for us…to learn how to cook properly. I just want you.”
I tugged his arm closer, butterflies hatching in my stomach at the thought of having Nick Tudor all to myself in a regular house. Could we actually have a normal life?
To push away the terrifying thought that the ring might not work and we would have to jump to our deaths after all, I tilted back to look at his calming face.
“So what are your final words?” I stammered lightly. “In case the guards break in, or the ring fails and we have to jump…it’s kind of morbid, but do you have any dying words, Your Majesty?”
We lay for a quiet moment before Nick spoke, his breath a soft kiss on my skin. “No matter where we shall travel, my lady—to the future or to God in heaven, I wish to be by your side. For I shall be a king no more, but merely a man, and I will worship and love you as such until the last breath of my immortal soul.” He kissed the skin behind my ear, sending a rush of sweet love through my veins. “Can you love me not as a king, Emmie, but as a man?”
Emmie and the Tudor Queen Page 28
