My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows (1)

For everyone who knows there was enough room for Leonardo DiCaprio on that door.

And for England. We’re really sorry for what we’re about to do to your history.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

—Napoleon Bonaparte

The crown is not my right. It pleaseth me not.

—Lady Jane Grey

Contents

(In Which We Revise a Bit of History)

You may think you know the story. It goes like this: once upon a time, there was a sixteen-year-old girl named Jane Grey, who was forced to marry a complete stranger (Lord Guildford or Gilford or Gifford-something-or-other), and shortly thereafter found herself ruler of a country. She was queen for nine days. Then she quite literally lost her head.

Yes, it’s a tragedy, if you consider the disengagement of one’s head from one’s body tragic. (We are merely narrators, and would hate to make assumptions as to what the reader would find tragic.) We have a different tale to tell.

Pay attention. We’ve tweaked minor details. We’ve completely rearranged major details. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent (or not-so-innocent, or simply because we thought a name was terrible and we liked another name better). And we’ve added a touch of magic to keep things interesting. So really anything could happen.

This is how we think Jane’s story should have gone.

It begins in England (or an alternate version of England, since we’re dealing with the manipulation of history), in the middle of the sixteenth century. It was an uneasy time, especially if you were an E∂ian (pronounced eth-ee-uhn for those of you unfamiliar with the term). The E∂ians were blessed (or cursed, depending on your point of view) with the ability to switch between a human form and an animal one. For instance, certain members of the general public could turn themselves into cats, which greatly increased the country’s tuna-fish consumption, but also cut down on England’s rat population. (Then again, other individuals could turn into rats, so nobody really noticed.)

There were those who thought that this animal magic was terrific, but others who saw it as an abomination that needed to be eradicated immediately. That second group (known as Verities) believed that human beings had no business being anything other than human beings. And because Verities were largely in charge of everything, E∂ians were persecuted and hunted until most of them died out or went deep into hiding.

Which brings us to one fateful afternoon in the royal court of England, when King Henry VIII, during a fit of rage, transformed into a great lion and devoured the court jester, much to the audience’s delight. They clapped enthusiastically, for no one really liked the jester. (Later, the courtiers discovered the incident was not a rehearsed act of artful deception, but indeed an actual lion masticating the jester. When the audience found out the truth they no longer clapped, but they did remark, “That clown had it coming.”)

That very night, King Henry, once he’d returned to his human form, decreed that E∂ians weren’t

so bad after all, and henceforth should enjoy the same rights and privileges as Verities. The decision to sanction the ancient magic made waves across Europe. The head of the Verity Church was not pleased with King Henry’s decision, but every time Rome sent a missive denouncing the decree, the Lion King ate the messenger.

Hence the phrase, Don’t eat the messenger.

When Henry died, his only son, Edward, inherited the throne. Our story begins in the middle of

tense times, with an increasing animosity brewing between E∂ians and Verities, a teenage king with a tenuous grasp on the throne of England, and a young lord and lady who have no idea their destinies are about to collide.

Totally against their will.

Edward

The king, it turned out, was dying.

“When?” he asked Master Boubou, the royal physician. “How long do I have?”

Boubou wiped his sweaty brow. He disliked giving bad news to royalty. In his line of business, sometimes it led to the stockades. Or worse.

“Six months, perhaps a year,” he croaked. “At best.”

Bollocks, thought Edward. Yes, he’d been sick for several months now, but he was sixteen years old. He couldn’t be dying. He had a cold, was all, a cough that had been hanging on longer than it should, perhaps, a tightness in his chest, a recurrent fever, some headaches, sure, frequent dizzy spells, a funny taste in his mouth sometimes, but dying?

“You’re certain?” he asked.

Boubou nodded. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. It’s ‘the Affliction.’”

Oh. That.

Edward suppressed a cough. He instantly felt worse than he had only moments before, like his lungs had overheard the bad news and were shutting down already. He’d known of others with “the Affliction,” always hacking into nasty blood-spotted handkerchiefs, acting all faint and trembly, then eventually excusing themselves from court to die a horrible, wheezy death out of view of the ladies.

“You’re . . . certain?” he asked again.

Boubou fidgeted with his collar. “I can give you tonics for pain, and make sure you remain comfortable until the end, but yes. I am certain.”

The end. That sounded ominous.

“But . . .” There was so much he wanted to do with his life. First off, he wanted to kiss a girl, a pretty girl, the right girl, possibly with tongue. He wanted to throw grand, lavish balls to show off his dancing skills to the nobles. He wanted to finally best the weapons master at swords, because Bash was the only person he knew who forgot to let him win. He wanted to explore his kingdom and travel the world. He wanted to hunt a great beast of some sort and mount its head on his wall. He wanted to climb to the top of Scafell Pike, get as high up as a person could possibly go in England, and look over the lands stretching below him and know that he was king of all he surveyed.

But apparently none of that was going to happen.

Untimely was the word people would use, he thought. Premature. Tragic. He could practically hear the ballads the minstrels would sing about him, the great king who had died too soon.

Poor King Edward, now under the ground.

Hacked his lungs out. They’ve yet to be found.

“I want a second opinion. A better one,” Edward said, his hand curling into a fist where it rested on the arm of the throne. He shivered, suddenly chilled. He pulled his fur-lined robes more tightly

around him.

“Of course,” said Boubou, backing away.

Edward saw the fear in the doctor ’s eyes and felt the urge to have him thrown into the dungeon for good measure, because he was the king, and the king always got what he wanted, and the king didn’t want to be dying. He fingered the golden dagger at his belt, and Boubou took another step back.

“I’m truly sorry, Your Highness,” the old man mumbled again toward the floor. “Please don’t eat the messenger.”

Edward sighed. He was not his father, who indeed might have assumed his lion form and devoured the man for bearing this dreadful news. Edward didn’t have a secret animal inside of him, so far as he knew. Which had always secretly disappointed him.

“You may go, Boubou,” he said.

The doctor breathed out a sigh of relief and darted for the door, leaving Edward alone to face his impending mortality.

“Bollocks,” he muttered to himself again. “The Affliction” seemed like a terribly inconvenient way for a king to die.

Later, after the news of his upcoming royal demise had spread around the palace, his sisters came to find him. He was sitting in his favorite spot: the window ledge in one of the south turrets of Greenwich Palace, his legs dangling over the edge as he watched the comings and goings of the people in the courtyard below and listened to the steady flow of the River Thames. He thought he finally understood the Meaning of Life now, the Great Secret, which he’d boiled down to this:

Life is short, and then you die.

“Edward,” murmured Bess, her mouth twisting in sympathy as she came to sit beside him on the

ledge. “I’m so sorry, brother.”

He tried to smirk at her. Edward was a master of smirking. It was his most finely honed royal skill, really, but this time he couldn’t manage more than a pathetic halfhearted grimace. “So you’ve heard,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. “I do intend to get a second opinion, of course. I don’t feel like I’m dying.”

“Oh, my dear Eddie,” choked out Mary, dabbing a lace-edged handkerchief at the corner of her

eye. “Sweet, darling boy. My poor little dove.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. He disliked being called Eddie, and he disliked being talked down to like he was a toddler in short tights, but he tolerated it from Mary. He’d always felt a bit sorry for his sisters, what with his father declaring them bastards and all. The year that his father had discovered his animal form—the Year of the Lion, the people called it—King Henry VIII had also decided that the king got to make all the rules, so he’d annulled his marriage to Mary’s mother and sent her off to a convent to live out the rest of her days, all so he could marry Bess’s mother, one of the more attractive ladies-in-waiting. But when Wife #2 failed to produce a male heir, and rumors started to circulate that Queen Anne was an E∂ian who every so often transformed into a black cat so she could slip down the castle stairs into the court minstrel’s bedchambers, the king had her head chopped off. Wife #3 (Edward’s mother) had done everything right; namely, she’d produced a child with the correct genitalia to be a future ruler of England, and then, because she was never one to stick around to gloat, she’d promptly died. King Henry had gone on to have three more wives (respectively: annulled, beheaded, and the lucky one who’d outlived him, ha), but no more children.

So it had just been the three of them—Mary, Bess, and Edward—as far as royal spawn went, and

they’d been their own brand of a mismatched family, since their father was possibly insane and

definitely dangerous even when he wasn’t a lion, and their mothers were all dead or exiled. They’d always got on fairly well, mainly because there had never been any competition between them over who was meant to wear the crown. Edward was the clear choice. He had the boy parts.

He’d been king since he was nine years old. He could only faintly remember a time when he wasn’t king, in fact, and until today he’d always felt that monarchy rather suited him. But a fat lot of good being king was doing him now, he thought bitterly. He would have rather been born a commoner, a blacksmith’s son, perhaps. Then he might have already had a bit of fun before he shuffled off this mortal coil. At least he would have had an opportunity to kiss a girl.

“How are you feeling, really?” Mary asked solemnly. Mary said everything solemnly.

“Afflicted,” he answered.

This produced the ghost of a smile from Bess, but Mary just shook her head mournfully. Mary never laughed at his jokes. He and Bess had been calling her Fuddy-Duddy Mary behind her back for years, because she was always so cheerless about everything. The only time he ever saw Mary enjoy herself was when some traitor was beheaded or some poor E∂ian got burned at the stake. His sister was surprisingly bloodthirsty when it came to E∂ians.

“‘The Affliction’ took my mother, you know.” Mary wrung her handkerchief between her hands

fretfully.

“I know.” He’d always thought Queen Catherine had died more of a broken heart than any physical malady, although he supposed that a broken heart often led to a broken body.

He wouldn’t have a chance to get his heart broken, he thought, a fresh wave of self-pity washing over him. He was never going to fall in love.

“It’s a dreadful way to die,” Mary continued. “You cough and cough until you cough your lungs

right out.”

“Thank you. That’s very comforting,” he said.

Bess, who’d always been a quiet one next to her solemnly loquacious sister, shot Mary a sharp look and laid her gloved hand over Edward’s. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

He shrugged. His eyes burned, and he told himself that he was definitely not going to cry about this whole dying thing, because crying was for girls and wee little babies and not for kings, and besides, crying wouldn’t change anything.

Bess squeezed his hand.

He squeezed back, definitely not crying, and recommenced pondering the view outside the window and the Meaning of Life.

Life is short.

And then you die.

Shortly. Six months, a year at best. Which seemed like an awfully small amount of time. Last summer, a famous Italian astrologer had done Edward’s horoscope, after which he had announced that the king would live forty more years.

Apparently famous Italian astrologers were big, fat liars.

“But at least you can rest assured knowing that everything will be all right once you’ve gone,”

Mary said solemnly.

He turned to look at her. “What?”

“With the kingdom, I mean,” she added even more solemnly. “The kingdom will be in good hands.”

He hadn’t really given much thought to the kingdom. Or any thought, truthfully. He’d been too busy contemplating the idea of coughing his lungs right out, and then being too dead to care.

“Mary,” Bess chided. “Now is not the time for politics.”

Before Mary could argue (and by the look on her face, she was definitely going to argue that now was always the time for politics), a knock sounded on the door. Edward called, “Come in,” and John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Lord President of the King’s High Privy Council, stuck his great eagle nose into the room.

“Ah, Your Majesty, I thought I’d find you up here,” he said when he spotted Edward. His gaze swept hurriedly over Mary and Bess like he couldn’t be bothered taking the time to really see them.

“Princess Mary. Princess Elizabeth. You’re both looking well.” He turned to Edward. “Your Majesty, I wonder if I might have a word.”

“You may have several,” Edward said.

“In private,” Lord Dudley clarified. “In the council room.”

Edward stood and brushed off his pants. He nodded to his sisters, and they dropped into their courtly curtsies. Then he allowed Lord Dudley to lead him down the stairs and across the palace’s long series of hallways into the king’s council chamber, where the king’s advisors normally spent hours each day filling out the appropriate royal paperwork for the running of the country and making all the decisions. The king himself never spent much time in this room, unless there was a document that required his signature, or some other important matter that required his personal attention. Which wasn’t often.

Dudley closed the door behind them.

Edward, winded from the walk, sank into his royal, extra-cushy red velvet throne at the head of the half circle of chairs (usually occupied by the other thirty members of the Privy Council). Dudley produced a handkerchief for him, which Edward pressed to his lips while he rode out a coughing fit.

When he pulled the handkerchief away, there was a spot of pink on it.

Bollocks.

He stared at the spot, and tried to hand the handkerchief back to Dudley, but the duke quickly said,

“You keep it, Your Majesty,” and crossed to the other side of the room, where he began to stroke his bearded chin the way he did when he was deep in thought.

“I think,” Dudley began softly, “we should talk about what you’re going to do.”

“Do? It’s ‘the Affliction.’ It’s incurable. There’s nothing for me to do but die, apparently.”

Dudley manufactured a sympathetic smile that didn’t look natural on his face, as he wasn’t accustomed to smiling. “Yes, Sire, that’s true enough, but death comes to us all.” He resumed the beard stroking. “This news is unfortunate, of course, but we must make the best of it. There are many things that must be done for the kingdom before you die.”

Ah, the kingdom, again. Always the kingdom. Edward nodded. “All right,” he said with more courage in his voice than he felt. “Tell me what I should do.”

“First we must consider the line of succession. An heir to the throne.”

Edward’s eyebrows lifted. “You want me to get married and produce an heir in less than a year?”

That could be fun. That would definitely involve kissing with tongue.

Dudley cleared his throat. “Uh . . . no, Your Majesty. You’re not well enough.”

Edward wanted to argue, but then he remembered the spot of pink on the handkerchief, and how

exhausting he’d found it simply walking across the palace. He was in no shape to be wooing a wife.

“Well, then,” he said. “I suppose that means the throne will go to Mary.”

“No, Sire,” Lord Dudley said urgently. “We cannot let the throne of England fall into the wrong hands.”

Edward frowned. “But she’s my sister. She’s the eldest. She—”

“She’s a Verity,” objected Dudley. “Mary’s been raised to believe that the animal magic is evil, something to be feared and destroyed. If she became queen, she’d return this country to the Dark Ages. No E∂ian would be safe.”

Edward sat back, thinking. Everything the duke was saying was true. Mary would not tolerate the E∂ians. (She preferred them extra-crispy, as we mentioned earlier.) Plus Mary had no sense of humor and was completely backward thinking and would be no good at all as ruler.

