Nick’s laugh was more like a breath, but it cut nonetheless. Why was he so sure the question was a joke? Was the idea of staying in my time that ludicrous? Couldn’t he tell how anxious I was about becoming a sixteenth-century Queen of England without making a muppet of myself—or worse?
For a few seconds, neither of us said anything. Awkwardness chewed up the air, and the chair squeaked beneath us.
Nick fingered a lock of my loose hair. “Is there any more you wish to do before we take our leave? I fear you may suffer when we part from this place.”
His eyes couldn’t meet mine, and I could tell he was picking up on my reluctance to leave my time so quickly. He didn’t need to worry: despite how badly I felt for my mom, I wasn’t about to let Nick jet off to the sixteenth century without me. Been there, done that. And it sucked.
I thought about his question. “There is one thing I’d like to do,” I said, fear crawling across my skin like spider’s legs. I didn’t have a laptop anymore, but Mom’s phone had internet.
I led him back downstairs, finding Mom still staring vacantly through the window. She said I could use her phone, and I opened an internet search window. Nick had seen a cell phone before, but his eyes still boggled. He slid nervously into the couch.
My fingers locked up in protest as I typed the words that I knew I shouldn’t.
* * *
“Queen Emmeline Tudor”
* * *
Click.
* * *
No results found for “Queen Emmeline Tudor”.
I frowned and typed a less specific search.
* * *
Emmeline Tudor, 16th century
* * *
Click.
* * *
No results found. Showing results for Elizabeth Tudor, 16th century.
* * *
The phone hit the table, my stomach splitting. Why wasn’t I there? Was this proof that things didn’t work out between Nick and me? I couldn’t bring myself to type in ‘Nicholas the Ironheart’s wife’. I’d already learned that it was too much of a head-trip to try and live in two different centuries. My decision had already been made, and my home was with Nick in Tudor England. If I kept coming back here and Googling myself, I was legitimately going to end up in a psychiatric hospital.
Nick sat tapping his feet, twiddling his thumbs madly. He kept glancing at the clock on the wall.
“Mom, Nick and I have to go now,” I said, trying to sound calm. “You know I love you, and if there was any other way…”
Her face fell. “Where are you going?”
“Tudor England,” I explained again, trying not to sound impatient.
Mom huffed with exasperation. “Enough of this…Emmie!” she cried. “I’m going to have to call your father again. I just can’t deal with you on my own anymore.”
“No, don’t call him,” I cried. Mom blatantly still held a candle for the guy and didn’t need much of an excuse to contact him. I did not want to be that excuse.
I held my forehead with my trembling fingers. I had no idea what to do. Telling Mom the truth had been a mistake, but Nick had to get home.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said to him. “Should we take her back with us?” In the corner of my eye, Mom’s head was in her hands.
“Christ, no,” he whispered. “I have enough ladies from the future running around my court. It is not so easy, Emmie.” An apology flooded his face, but he was right. I wasn’t sure my mom could convincingly play the role of Tudor lady, which could put her in real danger back there. Norfolk would sniff her out like a bloodhound.
Another idea struck me. “Mom, can you come upstairs? Nick, do you mind waiting outside my bedroom for a minute?”
Mom sighed but didn’t resist as I ushered her up the stairs with Nick following behind. While he waited outside the bedroom door, I lugged my suitcase off the bed.
“What are you doing?” Mom said in a sharp tone.
“Proving that Nick and I aren’t total nutjobs. But first, you have to help me with these clothes.”
“Oh my,” she breathed as sixteenth-century silk rippled through my fingers. I explained each step so she could help me dress, sparking a sweet memory of her fastening the intricate straps of my prom gown—only a few weeks before I met Nick Tudor.
“You look incredible,” she said, pacing backward to take in the full sight of me. “I can see why you like this English history stuff.” She flopped into my desk chair and crossed her arms.
