The Peculiar Princess

by Christina Graham Parker

  Yet those were not the words she needed at present. The time would come for them. Please, God, let the time come for them. For then, she needed him and so he kept the words to himself and held her instead.

  ****

  They had been at Hullington for three days when Lukas found her in the library practicing with quill and ink. She tried to hide her surprise. He had been busy with Ebbe and several other gentlemen upon their return from London. Most of the time, she saw him at meals and at bedtime. To have him seek her out during the day was unexpected.

  “Good afternoon, my love,” Lukas said, looking over her shoulder. “What have we here?”

  “I might need to write a letter one day and it occurred to me I should practice with this dreadful writing instrument.”

  She put the quill down. She’d not quite gotten the hang of ensuring her ink flowed in a smooth stream. Before her were several papers that looked as if she’d been fingerpainting instead of writing.

  “It would appear it is not your fencing abilities that need practice after all.”

  “I thought we could hang this one up in the drawing room.” She held up a paper with a particularly large inkblot in the middle, tilted her head sideways, and squinted. “If you look at it just right, this spot here looks like a dog.”

  Lukas laughed and took the paper out of her hands. “I doubt my father would appreciate the effort that went into designing this masterpiece, even at your hand.” He put the paper down on the desk and brushed her shoulder. “Come sit with me.”

  An internal alarm sounded. What could cause him to look for her in the middle of the day? She almost couldn’t breathe as she sat beside him on the small couch.

  “I have sent a message to Abiel,” he said.

  She let out her breath. “That’s what you came to tell me?”

  He sighed and took her hand. “No. No, it is not. I only thought to tell you because I know we had talked of it before. I wrote to him this morning after breakfast. It was no small matter for me.”

  “I’m glad you wrote him,” she said trying to keep her voice even. There had to be more he wasn’t telling her. “It’s a good thing.”

  His response sounded odd. “I do believe you are right.”

  “I know I am.” She patted his hand. “Now, what’s the real reason you came to find me in the middle of the day? Not that I care,” she hastened to add. “You can come for me anytime.”

  He started tracing a circle with his thumb. “Do you trust me, Alexia?”

  She took her free hand and lifted his face to hers. “Of course I trust you. Why do you ask?”

  “I must leave tomorrow.”

  That was what he’d come to tell her. She wondered if he could feel her tremble. “For where?”

  “I cannot tell you,” he whispered.

  He looked straight in her eyes as he spoke. She detected no hint of deceit, but her heart sank just the same. “How long will you be gone?”

  “I know not. Mayhap a week or longer.”

  He’d received no urgent message. Nothing like what had happened while they were at Haddon House. Had Severon contacted him somehow?

  “Severon?” She forced the name out.

  “Trust me when I tell you it is for the best that you do not know.”

  She pursed her lips, angry he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell her where he was going. But deep inside she knew this was the time to prove she trusted him. He loved her. Of that she had no doubt. So she bit back what she wanted to say and brought his hand to her lips. He tasted of metal and sweat. He’d been fencing again.

  “I love you and trust you with my life. Go on this errand, and I’ll be waiting for your return.”

  ****

  He left the next day. A week or more, he’d said. She thought she could live with that. For the first week, she threw herself into the running of Hullington, stepping into her place as lady of the house. Ebbe continued to busy himself with various gentlemen who came to call. Gentlemen she knew would be instrumental in overthrowing Severon.

  The second week she spent occupied with Hullington as well as conversing with Lady Rosemund. She delighted in her newfound friend. They visited each others’ homes often, and for a while, Lexy was able to keep her mind off of Lukas. Yet as time went on, she found it harder and harder to trust God that all was right. Ebbe said little, but she knew her husband’s extended absence troubled the older man.

  It was during the third week she knew something happened. She could not accept that Lukas had turned on her. She knew he would not. But she feared Severon had somehow discovered his change of heart. For what other reason could he be gone for almost three times as long as he’d said?

  Ebbe grew quieter, his expression filled with a growing sadness. She knew he was trying to work up the courage to send her back. Once he told her she should return, she’d have to make a decision, and she wasn’t sure what it should be. She’d accepted her place in 1580 and outside of the time she’d run from Lukas, she’d not once thought of returning. How could she go back now without knowing what became of Lukas? She prayed over and over but found no answers.

  One day, during the fourth week, Ebbe approached her and asked for her to accompany him on a ride. It was time, she knew. Ebbe would finally tell her it was over. She’d noticed the activity of late around Hullington. The men who’d been visiting and planning grew restless.

  She blinked back her tears as she dressed. The sorrow swelled inside as she met Ebbe outside and they started off. Oh Lukas. I love you so. How am I to go on without you? She could return to the future. She could face Cara and continue on with her plans for her master’s degree. But she could not go back with her whole heart, for she had given it to her darkly handsome husband and with him it would always remain.

  They rode out past the house and entered a low valley, when Ebbe stopped his horse and turned to her. “My lady…”

  Whatever words he’d started to say stopped. He gazed beyond her to the hill over her shoulder. Ever so slowly, the color in his face drained. It was if he saw a ghost. Dumbfounded, she looked over her shoulder to where three riders approached. Two were strangers, but the third… Lukas!