“So it can’t be Mary,” he agreed. “It can’t be Bess, either.” He twisted the ring with the royal seal around his finger. “Bess would be better than Mary, of course, and both of her parents were E∂ians, if you believe the cat thing, but I don’t know where Bess’s allegiance lies concerning the Verities. She’s a bit shifty. Besides,” he said upon further reflection. “The crown can’t go to a woman.”

You might have noticed that Edward was a bit of a sexist. You can’t blame him, really, since all his young life he’d been greatly exalted for simply having been born a boy.

Still, he liked to think of himself as a forward-thinking king. He hadn’t taken after his father as an E∂ian (at least, he hadn’t so far), but it was part of his family history, obviously, and he’d been raised to sympathize with the E∂ian cause. Lately it seemed that the tension between the two groups had reached a boiling point. Reports had been coming in about a mysterious E∂ian group called the Pack, who had been raiding and pillaging from Verity churches and monasteries around the country. Then came more reports of Verities exposing and subsequently inflicting violence upon E∂ians. Then reports of revenge attacks against Verities. And so on, and so on.

Dudley was right. They needed a pro-E∂ian ruler. Someone who could keep the peace.

“So who do you have in mind?” Edward reached over to a side table, where there was always, by

royal decree, a bowl of fresh, chilled blackberries. He loved blackberries. They were rumored to have powerful healing properties, so he’d been eating a lot of them lately. He popped one into his mouth.

Lord Dudley’s Adam’s apple jerked up and down, and for the first time since Edward had known

him, he appeared a tad nervous. “The firstborn son of the Lady Jane Grey, Your Majesty.”

Edward choked on his blackberry.

“Jane has a son?” he sputtered. “I’m fairly certain I would have heard about that.”

“She doesn’t have a son at the moment,” Dudley explained patiently. “But she will. And if you bypass Mary and Elizabeth, the Greys are next in line.”

So Dudley wanted Jane to get married and produce an heir.

Edward couldn’t imagine his cousin Jane with a husband and a child, even though she was sixteen years old and sixteen was a bit spinsterish, by the standards of the day. Books were Jane’s great love: history and philosophy and religion, mostly, but anything she could get her hands on. She actually enjoyed reading Plato in the original Greek, so much so that she did it for fun and not just when her tutors assigned it. She had entire epic poems memorized and could recite them at will. But most of all, she loved stories of E∂ians and their animal adventures.

There would be no doubt that Jane would support the E∂ians.

It was widely rumored that Jane’s mother was an E∂ian, although no one knew what form she took. When they were children Edward and Jane’s favorite game had been to imagine what animals

they would become when they grew up. Edward had always imagined he’d be something powerful and fierce, like a wolf. A great bear. A tiger.

Jane had never been able to decide on her preferred E∂ian form; it was between a lynx and a falcon, as he recalled.

“Just think of it, Edward,” he remembered her ten-year-old voice whispering to him as they’d

stretched out on their backs on some grassy knoll, finding shapes in the passing clouds. “I could be up there, riding the wind, nobody telling me to sit up straight or complaining about my needlework. I’d be free.”

“Free as a bird,” he’d added.

“Free as a bird!” She’d laughed and jumped to her feet and run down the hill with her long red

hair trailing behind her and her arms spread out, pretending to fly.

A few years later they’d spent an entire afternoon calling each other names, because Jane had read in a book that E∂ians often manifested into their animal forms when they were upset. They’d cursed at each other and slapped each other ’s faces, and Jane had even gone so far as to throw a stone at Edward, which actually did rile him, but they had remained stubbornly human throughout the whole ordeal.

It’d been a great disappointment to them both.

“Sire?” Lord Dudley prompted.

Edward shook off the memories. “You want Jane to get married,” he surmised. “Do you have someone in mind?”

He felt a twinge of sadness at the idea. Jane was easily his favorite person in this world. As a child, she’d been sent to live with Katherine Parr (King Henry’s Wife #6), and so Jane and Edward had spent hours upon hours in each other ’s company, even sharing many of the same tutors. It had been in those days that they’d become fast friends. Jane was the only one who Edward felt truly understood him, who didn’t treat him like a different species because he was royalty. In the back of his mind he’d been holding on to the idea that perhaps someday he’d be the one to marry Jane.

This was back when it was slightly less frowned upon to marry your cousin.

“Yes, Sire. I have the perfect candidate.” Dudley began to pace back and forth across the room, stroking his beard. “Someone with good breeding, a respectable family.”

“Of course. Who?” Edward asked.

“Someone with undeniable E∂ian magic.”

“Yes. Who?”

“Someone who wouldn’t mind the red hair.”

“Jane’s hair isn’t so bad,” Edward protested. “In some lights it’s slightly less red, and rather pretty.

. . .”

“Someone who could keep her in line,” Dudley continued.

Well, that made sense, thought Edward. Jane was notoriously willful. She refused to be pranced around court like the other girls of noble birth, and openly defied her mother by bringing a book to certain court functions and passing the time in the corner reading instead of dancing or securing herself a future husband.

“Who?” he asked.

“Someone who can be trusted.”

This was starting to seem like a very tall order indeed. “Who is it?” Edward raised his voice. He disliked having to ask a question more than once, and this was four times now. Plus Dudley’s pacing was making him feel a bit seasick. Edward pounded his fist on the side table. Blackberries went flying.

“Who is it? Blast it, Northumberland, just spit it out.”

The duke stopped. He cleared his throat. “Gifford Dudley,” he muttered.

Edward blinked. “Gifford who?”

“My youngest son.”

Edward took a moment to absorb this information, adding up all of the criteria Dudley had given

him: someone from a respectable family: check; someone who could be trusted: check; someone with undeniable E∂ian magic . . .

“John,” he blurted out. “Do you have E∂ian magic in your family?”

Lord Dudley lowered his gaze. It was a dangerous thing to admit to E∂ian blood, even in today’s more civilized age, where you might not get burned at the stake for it. While being an E∂ian wasn’t technically illegal any longer, there were still so many people throughout the kingdom who shared Mary’s opinion that the only good E∂ian was a dead one.

“I’m not an E∂ian, of course,” Dudley said after a long pause. “But my son is.”

An E∂ian! This was too good. For a minute Edward forgot that he was dying and marrying off his

best friend as some kind of political strategy. “What creature does he become?”

Dudley reddened. “He spends his days as a . . .” His lips moved as he tried to form the right word, but he failed.

Edward leaned forward. “Yes?”

Dudley struggled to get the words out. “He’s a . . . every day he . . . he . . .”

“Come on, man!” Edward urged. “Speak!”

Dudley wet his lips. “He’s a . . . member of the equine species.”

“He’s a what?”

“A steed, Your Majesty.”

“A steed?”

“A . . . horse.”

Edward fell back, open mouthed for a few seconds. “A horse. Your son spends his days as a horse,” he repeated, just to be sure he’d got it right.

Dudley nodded miserably.

“No wonder I haven’t seen him in court. I’d almost forgotten you had another son besides Stan!

Didn’t you tell us that your other son was a half-wit, and that’s why you deemed him inappropriate to appear in social settings?”

“We thought anything was better than the truth,” Dudley admitted.

Edward scooped a blackberry off the table and ate it. “When did this happen? How did it happen?”

“Six years ago,” Dudley answered. “I don’t know how. One moment he was a boy of thirteen, throwing a bit of a tantrum. The next he was a . . .” He didn’t say the word again. “I do believe that he’d be a good match for Jane, Sire, and not simply because he’s my son. He’s a solid boy—excellent bone structure, able-bodied, reasonably intelligent, certainly not a half-wit, anyway—and obedient enough to suit our purposes.”

Edward considered this for a few minutes. Jane loved all things E∂ian. She wouldn’t have a problem with marrying one. But . . .

“He spends every single day as a horse?” Edward asked.

“Every day. From sunrise to sundown.”

“He can’t control his change?”

Dudley glanced at the far wall, which bore a large portrait of Henry VIII, and Edward realized how foolish he sounded. His father had never been able to control his lion form. The anger would take him and then the fangs would come out, literally, and he would remain a lion until his anger abated, which often took hours. Sometimes even days. It had always been uncomfortable to watch.

Especially when the king decided to use somebody as a chew toy.

“All right, so he can’t control it,” Edward acquiesced. “But that would mean that Jane would only have a husband by night. What kind of marriage would that be?”

“Some people would prefer such an arrangement. I know my life would be a lot simpler if I only had to attend to my wife in the hours between dusk and dawn,” said Dudley with a weak laugh.

It would hardly be like having a marriage at all, thought Edward. But for someone like Jane, such a marriage could afford her a sense of privacy and the independence she was accustomed to.

It could be ideal.

“Is he handsome?” he asked. Dudley’s other son, Stan, had suffered the misfortune of inheriting his father ’s eagle nose. Edward hated the idea of marrying Jane off to that nose.

Dudley’s thin lips tightened. “Gifford is a bit too easy on the eye for his own good, I’m afraid. He tends to attract . . . attention from the ladies.”

Jealousy pricked at Edward. He gazed up once more at the portrait of his father. He resembled Henry; he knew that. They had the same reddish-gold hair and the same straight, majestic nose, the same gray eyes, bracketed by the same smallish ears. Edward had been considered handsome once, but now he was thin and pale, washed out from his bout with the illness.

“ . . . but he will be faithful, of that I can assure you,” Dudley was blathering on. “And when he and Jane produce a son, you will have your E∂ian heir. Problem solved.”

Just like that. Problem solved.

Edward rubbed his forehead. “And when should this wedding take place?”

“Saturday, I think,” answered Dudley. “Assuming you approve of the match.”

Edward had a coughing fit.

It was Monday now.

“That soon?” he wheezed when he could breathe again.

“The sooner the better,” Dudley said. “We need an heir.”

Right. Edward cleared his throat. “Very well, then. I approve the match. But Saturday . . .” That seemed awfully soon. “I don’t even know what my schedule looks like on Saturday. I’ll need to consult—”

“I’ve already checked, Your Majesty. You’re free. Besides, the ceremony must take place after sundown,” added Dudley.

“Right. Because in the daytime, he’s . . .” Edward made a faint whinnying noise.

“Yes.” Dudley produced a scroll of parchment and unrolled it on the desk upon which all the official court documents were signed and sealed.

“I bet you spend a fortune on hay,” Edward said, finding his smirk at last. He inspected the scroll.

It was a royal decree—his permission, technically speaking—that Lady Jane Grey of Suffolk be wed, on this Saturday hence, to Lord Gifford Dudley of North-umberland.

His smirk faded.

Jane.

Of course it had been a fantasy, this notion he’d had of marrying Jane himself. She had very little in the way of political capital—a rich family, to be sure, a title, but nothing that would truly strengthen the position of the kingdom. Edward had always known that he was supposed to marry for England, not himself. All his life he’d had a constant stream of foreign ambassadors trotting out the portraits of the daughters of the various European royalty for him to peruse. He was meant to marry a princess.

Not little Jane with her books and her big ideas.

Dudley put a quill in his hand. “We must consider the good of the country, Your Highness. I’ll ride for Dudley Castle tonight to fetch him.”

Edward dipped the quill in the ink but then stopped. “I need you to swear that he will be good to her.”

“I swear it, Your Majesty. He’ll be a model husband.”

Edward coughed again into the handkerchief Dudley had given him. There was that funny taste in

his mouth, something sickly sweet that mixed badly with the lingering blackberries.

“I’m marrying off my cousin to a horse,” he muttered.

Then he put the quill to the paper, sighed, and signed his name.

Jane

“And the blessed event will take place Saturday night.”

Lady Jane Grey blinked up from her book. Her mother, Lady Frances Brandon Grey, had been speaking. “What’s happening Saturday night?”

“Stand still, dear.” Lady Frances pinched Jane’s arm. “We need to make sure these measurements

are perfect. There won’t be time for alterations.”

Jane was already holding her book as still as possible, and at arm’s length. A feat of strength for someone who could wrap her own fingers around her upper arm.

“Note the bust hasn’t changed a smidge,” said the seamstress to her assistant. “Probably never will, at this rate.”

In another feat, this one of self-restraint, Jane did not smack the woman’s head with her book.

Because the book was old and valuable: The Unabridged History of the Beet in England: Volume Five.

She didn’t want to damage it. “All right, but what’s happening Saturday night?”

“Arms down now,” said the seamstress.

Jane lowered her arms, marking her place in her book with her index finger.

Her mother plucked the book from her hand, tossed the precious tome of beets onto the bed, and

adjusted Jane’s shoulders. “Stand straight. You’ll want this gown to hang correctly. You won’t be carrying your books during the wedding, after all.”

“Wedding?” Mild curiosity edged into her tone as she leaned to one side to look at her mother around the seamstress. “Who’s getting married?”

“Jane!”

Jane snapped straight again.

The seamstress noted the final measurements of Jane’s hips (poor for childbearing—another of Jane’s failures) and gathered her supplies. “We’re finished now, my ladies. Have a good afternoon!”

She fled the sitting room in a flurry of cloth and needles.

Lady Frances pinched Jane’s shoulder. “You’re getting married, my dear. Pay attention.”

Jane’s heart immediately began to beat faster, but she told herself not to worry. It was only an engagement, after all. She’d been engaged before. Four times, as a matter of fact.

“To whom am I engaged this time?” she asked.

Lady Frances smiled, mistaking Jane’s reaction for acceptance. “To Gifford Dudley.”

“Gifford who?”

The smile turned into a frown. “The younger son of Lord John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.

Gifford.”

Well, Jane knew of the Dudleys. Though the family itself was fairly minor as far as noble houses went, known more for the prize horses they bred and sold, there was one other interesting fact: John

Dudley was the president of the High Privy Council, the right hand of the king, a trusted advisor and perhaps the most powerful man in England, aside from Edward himself. And some might argue that

point, too.

“I see,” she said at last, though she had never encountered this Gifford fellow at court. That seemed suspicious. “Well, I’m sure he’ll be just as wonderful as the other fiancés were.”

“Do you have any questions?”

Jane shook her head. “I’ve heard all I need. It’s only an engagement, after all.”

“The wedding is on Saturday, darling.” Her mother looked annoyed. “At the Dudleys’ London home. We leave tomorrow morning.”

Saturday. That . . . was soon. Much sooner than she’d expected. Of course she’d heard Saturday before, but she hadn’t actually thought about how soon it was, or internalized what that might mean for her.