I yanked Nick into my room, despite his visible reluctance. When I guided him onto the bed and lay down beside him, Mom hopped to her feet.
“If you think I am going to sit here and watch you two—”
“Ew!” I said. “What you’re going to watch is Nick and I going to sleep. And because I’m wearing this enchanted ring that I told you about, we’re going to disappear before your very eyes.” Ugh, I sound like a wannabe magician with her own YouTube channel.
Mom burst out laughing. When Nick and I didn’t join in, she sighed. “Fine…okay.”
Nick lay as stiff as a board beside me. I willed myself to relax.
It was a moment I knew I wouldn’t forget, and not only because it was certifiably insane. The room was silent save for the breathing of the two people in the world I cared for the most. Two people who had nothing in common—apart from me—and who’d probably never see each other again. As I lay with my eyes pressed shut, I imagined the wedding Nick and I could have had here in my time. Something casual and intimate, with Mom and Nick shooting the breeze about cheese and my maddening stubbornness. Mia would be there, and our friend Josh, and gawd, maybe even Dad. They’d all think I was on crack for getting married at the age of eighteen.
And while my mom watched my boyfriend and I fall asleep together, her face revealing how uncomfortable she was with this, the soothing vision of a modern life with Nick Tudor lolled me to a peaceful sleep.
7
The moment I opened my eyes, the spell broke. Nick was out cold with our fingers still tightly fastened. Mom sat drooped in the chair, gently snoring like one of the elderly ladies at the rest home.
“Mom!” I hissed. “You have to look at us.”
“Hmm? I know,” she grunted, shifting to straighten her back. “I worked last night.”
Luckily, I’d become a world-renowned guru at falling asleep on cue. The blackness returned within minutes.
The next time my eyes peeled open, Mom was watching us closely. Both Nick and I had fallen asleep, yet we were still in my Hatfield bedroom. I tried to explain to Mom that the ring had recently began acting strange, and might take a few attempts to make us disappear, but she was already in the doorway.
“I think it’s time we get some help,” she grumbled. “I can’t deal with this anymore.”
“No!” I pleaded. Nick stirred and rolled onto his back beside me.
“I won’t tell your dad about this,” Mom said as if to reassure me. “But, I am going to call a psychiatrist in Boston.” She returned to the bedside for a quick feel of my forehead before clomping down the stairs.
I swore at the ceiling, and Nick shifted to face me, cuddling me with both arms. “We must sleep, Emmie,” he said groggily. “I am out of time.”
I lay there, examining his dozing face. He’d done his best to help me, and my mom wasn’t his biggest problem. A Tudor king couldn’t melt into thin air without all hell breaking loose, so there were two possible scenarios here: Nick and I could fall asleep and disappear together, leaving things unfinished with my mom—but at least she now knew I wasn’t at the bottom of the Connecticut River. Or, I could let Nick travel back to his time alone, and remain here to sort things out with Mom. Before returning to get me later, he’d have to explain the abrupt absence of his bride-to-be to the likes of Norfolk, and potentially be consoled by Lucinda ‘Lucy’ Parker. How about no.
The choice was clear. I wasn’t going back to two-timing the different centuries. I’d already made my choice, a
nd being with Nick was still the right decision for me.
“We need to fall asleep again as fast as possible,” I said, burrowing into the heavy warmth of Nick’s arms. “Carol Grace on the rampage can be a dangerous thing.” I was still dopey with tiredness, and the protective cocoon of his embrace soothed me back to sleep.
Hours later, an earthy sweetness tickled my nose. I turned my face away from the rose-scented sheets and onto my back, sighting billowy mounds of black velvet punctuated with red and white Tudor roses. Nick lay beside me, staring at the canopy.
We were back at Hampton Court Palace.
Nick’s concerned eyes found mine, his fingers slipping into my hand. “Are you well?” he said softly. Leaving Mom behind in that state had clearly freaked out the both of us.
