But I have to do this. For my family. For the timeline.
The entire room is staring at me, though they’re pretending they’re not, and it feels like their collective gazes are splintering through my skin. My breathing turns shallow. My palms are sweating.
“I need a minute,” I say to no one in particular. I turn away from my rapt audience and head to a side door, not caring where it leads as long as I’m alone.
I find myself in a small sitting room, locking the door behind me as I concentrate on my breathing. Inhale for four. Hold for seven. Exhale for eight. I repeat the process over and over until I come back to myself.
I can do this. I can handle a man in a midlife crisis whether he’s a king or not. I’m going to make him see what he wants to see, but everything will be for my gain. I don’t need to control—I need to steer.
I am in the driver’s seat.
It’s at this exact moment that a hand covers my mouth and drags me backward. Fear envelops my body as I thrash and flail. I trip on my skirt, and my attacker holds me up in a tight grip as they haul me against their chest. I’m screaming into their gloved hand as a desperate voice speaks into my ear.
“Catherine. It’s me. Don’t struggle so and I can let you go.”
I struggle harder, kicking and swinging and smashing my head backward until I make contact. I also bite the hell out of the leather glove that’s nearly suffocating me.
I hear a curse from the voice behind as I’m set loose. I grab a vase from a table and whirl around to face my assailant.
“Who are you? What do you want?” I keep my voice menacing, and I’m poised to strike. The man covers his nose with his hand, bending at the knees in pain as he looks up at me with shocked, accusing eyes.
“Catherine, it’s me! It’s Francis! What in God’s name are you doing? You bit me!”
“You’re lucky all I did was bite you!”
The man stands up, dropping his hand from his face. He’s bleeding profusely from the nose. The reverse headbutt worked.
“Why are you acting as though you don’t know me?” I try to look past the blood, studying his face to see if I hold any recollection. Then I see it. The pitch-black hair. His stormy eyes. He said just now that his name was Francis.
“Francis Dereham,” I whisper.
Silent elation fills his gaze at my hushed words. Francis Dereham was the speck on the road. I met him my first day here. We talked a little, and when he looked at me, at Catherine, it was like everything in the world began and ended with her. He and Thomas Culpepper are the two men who are meant to die with me.
He carefully takes a half step forward. “I just... I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to reach you. Believe me, I am doing everything I can for us to be together.”
“How did you even get in here?” I look around and realize the only place where he could have hidden was near the window. “How long were you behind that curtain?”
He pauses. “A day or two.”
“What did you do about food and using the bathroom?” He glances back at the curtain with a guilty countenance. “On second thought, I don’t want to know.” I rub my hands over my face. I came in here to decompress and am doing the polar opposite.
When I look back at Francis, he’s a step closer to me, and his eyes are streaked with intensity. “Not a moment has gone by where I haven’t thought of you. You’re just as beautiful as I remember.” He raises his hands, like he’s about to cup my cheeks, but I move back to dodge them.
“All right, let’s just regroup for a second. You’re Francis Dereham, right?”
His unyielding gaze burns into mine. “And you are my perfect Catherine.”
“And we first met...”
“At Lambeth, where I was the secretary to the Dowager Duchess.”
He steps forward. I step back. I try to remember what Cecily told me about where Catherine was before she came to the palace.
“Lambeth,” I say quietly. “I grew up there. With my step-grandmother. The Dowager Duchess.”
Francis nods. “It’s the place where we first fell in love. Where we first kissed. Where we first—”
“Yes, lots of firsts,” I say, cutting him off. “And you’re here now because... ?”