This wedding might actually happen. Her heart started to beat fast again.

“It is my greatest wish for you to be happily married before you’re too old for it.” Lady Frances didn’t clarify whether “too old for it” meant happy or married. “Anyway, I think you’ll like this one. I hear he’s a handsome creature.”

So Lady Frances hadn’t seen him, either. Jane felt a chill. And with the likelihood of him inheriting the Dudley nose—

Jane recalled the seamstress’s comments about her bust. And the fact that she had unsightly red hair and was so slight of stature that she was sometimes mistaken for a child. Maybe she shouldn’t judge. Looks, after all, should not decide the worth of a person. But that terrible nose . . .

“Thank you for warning me, Mother,” she called as her mother swept out of the room.

Her mother didn’t answer, of course. Too much to do before Saturday.

Saturday. That was four days away.

Jane got dressed quickly. Then she grabbed her book about beets, chose a second and third book

( E∂ians: Historical Figures and Their Downfall and Wilderness Survival for Courtiers) just in case she finished the first, and headed out to the stables. If this Gifford person was going to be her husband (but a lot of things could happen between now and Saturday, she reminded herself), then she had a right to know exactly what she was getting herself into.

Over the years, Jane had studied every map of England, both historical and modern, and that included more localized maps of the kingdom. And so she knew that Dudley Castle, where the Dudleys resided when they weren’t in London, was a little more than a half a day’s ride from Jane’s home at Bradgate.

She could have simply ridden her horse to Dudley Castle, but violence was on the rise in the kingdom and the countryside was reportedly dangerous to travel alone and unguarded. (The household staff said E∂ians were responsible for the disorder—some group called the Pack—but Jane refused to believe these awful rumors.) The last thing she needed on top of this sudden marriage announcement was to get caught in some kind of scuffle. So in the interest of safety (and not enraging her mother), she ordered a carriage to drive her to Dudley.

All she needed was to check on the nose situation.

It was a lovely day. The rolling hills that surrounded Bradgate were bright with early summer.

Trees were in bloom. Sunlight glimmered off the stream that burbled alongside the road. The red brick of the manor gleamed invitingly behind her on a small rise. Deer leapt away as the carriage rattled along, while birds sang pretty songs.

Jane liked London; there were benefits to staying there, of course, one being close proximity to

her cousin Edward. But Bradgate Park was her home. She loved the fresh air, the blue sky, the old oak trees standing on distant knolls. Her grandfather had intended the park to be the best deer-hunting ground in all of England—and it was, so it frequently received prestigious royal visitors, but that hardly mattered to Jane. (She didn’t hunt, though Edward was quite good, she’d heard.) To Jane, walking through Bradgate Park was the second-best way to escape any problem of Real Life.

The first-best way, of course, was through books. So as she left Bradgate behind, she allowed herself to become enraptured by the unabridged history of beets. (Did you know the ancient Romans were the first to cultivate the beet for the root, rather than just the greens?)

Jane, as we mentioned earlier, loved books. There was nothing she relished more than the weight of a hefty tome in her hands, each beautiful volume of knowledge as rare and wonderful and fascinating as the last. She delighted in the smell of the ink, the rough feel of the paper between her fingers, the rustle of sweet pages, the shapes of the letters before her eyes. And most of all, she loved the way that books could transport her from her otherwise mundane and stifling life and offer the experiences of a hundred other lives. Through books she could see the world.

Not that her mother would ever understand this, Jane thought after she finished the last page of her beet book and closed it with a sigh. While Lord Grey had encouraged her studies when he’d been alive, Lady Frances had never accepted Jane’s hunger for knowledge. What could a young lady possibly need to know, she’d often said, besides how to secure herself a husband? All that Jane’s mother ever cared for was influence and affluence. She loved nothing more than to remind people that she was of royal blood—“My grandmother was a queen,” she was fond of saying, over and over and over again. Too bad that the late King Henry had written Lady Frances out of the line of succession years ago. Probably because he just didn’t like her attitude.

Power and money. That was all that mattered to Lady Frances. And now she was selling off her own daughter the way one barters a prized mare. Without so much as asking her.

Typical.

Jane shook away the familiar resentment toward her mother and put her book aside, cringing at a bend in one corner, likely sustained when Lady Frances had abducted the book and hurled it to the bed. The poor book. It didn’t deserve to be hurt just because Jane had to get married.

Married. Uck.

She wished people would stop trying to marry her off. It was such a bother.

Jane’s first engagement had been to the son of a silk merchant. Humphrey Hangrot had been his

name, and since Hangrot Silk had been the only silk merchant in all of England, they controlled the prices. Humphrey’s parents were not shy about reminding the Grey family of their exciting new wealth. Most notably this was done by draping their stick-figure son in layers and layers of their most expensive brocade available. Jane had lost count of the number of balls she’d been forced to attend at the Hangrot family home; she’d survived by always having a book in hand.

As for Humphrey, he’d introduced himself to her as the “future king . . . of silk,” and instructed her to touch his sleeve. No, really touch it. Feel it. Had she ever beheld such fine cloth? She’d asked him if he realized the worms were boiled in their own cocoons in order to degum the silk, and he refused to speak to her after that. The engagement had dissolved thanks to the sudden arrival of a second silk merchant, one who was willing to undercut Hangrot Silk’s prices enough to take all of their business, which led to the immediate destitution of the family. No one, it turned out, wanted to pay Hangrot Silk’s outrageous prices, and the family retreated to a small home in the country where they faded from the public memory.

The second engagement had been to Theodore Tagler, a virtuoso violinist from France. He’d

been touring England with the Oceanous Orchestra when his family came to visit London. Several highborn families had heard about the Taglers’ desire to find a wife for their son—a lady of refined taste and good family, and who wouldn’t mind her husband’s long absences, should she decide not to accompany him on tour. Lord and Lady Grey had immediately suggested Jane—they were still trying to recover from the Hangrot scandal—and the match was approved.

Jane had a fair ear for music and enjoyed many sonatas, minuets, and symphonies. She even liked the occasional opera—her favorites being the tragedies in which the lovers both died in the end as punishment for a small act of mercy—but she hadn’t been fond of her new fiancé’s style of playing, which she found rather boisterous. Theodore himself turned out to be rather boisterous as well. The saying “bull in a china shop” came to mind. How he’d been able to handle such a delicate instrument had been a mystery to her, and it had been the instrument that dissolved this engagement as swiftly as the last.

The violin, a one-of-a-kind Belmoorus from the late violin maker Beaufort Belmoor, had been stolen. Snatched. Thieved. Taken from its place in the home of Beaufort Belmoor ’s children. It had been tracked across France and through Spain, all the way to England. The “owner” who’d loaned the violin to Theodore Tagler—as all non-musician owners of instruments do to ensure their possessions are played regularly—had been arrested and, in spite of Theodore’s innocence in the matter, he and his family had also gone into immediate destitution.

The third engagement had been to Walter Williamson, the grandson of a famous but reclusive inventor, though what it was he had invented was said to be a state secret. If it hadn’t been for the whole marriage thing, Jane wouldn’t have minded Walter; he appeared intelligent and well read, and spoke often of the legacy his grandfather had left. He, too, had aspirations of invention. It was in his blood, he said, not that he had ever shown a hint of creativity.

Only a month into the engagement, papers were released revealing Walter ’s grandfather had been a thief, imprisoned these last fifteen years. Public regard of the Williamson family plummeted, and (as you can surmise) the result was immediate destitution.

And the fourth engagement—well, the young man turned out not to exist. Jane’s mother (for Jane’s father had died between the third and fourth engagements) had received a miniature painting of a handsome fellow, not realizing it had been a sample work—an advertisement for the artist’s skills.

And while Jane’s mother was typically intelligent, she’d been desperate to marry Jane off to someone by now, and had misunderstood the note accompanying the miniature. “I present to you an opportunity fit for someone of Lady Jane’s rank” had meant the skill of the artist, not the imaginary—though incredibly handsome—fellow in the painting. Her mother had announced the acceptance of the proposal before the artist could write back to inquire about travel for Jane’s portrait and a reminder that his fee was non-refundable.

In a fit of anger and embarrassment, Lady Frances told a revised story in which she was the victim of a vicious prank—and so soon after her own husband’s tragic death. This time it was the artist who fell into immediate destitution.

It seemed that agreeing to marry Lady Jane was a very risky business.

If her track record with fiancés was anything to go by, Gifford Dudley’s days—and the days of his family’s prosperity—were numbered.

She almost felt sorry for him.

Jane picked up the second book, the one about E∂ians, and traced the word with her forefinger.

What she wouldn’t give to have an animal form. Something no one would dare to bother or force weddings upon, like a bear. But if being an E∂ian was hereditary, as many people insisted, then the

trait had skipped her. (No one was supposed to know, but Jane had once overheard her parents arguing about her mother ’s E∂ian magic.) And if the gift was bestowed on the worthy (another popular hypothesis, though less scientific), all her efforts to be so deserving had fallen woefully short.

In the distance, a castle jutted into the sky at the top of a steep hill. A bustling village huddled at the base, the villagers stopping to gawk as the carriage passed through the town gates and began the slow climb up. Jane admired the castle’s towering keep (built in the eleventh century, if she knew her architectural history, which of course she did) with its beautiful white stone and narrow, slitted windows. It looked like a very defendable place, she thought, almost ominously so. Like the owners expected an attack at any moment.

The carriage had to pass through three more gates and over a moat before they reached the central courtyard, where the driver stopped outside the elegant castle apartments. These were a new, more modern addition, clearly, with peaked roofs and many windows. The whole place seemed like

the look-don’t-touch kind of home. Perfectly manicured. Never enjoyed.

Jane scanned the dozens of windows for movement, but all was quiet, save the horses loitering in the wide field on the far side of the castle.

So these were the prize horses Lord Dudley bragged about so much.

She hopped out of the carriage and walked toward a closed gate to look at them.

All the horses were fine creatures with sleek coats and spindle-thin legs. But the best among them was a beautiful stallion on the other side of the field. His muscles rippled as he thundered across the grass, his head high and ears alert. He thrashed his head so his mane streamed back in the wind, the sun gleaming off his chestnut coat. He was simply magnificent. While, true, her experience with horses was generally limited to the gentle and well-mannered geldings appropriate for a lady, Jane thought she had never seen a horse more worthy of the constant bragging.

How amazing it would be, she imagined then, to live as a horse. The ability to run like that, to fly across the ground on those strong, powerful legs. No one nagging her, pinching her, commenting on what a small, insignificant person she was.

What she wouldn’t give for the ability to change into a horse and escape not just this engagement, but everything that was wrong with her life.

“My lady,” came a man’s voice from behind her. “May I help you with something?”

Jane turned and craned her neck, first noting that the gentleman who stopped beside her was a well-dressed fellow. Then she finished looking up.

There it was.

The nose.

Truly, it was a great, arching eagle nose that would enter a room five whole seconds before the rest of him did. (It may help the reader to recall the long-nosed plague doctor mask that would appear in the next several decades. It is said the design of those beaked masks was actually inspired by the Dudley nose, though never within a Dudley heir ’s hearing.)

God’s teeth! What if this was Gifford?

“I’m here to visit Lord Gifford Dudley,” she said hesitantly, catching herself as she addressed the nose. But it was right over her. It was hard to avoid. She took a measured step backward in hopes she’d be able to meet his eyes.

“Ah.” The man smiled knowingly. “You’re here to visit my brother.”

Whew. This nose—rather, this man—wasn’t Gifford, but Stan Dudley, the older brother who sometimes accompanied his father to court. (Not that Jane paid much attention at court; she had so

many books to read.) But what if Gifford’s nose was worse?

She clutched her books to her stomach and considered prayer. Would praying for a decent-size nose be considered sacrilege?

“Yes. I’d like to see Gifford now.”

“I’m afraid he’s unavailable. He’s, uh, busy with the horses.” Stan glanced at the pasture, but if Gifford was out there, Jane couldn’t see him. The only creatures were the horses, who’d moved to a new spot of grass.

“He won’t receive me?”

“Not right now.”

This was infuriating. She wanted to at least lay eyes upon her intended before they were to be wed.

Was that so much to ask?

Stan turned his head, momentarily blocking the sun with his nose. “I see you’re upset. I’m terribly sorry, but you know my brother never has time for ladies until after dark.”

Ladies . . . plural?

Sir Nose went on: “You must be . . . Anne? Frederica? Janette?”

Jane blinked at him. “I’m sorry? Who?”

Stan crossed his arms and inspected her more closely. “Red hair. That is unusual. I can’t recall my brother mentioning one of his ladies was a redhead.”

“One of his ladies?” she managed to squeak.

“Surely you didn’t think you were the only one. But I’d thought he usually preferred brunettes.

Taller. With more . . . shape.”

Jane gasped. This was outrageous. Who did this Stan fellow think he was? Why, Jane was of royal blood (her great grandmother was a queen, after all), cousin and friend to Edward VI. She had the king’s ear, and it would not be long until that royal auricle heard all about the rude, impolite, presumptuous, rotten man—

She was saying none of this out loud, she realized. Instead she was standing there, slack-jawed, while the mouth beneath the Dudley nose continued to guess her name. There were so many names. At least one for every letter of the alphabet. Did Gifford have relations with all of these women? Or was Stan simply being mean?

“All right,” Stan said. “I give up. I’ll tell him you came by, if you tell me who you are.”

She mustered the strongest tone she could. “I am Lady Jane Grey. His fiancé.”

Stan went still for a moment, and then hurried into a bow. “Oh, I see. My lady. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize. I should never have said all those things. It’s just you have such red hair for a highborn.

I mean . . . I would never have mentioned the other ladies. Because there are no other ladies.

Anywhere. In the world. Except my wife. And you. Gifford will be a faithful and loyal husband to you.

Like a dog! Well, not like a dog.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything—”

Jane just glared at him. Well, at his nose. It was hard to see much else.

“Please accept my sincerest apologies, my lady.” Stan Dudley made several feeble attempts at reparation, mumbled something about leaving her to her thoughts—which were surely as pure as the whitest blossoms of the most virginal tree—and then he was gone.

So. Her husband-to-be was a philanderer. A smooth operator. A debaucher. A rake. A frisker. (Jane became something of a walking thesaurus when she was upset, a side effect of too much reading.) No wonder no one had seen him, since the libertine was too busy with the horses during the day—

allegedly—and too busy with the strumpets at night.

