Fitz shot awake. “Go get the children!” he commanded.
An arrow of sheer terror shot down her spine as she leapt out of bed, threw on her dressing gown, and ducked through the small door hidden by curtains in the back of their room. Fitz had it built when the threats first appeared. The door led to a narrow crawlspace leading to the children’s room. Another door, similarly hidden, opened into their bedroom.
There was a scream from the hall. “Fitzgerald!!!” The voice was deep and sinister. There were men in the hall. Emma could hear them now, and dread turned into horror threatened to buckle her knees.
She paused at the door.
“Go!” Fitz yelled. “Get the children. I will be fine.”
He reached for his pistol, which was in the drawer of the bedside table. Right after Emma slipped through the hidden door, the men burst into the room. From the sounds of their voices, she guessed there were four, perhaps five of them. She heard the door slam open to their bedroom, and the men yelling inside. Then there was fighting.
Emma quickly reached the children’s room. Their governess was already there, and the children were crying. No doubt the entire palace had heard the shouts.
“Mummy!” they yelled, almost in unison. Fleur was crying and Noah holding was holding her hand.
“Children, it’s going to be all right.” Emma tried to steady her voice, but in her soul she knew it was not going to be all right, that nothing would be all right ever again.
She heard a gunshot in the next room and her blood ran cold. “Charlotte,” Emma said, when she realized she knew the governess’s name. “Help me get the children to the hiding place. I want you to go with them.”
“Where are you going?” the governess asked, bundling the children up.
“I need to go to my husband,” Emma said. “Go now, please. Get them to the safe place I showed you. I will join you as soon as I can.”
“But, Mum, the men…” Another gunshot and screaming meant the time for discussion was past.
“Go!!” Emma commanded, and she cinched her dressing gown tighter around her waist and quietly opened the door leading into their room from the crawlspace to the children’s room. She could hear fighting and Fitz yelling at them and another gunshot.
A thud.
When she arrived at the door, Fitz was on his knees, his face bleeding in several places, and blood all over his shirt and trousers.
“Fitz, no!!” She yelled and raced to him, but she was stopped by a strong, dirty hand.
“Stay here, m’lady. This is no place for a queen.” Someone snickered, a sound so evil she had to swallow several times to avoid vomiting and revealing her presence.
She looked around the room and saw three other men, their faces covered by makeshift masks. Only their eyes were visible. Except for one man, who’d lost a good part of the mask he was wearing—no doubt in the fight.
“My darling,” Fitz could barely stay upright or speak. They had beaten him within an inch of his life, and another man lay bleeding on the floor of their bedroom.
One of the men grabbed Fitz and yanked him to his feet.
“Come now, we must go away. Your Highness, if you come quietly, we will leave your family. We have what we want.”
The one man’s mask slipped farther down, and as he reached to grab Fitz, Emma caught a glimpse of his face. She forgot to breathe. There was something about his face that sparked a memory. But it wasn’t Anna-Maria’s memory, it was Emma’s, from her own life. She knew that man. She’d seen him before. Recently.
“No, please, don’t take my husband, I beg of you!” Anna-Maria was weeping then and remained in the doorway, blocking their way. “You will have to kill me to get him out of here.”
“Annie, no, darling, please, the children, our babies. You must take care of them for me, for both of us.” Blood trickled from his lip, and he was on his feet but hardly able to stand. “I’m so sorry, darling. I thought I could protect us. Please forgive me.”
Emma ran to him and stroked his face, kissing his lips while she tasted the blood mixed with her own tears. “I won’t rest until I get you back. I promise that, and I will love you until the day I die.”
One of the men laughed, “Ah, a true love story. Too bad it has to end here.” Someone slammed a fist into Fitz’s stomach, and he doubled over.
“No, dear God, please. I beg you. We’ll give you anything, but don’t hurt him any more. What do you want? Money?”
“No, m’lady. We want the monarchy.” Another sinister laugh, and Emma felt her stomach lurch while they continued to drag Fitz from the room.
“Papa!” It was Noah screaming, standing in the hallway.
“Noah, get back inside,” Emma begged. “Please, darling, you should not see this.”
“Papa!!” Noah ran to his father and threw his arms around him.
“Should we take the boy?” one of the men asked. “He’s next in line, you know.”
Emma couldn’t feel her legs. “No, please, you mustn’t. He’s just a little boy!!” She pulled Noah from his father and said, “Noah, you must run, now! Please go with Charlotte!”
Noah didn’t hesitate. He turned and ran, yelling, “I love you, Papa,” over his shoulder as he did.
“Get the boy!” one of the men yelled.
“No, leave him. I have a better plan.” One of the men who was holding Fitz, the one whose mask was pulled down, turned toward her, his eyes cold and dark, and said, “If you give us any trouble—if you send the authorities after us—we’ll come back for all of you. And we’ll kill you one by one…and let His Majesty, here, watch.”
The men dragged Fitz away while Emma yelled, “I love you, Fitzgerald! I love you!!”