I tucked my free arm behind my head, letting my jumbled thoughts crystallize. I guess I’m not going to see my mom again for a good while. What would happen to her?
“Emmie?” Nick pressed gently.
“I’m a bit sad to have left my mom that way,” I admitted.
He lay still, aside from the fingertips circling my palm. “I share your sorrow. You are fortunate to have a mother who cares for you so.”
I twisted to look at him. Nick’s capable maturity made it easy to forget that he’d lost a mother of his own. His mom, Queen Elizabeth the First, had died soon after giving birth to Nick’s little sister Kit. My finger traced his facial features, many of them gifts from his handsome father, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. “I bet your mom would give anything to be here with you,” I said.
He shrugged. “My mother would yearn for her throne, but to see me not.”
“That’s not true.”
He smiled bleakly. “Elizabeth was born to be a glorious prince. Despite her many troubles—her mother’s beheading, betrayment by her father, imprisonment by her sister—Elizabeth yet won the throne with pride and might.”
“She was amazing. Just like her son.”
His voice drooped with sadness. “A son who snatched his mother’s fortune and promise. Elizabeth wedded my father only because she was with child, Emmie…with me. If my birth had not come to pass, my mother would never have married beneath her station. If she had not then sought a second heir—my sister—then God would not have called Elizabeth away. When all is said and done, it is I who caused Queen Elizabeth’s untimely death.”
I cupped his trembling face. “No. Your mother loved you and Kit more than anything; I know it. You’ve had so much to deal with for someone so young. Too much.”
He dropped his chin to my shoulder. “We have both felt loss, have we not? But we have one another now, and that remedies my heart in great measure.”
“Mine too.”
I relaxed a little as his long fingers played with the blue diamond on my thumb. “You spoke the truth when you said that this ring has become strange,” he said. “Once again, we awakened no fewer than two times before it carried us back here.”
“I’m glad you agree.” I inspected the diamond for any signs of change. “I still think a soothsayer could help us out with some answers. Maybe someone like Agnes Nightingale?” I made a pleading grin. Last time we’d spoken about this, Nick had spurned the idea of paying the soothsayer a visit. “If it’s too risky for you, we could start with an astrologer,” I suggested, remembering what I’d been reading about the more accepted sciences in the sixteenth century.
Nick’s teeth pressed his bottom lip. “To speak plainly, Emmie, I bid you consider that we destroy the ring.”
For a second, I couldn’t process the words, like they were in a foreign language. “Destroy it? Why?” That’d mean never going home again. Never seeing my mom again. Ever.
Peach sunlight cast diamond-shaped shadows across Nick’s strained face through the leaded window. “If the claims are true, this ring was enchanted to ruin me. Now it has plainly become impaired. We have no knowledge of what its sorcery may yet do. Must we wager our lives on it?”
I could barely speak. “There’s no evidence to suggest the ring could harm us in any way.”
“But do you not agree that the ring has become fickle?”
“If by that, you mean ‘acting a little weird’, then yes. Of course.”
He leaned away from me. “Then what is to say that the next occasion we travel to your time, we will not become trapped there forevermore?”
It was apparent that the thought of having to stay with me in my time frightened Nick to death, which was impossible not to take personally. “Why would that be so hideous?” I said sharply. Had Nick already forgotten the incredible invention of human flight? How about the peace of anonymity and of being out of the Tudor pressure cooker?
His face read mine and then crumpled. “Emmie. We have suffered through this puzzle enough. I am a king, and one bereft of an heir. If I were to quit my kingdom, there would be unthinkable bloodshed. That vile woman Mary Stuart would come for my sister and the Tudor throne. If mine actions were to surrender England to a Catholic heretic, it would mean the damnation of my soul. Must we even speak of this again?” His voice rose with frustration.
“It’s okay, I get it,” I said. “You want to destroy the enchanted ring, meaning I can never visit my mom or my home again, because those things don’t matter as much as your kingdom and throne.”