This was not acceptable.

Jane stomped back to her carriage. She imagined all the things she would say to Gifford, Edward, her mother, and whoever else had arranged this marriage for her. Angry, angry things.

She’d thought this engagement would ruin Gifford’s life. But for the first time (in, perhaps, ever), she’d been wrong: the engagement to Lord Gifford Dudley would ruin her life.

Unless she put a stop to it.

Jane straightened her spine. She was not going to marry Gifford Dudley. (And what kind of name

was Gifford Dudley, anyway? Honestly!) Not Saturday. Not ever.

Gifford (call him G!)

The worst part about waking up when the sun went down was the distinct grassy taste of hay in his mouth, an unfortunate side effect of actually having hay in his mouth. But the affliction of unwanted-hay-in-the-mouth-itis (or “hay-mouth” as his mother referred to it, like someone else would refer to morning breath) was not to be avoided when one ended each day as an undomesticated horse and began each night as an undomesticated man.

Almost man, his mother would say. At nineteen years of age, he was almost a man. Definitely undomesticated.

As he pushed himself into a crouching position, and then into a standing position, G (please call him G, and avoid referring to him by his terrible given name, Gifford Dudley, the second—and therefore insignificant—son of Lord John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland) stretched out his haunches, which were now hips.

He reflected on this morning’s jaunt across the countryside. He’d gone northwest this time, running at a flat-out canter over green hills and lush forests for hours before he had to search for water. There was nothing, he imagined, that could compete with the feeling of a life without boundaries or borders, and the wind running through his hair. Mane.

He hadn’t asked for this power. (If he had, he definitely would’ve requested the ability to control it as well, even though it would be rather missing the point for a curse to come with an on/off switch.) Still, there was an upside to it. He belonged to no one. (Who would want a half horse/half man?) He could pick a spot on a map and then go there the next time the sun was up. (Provided his horse brain remembered the way. G would argue that horses were not known for their sense of direction, instead of the likelihood that he—even as a man—could get lost in his own closet.) Best of all, he had no human-ish responsibilities.

After the freedom he enjoyed during his days, nightfall was usually a bit of a letdown. G searched out the pail of water his servant always left for him in the corner, and once he spotted it he galloped over (in a human way, but probably resembling a horse more than any other human could) and ladled a cupful of water into his mouth.

The transformation always left him dehydrated, and tonight he needed his wits about him. Due to an entirely nighttime existence, there were only so many activities in which the human G could participate. With the casual, often brash way G spoke, and his general rambunctious demeanor, it was easy for his parents to assume he spent his human hours in the boudoirs of questionable ladies or getting tipsy in brothels. Lady Dudley was often overheard lamenting, “That boy and his dalliances . . .

What are we to do?”

G let them believe that; in fact, he often boasted of his conquests with different ladies in order to play along. If they thought he was something of a Casanova (although they of course couldn’t equate

him to the literal Casanova, who wouldn’t be born for another two hundred years), it left G the freedom to do as he pleased. Besides, the truth of how he spent his nights was far more humiliating.

He would rather his parents believed he was carousing with the ladies.

A sharp knock sounded on the stable door.

“My lord?” Billingsly called from the other side.

“Yes,” G said, trying to shake the whinny out of his voice like someone else would clear his throat in the morning.

“Your trousers.”

The stable door opened just wide enough for an arm covered in the blue of the steward uniform to extend through, holding a pair of trousers.

“Thank you, Billingsly.” G took the pants and stepped into them as Billingsly set the rest of his clothes on a wooden table so the hay wouldn’t besmirch the young lord’s ensemble.

“And, my lord, your father would like a word with you when you are appropriately attired.”

“My father?” G said, alarmed. “He’s returned to the castle?”

“Yes, my lord,” Billingsly said.

G fastened the buttons on the front of his jacket and pulled on his tall leather boots. “Please tell my father I am otherwise occupied. I have . . . plans.”

Billingsly cleared his throat. “I’m afraid, my lord, your father was rather insistent. You’ll have to reschedule your . . . um . . . po—”

“Billingsly!” G cut off his servant as the heat rose in his cheeks. “I thought we had an agreement that we would never mention the . . . thing . . . outside of . . . the place.”

“I’m sorry, my lord. But I couldn’t recall your requested code word for it.”

G closed his eyes and sighed. Billingsly had only recently discovered the true nature of G’s secret night outings and had been convinced (cough, bribed) not to tell G’s parents. “Dalliances, Billingsly.

My dalliances.”

“Right, my lord. Your dalliances will have to wait, because your mother requests your company

as well. She is with your father in the drawing room.”

His father and his mother both here at the estate, in the same room, and summoning him? This sounded rather serious. Yes, his father occasionally requested G’s company to discuss his future, his equestrian curse, his inheritance (or lack thereof, considering he was the second son), his desire for more comfortable hoof-wear and a blacksmith who could keep his mouth shut. But his mother rarely participated in these discussions. She was more at ease in a nurturing role, like giving him sartorial advice or fixing his hair (or mane, depending on the position of the sun in the sky).

G looked at Billingsly. “It’s not Christmas, is it?”

“It’s May, my lord.”

“Somebody’s birthday?”

“No, my lord.”

“Somebody died?” For a moment, he let himself believe it might have been his perfect older brother, Stan, who had died, leaving behind his perfect wife and their perfect son, but then he realized Stan never made mistakes, and leaving behind a family due to an untimely death would most certainly be considered bad form. In addition, then G would be responsible for marrying and heiring. He shuddered at the thought.

“Not that I am aware of, my lord,” answered Billingsly.

G pressed his noble lips together and blew, a sound that was all horse.

“Shall I translate that to mean you are in compliance?”

G closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“Very good, my lord.”

What G wouldn’t give at this moment to be able to change into a horse at will. Then he could put fifty miles between himself and his father ’s nose. (He would probably need forty-nine of those miles just to get out from under the sniffer.)

Twilight transformed into deep dusk as G made the trek up from the stables to the side door of the apartments. His mind was galloping at breakneck speed wondering what his parents wanted to speak to him about.

From the time he was old enough to sit at the supper table, he’d been aware of his inferior position in the family. Stan always got served before G—the main course and all the side dishes.

When their father introduced the two of them, it was always, “This is Stan, the next Duke of Northumberland, heir to the Dudley fortune.” Long pause. “Oh, and this is my other son, Stan’s brother.”

Here, your narrators will point out two facts that may have contributed to the Duke of Northumberland’s embarrassment surrounding his second son. One: the E∂ian power was widely considered to be hereditary, and neither the duke nor his supposedly devoted wife had the magic.

Two: the duke had an epic nose, the proportions of which were legendary; Gifford’s nose was the perfect size, and the shape could’ve been the inspiration of sonnets.

The combination of these two details made the duke often glance sideways toward his wife, and

repeatedly treat Gifford as if he wasn’t there.

That was why at the age of thirteen, Gifford had requested his name be reduced to just G, since nobody seemed to care what his name was anyway.

Billingsly led G from the side entrance down the third main hall, where G caught a glimpse of himself in a hanging mirror and paused to fish a stray piece of hay out of his chestnut-colored hair.

His mother had strict rules of civility inside the castle, the most important of which was, “All signs of equestrian escapades are to be left in the stable, where they belong.”

His mother had always approached his curse as if G wanted to spend his days as a quadruped. As

if it were just another way for a privileged teenage boy to rebel. She often forgot that he didn’t ask for this curse, and that if he could find a way to control it, he would give Billingsly’s right arm for that information.

As if he could hear G’s thoughts, Billingsly pulled his right arm in front of his body, and away from G’s line of sight.

“In here, my lord,” he said as he swung open the doors of the drawing room, using his left arm.

Inside the room, his father sat behind an ornate wooden desk, his mother, Gertrude, standing behind him. Her hand rested on Lord Dudley’s shoulder as if they were posing for a portrait. His little sister, Temperance, was on the couch, playing with her knights-and-ladies doll set.

“Giffy!” she said when she saw him enter the room. Tempie was the only one in the world who

could get away with calling him Giffy.

“Hi, Curly,” G answered, for Tempie had the curliest blond tresses in all of England.

“Ah, son,” Lord Dudley said. He motioned to a woman standing in the corner, Tempie’s nurse, who immediately took hold of the little girl’s hand and led her from the room. Tempie waved awkwardly as she balanced her dolls and held her nurse’s hand. “Thank you for joining us with such haste.”

“Father,” G answered with a slight bow of his head, although now he knew something must be wrong, because “joining with haste” was the best compliment his father had given him in two years.

(His previous compliment had been in recognition of “keeping to the background” when Rafael Amador, the emissary from Spain, was visiting.)

“We have some excellent tidings for you,” his father continued. Gertrude stood a little taller at this. “And for your future happiness.”

Uh-oh, thought G. Future happiness was always code for—

“You have grown into a fine young man, and a stout, er, stallion,” his father said. “We may not have a handle on controlling the equestrian situation, but this minor daily divergence from humanity does not preclude you from leading a relatively normal life, nor will it strip you of the rights and privileges afforded any nobleman.”

First of all, G was annoyed that neither of his parents could tell it like it was and use the phrase

“horse curse,” instead referring to it as his “equestrian condition” or a “minor daily divergence from humanity” or some such nonsense. But the more worrisome part of his father ’s speech was the bit about the “rights and privileges afforded any nobleman.” Because this could only mean—

“Marriage, son,” Lord Dudley said. “Marriage to a well-vetted and—as far as can be anticipated

without being tested—fertile young lady, of excellent lineage and equally verifiable family connections.”

G’s worst fears come true. “Wow, Father. Fertile and well vetted? You make it sound so very romantic.”

At this point, Lady Gertrude moved her hand from her husband’s shoulder and placed it on the back of his neck, as if to prove a showing of such ardent affection was indeed possible in forced marriages. “Darling boy, if left to your own devices, I fear you would never marry.”

“I thought that fact was already established and agreed upon,” G said. A month after he’d first begun to turn into a horse, he’d overheard his mother lament to his father that no self-respecting lady would want a half horse for a husband. And then his father had said his chances would’ve been better had he been a horse both day and night, and skipped the human part entirely. Then perhaps his parents could sell him and receive some compensation for all their trouble.

G had gone out and slept in the barn after that.

Now, in the drawing room, Lord Dudley shook off his wife’s hand as if he were shooing away a

pesky insect. “It is my wish for all of my children to marry.”

“Why? You don’t need heirs from me,” G said. “I’m second son.”

“Which is why I have invested the last fortnight securing your happiness—”

“You mean, arranging for me to wed a perfect stranger,” G interjected. “Well, thanks but no thanks, Father.”

A vein G had never noticed before popped out on Lord Dudley’s forehead. “I am securing your

happiness and thus ensuring your future and your own estate and a fortune for future generations of Dudley men and you will get married and father a son or two or seven before you turn into a horse forever, is that understood?”

G backed up a step, partly to avoid Lord Dudley’s increasingly airborne spittle and partly because he did not know turning into a horse forever was even a possibility, although he had to admit the freedom of galloping far away and blending in with the wild horses of the Cornwall region sounded tempting when compared to impending nuptials. It wasn’t like he wanted to spend the rest of his life alone. Marriage had its merits, he supposed. But what kind of husband could he make? His parents’

own marriage had taught him that when there is no great love in the beginning, better acquaintance would only lead to more contempt.

Besides, what woman would marry him once she found out the truth?

“But Father—”

“You’re getting married, or I’ll have you gelded, so help me, I will,” Lord Dudley ground out.

“And what is the name of my dearly intended?” G asked.

This response seemed to calm Lord Dudley a degree. “Lady Jane Grey.”

“Lady Jane Grey?” G hoped he had heard his father wrong. He hadn’t been present in court for

several years now, but he knew of Jane. Her reputation preceded her.

The book girl.

“Lady Jane Grey. Daughter of Lady Frances Brandon Grey. First cousin once removed to King Edward.”

Lady Gertrude leaned forward. “What do you think, my boy?”

G took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly. “I’m thinking lots of things. Like the fact that the lady’s face has rarely been seen because it’s usually buried in a book.”

“You’ve never opposed the education of a lady before,” his mother said.

“And I am still not opposed to it. But what if she is merely using the Second Volume of the Political History of England to cover up some hideous malformation on her face?”

“Gifford!” his father said.

G’s mouth snapped shut at the sound of his given name.

“Your sharp wit will get you nowhere.” Lord Dudley flared his nostrils and exhaled—a move that

nearly produced a windstorm. “My boy. It sounds as if you are under the delusion that this match is merely a suggestion.” His lips disappeared into his beard, as they did when Lord Dudley was upset.

“Believe me when I tell you the negotiations behind this match have been arduous and delicate, and your romantic notions of lifelong bachelorhood will not be humored.” He stood and put his fists knuckle-down on the desk, the top of his head reaching the mouth of the stuffed bear carcass hanging on the wall, caught in mid-roar. “Let me repeat. YOU WILL MARRY THE LADY JANE GREY!”

His voice echoed off the walls. Nobody moved for fear of disturbing the beast further.

Lord Dudley unclenched his fists and walked over to G. “Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials, son. I’m sure you will be very happy.”

“Thank you, Father,” G said through clenched teeth. “One last thing. Does Lady Jane know about .

. . the equestrian situation?” G couldn’t believe he’d resorted to using a phrase his father would use, as if the upcoming marriage had suddenly made him more ashamed of his curse.

Lord Dudley put his arm around his son, but it was only so he could escort him from the room.

“It matters not,” he said, and closed the door in G’s face.

It matters not. What was that supposed to mean? That she knew about it and it was of no concern to her? Or she didn’t know, and it wouldn’t matter just as long as she repeated her vows before sunup?

Billingsly met G near the side entrance of the great estate.

“Your overcoat, my lord. I have your horse waiting to take you to your . . . dalliances.”

G rolled his eyes. Every time Billingsly used the code word dalliances, it sounded so suspicious.

Maybe he should have come up with a different word. And yet, dalliances had a certain cadence to it.

If he thought about it hard enough, he was sure he could incorporate it into his performance tonight.

Dalliances. Dalliances. What rhymed with dalliances? G concentrated as he put his left foot into the stirrup and hoisted himself onto the back of his horse, Westley. Valients . . . es? Balances?

