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“Yes,” I respond in a choked voice.
“Why it’s the year 1439, madam. Are you alright? Where are you from?” he asked, looking me up and down confusedly.
Looking down at my outfit I realize that I’m still wearing the jeans and t-shirt that I had been wearing when I left Boston. A pang hits me at the thought of Liam. But I brush it away. James has to be my thought. If I could return to James...I could possibly return to all of them.
The thought is almost more than I can bear.
I think quickly of a response. “There was an attack on my village that caused a fire. These were the clothes we were forced to wear after everything we owned was burned.”
He nods like I’ve made perfect sense, the idea that I could be from a different time obviously not occurring to him.
“I’ve heard that the French have been “experimenting” with new fashion. I’m not sure why they would want their ladies to look like the menfolk,” he responds, and I try to hide my grimace. I had forgotten just how male controlled of a society my growing up had been.
“Where are we?” I hurry on, desperate for more information.
The worry on his face grows at my question. “Windsor,” he says slowly.
I cry out this time in a relief that’s so great it cannot be measured. What was despair a moment ago has morphed into a feeling of anticipation that threatens to overwhelm me.
“Please sir, you must take me to the castle. Is the Prince in residence there?” I ask, clasping my hands in front of me like I’m in prayer.
"Milady, is there anyone I can take you to? Do you need a doctor?”
"Please just answer the question," I snap, barely able to hold on to any semblance of sanity at the moment. I could feel the loss of Liam sitting deeply in my bones, waiting to rise up again and drown my mind in despair. I had to hold off my anguish at losing him for as long as possible until I could see James again. Then I could figure out how it was possible I was finally back in a century that I had been before and how I could see Liam again.
"Are you not from around here, madam?" he asks. "The last King died two years ago. Prince James is now King James."
That would make everything more difficult. The Prince abdicating was one thing. James had been prepared to do that if we couldn’t marry before. But the King abdicating, well that was a whole other matter.
Not that I should be thinking about that. There was a good chance that James would take one look at me and want nothing more to do with me.
I had loved James passionately. But I had also found that same type of love with four other men that was just as deep and real as my love story with James. There was no way I would be able to forget them and just start a happy life with James now that I knew that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility to be reunited with them.
But again, I would think about all of that later.
"Can you take me to the castle?" I ask desperately. A little voice inside of me feels guilty at the fact that I wasn't going to see my father first. We hadn’t had the best relationship, but I felt like he had done his best after my mother had disappeared. I'm sure it was a blow to him when I had unexpectedly disappeared.
Despite the love that I had for him, it didn’t compare to the overwhelming urgency I had to see James again. I could disappear again at any time, and while it was sad to say that I could live without seeing my father again, I would quite literally not survive if I didn’t see James again after being so close to him.
I had to get to him.
The man analyzes me, I'm sure wondering if I was going to commit an act of treason against the monarchy in my unsettled state if he were to take me to the palace. Fortunately, the fact that I was a frantic mess ultimately must have appealed to his greater sympathies and won him over because he signals for me to hop onto the bench next to him on the carriage. I pull myself as quickly as I can onto the bench.
The situation was an example of how different things were depending on what time period you were in. It would've been with great hesitation that I would've gotten into a car with a stranger in modern-day Boston. And now here I was basically hitchhiking with a stranger. Hopefully my memory of how safe the 1400s were for the gentry class was accurate. Although with how desperate I was feeling at the moment, probably no threat to my safety would have prevented me from trying to get to James.
The man tries to ask me questions as we ride along, but I keep my answers short and vague. I'm sure there is a lot of information that I could be getting from him, finding out how things have changed or stayed the same in the years that I’ve missed... but all I can think about is reuniting with James.
Six years didn't seem like very long compared to everything that I had gone through, but it could've been a lot to him. I was practically a child when I had met him, there’s so much about me that has changed over the years, and not necessarily for the better. When we fell in love, I was young and naive, swept along in a love story with my real-life Prince Charming. I was many things now...a murderer being one of them.
I didn't even know if he'd be able to recognize the person I was now. Hopefully I could convince him that at least some form of the Juliet that I used to be was still inside of me. Hopefully that was true.
Our love couldn’t be lost like everything else in my life.
* * *
I had forgottenhow slow horses were as a form of transportation. What was most likely only a 20-minute journey by car took a few hours by carriage.
Part of me wished it had taken even longer though when I saw the towers of Windsor Castle appear in the distance. Seeing the walls that surrounded the castle brought me right back to my first meeting with James. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. Nervousness like I've never experienced courses through my body.
