Waking Elizabeth (11 page)

“Are
you sure Miss?”

“Yes.
 
Small spaces.
 
I do that in elevators too,” I attempted to make a joke and the man did
smile a bit, although his face was awash with worry.

Ronan
led me down the stairs and into the courtyard past Tower Green where I noticed
the raven sitting ominously on the plaque, “What is with that damn bird?
 
He’s always there, just sitting there staring
at me.”

Ronan
laughed, “Maybe he likes you.”

“I
feel so stupid.
 
I got in there and the
door shut and I couldn’t get out and I just panicked.
 
I’ve never had a panic attack like that
before, ever.
 
I don’t know what happened
to me,” I lied.
 

Ronan
didn’t answer but his arm around me tightened, “Are you okay now or should you
go inside for a while?”

“No,
we can go,” I suddenly remembered why we were delayed, “Did you get your papers
signed?”

He
looked at me with a worried smile, “Yes.
 
I’m sorry.
 
Had I been ready that
wouldn’t have happened.”

“No,
don’t say that.
 
It was my fault.
 
I should have just hung out with the creepy
bird.
 
It would have been a lot less
traumatic.”
 

Ronan
laughed despite his worried look, “Should you go back to your room and rest for
a while?”

“No,
I’m fine.
 
Let’s go,” I lifted my arm to
waive to my driver that was across the street.
 
Ronan noticed this and watched as the black Mercedes did a u-turn and
pulled up in front of us, “Just tell him where to go,” I said, reaching for the
door.

“Hatfield?”
Ronan said as the driver opened the door for us and I slid across the
seat.
 
Ronan slid in behind me and the
door closed.

“Would
you like me to stop for anything or are you ready to go?
 
There’s water and other refreshments in the
back console,” the driver said through the opening in the window.

“Do
you need anything?” Ronan asked me with concern still etched across his
handsome face.

“No,
I picked us up some breakfast to go with coffee, but I’m fine with water,” I
said, smiling at the driver and doing my best to avoid Ronan’s worried stare.

“Very
well.
 
I’ll lift the privacy screen.
 
There’s a button in the back you can page me
if you need me.”
 
With that, the tinted
screen lifted and we were enclosed in our own private world in the back
seat.
 

“So,
the ballet profession must pay exceedingly well.
 
I’m not sure I’ve ever ridden in such luxury
before,” Ronan said as he relaxed against the seat.

I
was thankful that he started with something light and didn’t immediately delve
into what had happened at the Tower, “It doesn’t.
 
My friend Blair back in America likes to take
care of her friends so she hired me a car and driver to take me around.
 
It’s what she does.
 
I certainly wasn’t going to turn it down.”

“It’s
nice,” he mused as he looked around at the plush leather surroundings and the
console in the center which held a couple of iced waters and juices.

“I’m
really sorry for causing a scene back there.
 
I guess I just panicked when I couldn’t open the door.”

“No
need to apologize,” he answered, but I could hear the worry in his voice.
 
I was still actively avoiding his gaze.
 
For some reason I knew that if I met his eyes
it would not be so easy to lie.
 
Much to
my dismay, avoiding him was short lived because he reached for my chin and
turned me gently towards him.
 
“Is there
something you want to talk about?”

Like
a child I closed my eyes, attempting to block him out while I shook my head
gently, “No.”

He
smiled languidly, instantly putting me at ease, “Okay.”

I
could sense his disappointment, “I’m better,” I wasn’t lying, I did feel
better, “So, where are we going?”

“Hatfield
House.
 
It’s roughly an hour’s
drive.
 
It’s a beautiful estate, owned by
the current Marques of Salisbury.
 
He’s
an avid collector and has several things that might interest you.”

I
smiled, very content to be traveling with him in such a private setting where I
could have him all to myself, “Sounds good.”

“So
how much do you know about her?” he asked, reaching for the breakfast I had
bought us at Starbucks and breaking off a piece.

“Well,
about what everyone knows, I guess.
 
I’m
certainly not knowledgeable enough to have a decent conversation with you
without embarrassing myself.”

He
suppressed a laugh as he ate, “You won’t embarrass yourself.
 
Everyone has their niche, mine happens to be
her.”

The
way he said it struck me in an odd way.
 
It wasn’t just history, or the era, or even the Elizabethan
culture.
 
It was something else.
 
The way he had said the word
her
felt familiar and intimate, like he
knew her in a way that no one else in the world did.
 