He was lost inside his own head, searching for rhymes, when Stan passed him on his way down

the road from the castle.

“Brother,” Stan said by way of greeting.

When G had asked Stan to call him G instead of Gifford, Stan had resorted to calling him the even more generic “brother.”

“Good evening, Stan,” G said.

“Where are you off to?”

G’s heart rate increased. His brother was rarely curious about G’s comings and goings. Maybe Stan knew about the wedding, which would give G more consequence in Stan’s mind. Or maybe he

was just making small talk. Either way, the scrutiny wasn’t welcome.

“Um . . . I’m off to . . . dalliant.”

Stan tilted his head.

“To do the dalliant. To be dalliant.” God’s teeth. He’d never really investigated how to use the word, and the only times he’d heard it uttered were in the form of one or both of his parents saying something like, “There he goes again. That boy and his many dalliances . . .”

“I have plans,” G said. “That may or may not involve dalliancing.”

Stan nodded. “Perhaps it will be a redheaded girl this time. A short one. With brown eyes. Would you fancy a girl like that?”

“I’m not generally picky,” G answered cautiously. “It’s just a dalliance, after all.”

“Right. Well, carry on.”

“Thank you,” G said. “Good night, Stan.”

He put his head down and urged his horse into a smooth canter. At this point, he could not afford any more distractions or impediments. He held his lantern as steady as he could, but he didn’t need much light for this journey. It was simply a turn to the right, then to the left, then two rights, then a slight right, then a hairpin left, then up the hill, then over the bridge, then a sharp left, and you were there. G could’ve done it with his eyes closed.

By the time G tied his horse outside the Shark’s Fin Inn, the moon was high. He could already hear the raucous crowd inside cheering and hissing and shouting oaths and clanging goblets. He checked in with the barkeep, signing his name as John Billingsly, and then took a stool at a table with four other men, who had clearly already downed multiple flagons of ale.

“Back again for more, are ye?” said the man with the bushiest beard.

G ignored him and placed his hand over his vest pocket, feeling for his latest work, “The Ecstasy of Eating Greenery.” Then he reached down and felt for the dagger at his hip.

Public poetry readings were known to be a rough business, especially when presenting new material. A man could lose a lot more than just his pride.

Edward

When you were dying, Edward quickly discovered, people would let you do pretty much whatever you wanted. So he made some new unofficial decrees:

1. The king was allowed to sleep in as long as he wished.

2. The king no longer had to wear seven layers of elaborate, jewel-encrusted clothing. Or silly hats with feathers. Or pants that resembled pumpkins. Or tights. From now on, unless it was a

special occasion, he was fine in just a simple shirt and trousers.

3. Dessert was to be served first. Blackberry pie, preferably. With whipped cream.

4. The king would no longer be taking part in any more dreary studies. His fine tutors had filled his head with enough history, politics and philosophy to last him two lifetimes, and as he was

unlikely to get even half of one lifetime, there was no more need for study. No more lessons,

he decided. No more books. No more tutors’ dirty looks.

5. The king was now going to reside in the top of the southeast turret, where he could sit in the window ledge and gaze out at the river for as long as he liked.

6. No one at court would be allowed to say the following words or phrases: affliction, illness, malady, sickness, disease, disorder, ailment, infirmity, convalescence, indisposition, malaise, plight, plague, poor health, failing health, what’s going around, or your condition. Most of all, no one was allowed to say the word dying.

And finally (and perhaps most importantly, for the sake of our story)

7. Dogs would now be allowed inside the palace. More specifically, his dog.

Edward had always loved dogs. Dogs were uncomplicated. They loved you without expectation.

They were devoted and loyal, not because you were the king and you could have their heads chopped off if they displeased you, but because it was in their nature to be so. Most of the time he greatly preferred the company of dogs to the company of men.

Edward’s favorite dog was named Pet, short for Petunia. She was the best kind of dog, a large Afghan hound with flowing, wheat-colored hair and long, silky ears. Pet was warm and soft and goofy and always good for a laugh. And so for the past few days, simply because Edward said so, Pet had been allowed in the throne room, the dining hall, the council chambers, and his newly arranged bedchamber in the turret. Wherever the king went, so too went Pet.

His sister Mary, for the record, did not approve of dogs in the castle. It was undignified. It was unsanitary.

Bess was allergic. (Plus she was more of a cat person.)

But neither one of them could really protest, because their brother was dying, and how does one deny the wishes of a dying king?

So it was that on Friday morning, after breakfasting on blackberry pie and whipped cream, Edward was lounging on the throne in a shirt and pants, not even wearing his crown, with Pet’s head resting on his lap. He was scratching behind one of her silky ears, and Pet’s hind leg was moving in time to his scratching, because she couldn’t help herself. Mary was in the corner, muttering something about fleas. Bess was sniffling into a handkerchief. Lord Dudley, having just returned from his trip to his country estate to fetch his son, was sitting in a much smaller chair on Edward’s right, reading over some official-looking document, a pair of spectacles (or the early predecessor of what we think of as spectacles) perched on the landscape of his nose.

That’s when Edward heard the indignant footfalls ringing on the stone in the outer corridor and the familiar, high-pitched voice demanding, “No, I must speak with the king, now, please,” but before the steward even had a chance to announce, “Lady Jane Grey, Your Majesty,” which was protocol when someone was about to enter the king’s presence, the doors to the throne room burst open and in rushed Jane.

It was Friday, as we mentioned. If all went according to Lord Dudley’s plans, Jane and his son Gifford would be tying the knot tomorrow night.

Edward smiled, happy to see her. He hadn’t seen much of her lately on account of his illness, but she was just as he always pictured her, albeit a little travel-worn.

Jane, however, did not seem happy to see him. There were two bright pink spots in the middle of her cheeks and wisps of her ginger hair sticking to her sweat-dampened face, as if she’d run all the way from Bradgate. And she was frowning.

“Hello, cousin,” Edward said. “You’re looking well. Why don’t you sit down and have a nice cup

of—”

Tea, he was going to offer. Because he was English and that’s what the English do under stress: they drink tea.

“No tea,” Jane interrupted, waving away the royal tea mistress who was approaching her with a teapot in one hand and a saucer and teacup in the other. “I need you to talk to you, Edward. It’s urgent.”

The throne room, which was full of courtiers, fell silent for a few seconds and then broke out into a rumble of scandalized murmurs, although whether the lords and ladies present were more scandalized by Jane’s casual use of Edward’s first name or her very rude refusal of his offer of tea, we can’t say. Lord Dudley cleared his throat.

“All right,” Edward said a bit nervously.

Jane’s gaze darted around the throne room, as if she had just noticed that she had an audience. Her face reddened even more. “I need to speak with you about, um . . . the reign of King Edward Plantagenet the Second. I’ve been reading this very important book about that period of English history, and I wanted your opinion on the subject.”

Alone, her eyes said. Now.

Concerning the wedding, of course.

Edward was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out how best to handle the logistics of seeing Jane in private.

“It is of great historical importance!” Jane insisted.

“Ah . . . yes,” Edward stammered. “Very well. I would be delighted to talk to you about the reign of King . . .”

“Edward Plantagenet,” Jane provided.

“The First.”

“The Second,” she corrected.

“Yes, of course. Why don’t we go for a walk and you can tell me all about it?”

Jane’s small shoulders sagged in relief. “Thank you.”

Edward stood up. His eyes met Dudley’s. The duke looked decidedly disapproving, but Edward ignored him.

“I’m going to walk with Lady Jane in the orchard,” Edward announced. “Carry on without me.”

“But, Your Majesty,” protested Mistress Penne, rushing forward. She was his nursemaid, a plump, kind-faced old woman who had looked after him when he was a baby and been called back to his side during his illness earlier in the year. Lately she was always hovering, fretting that he wasn’t dressed warmly enough, worrying that any small exertion might be too much of a strain on his now-delicate constitution. “Are you sure that’s wise, in your condition?”

That was one of the forbidden words, but Edward decided he would allow it from Mistress Penne

because when he’d get his fevers she’d sit next to his bed and put a cool cloth on his forehead, and stroke his hair, and sometimes even sing to him.

“Yes, Sire, perhaps you should rest,” agreed Dudley.

Edward waved them off. “What’s the worst that could happen? I could catch my death?”

He was trying to be brave and jovial in the face of it all, but in this he obviously failed. Dudley looked disappointed in him. Mary appeared more solemn than usual. Mistress Penne put her hand over her wrinkled mouth and shuffled away, sniffling.

Brilliant, he thought. Just brilliant. But should dying people have to apologize?

Jane looked at him, suddenly taking in his plain clothes and lack of crown and the wag-tailed dog at his side. “Edward? What’s going on?” she asked.

“Come,” he said, stepping down from the throne and offering Jane his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

And so they walked, dog and girl and king, out of the palace and across the grounds and down through the entire length of the orchard, where they settled under the white blossoms of an apple tree.

“All right,” he said, once they were certainly out of earshot of anyone from court. “What’s the matter, Janey?”

“I can’t get married tomorrow,” she burst out. “You’ve got to call it off.”

“But why?” Edward picked up his scratching of behind Pet’s ears, and she made a happy dog noise deep in her throat.

“I simply cannot marry him, that’s all. Not him.”

“But I hear he’s a fine young man, Jane,” Edward said. “Lord Dudley assured me that Gifford will be a model husband.”

When he wasn’t busy galloping around the countryside, Edward thought a tad guiltily.

Jane picked at the brocade on her gown. “That’s what they all say, isn’t it? A fine young man. A good match. How fortunate I am, indeed. Well. I went to Dudley Castle a few days ago, for I thought I might get a chance to see him or speak with him before we’re to be wed, and . . .”

Ah, so she must have seen Gifford in his steed-like state. Which must have been rather a shock, if nobody had told her that Gifford was an E∂ian beforehand. “What happened?” he asked.

“It was awful. It turns out, Gifford Dudley is a . . . he’s a—” She couldn’t even finish the word.

“Please, Edward,” she said, and to his horror, her voice wavered and broke. “You don’t understand.

He’s a hor—”

“I know,” he said.

She stared at him. “You know?”

“Yes. Lord Dudley told me.”

“But then why did you agree to the match?” she cried indignantly. “How could you wish me to marry such a—”

“I didn’t think you’d mind,” Edward said.

Her brown eyes widened. “What?”

“I thought you’d be intrigued by his condition.”

“No, I can assure you, I am not intrigued by anything to do with him.” Jane’s nose wrinkled up in distaste. “And I wouldn’t exactly say he has a condition.”

“Then what would you say?” Edward was starting to feel as though he’d missed something.

“He’s a horrible skirt-chaser!” she exclaimed. “A stud, a lady-killer, a womanizer!”

Oh.

So she didn’t know about Gifford’s steed-like state.

“Well, Janey,” he said with a cough. “That’s hardly surprising, is it? They say he’s handsome.”

“Do they?” she said, with an edge of hysteria. “Do they say that?”

“Yes,” Edward affirmed. “And rich, handsome young men with titles can generally have their pick of the ladies.”

Unless you were a teenage king with a coughing problem.

Jane’s mouth pursed. “I can’t marry him. Please, Edward, you must put a stop to it.”

Edward couldn’t stop this wedding, he knew, not in his country’s present political climate. But he sensed that if he explained the true reason for her rushed nuptials (that they were in a great hurry for her to produce an heir who would inherit the throne of England after he died), it would only upset her further. Instead he tried to think of something soothing to tell her, but nothing especially soothing came to mind.

“I’m sorry, Jane,” he tried. “I can’t. I . . .”

“If you care for me at all,” she said then, “you won’t force me to marry him.”

Edward experienced a tightness in his chest. He coughed into his handkerchief until purple spots appeared on the edges of his vision. Pet raised her head from his lap and cast an accusatory glare in Jane’s direction.

“Are you all right?” Jane murmured. “Edward. Are you . . . ill?”

“I’m dying,” he confessed.

He watched the color drain from her face.

“I thought it was only a chest cold,” she murmured.

“No.”

“Not ‘the Affliction’?” she guessed, and closed her eyes when he just gazed at her sadly.

“I do intend to get a second opinion,” he said. “A better one.”

“When?” she asked in a small voice. “When do they think . . .”

“Soon enough.” He took her small ink-stained hand in his. “I know this marriage is not what you want. Believe me, I understand. Remember when I was engaged to Mary Queen of Scots?” He shuddered. “But you have to marry somebody, Janey, because that’s what young ladies of high birth do: they get married. You can’t hide in your books forever.”

Jane bent her head. A lock of runaway red hair fell into her face. “I know. But why him?” she asked. “Why now?”

“Because I trust Lord Dudley,” he said simply. “And because I’m out of time. I need to know that

you’ll be taken care of. After I’m gone, who knows who you’d be matched to? There are worse fates than ending up with someone young and good-looking and rich.”

“I suppose,” she said.

He knew he should tell her about the horse thing. This was a detail she should be aware of. But he couldn’t find the appropriate wording for what was essentially, and by the way, the guy you’re marrying actually is a stud. Literally.

He should tell her.

He’d get someone else to tell her.

“Do this for me, Jane,” he said gently. “Please. I’m asking as your king, but also as your friend.”

She remained silent, staring down at their clasped hands, but something changed in her expression. He saw there the beginnings of acceptance. His chest felt tight again.

“All will be well, you’ll see.” He squeezed her hand. “And, if it will make you feel better, I’ll speak to this Gifford fellow about his carousing problem. I’ll make him swear to be a picture of fidelity. I’ll threaten him with the rack or something.”

She looked up. “You could do that?”

He smirked. “I’m the king. Anything else you’d like me to do to him? The stocks? The cat o’ nine tails? Thumbscrews? The Spanish tickler?”

He was relieved to see the hint of a smile that played across her lips.

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, sliding her hand from his to bury her fingers in the fur at Pet’s scruff. “He might be in need of a good foot roasting.”

“Done,” he agreed.

She let out a little sigh. “I suppose there is one other thing you can do for me, cousin,” she said after a moment.

“Whatever you desire,” he said. “Name it.”

Her warm brown eyes met his. “Walk me down the aisle?”

His heart squeezed again. “Of course,” he said. “It would be my pleasure.”

After he’d seen her off in a carriage back to Chelsea (where the Grey family stayed while they were in London) Edward sought out Lord Dudley, who he found in the council chambers engaged in what

appeared to be a very serious conversation with Mistress Penne. On the subject of his failing health, no doubt.

