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I guess I had ended up just like her.
“What is your business here?” she asks. The guards watch us in annoyed silence. I was surprised that they were being so deferential to her.
"The King and I are old friends." I tell her, trying to keep my voice steady. She stares at me for another long minute.
"Let the girl in," she finally says to the blonde guard who had propositioned me only moments before. Both guards look reluctant to obey her. By the look of the woman’s clothes, she’s part of the royal household staff. Evidently a higher up if the guards feel like they have to listen to her.
"This is on you if the King is upset," the guard barks, moving aside to let me pass him.
The woman rolls her eyes. “What isn’t on me these days?" she asks in an annoyed tone.
I step through the gates quickly, afraid that one of them is going to change their minds and not let me through at any second. I walk up to the woman.
“Follow me,” she sighs. I can hear the guards muttering about me behind us. I’m glad that I can’t hear what they are saying.
"May I ask your name?" I ask the woman as we begin to walk, wanting to be able to thank her by name. It’s more luck than I usually have that I’ve found two people in one day that have offered to help me.
"Joan," she says.
"Did you know my Mother?" I ask tentatively, momentarily distracted from my quest to find James in the face of someone who seemed to know something about my past.
“You’re the spitting image of her, you know,” she says, not exactly answering my question.
I tried to remember what my mother had looked like. She had left when I was four so all I had in my memories of her was a fuzzy image of a beautiful brunette woman. Father had burned all the paintings of her in rage at her disappearance.
“Do you have a wandering heart as well?” she asks me.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I tell her, my mind racing with the hidden connotations in her words.
We reach a bench outside what I recognized as the doors to the Throne Room. The heavy wooden doors were closed.
"The King is with his advisers currently," she says, once again ignoring me. “You’ll have to wait out here until he’s done.”
I nod obediently, feeling like a chastised child as I settle myself on the hand carved bench that sits in the elaborate hallway.
She begins to walk away.
“Wait,” I call out, jumping up from the bench, suddenly frantic to try and get more information out of her.
“Come find me after you reunite with the King. I’m in the kitchens more than not,” she says as she continues to walk away.
I feel the urge to follow her, to badger her until I get more answers, but I hold myself back. I can only solve one problem at a time and reuniting with James needs to be my first priority.
I settle back onto the bench to wait, my mind whirling with everything the day had brought. A few hours ago, I had tried to fling myself off a cliff. A few hours ago, I had been with Liam.
And now I was in medieval England about to reunite with my ex-fiancée.
There would be a time that I would need to face the events of this morning. Where I would need to contemplate the fact that I had almost killed myself. I didn’t think I could deal with what I had done at the moment. It was hard enough to keep my feelings at bay at the fact that I had left Liam. I’m sure that it would be a great first impression to see James again, a man who most likely believed I had left him, while crying over my last lover.
One thing that I couldn’t ignore was the fact that Liam had seen me disappear today. None of my men had ever been present when I had disappeared. I wonder what he's thinking. He had to believe me now, I thought wryly. It hurt to think that I had finally gotten what I wanted, someone to believe me. And then I had left once again.
So, I tried to distract myself.
I had forgotten how beautiful Windsor Castle was. I could have visited it in some of my centuries of travels, but I never could bring myself to come here. There were too many memories that would've haunted me as I walked along the ancient stone hallways.
Footsteps sound in the hall, signaling that someone is approaching. A tall, thin, elegantly dressed blonde woman walks towards me from down the hall, attended by five women who look to be her handmaidens. She looks at me curiously but doesn’t say anything to me as she stops outside the Throne Room. One of the handmaidens opens the door to the throne room, and they all go in.
Who was she? The answer of who she probably was, was obvious...but my mind didn’t want to comprehend that. She had been dressed regally...like a royal. All I could hope was that she was a Lady or Baroness from a nearby estate, come to pay her respects to the King.