Emma screamed out her anguish, sobbed, and fell to her knees in the hall as the men dragged away her husband, battered and bleeding, into the cold, restless night.
chapter 22
“Emma, Em, darling, wake up!” Peter was sitting on the bed, trying to hold her but Emma twisted in her sheets, still screaming and crying. Peter pulled her up and into his arms, “Em, my love, please wake up.”
Emma shot awake, still sobbing.
“My God, Emmeline, what’s wrong?”
She sobbed into Peter’s shirt, shaking and chilled to the bone from shock over what she just witnessed. The love of Anna-Maria’s life, dragged away, battered and bleeding and nearly dead.
Emma struggled to speak. Finally, she said, “It was a bad dream.”
“It must have been one very bad dream, darling. I heard you screaming from all the way down the hall.”
“You slept on this floor?” She was certain Peter’s room was on the other side of the palace, in an opposite wing.
“I did. I didn’t want to leave you on this floor by yourself. Emma, you’re shaking.” He looked around. “It’s chilly in here, so I’ll light the fire. Here, wrap yourself in this.” He grabbed a blanket from the foot of the bed and draped it around her.
Then he hurried over to the enormous fireplace to find barely enough wood for one good fire. He hurriedly stacked the pieces and lit the kindling, and the fire roared to life almost immediately.
Emma watched him, still shaking. She tried to reason with herself. What she just experienced happened hundreds of years ago. No one was going to come in and drag Peter from this room and kidnap him. There were no children in the next room to worry about. She was safe. Peter was safe.
But deeper than that, she ached for Fitz and Anna-Maria, and she felt Anna-Maria’s pain as if it were her own. The deep, agonizing loss of seeing her husband beaten and kidnapped, worried sick about her children, and the possibility of never seeing Fitz again.
“Come, let’s sit by the fire, and let me help warm you up. Poor darling, you’re shaking like a leaf, Emmeline. That must have been quite a nightmare.” He picked her up off the
bed, and for a snapshot moment she was back in the other life, when Fitz carried Anna-Maria to bed and made love to her.
Peter set her down by the fire and wrapped her in his arms, “It’s this room, Em. I should have insisted you not stay here. There’s always been an odd vibe to it.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked at the fire, which was blazing now. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Of course I won’t. Tell me. Please.”
He took a deep breath and said, “When I was a boy and slept next door, I would often wake up in the middle of the night and hear a woman weeping. It was always coming from this room.”
Emma’s breath hitched.
“I would sneak up to the door, which was always closed, and listen. I would hear a woman sobbing her heart out, almost like you did tonight. One time I opened the door, and I guess my mind was playing tricks on me, because I saw a shadow of someone: A woman in a dressing gown sitting on her bed weeping. It was only a flash of her, seconds, really, and then it was gone. I chalked it up to a young boy’s wild imagination, but I found the courage to tell Astrid, and she told me about the legend of Fitz and his beloved wife, Anna-Maria, and the tragedy that began right on this floor.”
Em couldn’t breathe. How can Peter know? How could he have seen what she experienced? Though it made sense that Anna-Maria had never found peace without her husband by her side. Emma wanted desperately to tell Peter about what she’d seen, what she’d been seeing for weeks now—the life she remembered like it was yesterday, though it happened a couple of centuries ago, and the fact that in another lifetime they were lovingly and happily married with children, and their lives were ripped apart.
“Will you tell me the legend?” Emma asked quietly.
Peter gave a heavy sigh and said, “King Fitzgerald ruled during a very difficult time in our country’s history. For years, Belgium was fought over by Spain and Holland, and ruling this country was difficult and often treacherous. There were men who didn’t want Fitz in power and wanted to bring the monarchy to an end, to annihilate it and the royal line. So Fitz set out to protect all of them.
“He kept his wife and two children on the grounds, and he tripled the size of their personal protection. He couldn’t risk letting his children go to school, so he had teachers brought in to educate them here. He did it for six months while his generals tried to isolate the threat, but then one night it was too late.”
Emma watched the fire as Peter spoke.
“Men simply marched in. No one ever found out who they were. They took Fitz and left his family. No one knows what happened after that, or where Anna-Maria went, but she and the children disappeared the same night, and I don’t think she ever saw her husband again.”
Emma felt her eyes burn with suppressed tears. She wasn’t sure she could bear to hear any more.
“Anna-Maria was believed to have died of a broken heart only a few years later. When their son Noah was old enough, he came back to take his rightful place on the throne, but it was never the same. He was sad all the time, and it was rumored that he drank a lot and died young because of it.”
Emma could almost feel her heart break. What a tragic ending to a beautiful love story.
But in the midst of sitting there with Peter and listening to this heartbreaking story, an idea, a strange connection, seeped into her mind. One of the men who kidnapped Fitz had a familiar energy about him. There was something she recognized but couldn’t quite place about him, something she should be able to remember easily. Something impossibly sinister. That’s when it hit her.
Alexandra.
The man was Alexandra.
A ROYAL romance
A Royal Affair Series - Book Three
By Christina George
All rights reserved. Use of any part of this publication, whether reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher, is an infringement of copyright law and is forbidden.