“So,” the duke said as Edward drew near. “Did you persuade her?”

Mistress Penne felt his forehead with the back of her hand. At his side, Pet let out a low growl, and the nurse withdrew her hand.

“I’m fine,” he said.

The nurse gave him a look that conveyed that she was still offended by his earlier flippancy, and retreated with a rustle of skirts. He watched the door swing closed behind her. Then he dropped into his red cushy chair and reached for the bowl of blackberries.

“Sire,” Lord Dudley began. “You must take care to—”

Pet stuck her long nose into the blackberries and snuffed, sending the bowl clattering to the floor and berries rolling in every direction.

Edward gave the dog a stern look as servants rushed in to clean up the mess.

“Bad dog,” he said.

She wagged her tail.

“Sire, you mustn’t overexert yourself,” Dudley said.

“I’m fine,” Edward insisted. “The fresh air did me good. And yes, Jane has agreed to marry your son. But why did no one tell her about the horse . . . situation?”

Dudley shook his head as if the issue was entirely unimportant. “I’ve found that women do not need to be burdened with such minor details.”

Well, that makes sense, thought Edward. “Even so, I’d like to speak with your son.”

Dudley’s mouth disappeared into his beard. “My son Gifford?” he asked, as if he hoped Edward

might inexplicably need to parlay with Stan.

“Yes. Send for him immediately.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Your Highness.” Dudley gestured to the window, where sunlight was streaming in from the west. There were still hours before sunset.

“Oh. Right,” Edward said. “Well, as soon as night falls, then.”

Dudley still looked uncomfortable. “But, Sire, there are so many preparations that need to be made before tomorrow’s ceremony. It will be difficult to get my son away from—”

“I desire to speak with him,” Edward said in his I-Am-the-King voice. “I will speak with him tonight.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Dudley conceded. “As soon as the sun is down.”

Suddenly Edward was tired, so very tired. He sagged against the back of his chair. Pet whined and licked at his hand.

“Are you all right, Your Highness?” Dudley asked.

“I. Am. Fine.” Edward straightened. “I’ll be in my chambers,” he said, although he had no idea how he was going to manage the stairs. “Send Gifford there when he arrives.”

“Yes, Sire,” the duke said tightly, and then he left Edward to catch his breath.

It was less than an hour past sunset when, as expected, there came a knock on the door to Edward’s room. Pet started barking but stopped immediately when Gifford Dudley stepped inside.

The two boys stood examining each other. Gifford was predictably tall, broad of shoulder, and boorishly square of jaw. He was as comely as his father had described him, and for a moment Edward actually hated him for looking so decidedly strong and able-bodied. But then Gifford dropped into a bow, and Edward remembered he was king.

“You sent for me, Sire?” Gifford murmured.

“Yes. Please sit down.” They both sat awkwardly. “I wish to discuss Jane.”

“Jane?” Edward couldn’t tell if Gifford meant this as a statement or a question or if he even knew who Edward was referring to.

“Your future wife.”

Gifford nodded and scratched at the side of his neck, bearing an expression very similar to one that Jane had been wearing earlier today: the staring-into-the-face-of-doom look.

“Jane is a special person to me,” Edward began. “She is . . .”

There really wasn’t a good enough word to describe Jane.

“I have yet to meet her,” said Gifford delicately. “But I’m sure she’s very . . . special.”

“She is.” Edward sat forward in his chair. “What troubles me, Gifford—”

“Please, call me G,” Gifford interjected.

Edward frowned. “What troubles me, er . . . G, is that you haven’t been at court these past years, and while I understand why”—he cast Gifford a significant look that said, I know all about the horse thing— “and I know your family to be perfectly respectable and worthy of someone as . . . special as my cousin Jane, I feel that I don’t know you.”

Then he stopped talking for a minute because Pet, with her tail wagging, had plopped herself down right next to Gifford’s chair—Gifford’s, not Edward’s, mind you—and was staring up at the young lord adoringly. Gifford smiled down on her and reached out to scratch what Edward knew was just the right place behind Pet’s chin.

She sighed and put her head in his lap.

Even she couldn’t resist this fellow’s charms.

Edward started coughing, and then coughing, and then coughing some more, so hard that his eyes

watered. When the spasms subsided both Pet and Gifford were looking at him with concern.

“Anyway,” Edward wheezed. “I want to know, G, that as her husband you will take care of my dear cousin.”

“Of course,” Gifford said quickly.

“No,” Edward clarified. “I mean that there will be no one else that you’re going to take care of.

Ever. Only Jane.”

Comprehension dawned in Gifford’s eyes.

“Jane deserves a devoted and virtuous husband,” Edward continued. “So you will be a devoted and virtuous husband. If I hear even a whisper of anything otherwise I will be very unhappy. And you would not like to see me unhappy.”

Gifford looked decidedly alarmed, which pleased Edward. He might no longer be strong, but he

was still powerful. He smiled. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Gifford said. “I understand, Your Majesty.”

“Good,” Edward said. “You’re dismissed.”

Gifford was on his feet, already nearly to the door, when Edward called after him, “Oh, and one more thing.”

Gifford froze, then turned. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Jane is unaware of your condition. Your . . .”

Gifford sighed heavily. “Horse curse. My horse curse.”

“Yes. No one has informed her yet. I want you to be the one to tell her.”

Gifford’s eyes flashed with something resembling panic. “Me?”

“She deserves to hear it from her husband,” Edward said. As he spoke the words he thought that

this sounded like a very wise idea. A kingly idea. Inspired. “You probably won’t see her before the wedding, I understand, but before the night is through, before you and she . . .” He stopped. He didn’t want to think about the end to that sentence. “You should tell her.”

There it was again, the doomed look, on Gifford’s too-handsome face. “Have I a choice, Sire?”

“Do any of us have a choice where destiny is concerned?”

Gifford lowered his head. “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm,” he said, his voice building in intensity.

Edward stared at the young lord for a few long minutes. “I assume that means you’ll tell her.”

“Yes, Sire,” the young lord mumbled, and took his leave.

Edward watched from the window as, below in the courtyard, Gifford mounted his horse and galloped off the palace grounds. Edward felt good about how the conversation had gone. Then he crossed to his bed and slung himself down into it.

Pet came over to lick at his face.

“Off with you, traitorous dog,” he said, pushing her away playfully, but then he scooted over to make room, and she jumped up beside him.

Jane

The wedding day was upon her.

The ceremony was being held at Durham House, the Dudleys’ London home, which meant on Saturday afternoon Jane was taken across the city by carriage and deposited, along with her mother, the seamstress, and Adella, her lady-in-waiting, into the Dudleys’ family library, which was to serve as a dressing chamber. (Only it didn’t seem as much of a library as it did an unused storage room, somewhat cleared in hasty preparation for the wedding.) Light streamed through the windows, thrown open to let in the breeze. There were bookcases (Jane could almost feel them calling out to her), a stack of wooden trunks, and The Gown waiting on a wire frame.

“This is so exciting,” chirped Adella as she fluttered around the sunlit room, touching everything as though it were all good luck. Puffs of dust flew up at her fingers. “You’re finally getting married!”

“Finally,” Jane said, staring at The Gown. It was gold-and-silver brocade, embroidered with diamonds and pearls. (Recall that these were the days before Queen Victoria famously wore a white gown for her wedding and forever changed matrimonial fashion.) It really was a lovely creation, and expensive, no doubt. Perhaps she’d even hear just how expensive if she were to protest this match even further.

But Edward had asked her, and she would do this for him.

A knot tightened in her stomach when she thought of Edward.

Once, when she’d lived with Katherine Parr, when she and Edward had been hiding in the back of

the library of Sudeley Castle all afternoon, which they often did, and after she’d started complaining about her many terrible engagements, which she often did, Edward had poked her in the ribs and said,

“Such high standards, Jane. Well, I suppose you could always marry me.”

Back then marriage had seemed to her like a silly game rather than a cage to be locked in, as it was starting to feel now. “That’d be quite a risk you’d take, getting engaged to me,” she’d replied.

“You know I bring about the ruin of all of my potential suitors. Besides, I don’t think I’d like to be queen. Too many rules.”

“Oh, come now, it wouldn’t be so bad.” Edward had tapped her upturned nose and smiled. “We’d

have a jolly time together.”

They’d both laughed like it was a joke, and never spoken of it further, but Jane had thought about it later. That he might have meant it. She’d suspected for a while that Thomas Seymour and her mother were plotting that very thing—sending her to live with the dowager queen to be educated and refined, on the off chance that one day she’d marry Edward and become queen herself.

He was right, too. It wouldn’t have been so bad, even if it was difficult to think of Edward as anything more than her friend. She’d read about romance, about how your heart was supposed to pound in the presence of your beloved, your breath was supposed to catch, etcetera, etcetera, and

she’d never felt anything like that around Edward. But she could think of worse things than marrying her best friend. Far worse things.

But then Katherine Parr had died in childbirth, and Thomas Seymour had committed treason and

lost his head. Jane had been sent back to Bradgate, and her mother had started looking for eligible husbands again.

And now Edward was dying, and Jane was getting married tonight. Probably.

Unless some kind of miracle happened.

Afternoon transformed into evening, and it seemed less likely that a horrible catastrophe would befall the Dudley family and save Jane from her fate. The Gown went on, the green velvet headdress went up, and Jane’s hopes went down.

The worst part?

No books.

Between all the hair plaiting and gown adjusting, Jane let her fingers drift across the book spines on the shelves of the library. History, philosophy, and science: her favorite things. Things that would save her if the wedding got boring.

“No books.” Lady Frances smacked Jane’s hand away from the gilt-lettered spines. “I will not have my daughter say her vows from behind a dusty old book.”

“They’d be less dusty if the Dudley family took care of them.” Jane gazed longingly at the literary cornucopia. Indeed dusty, but certainly still in fine enough shape to read a hundred times. “Maybe you’d prefer I brought my knitting.”

“Watch your mouth. No one likes a sarcastic wife.” A strand of Lady Frances’s brown hair turned gray, as if by magic. (Not actual magic, mind you, but the magic that daughters possess over their mothers. As we all know, the only actual magic is E∂ian magic.)

At least the wedding meant Jane would no longer live with her mother.

After a bit more tugging and twisting and distress over Jane’s general flatness of bosom, there was a knock on the library door. “It’s time.”

A glance at the window revealed dusk had fallen. It was night.

“What kind of man insists on getting married after dark?” she muttered as she was ushered from

the room. A boorish brute, Jane thought. That’s who.

She shot one last longing look at the neglected books. Maybe, at least, they would come with the husband. They could make a trade. The books for— Well, she would figure out what he wanted.

Besides women. Edward had said he would speak to him. Even someone like Gifford couldn’t say no to his king.

Jane couldn’t seem to catch her breath. (And it wasn’t just that her corset was too tight, although it was. Extremely.)

She’d always known she’d have to get married, of course. The string of destitute ex-fiancés could not continue forever.

But to someone who’d spent time with dozens—maybe hundreds—of women, how could she

compare? To Gifford, what would she be but another woman and the end to his debauchery? He’d resent her every day of their marriage, and not just because of her narrow (unsuitable for childbearing) hips and her odd red hair.

Jane tried to drag her feet on her way to the great room, but her mother hurried her along and sooner than seemed possible, they stood near the wide double doors, both thrown open to release the sound of music and voices. Flickering candlelight cast a haunting glow over Edward, who was waiting for her. He smiled and stood when she arrived, using the armrests for support as he did. “You

look beautiful, Jane.”

“You look—” Jane didn’t finish her thought. Today he was wearing the royal regalia, the crown

and coat and gold dagger, all the fashion required of a king about to give away his cousin at the altar, but underneath the layers of brocade and fur, he still looked thin. Sick. Dying.

“I know.” He plucked the end of his fur-lined coat between his white-gloved fingers. “I look as handsome and regal as ever. But don’t stare. You’ll embarrass me.”

Jane mustered a smile.

“Now, Jane,” Lady Frances said after all the appropriate greetings and genuflections to the king were made, “try to be happy. This is your wedding day!”

Jane exchanged a look with Edward and rolled her eyes as her mother and lady-in-waiting went

into the great room to take their places. Jane made sure to stay out of the line of sight from the guests.

As soon as she appeared, people would expect her to begin the long trek to her betrothed.

“Jane,” Edward said when they were alone. “I wouldn’t ask this of you unless it was important.”

“I know.” She didn’t need a repeat of yesterday’s conversation.

“I did speak to him,” Edward said. “His nights of carousing are over.”

“The nights of carousing that have already occurred can never be undone.” She tried to cross her arms, but the embroidered gems caught so she left her hands at her sides. If she ruined The Gown before she’d even said her vows, her mother would never let her forget it. “He’s a dissolute man, a reprobate, a—”

She’d run out of synonyms. That was disappointing.

“Janey—” Edward coughed into a handkerchief that was already speckled with pink.

She waited a moment, unsure whether to help or say something about his condition, but as he stuffed the handkerchief back into a pocket, his face was red with the exertion or embarrassment or both. Instead, she jumped on to the next subject that would help take both of their minds off his affliction. “So, you saw Gifford. Prepare me: how bad is the nose?”

A general flurry of motion came from the great room, and Jane realized that she’d moved within

view of the wedding guests.

Edward’s eyebrows raised. “I guess you’re about to find out.”

With a sigh, Jane picked up her bouquet—White Roses of York and cowslips—and took her place

by the king’s side. Arm in arm, they entered the great room. It was filled with people, all of them staring at her. What she wouldn’t give for a book to hide behind. She’d have brought a spare book for Edward, too, though perhaps he was more used to the attention, what with being king.

Hundreds of candles lit the great room, a line of them illuminating a path to the altar, where a priest and the groom waited. There were even more candles behind them, which made it impossible to really get a good look at her betrothed.

Together, Jane and Edward made a slow, stately march down the aisle, ignoring the murmurs about how the king seemed sickly, and how the color of her gown made her hair look court-jester red, and how odd and hasty this wedding was. Jane tried to shrink into The Gown.

Then, much too soon, they’d reached the altar and Edward took one of Jane’s hands. “To you, Lord Gifford Dudley, I give my cousin and dearest friend, Lady Jane Grey.” Before Jane’s hand was passed from one man to the other, she gave Edward a light squeeze and blinked away the tears prickling at the backs of her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. Not really.

