Now: Seventy Three

44.7K 2K 521
                                    


As inconvenient as it is to be all but sequestered in our rooms with two small children, life in the castle is not hard by any stretch of the imagination. Food is brought to me on huge platters, delivered by Zayn. I am never cold, never hungry, never truly lonely during the daylight hours. My family is led to my rooms daily for the noon meal, and we eat, and drink wine—a luxury we've rarely known. My parents monopolize baby Anne, and Mary lovingly takes Robin into her arms, singing to him near the window, but carefully out of sight from the courtyard below.

I know my parents won't admit it, but as attached as Mary is to Robin, they are equally wary of him, and are anxious to know what we have planned. No one else outside of the castle—save Catroina—knows about him, and each day Mother lists the hundreds of reasons we cannot raise him ourselves.

He will easily know that he is not my child, nor Harry's.
He will learn that his father did not love his mother.
He will learn that I captured his father's heart before his mother ever had a chance.
He will learn of his mother's treason, and how would that affect him?
He will someday question how his mother died.

And on, and on.

And it is for these reasons precisely—and so many more—that Harry has instructed me, carefully. Not even Mary knows our plan. Every time I imagine her face when she discovers what we've done . . . I feel weak with anxiety.

Each afternoon, Mother distracts me from my sadness of Harry's expanding absence by filling me in on what is happening in the village. I'm interested in hearing about the latest courtships, ale house catastrophes, and children born to people I've known my whole life . . . but more than anything I am eager to hear what people are saying about me . . . with Harry.

Everyone knows what Maria did to the king. And everyone knows that Anne is Harry's daughter, and what Maria did to us both. For as long as I was back with my village after I was freed from prison, I was treated with respect, and the same generous kindness I've known my whole life.

But Mother tells me that as soon as I disappeared to the cottage, tales of my affair with Harry exploded like steam from a kettle, and gossip spread like wildfire around the village. There were a million stories about times we had been witnessed, about shared glances or words spoken to each other in private. None of them were true, Mary assures me. Everyone simply wondered where I went, where the King was. We must be together, they reasoned. Would we ever come home?

But all of this is only gossip. What my heart yearns to know is now that we are back, and Harry is well, do they accept me? Or do they see me as nothing but a common mistress with a bastard child, and expect another royal to marry our King? When Harry was missing, Anne was their only connection to the royal family. But with Harry home and safe, will this change? Will they still adore her?

The fear that my own village will disapprove of me keeps me up at night, restless in my enormous, cold bed.

I am simply too afraid to ask.

One week after Harry and Liam leave for Spain, Mary has the courage to bring it up for me. She watches me mixing root vegetables in a bowl to feed to Anne, and her quiet voice carries easily across the room: "Everyone is eager to see you beside him."

I look up, and it takes me a breath to understand that she is not speaking about the newborn in her arms, but about the King. My heart seems to trip over itself beneath my ribs. "Truly?"

Beside him could mean so many things. As Anne's mother, as his mistress, as—

"As Queen," Mary adds in a whisper, as if she's read my thoughts.

Mother and Da go still, looking over at me. Despite Harry's indication in his public address that there will be a festival when he returns, to his subjects there has been no promise of a wedding. Nor have I told my parents that I plan to marry Harry. For all they know, I may simply be his mistress for the rest of my life, raising my daughter in the servants' quarters deep in the belly of the castle.

Mary nods, and when she smiles, she is positively lovely: her curls are darker than mine, her eyes are the light brown of a perfect cup of tea. I blink down to her slim hips, her flat stomach. She is thin, and small-boned. Even Robin doesn't look all that tiny in her arms. With a protective pang to my heart, I blink back up to her face.

"Truly," she says, oblivious to my brief inspection. "You've become quite a mythical creature. 'How lucky we all have been living beside her,' they wonder, 'this beautiful girl our King loved from the moment she was born.'"

"He always had eyes for you," Da says.

"It was fate," Mother reminds me. "I was meant to have a boy. But you were put there instead, for him."

And I bite back my smile, wishing my heart would stop pounding. Wishing Harry would come home to me now now now. It is easy for my family to say such things in the presence of the proof: Harry's daughter, my daughter, sleeping in her grandfather's rough, scarred arms.

~~

I toss and turn at night, needing the reassuring weight of him beside me. Before Harry, before Liam, I went my entire life sleeping alone, but now not even the comfort of Anne's quiet snoring is enough to soothe me.

I miss Harry's warmth, his sleepy, roaming hands. I miss the softness of his mouth on my shoulder, working its way up to my lips as he comes over me in the darkness of the night, half-asleep, nearly all instinct. I miss the words he speaks against me, the declarations, the dreams.

Flipping over, I stare at the wall before forcing my eyes shut, squeezing them tight.

In five days I will follow the plan Harry laid out for me.
This time, at the blackest part of the night, I will meet Zayn at the stables.
We will ride together on his horse, and pray that no one sees us.

We will ride for two hours, and almost immediately return home. If we can beat the farmers to daylight, we should be all right.

I go through Harry's careful instructions again and again, and my pulse picks up each time.
I am terrified.

For I know that once we reach our destination, hoping we remain hidden will be the least of my concerns. I will spend the next hours praying with every fiber of my being that the newborn baby we leave behind will remain safe until he is found.




No FuryWhere stories live. Discover now