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Interior and Cover Design: Fusion Creative Works, fusioncw.com
First Printing
Printed in the United States of America
chapter 1
Emma and Peter stayed up for most of that night talking, with her cuddling in his lap while he occasionally stroked her hair or gently massaged her tight shoulders. He shared with her in detail his plans for when he took over the throne for his father, and though he wasn’t exactly excited, he was eager to do good work—to create something useful, valuable from the hand he had been dealt.
Finally, and mercifully, Em fell asleep, as did Peter. Emma slept in his arms in front of the fire the remainder of the night.
Peter only slept for a few hours, and when he woke up, he watched her sleep, making the kinds of wishes that felt both hopeful and fruitless, painful and blissful. He wanted to spend his life with her, love her and adore her. But it was, in fact, time to let her go, and the thought of it tore him in two.
. . .
The next morning Emma woke up in the bed. Peter must have tucked her in after she fell asleep last night, and she slept through it, and hadn’t been able thank him.
But Peter was gone and the fire was out.
Fitting, she thought.
Emma sat up and looked around the room. Even though she’d slept, she still felt bone tired from the past twenty-four hours. When she heard a tap at the door, her heart fluttered. Peter?
“Hello, Emmeline.” Astrid poked her cheerful face in, and Em tried not to look disappointed when she said, “Please, Astrid, come on in.”
She did, carrying a tray of food. “Peter told me you had a rough night.” She set the tray down on the foot of the bed. “You should eat, my dear, before your long plane ride.” Astrid pulled a chair from the dressing table over by the bed and sat down.
Emma nodded and gave Astrid a weak smile.
Yes, she was flying out this morning. Peter had arranged a first-class ticket for her yesterday afternoon, when Sebastian insisted his private plane was “busy.” Besides, as Peter told her later, knowing Em as he did, he was sure she would rather not fly back in that jet anyway.
“Emmeline, tell me what happened,” Astrid prodded gently.
Em took a sip of coffee, which was very strong and absolutely perfect. She told Astrid about going back in time—about the break-in, losing Fitz, and then waking up screaming.
Astrid shook her head, “I’m so sorry I suggested it. It must have been a terrifying experience.”
“It was agonizing. Anna-Maria loved him more than life itself, and the children! How awful to go through that as a child. And Noah saw it all—well, most of it. I bet it scarred him for life.”
Astrid took a deep breath and shook her head, “I can’t imagine. I love Peter like a son, and the thought of him in such danger,” she swallowed hard. “I can’t even think about it.”
Emma patted her arm sympathetically. “Peter told me the rest of the story. What a tragic ending. I don’t get it. I don’t know why I had to have this experience, only to find out it ended so horribly. If this was, in fact, a life I led with Peter, is this always destined to be our path?”
Astrid sat up straighter, “I have to wonder, Emmeline, if there isn’t a way to alter the outcome. I mean, change what happened in the past.”
Emma frowned. She did know it was possible to tinker with certain things without completely throwing everything into disarray. Not everything was subject to the butterfly effect.
“I believe—actually, I know for a fact—that we can affect the future by fixing the past,” Emma said. “But I hardly know where to begin. But, if the men had been caught, Fitz would have been found, yes? And been restored to the throne?”
Astrid shrugged, “Presumably, yes, but we�
�ll never know for sure.”
Emma bit into a croissant. “And another thing. You know we often find ourselves in this life with people from a past life. Sometimes it’s to finish out an experience or a lesson, and other times, it’s the continuation of a story, a karmic tangle that hasn’t been fully worked out yet. Or a kind of project that isn’t completed yet.”
Emma took a deep breath and then added, “You know, in Peter’s and my case, the fact that we look so much like Fitz and Anna-Maria isn’t common. Most people don’t return life after life looking the same every time. But energy doesn’t change. In fact, that’s often why people say ‘I feel like I’ve known this person before,’ because in all likelihood they have, and their soul recognizes the other person’s energy.”
Emma took a deep breath. Spit it out, girl. She’ll believe you. “That’s how I know, with one-hundred percent certainty, that the man who was in charge of kidnapping Fitz has returned in this life, and it’s Alexandra.”
Astrid’s hand flew to her mouth, “Alexandra? How can that be?”
Emma shrugged, “I do know that people often switch genders from life to life. But I don’t know exactly why she’s here now. Probably she is drawn to Peter by the determination to make him unhappy or to steal any happiness he may have. Perhaps her need to punish and demean him wasn’t satisfied in the previous life.”
“Or to keep you two apart.”
Emma looked away to think for a moment. Huh. That could be true, too. She felt her resolve kick in. “I need to go back again, but not here. This place is too overwhelming. I need to be somewhere more neutral, and I need time to get some distance from the pain those lovely people suffered.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t stop those men from kidnapping him any more than I could stop myself from reliving this whole nightmare.”
“Emmeline, you may be onto something. I mean, the men were never caught. The men who did this were never even identified, never caught and brought to justice.”
A Royal Affair Series: Book 1, 2, and 3: A paranormal, time travel, royal romance Page 17