“Thank you.” Gifford’s voice was deep, but his tone completely bland as he took Jane’s hand and helped her up the step where she stood before him at last.

She looked up. And up. And nearly crushed her wedding bouquet.

Gifford Dudley was unfairly handsome: impressively tall and well shaped around the neck and shoulders, with glossy chestnut hair tied into a short ponytail, and expressive brown eyes. And his nose. His nose. It was perfectly shaped: not too long or short, not too plump or skinny, and even the pores were discreet. There was no trace of the Dudley Nose Curse.

Praise all the gods and saints, Lord Gifford Dudley may have had an unfortunate name, but he did not have the nose. She wanted to sing. She wanted to spin around to where Edward was taking a seat in the front and tell him all about Gifford’s perfect nose.

It was a miracle. A marvel. A wonder. A relief. After all, she would be expected to kiss this man by the end of the ceremony, and the last thing she needed was to lose an eye. Then again, she might have expected he’d be free of the curse, or there would be a lot of one-eyed women in England.

The elation drained out of her.

Well, so he was handsome. Good for him. It wasn’t as though there weren’t other handsome men

in the world—men who didn’t spend every night with a new woman. His perfect nose did not excuse his poor behavior.

For his part, Gifford did not seem to find her appearance remarkable. Of course not. Few did, unless they were commenting on the hair.

The wedding continued, and Jane dared a glance at the guests. Edward sat stiffly in his chair, his mouth drawn tight like he was in some kind of pain. Her mother sat with the groom’s family; Jane recognized Lord Dudley and his wife, who leaned away from each other, which did not bode well for the marriage Gifford must have grown up observing. Lady Dudley sat close to a young girl, who clutched a doll in one arm and gave a shy wave. Then there was Stan and his wife, both with stiff postures and haughty faces, and a young child between them, toddling on the pew. If Stan remembered his crass assumptions about Jane the other day, he gave no indication, but Jane allowed her eyes to narrow at him slightly as the priest began declaring the all wonders of holy matrimony.

First, true love. No danger of that here. Gifford was staring over her shoulder, a bored, put-upon look on his face. Still bitter about what he and Edward had talked about, undoubtedly.

Second, virtue. Jane snorted, drawing Looks. From her mother especially, who developed another

gray hair.

Third, progeny. Jane blanched and went cold. She’d almost managed to forget about that part of

marriage. Children. The making of. She would be expected to produce a child. Children. Plural. After all, Jane had no brother, which meant it would be her job to conceive heirs for the Grey estate. The fact that women often died having babies, or shortly thereafter—she was thinking of Edward’s mother, who’d lived only a few days before departing this world—was alarming enough, while having multiple children was just tempting fate multiple times. Especially considering her deficiency in the childbearing-hips department.

But even that was a worry for another time. Because as the priest droned on about the joy of children, how every child would strengthen the bond between the parents, Jane realized that tonight there would be . . .

That was, she—they—would have to . . .

Gifford looked rather stricken, too, as though the idea of the two of them . . . creating offspring had not yet occurred to him, either.

Jane clenched her jaw. So she had red hair and he preferred brunettes. Was she that unattractive that even someone as questionably virtuous as Gifford the Carouser would not want to— She couldn’t even think it. Not now. What had her mother called it?

The very special hug.

When she’d been engaged to Humphrey Hangrot, her mother had tried to prepare her for the wedding night.

“The very special hug might be unpleasant,” Lady Frances had said. “But it’s part of the wedding night, and part of your duty as a wife. You’ll need to produce as many heirs as you can manage. The event itself will be over quickly, at least. Don’t think too much about it.”

Jane had just stared at her mother, mortified, and later tracked down every book on anatomy that had ever been written. There were the obvious differences between a man’s body and a woman’s body, ones anyone could notice. And then, she’d discovered the not-so-evident differences. It hadn’t taken long to figure out what went where, and what a terrifying thing the very special hug must be for a woman.

And now, as the priest announced it was time for the vows, Jane’s stomach knotted and the bouquet slipped in her sweaty hands.

Gifford’s tone was paper dry as he said his part. “I, Gifford Dudley, hereby declare my devotion to you. I swear to love you, protect you, be faithful to you, and make you the happiest woman in the world. My love for you is as deep as the ocean and as bright as the sun. I will protect you from every danger. I am blind to every woman but you. Your happiness is paramount in my heart.”

From the first row of guests, Gifford’s mother dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and the girl fought a small fit of giggles. Edward was stoic faced, his blood-dotted handkerchief crumpled in his fingers.

Gifford took her damp hand and pushed a ring onto her finger. “I give myself to you.”

“I receive you.” It sounded more like a croak. “And I, Jane Grey, hereby declare my devotion to you. I swear to love you, parley with you, be faithful to you, and make you the happiest man in the world.”

The original version of the vow her mother had suggested had said “obey you” but that simply would not do. It was enough that Jane had agreed to keep the word love where she had tried to insert the phrase “feel some sort of emotion,” but with obey she could not bend. She would consult him regarding decisions. She didn’t have to listen to him after that. And she would be faithful. She might try to make him happy, unless he insisted on being unreasonable.

She continued: “My love for you makes the wind appear a mere breath, and the sea a mere drop. I will consult your wisdom. I am deaf to the call of temptation. Your happiness is my northern star.”

She took his hand and shoved on the ring awkwardly, her bouquet still clutched in her fingers. “I give myself to you.” Never had she dreamed of uttering such words.

“I receive you.” He, at least, looked equally miserable.

The priest beamed. “Is there anyone who would like to contest this match?”

Please please please. Jane risked a glance at Edward, who had not moved at all. There would be no last-minute rescue. No awful coincidence. Nothing to keep this from going any further.

“Then,” declared the priest, “I name you husband and wife. You may kiss.”

Jane squeezed her eyes shut and waited. Entire seconds fell by, and then a touch warmed her chin and lifted her face, which she’d turned down to her shoes. The kiss came quickly. It wasn’t anything more than a touch of his lips to hers, so light it might not have happened at all. But the guests were cheering and when she and Gifford turned to face everyone, Edward’s eyes were shining, her mother wore a triumphant smile, and the girl with Gifford’s parents was kissing her doll.

“Now to survive the feast.” Gifford’s words were low, perhaps not even for her, but they were the first real words he’d spoken since they’d met.

“Perhaps there will be a buxom serving girl to help you pass the time,” she snapped without

thinking.

Gifford met her eyes coldly. “Perhaps there will be a book for you to hide your face in.”

They moved down the aisle together, to lead the way to the wedding feast, and the last shred of hope in her shriveled and died. He was as awful as she’d expected, and now she would be spending the rest of her life with him.

And suddenly the rest of her life, stretched out before her with the marriage bed and children and seeing each other only when was absolutely necessary, seemed like an exceedingly long time.

Gifford

Maybe he had been a bit rude.

But to be fair, he’d had his reasons. One reason. Which was: he hadn’t been prepared for the fairness of the maiden who had met him at the altar.

Until the ceremony, he had, in jest, been vocal about the possibility that Jane was hiding behind books because she was trying to conceal the hideousness of her face. But deep down he’d hoped it was true. Because that would’ve made it easier to tell her the truth about his horse curse. If she had been less attractive, there might’ve been the chance that a half horse/half man was the best she could do. But Jane Grey could certainly do better than Gifford.

Not that she was a stunning creature. She did have that fire-red hair, after all. But G had to admit that not one in twenty men would find her unseemly. Her eyes were the color of varnished oak flecked with deep mahogany—perceptive eyes that seemed to drink in everything around her. Her skin was creamy and unblemished. Her figure had all the expected parts in all the right configurements. But it was the supple pout of her lips—and they had pouted a lot during the ceremony—that could inspire poetry.

Like kissing cherries, he thought, but that wasn’t a very good comparison.

And now, he had to tell those lips about the curse. He’d promised the king he would share the news with his bride before he and she . . . before they . . . what was the official term for it?

Ugh. Consummated, G thought. What was it with this obsession with consummation of a marriage? As if the “I do”s weren’t enough. At least the nobility of England no longer required live witnesses to the event.

But right now, at the wedding supper, a bigger problem was emerging. Every time G thought about how to break the news to her, he gulped down a cup of ale. And he thought about it a lot. Every time he looked at his new bride. And he looked at her a lot.

As a side note, he decided her frown would not inspire poetry. Because the poem would read: Her frown made him desire they be better strangers.

And what was Jane’s relationship with the king anyway? When Edward had summoned G

expressly to tell him how “special” Jane was, Gifford had gotten the distinct impression that perhaps the king would have preferred to have Jane for himself. Yes, she was Edward’s cousin, but perhaps they were “kissing cousins,” judging from the way Jane had clutched the king’s arm as they’d walked down the aisle together. And the way she’d kept glancing in Edward’s direction during the ceremony.

Perhaps his wife was in love with another man.

The thought left a bad taste in his mouth. He washed it down with more ale.

He turned away and scanned the crowd. Billingsly was coming toward him, threading his way through the tables. “My lord,” he whispered in G’s ear. “Your father has asked me to gently urge you

to switch from ale to cider.”

“Billingssssssly,” G said, marveling how long one could sustain the s in Billingsly’s name.

Perhaps he had consumed more ale than he’d thought. “Billingssssssssssssssssly.” He leaned away from his bride. “I wonder if you might do me a favor.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I wonder if you might tell Lady Jane about the whole . . .” G waved his hand in a circle as if to say, “Fill in the blank about the horse stuff.”

Billingsly looked from Jane back to G. “My lord, under other circumstances, I would gladly assist you. But I believe the lady would prefer to hear such news from you.”

“Coward.” G took another swig from the goblet of ale in front of him. Where was the honor among servants these days? He caught a hard glance from his new wife, and judging from the narrowness of her eyes, he assumed she disapproved of his ale consumption. He wished his ale consumption was all there was to cause disapproval.

G raised his glass toward her, and said loudly, “To my beautiful bride!”

The entire assembly hall raised their goblets in response. “To the Lady Jane!” they said in unison.

G took another gulp, and thought about the best way to break the equestrian news.

My dear, you know those four-legged majestical beasts of the land? Well, you married one!

No. That could not be the right approach.

My sweet, have you ever had a difficult time deciding between man or beast? Well, now you don’t have to!

Again, he thought better of this tactic.

Sweet lady, there are those of us who sleep lying down, and those of us who sleep standing up. I can do both.

No.

You know how some men claim to have another, perhaps hairier side?

Have you ever cursed the fact that your loved one has just the two legs?

Did you know that horses have incredible balance?

Hey! What’s that over there? And then he would gallop away.

G shook his head and could almost feel the ale swirling in his brain. It was at that moment he reasoned to himself that the assembly hall was not the place to tell his wife about his alter ego. Too many people.

Hours later, when G was practically sloshing with ale, he came to the conclusion that the walk to their bedchamber was not the place to tell his wife, either. Too many mounted deer heads on the walls.

Minutes later, as his wife stomped into the bedchamber, and G then mimed the action of a man carrying a woman across the threshold, he decided that the bedchamber was not the appropriate place to disclose his secret. Too quiet.

After that, the only other possible time to tell her would’ve been the few seconds between the act of stripping off his boots and then falling downward, and he happily would’ve told her then, only his lips were smashed against the wooden slats of the floor before he could get the words out.

But he’d promised the king he would tell Jane, and a promise was a promise. So just before the

world went dark, he said, against the floor, “Mah Lavy? I ammmm a horrrrrrfffff.”

“Pardon me?” Jane’s voice came from somewhere in the black clouds behind his lids.

He could not repeat himself. Besides, it wasn’t his fault his wife couldn’t understand plain English.

G wasn’t sure what awakened him. Perhaps the distant sound of servants beginning breakfast

preparations in the kitchen. They always started so early.

Or maybe it was the sound of soft breathing coming from the bed above him. G was not used to

sharing a bedchamber with another person, although at the moment, because of his hazy brain, he couldn’t remember exactly who it was.

Or perhaps it was the gray tones of the impending dawn.

Dawn.

DAWN!

G threw off the blanket covering him (his new wife must have draped it over him at some point

during the night) and using the fringe hanging down the side of the headboard tapestry, he pulled himself up.

Jane was asleep, her red hair splayed out over the pillow like a halo of fire. G paused for a moment, admiring the soft swell of her cheekbones, and wondered why he had not previously noticed that her neck curved in a very delicate and appropriate way as it connected to her shoulder. He would have to include that particular body part in his poem about her pout.

Dawn, he reminded himself. It was moments away.

G reached out and jostled her shoulder. The change was so close, he could feel it. Jane moaned

and shook off his hand.

“My lady, wake up!” She didn’t respond. “Jane!” he shouted louder, nudging her.

She turned toward his voice and her eyes fluttered. “It is not morning,” she said.

“Yes, it is. What do you think that light through yonder window is? I must warn you of something, and it really is not extraordinarily consequential, but it can be rather alarming if you’re not prepared for it—” Why was he using so many words? Why hadn’t he practiced this speech? He’d barely ever

said two words to her in a row, and now suddenly he was using all the words. “You’ve heard of that ancient, some would say beautiful, magic of our ancestors—” Uh-oh. It was too late. In one swoop, he was standing over her, much taller than he’d been a moment ago.

Jane’s eyes went wide. She scooted to the farthest edge of the bed and brought her fingers to her lips. “Wha—?”

G stepped backward, his hindquarters smashing up against the wall. This bedchamber was certainly not made with a horse (on his wedding night) in mind. Originally he had planned on sharing his equestrian news, gently excusing himself just before dawn, and trotting down to the stables. Of course, that plan would have required significantly less ale.

Jane furrowed her brows. “Gifford?”

It’s G, he thought, but then he remembered he hadn’t had the time or the mental acuity to tell her to call him G. He threw his head back and let it drop again in what he hoped would look like a nod.

She raised a gentle hand toward his face. G leaned down and sniffed her palm and then the curves of her fingers, his equestrian instincts taking over. He caught a whiff of wine on her wrist, surely left over from the night before, and used his horse lips to try to draw out the remnants.

Oh, no, he thought. I just nibbled on her wrist. He couldn’t help it, though. The wine had been particularly aromatic last night. (He would have to ask the servants which year was used.) But before he did anything else, he had to force himself to stop nibbling her wrist. He needed a distraction from the smell of wine, so he lowered his head to the table next to the bed, and promptly ate the bridal bouquet. There. That would satisfy his nibbling for the time being.