He made an exasperated huff. “You must know that I do not ask this lightly. This ring has proven itself unstable and may cease to take effect at any moment. Therefore, if we were to journey to your time again, I would have to stake my kingdom on it, for the ring may never bring me back here. If you were to journey to your time without me, then I would stake losing you to all eternity if you could not return.”
I didn’t know what to say. Nick was so used to getting his way, and it showed.
He slid out of the bed. “What is certain is that you made a choice to be my bride, Emmie, so the question is: what are you prepared to give up? When my grandfather wed Katherine of Aragon, that woman never set foot in Spain again. There are many stories of English princes marrying foreigners who were content to live out their lives in their new kingdom. If you choose me, I want you to choose me. But if I am not enough—if all of England is not enough—then perhaps you have made the wrong choice.” He turned his face away from me.
“Nick, I did choose you, but it was a fast decision, and I didn’t think it meant I’d never be able to see my mom again,” I called after him, but he’d already tapped once on the paneled wood. The doors opened immediately to the scurrying of boots and a voice crying, “His Majesty the King!” Nick disappeared into the frazzle, leaving me blinking away tears.
It felt like I’d been away from court for a week, but the ease with which I slipped into my old routine reminded me that it’d only been a day. Bridget quizzed me with cheeky questions about why I’d been locked away with the king overnight, but Alice shushed her. Lucinda kept her focus on her sewing like she didn’t want to know.
I didn’t catch sight of Nick for several days, and he was evidently avoiding me. Our conversation about the enchanted ring festered in the pit of my stomach, and I wanted to clear the air. I was nowhere near ready to destroy the ring without at least trying to learn more about it. Surely he could agree with me on that.
I distracted myself with my snore-fest lessons, took leisurely strolls in the gardens before the weather changed, and sank into the ease of some girl time.
At first light on Sunday morning, one of Nick’s gentlemen delivered a message that I’d been requested to join the king at chapel. I still wasn’t used to being summoned without notice like the family pet. He’s a Tudor king, I reminded myself as I waited in the processional gallery upstairs, smoothing my hair and fidgeting with my dress.
Nick arrived swiftly, draped in a velvet coat of forest-green that stunningly contrasted with his blush-pink doublet. Courtiers and attendants kissed his hand at every turn, and what I thought would be us catching up became a public performance as he formally led
me through to his royal pew.
We’d barely spoken to each other before I was ushered into a separate balcony beside his. A thick curtain of crimson velvet separated us. I couldn’t even see Nick, let alone talk to him.
Tudor king, Tudor king, Tudor king.
I focused on snapping mental photographs of the Chapel Royal ceiling, which I’d never seen from this vantage point. Lifted from the pages of a fairytale, it shone in a cobalt blue constellation of golden arches, stars, and royal emblems. Its majestic beauty was enough to entertain me through the liturgy that was difficult for me to understand. When a choir of boys in white ruffs began singing, their euphonic voices like angels, I gripped the balcony handrail, fully absorbed. Okay, so maybe airplanes and ketchup aren’t all the world has to offer.
When the service ended, the curtain between Nick and I glided open, and I swept toward him before he could disappear. As soon as we reached the processional gallery, courtiers rushed at the king with scrolls and petitions in their hands. Francis Beaumont had arrived on the scene to field them off, allowing Nick and I to duck into the concealment of one of his private stairwells and have a moment alone. Perhaps Francis was warming to our relationship, which served as a timely boost of encouragement.
“Was the service to your satisfaction?” Nick said to me, his expression hard to read.
“The choir was incredible,” I replied, my voice bouncing off the stone walls. “It was probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”
His shoulders relaxed a little. “I am pleased to hear it.”
He couldn’t look me in the eye, clarifying that he was still as uncomfortable with things as I was. He offered me his hand. “I wish to show you something.”
Emmie and the Tudor Queen Page 9