  “God be praised,” Ebbe finally said.

  “I know!” She fought the urge to spur her horse forward. “Can you believe Lukas is back?”

  “Not Reynard, my lady.” His eyes never moved from the approaching figures. “They return. King Torsten and Queen Elisabet.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I will not faint.

  I did not faint when forced to marry against my will. I did not faint when attacked by Byron Davis. I did not faint when Lukas questioned me on the number of children we should have. And I will not faint when I meet my parents.

  Somehow she managed to stay upright, but she focused on the three figures on horseback. Lukas waved at her and then spoke to the couple following him.

  Her parents.

  They stopped, and Lukas continued the rest of the way alone. By the time he’d come within earshot, she’d managed to dismount.

  “Alexia,” Lukas said. He slipped off his horse and moved to stand within five steps of her. “I beg your pardon. I knew not I would be gone so long.”

  “I should smack you,” she told him.

  He’d been gone for almost a month when he’d told her he’d be gone for a week or so. She’d thought he was dead, captured or worse. He’d sent no word and they’d almost been forced to drop the entire plan for Dresdonia. And then he begged her pardon? She should definitely smack him. Hard, in fact.

  “I know,” he agreed.

  But he’d come back. He’d returned to her whole and alive. He’d returned, and he’d brought her parents with him. Not just her parents, but the King and Queen of Dresdonia.

  So instead of smacking him, she walked five steps, threw her arms around him and kissed him.

  “What have you done?” she asked.

  He pulled back and waved. At his signal, the couple moved forward. “
I shall tell you the entire story later, but for now, I think it important you meet our guests. They are afraid. They think you might be cross with them.”

  She squinted against the sun behind her parents in an effort to see them better. They looked old. Older than what she’d have thought. And they were oh so thin. Where had they been for the last twenty-five years? What had happened?

  As they came closer, Ebbe ran forward. King Torsten, her father, dismounted and the two men embraced. She’d never seen Ebbe cry, but she could hear his sobs from where she stood. No, she decided as she watched, Ebbe was not embracing her father. They were holding each other up.

  Queen Elisabet paid no attention to the scene played out in front of her. She only had eyes for Lexy. Slight and thin, with skin an unhealthy gray, the weak woman looked close to falling off her horse.

  “It is too much to believe,” her mother said as she dismounted. “You are returned to us.”

  Lexy swallowed, not sure she could speak. “No. I think you have been returned to us.”

  Growing up, Lexy had not ever given much thought to the people who were her birth parents. Matter of fact, before she had been brought back to the sixteenth century, she’d not spared more than ten minutes at a time to think about them. But somehow standing before her mother, she felt as though a hole in her heart, a hole she’d not even known had been there, was finally filled.

  Her mother reached out a tentative hand to touch Lexy’s face. She traced her eyebrows and then trailed her fingers down her cheekbone to run across her chin. “I thought of you so often, what you would look like, how you would grow. I knew, of course, that you were grown. Yet to see you here before me, it is unsettling. You are not an infant. You are a woman. And I have missed it.”

  Lexy took her mother in her arms, careful not to hold the woman too tightly. From the feel of the bones through the thin dress, she feared breaking her mother in half.

  As she pulled away, she noticed her father had moved closer. He was every bit a king even though he had not ruled anything for the last twenty-five years. His poor clothes and thin appearance could not hide the regal manner he possessed. She wondered if it wasn’t genetic, that regal manner. If so, she supposed she’d missed out on it altogether.

  His voice sounded just as regal as his appearance. “I would not have asked Ebbe to bring you back. I am, nonetheless, most pleased. Most pleased indeed. Likewise, I would not have consented to a marriage between my heir and any of Culberton’s offspring.” By then, Ebbe, standing behind her father, paled. “They are a rowdy and unpredictable lot. In particular, if rumor can be trusted, his younger son.”

  She reached for Lukas’s hand and laced her fingers through his. How dare her father say such a thing, especially when Lukas had done what he had to bring them back?

  Torsten’s gaze followed her movement. “‘She would not have chosen me of her own accord.’ Those were your words, were they not, Reynard?”

  “They were,” Lukas admitted.

  “And yet, from all accounts, she appears to have chosen you after all. And I am, again, most pleased. Most pleased indeed.” His stern expression relaxed as he observed the couple before him. “It is humbling, I am finding, when the choice you think would be the worst, happens to be the best.”

  “It is,” Lexy agreed, walking to her father and embracing him.

  She didn’t know how long they stood there, but she eventually pulled away.

  “We should make our way to the house,” her father said. “It is not safe for us to be out of doors for so long, and Betta is not in the best health.” He glanced at his wife with unguarded love and affection. “Stubborn woman insisted on riding by herself the entire way.”

  “My first taste of freedom for five and twenty years, and you think I would consent to be carried as a child, Torsten?” her mother asked. “You may as well put me in the ground now.”

  With that, Elisabet lifted her head and rode toward the house. It occurred to Lexy that perhaps she inherited more from her parents than she first thought.