“What
is it about her?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
 
I risked looking in his direction and found
him focused on something out the window.

“I’ve
always been fascinated by her, ever since I first heard her mentioned in school
as a boy.
 
I always knew I wanted to go
into a line of work that involved history and research, and she has always been
very much a part of that.”

“So
there was never anything else you wanted to do?” I pressed.

“Never.
 
My parents own a farm in Somerset, one day I
might take over when my father gets too old.
 
I do enjoy horses and worked with them when I was younger.
 
Training them.
 
When I return home I always ride and I do
realize I miss it once I’m there.”
 
He
looked over at me and grinned, “Not into history are you?”

“I
didn’t dislike it in school but it certainly wasn’t my favorite class.”

“What
was your favorite class?”

“Tennis,”
I offered him a playful grin.

Ronan
chuckled, “So, why the sudden onset of fascination with her?”
 

I
looked away, “I don’t know.
 
I read
something recently about her which intrigued me and when Jess said she was
coming over here for work, I thought, why not go?
 
See what’s over there and have some fun.”

“So
you come over with a friend with a detailed itinerary that is pages long with
nothing on it but places to visit that have some kind of historical
significance in Elizabeth’s life?”

I
picked an imaginary piece of lint off my jeans, “Sure, why not.”

He
dropped it, thankfully, which seemed to be a habit of his.
 
We spent the next forty-five minutes of our
drive discussing where I lived in America and what my life was like back
home.
 
He listened intensely as I talked,
never breaking in, never acting bored, and always wanting to know more.
 

“Is
your hair naturally straight?”
 

On
instinct I reached for it and ran it through my fingers where it fell across my
shoulder and down to my waist, “It wasn’t when I was little.
 
I had ridiculously curly hair, which of
course is not what you want in high school.
 
I fought for years to straighten it and when the new treatments came
along that made it permanently strait, I booked the first appointment I
could.
 
Now it’s easy and pretty hassle
free.”
 
What an odd conversation to have
with a man, I wasn’t sure anyone had ever asked me about my hair before.
 
This might have been a first.

“Do
either of your parents have red hair?”

“My
father does.
 
My mother has a dark
complexion.
 
I guess that’s where my dark
eyes come in.”

He
studied me silently, and to my surprise his hand lifted and his fingers grazed
my cheek, “What is this scar from?”

I
was again caught off guard by the question.
 
I knew the scar he was referring to, but it was so small that no one
ever noticed it.
 
I wasn’t sure I had
even discussed it with Jess and we had known each other for over a decade.
 
“There’s a matter of contention in my family
over the cause.
 
My mother swears it’s
from chicken pox, my father thinks I got it when I fell when I was a
child.
 
They can never agree, so I’m not
sure I’ll ever really know.
 
All I know
is that for as long as I remember seeing my reflection in the mirror, it’s been
there.”
 
I ran my fingers over it, for
some reason embarrassed by it now, “Nobody ever notices it.”

“I’m
more observant than most.”
 

Chapter
12

I
felt the car roll
to a stop, “We’re here already?”

“It’s
amazing how fast an hour car ride can be when you’re not having to drive and
can focus on conversation.”

“Good
ole Blair,” I said, reaching for my bag.

“I
have a pass for this house, you know, being that I’m that historical guy that
works at the Tower.
 
You won’t need
anything except for your phone to take some pictures.
 
I’m sure your bag is safe with James Bond up
there.”

I
laughed at his reference to our very clean cut driver, “True.”

The
driver opened the door for us and Ronan immediately stood and offered a hand to
help me stand, “Still feeling okay?”

“Better.
 
Just don’t let me get locked in anywhere,” I
joked and reached to slide my phone into the non-existent pockets of my jean
leggings, “Damn.
 
Pocketless today.”

“I’ll
put it in mine,” he reached for my hot pink phone.

“You’ll
hold my pink phone?” I raised my brows in question.

“Sure.
 
I’m very secure with my masculinity.
 
And I have a sister,” he winked at me and
took my phone, sliding it into the front pocket of his jeans.
 

I
took my first look at our surroundings.
 
It was magnificent, so peaceful and green, unlike the towering buildings
and busyness of London.
 
The gardens from
what I could see were extensive and there was a massive house in the distance
that I could only assume was the main attraction.

“Do
you want to see old or new?” he asked me.

“Um
… old.”

