Chapter Nine #3
“You mean this hallway?”
“No, not this hallway” he counters easily. “I mean the way I feel about you.”
My pulse jumps at his words. I slow my pace down again. I need to make this stroll last. “How do you feel about me?” I ask. I’m hyperaware of every sound, every footstep, every breath between us as I wait for his answer. When he speaks, he keeps his eyes forward.
“How honest would you like me to be?”
“Very honest,” I tell him.
Simon nods, inching the smallest bit closer to my side and dropping his voice again so no one can overhear. “Well then, very honestly, I feel as if there’s everyone else in the world, and then there’s us. And we belong more to each other than we do to anyone else.”
There’s a rush of heat to my cheeks and ears. We belong to each other. He belongs to me, and we haven’t even kissed. These Tudor guys don’t waste any time.
“And you think that’s dangerous?” I ask quietly.
Simon looks down at me, his gaze assured and unshaken. “I know that it is. But I’m accustomed to grave peril. Are you?”
I’m taken aback for a second. “You’re accustomed? Like, you’ve done this with queens before?”
Simon’s eyes widen in confusion. “What? No, I mean with jousting. I could die each time I joust.”
“Oh,” I answer quickly. “Sorry, I should have figured that.” With my jealous nerves quelled, I lean my head toward him subtly as we cross through a corridor. “What if I told you I wasn’t worth the risk?”
Simon moves closer to me, letting our arms touch.
“Then I’d tell you that you were a liar.
” A smile starts to spread across my face, and I have to bite my lip to keep it at bay as Simon goes on.
“I don’t know how it happened or what changed, but I don’t want to go back to the way things were before.
But if you want me to, I will. I think I’d do just about anything you asked me to—even if it’s staying away from you. ”
We’re entering the king’s rooms now, just outside the Presence Chamber.
I cast a few quick glances around the room. We’re not alone, but no one is close enough to hear. My shoulders tense, but not from discomfort. I just know that our stolen moment it almost over, and whatever I say next needs to count.
I should think this through more. I should think long-term and endgame, but I don’t want to. Not now. “No,” I quickly tell him. “I don’t want you to stay away. I want the opposite.”
I murmur the words so quietly that for a second, I wonder if Simon’s heard me at all.
But then I look at him. His eyes grow warmer.
The muscles in his neck tighten. His controlled stillness has me lingering somewhere between exhilaration and panic.
I want to do or say something, but I also want to keep watching at him as long as he’s willing to stand there. I could look at him for hours.
It’s just us now, despite everyone around us—like he said. It feels like I’ve taken a bite of something I shouldn’t have, and I already want more.
Just then, the doors swing open in front of us, and Archbishop Cranmer exits. Dressed in clerical vestments, he has a narrow nose and a dominant chin. His blue eyes seem too small for his face. He’s one of the king’s most loyal sycophants and I can’t tell if he loves or hates me.
“Your Majesty,” he says with a bow. “The king awaits your presence.”
I give him a small smile and a curtsy, walking into the Presence Chamber and looking back at Simon over my shoulder.
His hands are pinned behind his back and his legs are tense, like he’s forcing himself to stay where he is as the doors close between us.
They seal shut with a click, and when I focus back forward, I realize what purpose the Presence Chamber serves. It’s Henry’s throne room.
Lavish tapestries adorn almost every wall. The gilded ceilings instantly draw the eyes up before they’re demanded back down by the formidable throne sitting front and center. It looks more eerie than it does powerful, and I don’t like being in here one bit.
“Henry?” I call out through the empty room.
“Back here, Catherine.”
My shoes echo against the stone floor as I make my way through, coming to a narrow hallway lined with guards as I enter the king’s Privy Chamber. This is the inner sanctum. The room where I was brought to Henry when we played cards and he told me we were to be married.
It seems different than it did that night—somehow grayer, despite the fading sun. The guards close the door behind me, and I find Henry sitting in his high-back chair, his mouth tilted with quiet satisfaction.
“Hello, my love. What a tedious day it has been without you.” He reaches his arm out, beckoning me over to the chair facing him. I do as he wishes, and he squeezes my hand as I sit down to join him.
“I was told you wanted to see me.”
“I always want to see you,” he says teasingly, “but I sent for you now because I just concluded the plans for my upcoming travels with the archbishop.”
I go still as unease ricochets inside me. “What travels are you talking about?” Solo travels? Group travels? I can’t leave the palace when I’m meant to see Matthias in three days. Do royal astrologers go on road trips?
“Unfortunately,” Henry says, “you will have to remain here. I have urgent business to attend to in Buckinghamshire that should take around a month.”
A month?!
“Oh, no.” My voice is shaking in unexpressed excitement. I keep my gaze downcast. Henry leans forward to brush a comforting hand across my knuckles.
“You must know that I would never leave you so soon after we were married if it wasn’t necessary. This hurts me as much as it hurts you.”
I grip the chair with my free hand. If I don’t hold on, I might float away on a cloud of bliss. I look up at Henry like I very well might die from missing him. “I’ll do my best to manage the pain.”
“My brave girl.” He gives my hand another comforting squeeze before reaching for a decorative wooden box on the table between us.
He hands it to me with a knowing smile, and when I open the lid, I’m met with the most elaborate diamond necklace I have ever seen.
It’s precious stone after precious stone and has to weigh at least four pounds.
That’s the weight of a prize-winning summer squash.
“I promise you,” Henry goes on to say, “when I return, we will go on progress just as we intended. The people of England want nothing more than to honor their perfect new queen. And I want nothing more than to spend every waking moment with you.”
I place the jewel box in my lap, taking a pained breath for Henry’s sake.
“I just don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye . . .”
His face fills with tenderness as I look down, brushing away a fake tear.