  Once inside, and after an exuberant reunion with Margaret, Lexy led her mother to the couch and instructed her to sit down. “I’ll bring you some chicken broth.” She took the thin wrist before her and checked the pulse. It was weak, her respirations shallow.

  “What is she doing?” her father asked Lukas.

  “She does such things often,” Lukas replied. “If I may be so bold, Your Majesty, I beseech you not attempt to thwart her. She can be quite singular in her purpose. It would come as no surprise to me if she chose to kill the chicken and pluck it herself.”

  “Indeed?” her father asked.

  “Indeed.”

  “She plucks chickens?” her father questioned.

  Lexy kept her gaze on her mother. “I’m still in the room, you know, and can hear everything you say. And just to set the record straight, I have no intention of killing or plucking a chicken myself.” She lowered her voice. “Men.”

  Elisabet gave a small smile.

  ****

  With Elisabet settled as comfortably as possible in the room Lexy had occupied upon her initial arrival at Hullington, Lexy joined Lukas, Ebbe, and her father in the library.

  “Now then,” she said, taking her place beside Lukas. “Tell me everything. Are we to expect Severon to appear on our doorstep tomorrow?”

  Lukas put a hand on her knee, sending an electric shock up her leg. “I doubt Severon will be arriving any time soon. He does not know I was the one behind King Torsten and Queen Elisabet’s disappearance.”

  She tilted her head. “How’d you swing that?”

  “If you are asking how I accomplished it, I was with Severon when they escaped.”

  “Oh,” she said, shocked. “That works.”

  “I told you I wrote to Abiel the day before I left? I met up with him briefly before journeying to meet Severon. Before you returned to Dresdonia, Severon had let some information slip about the king and queen. I did not know with any certainty if they were alive, but I had enough of an inkling to give instructions to Abiel.”

  The sun shined behind him, illuminating him, making him look larger than life. “Abiel broke them out?” she asked, struggling to keep her mind on the conversation.

  “Yes. Severon had them living in France. I thought they were in Denmark, which is part of the reason it took so long for me to return. I stayed with Severon for much of my absence.” He took his hand from her knee and reached for her fingers. “It was horrendous. I had to tell myself what you told me. How playing the old me was a consequence I faced. Severon is most pleased with me. He believes me to be playing my part splendidly.”

  “I wonder why he kept them alive for so long. Why do it when everyone thought them dead?”

  His gaze dropped to their hands before answering. “He meant to bring them to the castle to watch your execution. Then he would kill them.”

  “Oh,” she said with a whisper.

  “Reynard has been brave.” Torsten said. “Yet I fear it may have been to his detriment.”

  “Think of it no more, Your Majesty,” Lukas said. “Severon thinks we will attack the beginning of July. I feel confident we can group everyone together in the next weeks and launch an attack the middle of June.”

  When the talk turned to military strategy, Lexy allowed her mind to wander. On a typical night, she would have left, but she was unwilling to leave Lukas’s side for any reason. If he felt it necessary to talk strategy, she’d endure it to remain with him.

  At dinner that night, Elisabet felt well enough to eat in the dining room. Lexy tried to watch her unnoticed. Her color was still pale, but when she’d checked her pulse again, it seemed stronger than before.

  That night, she learned some of what her parents had endured during the last twenty-five years. Severon had kept them in near poverty in France, with assorted guards to ensure they remained where they were placed.

  After dinner, Torsten stood and announced his intention to sit in th
e drawing room. When he took his wife’s hand, Elisabet gave a weak smile and stood to join him.

  Lexy walked to the door of the dining room. Pigs would need flight clearance before she spent hours in the drawing room. “I’m going upstairs. See you tomorrow.”

  Lukas stood between Lexy and her father, hesitating a moment before bowing to her parents and taking Lexy’s hand. “Your Majesties.”

  Torsten gave the young couple a knowing smile before he walked with Elisabet toward the drawing room, leaving them alone.

  Lukas faced her. “Do you still wish to smack me?”

  She ran her fingers down his face, fingertips trailing down to his doublet and tracing the gold buttons. To be so close to him, to touch him again, almost took her breath, but she wasn’t ready to let him off the hook. “I’m not sure what to do with you yet. Give me a minute though. I’ll think of something.”

  He captured her hand in his. “I await your pleasure.” He kissed her palm, keeping his gaze locked on hers. “My lady.”

  Her heart doubled its tempo. Forget the hook. He’d never been on it to begin with. “In that case, I suggest you take me upstairs.”

  “As you wish,” he said and scooped her into his arms and carried her to their room.

  ****

  “‘She would not have chosen me of her own accord?’” she asked him later.

  The candles flickered in their room, throwing golden shadows across his dancing eyes and sweet smile. She still couldn’t believe he’d returned. Part of her feared sleeping, afraid she’d wake to find him gone again. If only she could somehow stay awake all night and watch him sleep. Then maybe when morning dawned, she’d know he wasn’t a dream.

  “I thought it best there not be any deceit concerning the origin of our marriage,” he explained. “Your father married for love. He doubtless would have wanted the same for you.”