“My
favorite,” he smiled and walked towards the ticket booth where he flashed a
badge of sorts and we were ushered through.

“Wow,
a historical curator at the Tower must be exceedingly important,” I joked,
stealing his line from earlier.
 

“They
usually greet me with red carpet and trumpets.
 
Several people will end up in the stocks today for failing to procure
that.
 
After all, I’m trying to impress
you.”

We
walked towards a sign that read “The Old Palace”, passing tourists who were
taking pictures in the gardens out front.
 

“The
original house was demolished, or at least a good portion of it was, but this
is one of the remaining buildings from when Elizabeth lived here during her
childhood.”

I
turned to him in surprise, “She lived here?”

“She
did.
 
She was actually imprisoned here,
if you could call this a prison, when her sister was queen.
 
She was kept under house arrest for years,
but as you can see, it could have been much worse,” Ronan said as he led me
through the doors and into a great hall with rounded high beamed wood
ceilings.
 

I
gazed at my surroundings, waiting to feel something, “Why was she imprisoned?”

“Politics,”
he answered, “Elizabeth was Protestant her sister Mary was Catholic.
 
There were many people who would have rather
seen Elizabeth on the throne.
 
This was
Mary’s way of keeping an eye on her.
 
She
was here when Mary felt least threatened by her, but once she feared a true
rebellion, she had her moved to the Tower.”

Of
course!
 
That would explain what happened
earlier, “Was she held in the Bell Tower?”

He
turned to me, pausing as if carefully choosing his words, “She was.
 
In the very room you were locked in earlier.”

I
nodded, turning away from him and his all too probing gaze.
 
I tapped the wood floor with my foot, and
pivoted my toe in a small circle.

“She
would have danced in here, with the sunlight coming through those windows,”
Ronan pointed upwards towards the large windows mounted over the brick walls,
“There would have been banquets in her honor held here.”

I
was waiting to feel some kind of connection to the room and was surprised when
none came.
 
Maybe she didn’t like it here
or maybe it brought back painful memories like the one I experienced earlier in
the Tower.
 
I walked around, silently
studying the paintings and marveling at the interior that was hundreds of years
old.
 

“There
are some paintings of her in the main house, some quite famous ones at that,
would you like to look?”

“Yes,”
I answered, and followed as he led me through the doors and across the gardens
towards the main house.
 
Once inside I
was staggered by the size and opulence of the house.
 
It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and I
had been to the Biltmore House in North Carolina.
  

“This
part is new.
 
This was not here when she
lived at Hatfield but was actually finished seven years after she died.”

“When
did she die?” I blurted out.
 
It was
something I had not bothered to look up before.

“1603,
six months shy of her 70
^th
birthday.
 
She lived to be quite old, which was uncommon during her time,” he
answered, leading me through the house as if he’d been there a million times and
into a room called the Marble Hall.
 
Once
inside I spotted her portrait immediately.
 
I walked across the room and stood before it.
 
Ronan followed and settled close behind
me.
 
I had seen a close up of her face on
the cover of a book that was very similar to her face in the full
portrait.
 
She was dressed in an ornate
orange colored dress, her youthful face smooth with pale white skin.
 
Her hair was elegantly coiffed and piled high
atop her head.
 
Her dress was covered
with bizarre embroideries of eyes and ears.
 
How odd
, I thought,
what on earth did it mean?
 
She wore a long string of pearls tied in a
knot in the center that draped down the front of her dress.

“How
old was she when this was painted?” I asked, mesmerized by her dark eyes.

“It
was painted the last year of her reign, so she would have been 69 in this
portrait,” Ronan answered from behind me.

I
turned to him in disbelief, “That woman is not 69.”

“Exactly,”
he smiled, ”So after 400 years, she’s getting the reaction that she wanted,” he
smiled with a distant look of satisfaction.

“I
don’t understand.
 
Did she want to hide
her real age?”

“She
was very well aware that people knew her age, what she didn’t want them to know
was
how
she was aging.
 
She was very particular about her looks.
 
She was a beautiful woman in her youth but
she didn’t age well, although no one did back then.
 
She had every mirror in her rooms covered, so
as not to be reminded of her fading looks.
 
She began to wear heavy makeup to cover scars which actually did more
harm than good since it was made of lead.
 
She also instructed every painter that painted her portrait to paint her
as if she was twenty.
 
That was a
standing rule.
 
As a matter of fact, she
had an approved face that every painter was to model their portraits after, and
no one dared paint her any different.”
 
Ronan stood closer to her portrait and gazed up at her, “Every painting
you will see of Elizabeth in her later years will look exactly as this one.
 
She carefully crafted her appearance and what
the world knew about her.
 
She controlled
it all, or as much as she could.”

There
was a long rail in the corner of the room that served as a plaque of some sort
and had a timeline of famous paintings done of the queen, all of them much the
same, her face almost identical, just as Ronan had described.
 
I ran my finger over them, noting the year
and studying her face.
 
The same dark
eyes, the same pale white skin, covered with makeup, the same flamboyantly
elegant hairstyle.
 
I pointed to one of
her in a dark black dress and Ronan instantly identified it as the Armada
Portrait.
 

“The
pearls?
 
She’s wearing them again in this
portrait,” I said as I studied her.
 
It
wasn’t really a question, it was just an observation.

“Yes,
she was fond of them.
 
They were left to
her in the will of someone she was extremely close to,” Ronan noted, running
his fingers over the pearls in the portrait.

“Who?”
I asked.

“Robert
Dudley.”

Ronan’s
voice as he murmured the man’s name echoed throughout the silent room and
involuntarily my hand reached up to grasp something around my neck that wasn’t
there.
 
Ronan noticed this and his eyes
narrowed in my direction, “You’ve heard of him?”

“I
don’t think so,” I answered, and I meant it.
 
I was quite sure I had never heard his name before, but for some reason
hearing it now was having a profound effect on me.
 
This was the familiarity I was looking for
earlier.
 
It was just the thing I was
searching for but terrified me when I actually found it.
 
I turned away from Ronan and towards the
plaque, placing my hand on the small portrait there, gliding it over the
pearls.
 
I could instantly hear music,
something I could not identify but once again the tune felt familiar.
 
I got a dizzying sensation of being twirled
around a room, one very similar to the one I was in earlier that day.
 
I heard laughter, a light lyrical carefree
laugh.
 
Was it me?
 
I felt
euphorically happy, my eyes open and watching the sun cascading through the
windows.
 
There were strong hands around
my waist, holding me high in the air before setting me on my feet again only to
repeat the sequence over and over.
 
Once
on my feet my face was pressed against a warm masculine neck.
 
I breathed in the smell of him.
 
We were dancing.
 
And I loved it.
 
Suddenly there was a very real hand gliding
across my back that pulled me from my trance.
 

“Ellie,
are you alright?”

I
was.
 
I was more than alright, I felt
drugged with a sort of happy sedation from the vision I had just had and to be
honest I was sad to see it vanish.
 
It
was truly the most peaceful vision I’d had yet.
 
I offered Ronan a hazy smile, “I am.
 
Perfect actually.”

He
smiled at me with a mixture of suspicion and awareness, “Perfect?”

“Yes.
 
I’m glad you brought me here,” I said still
reeling from the feeling from a moment ago, “This has been my favorite place so
far.”

“You’ve
only been to two places,” he chuckled, “I think I can probably top it.
 
As a matter of fact, I have something else to
show you.”
 
He led me towards a long
gallery with a beautifully ornate gold ceiling.
 
The walls were dark paneled on one side and on the other was a line of
windows overlooking a garden.
 
There were
old pieces of furniture lining each side of the long room and a light oak
checkerboard floor.
 

“This
is unbelievable,” I said in a hushed tone, feeling the need to whisper in such
a room, “I can’t believe someone actually lived here.”

“Lives
here,” Ronan corrected me, “This house is still in the Cecil family and they
reside here to this day.”

“You’ve
got to be joking?
 
Who could live in such
a place?”

Ronan
looked at me with a grin, “You wouldn’t live here?”

“I
mean, I guess I could.
 
You could live
here with 20 other people and never see anyone!”

He
led me down the gallery towards a glass case in the corner.
 
Once there I saw it housed a pair of gloves and
what looked to be a long pair of gold colored knit socks.
 

“These
are hers.
 
Most of her belongings are on
display at museums or locked away, but these are part of his private
collection.”

I
stared at the faded gray colored gloves and wondered what color they use to be,
“She had long fingers.”

“She
did.
 
She considered her hands one of her
best attributes.
 
She had long delicate
fingers, and she was a huge fan of gloves, possibly to hide scars on her hands,
but never-the-less, it was estimated that she owned nearly 2000 pairs of
gloves.”