When he was finished, Jane sighed and gathered up the torn stems of what was once a bundle of

White Roses of York and a dozen cowslips. G remembered because his mother had picked them out

specifically, having pledged her troth holding a similar bouquet when she’d married G’s father.

“You are an E∂ian?” Something between awe and yearning appeared on Jane’s face.

G gave his best nod.

Jane set the stems down on the table and turned back to G. “You must tell me everything. How did you get the magic? When did it first appear?”

G tried to follow her questions, but a sensuous odor wafted into the bedchamber, filling his large nostrils and making his mouth water.

He sniffed loudly and whinnied.

“Gifford? Are you listening to me?” Jane’s voice cut through his preoccupation with his olfactory senses.

He wanted to answer that of course he wasn’t listening to her. She obviously wasn’t the source of the scent.

He stamped his right hoof on the wooden floor, hoping the lady would understand the simplest of horse signals.

“Change back so you can speak to me,” Jane said. “Please.”

But to G, it sounded like wah wah wah and wah wah wah, for all he could focus on was the smell in the air.

Apples, G thought.

He closed his eyes and shook his mane.

With a helping of . . . hay.

The door to the bedchamber squeaked open an inch, and the aroma intensified. G turned away from the lady, who was apparently still talking because her mouth was moving, and toward the door.

“Lady Jane?” It was Billingsly’s voice coming through.

Jane pulled the bedcovers up to her neck. “Yes?”

“It’s Billingsly, my lady. I believe Lord G is still within the room? I am here to help.”

“Please come in,” Jane said.

Billingsly entered carrying an apple in one hand and clutching stalks of hay in the other. G

released a full-blown neigh at the sight.

Billingsly held out the apple and G latched on to it with his teeth, the succulent juices dripping onto his tongue.

“There’s a good boy,” Billingsly said, scratching G’s neck.

Before he could consider how it would look to Jane, G nuzzled Billingsly’s cheek in response. He quickly pulled back and shook out his mane, in what he hoped was a very dignified manner. Yes, he was a horse, but he was still a man. Except anatomically. And he would be treated accordingly, with the utmost respect.

“Here, boy,” Billingsly said, dangling the hay in front of G’s nose and then tossing the bundle into the far corner of the room. “Fetch!”

G sauntered over to the corner and began chewing.

“I asked him to change back to talk to me, but he won’t,” Jane said. “It’s disrespectful to remain a horse in the bedchamber, I should think.”

Considering what had to have been a monumental shock, she seemed to be taking the equestrian

news rather well.

“My lady, Lord G does not have the ability to change as he pleases. He is a horse from sunup to sundown.”

“Does not have the ability? I’ve read about E∂ians who undergo their initial change in moments of great emotion, but the ability to control it can be learned through focused training. All it requires is

determination and discipline. Perhaps Gifford simply lacks that, but I would be pleased to help. I’ve quite a knowledge of E∂ians.”

And, good feelings gone. He blew a raspberry toward her and she flinched.

“I’m sorry, did I offend the beast?” Jane said.

“My lady, you might consider leaving the bedchamber to Lord G for the day.”

Her lips pressed together. “Why should I be the one to leave?”

“Because Lord G, in his present state, cannot fit through the door.”

(This was true, for the average size of a human being during this age was much shorter than it is today, and the doorframes reflected that.)

At this, G looked frantically about for escape options. The window was nearly large enough for

him to leap through; however, they were at least fifty feet above the ground, and horses were not known for their ability to absorb the impact of a fifty-foot free fall.

G scraped his hoof along the floorboards, as if he were a bull looking to charge. The only problem was, he had nowhere to go. He snorted. With no place to run, the curse was feeling very much like a prison as opposed to its usual feeling of freedom.

“My lady, Lord G has an affinity for running when he is in this condition. And now that he is trapped here for the day, and he has eaten . . .”

Jane held her hand up. “Say no more, Billingsly.” She turned toward the horse. “Lord Gifford. It seems fitting that you be relegated to your room all day, considering your behavior last night.

Perhaps the confinement will provide the impetus you need to develop the ability to control your gift.”

Gift. G’s nostrils flared. There’s no controlling it, he thought. And call me G!

He spent the day pacing. He knew this situation was only temporary, and that he would not be trapped in this room forever, but for G, running across the countryside, tethered to nothing, was an essential part of his soul. He often wondered if that was how he got the curse in the first place. Something deep inside of him yearned to run, to break free of the disappointment his parents displayed toward him.

Not only was he the second, and therefore unimportant son—the one without the esteemed nose—but as he grew up, he was always “wasting” his time reading poetry and plays. Rubbish, his father had called it. As a boy of thirteen, he’d skipped out on his fencing classes to read under a tree behind Durham House. When his father caught him and threatened severe punishment, G had run across the field, down the road leading away from London, and didn’t stop until he reached the edge of the dark forest.

G lived to run. And ran to live.

And now, after the humiliation of turning into a horse in front of his new bride, he was trapped in this room like a caged . . . beast was the word she’d used. A wife was simply a new person to disappoint.

And since this was supposedly the first day of his happily-ever-after, he could only conclude that marriage consisted of four solid walls, a door too small to squeeze through, and a window too high to jump from.

The lines of a poem formed in his head.

The stifling air, damp and dank for want of release,

The horse, too still and stuck, in need of a little grease,

To shimmy his frame through a door too small,

But even then, he’d be stuck in the hall . . .

Not his best work.

Edward

“Edward, dear,” Mistress Penne said from her chair beside his bed. “Eat your soup.”

She lifted the spoon to his lips, and he allowed her to feed him a few swallows, but then he turned his face away.

“Just two more bites,” she coaxed.

“I’m not hungry.” He would have liked to remind her that he was the king and not some little boy she could boss around, but getting all those words out seemed like a lot of effort. Instead he fell back against the pillows and pressed closer into the steady warmth of Pet’s body where she was stretched out beside him. The dog’s tail thumped against the blankets. She licked her lips and gave him a yearning look expressing that if he didn’t want to eat his food, she’d gladly undertake such a task for him.

He was too tired to give her any.

“Sire,” the nurse tried again. “You must eat if you are to regain your strength.”

He knew this was true, but it didn’t make it any less humiliating. He was mortified when he thought about last night. How, as he’d walked to the carriage after the wedding feast, his legs had abruptly given out underneath him and he’d tumbled to the muddy ground. How one of his stewards had lifted him easily in his arms like the king had no more substance than a woman, and carried him the rest of the way. How he’d also had to be carried up the stairs to his bedchamber, and how he’d spent every moment since then in bed. He’d slept for the entire night and most of the morning, but had awakened to a feeling of bone-deep exhaustion, as if he had not slept a wink. And now he was being spoon fed like a toddler.

He was dying, he finally admitted to himself.

He’d known this before, of course, but now the idea seemed real. His strength had abandoned him, and he doubted it would ever return. The coughing fits were coming more frequently, and there was a lingering pain in his joints and spine. Even his head felt diluted, as if his thoughts had to work their way through a bank of clouds to reach him.

He was dying.

Already. Hadn’t it been less than a week ago that Master Boubou had given him six months to live? A year at best.

He was dying, he thought numbly. Sooner than expected, apparently. Soup was of no consequence.

“Sire,” the nurse prodded.

“Leave me,” he muttered, and when she did not move away quickly enough, he barked, “Leave me!” and Pet raised her head and bared her teeth at the old woman.

Mistress Penne bustled away. Edward soothed Pet by resting his hand on the smooth space at the

crown of her head and stroking. Her tail thumped again. He closed his eyes.

Behind his eyelids he replayed Jane’s wedding. He remembered her standing in her wedding gown, all gold and silver and jewels, her red hair shining. He recalled the way Gifford’s gaze had swept over Jane as they had approached him, the flicker of surprise and definite male interest in his eyes before he’d forced his expression back into perfect blankness.

When Edward had seen that flicker, he’d felt hope for Jane. That maybe this would be more than a marriage of convenience. That maybe she’d find love.

He thought, I will never find love.

He remembered the touch of Jane’s small, cool hand in the crook of his arm as he’d walked with

her.

He thought, I will never feel a woman’s touch.

He remembered the way Jane’s cheeks had flushed when Gifford had tilted her face up to be kissed.

He sighed. Pet scooched up on the bed and licked his chin. He pushed her head away, but resumed stroking her behind the ear.

His last moment with Jane had been at the end of the night, when Lord Dudley had announced that it was time for the young couple to “turn in,” as he’d phrased it, and Jane had come to him to say good-bye. He’d known by the gleam in her dark eyes and the ramrod straight way that she was holding herself that she was both furious and terrified at what came next.

The consummation.

“Jane,” he’d leaned to whisper in her ear. “Don’t fret. You’ll be all right.”

“He’s drunk,” she’d hissed. “So now we can add ‘inebriant’ to the list of his charms. A boozer. A lush. A tippler. A souse.”

“You will find something to like about him,” he’d answered, and kissed her cheek. “Be happy, cousin. For me.”

Then Gifford had led her away. To their bedchamber.

Edward thought, I am never going to consummate anything. I’m going to die a virgin.

And he’d felt more sorry for himself than ever.

The floor beside his bed creaked, and he opened his eyes. Master Boubou was hovering over him,

and behind him Edward could make out the outline of Lord Dudley’s nose.

The doctor took Edward’s hand and felt for a pulse at his wrist, then frowned.

“So it’s good news, is it?” Edward smiled at his own joke and was immediately overtaken by coughing.

“I’m afraid not, Your Majesty,” said Boubou, when the coughs subsided. “You appear to have taken a turn for the worst. Your heart is very weak. Perhaps the wedding was simply too much exertion.”

Edward resolved that he would never, ever, no matter how bad things got, regret being there for Jane at her wedding. “So what’s to be done about it?”

“I’ve brought a tonic.” Boubou helped Edward to sit up as Lord Dudley handed him a goblet of a

dark liquid that tasted as bad as it smelled, like rotted leaves with a touch of fennel. But almost immediately after the tonic touched his tongue, he felt slightly better, clearer of mind, less exhausted.

“I should probably bleed you at some point,” Boubou continued delicately after Edward had dutifully downed the tonic.

Edward tried not to cringe. He’d been bled once before, when he’d first become ill. He thought that if anything, the bleeding had only made him feel weaker. Plus it was unsettling watching his blood drain into a bowl.

“No,” he said. “No bleeding.”

Boubou didn’t argue, but the doctor didn’t seem to be afraid of him any longer, which Edward found disappointing.

Lord Dudley shuffled forward hefting a writing tray, which he placed carefully across Edward’s

lap. Then he produced a large parchment scroll and unrolled it on the tray.

Revised Decree on the Line of Succession, the scroll read, followed by a lot of very fine print that swam before Edward’s eyes.

“What is this?” Edward asked.

“Your royal will, Your Highness,” the duke said, motioning for Boubou to bring him a quill and a pot of ink. “We discussed how you would name Jane Grey’s male heir as your successor.

Remember?”

Edward had a vague recollection of this.

“But considering this most recent turn in your health,” Dudley continued, “I thought it might be prudent to revise the line of succession.”

For a moment Edward was confused. Then he realized. “Because you don’t think I’ll live long enough for Jane to have a son.”

Dudley said nothing, but his gaze lingered on the parchment. Edward squinted to read the flowery calligraphy. At the top was his title: Edward the Sixth, by the Grace of God, King of England, Ireland, and France.

(Back then the English monarchy liked to claim ownership of France, even though France had a

perfectly suitable king of its own. The relationship between the two countries was obviously strained as a result.)

“‘For lack of issue of my body,’” he read, then stopped to take a breath. “‘Upon the event of my death, I bequeath my kingdom and the entitlements and protections thereof, to the Lady Jane Grey and the male heirs who follow her.’” He glanced up at Dudley. “You want me to make Jane herself the queen?”

Dudley nodded sagely, his eyes gleaming above his great nose.

Edward didn’t know why he felt surprised at this news.

“But she’s a woman,” he murmured. “The crown can’t go to a woman, right?”

“Jane would have my son to guide her,” Dudley said. “And me.”

Well, that made sense, thought Edward. Lord Dudley had been one of his most faithful and trusted advisors over the years. The duke had never led him astray.

Dudley handed him the quill.

Edward hesitated. He ignored Dudley’s protests and rose shakily from his bed, crossed to the window to stare down at the courtyard. For just a moment he thought he actually saw Jane down below him, the jewels of her golden gown catching the sun, her hair a gleam of red. But when he looked again she was gone.

Jane was on her honeymoon, he told himself. Not here.

Then he allowed himself to truly consider the idea of Jane as queen. His little, stubborn, and bookish, utterly sweet cousin Jane. Queen of England.

She wasn’t going to like that. She’d even said as much once. Too many rules.

But what was his alternative? Mary was still a Verity and a royal stick in the mud. Bess was still of an uncertain opinion when it came to her stance on E∂ians. Jane was the only decent choice left from the royal line, unless you factored in Mary Queen of Scots.

He shuddered.

“Queen Jane,” he whispered to himself. “Queen Jane.”

It had a nice ring to it, he thought. Jane would be a kind queen, for one thing. She was well educated—some would even say too well educated, for a woman. She was clever. She had backbone,

wouldn’t let the counselors make all the decisions. She could make a good ruler, an excellent ruler, even, in spite of the whole female problem. He allowed himself the sentimentality of picturing Jane in the palace, living in his chambers and taking her meals at his table and reading the books from his library.

Wearing his crown.

“Is there a problem, Sire?” Dudley prompted. “Do you need to lie down?”

“Give me the document,” Edward said. Dudley moved the parchment to a nearby side table, and

Edward signed his name carefully. The duke leaned over him to drip wax onto the bottom of the paper and helped Edward to press the ring with the royal seal into the wax. After that was finished, Dudley signed the paper himself, as a witness, along with Master Boubou. Then Dudley rolled the scroll up and whisked it out of sight.

Weariness tugged at Edward again, and he got back into bed, sinking against his plethora of pillows. He closed his eyes.

He had just made Jane the most powerful woman in England.

He liked the idea, but there was still something nagging at him. A doubt. A whisper of worry.

He tried to ignore it. His stomach rumbled, and he decided that any misgivings he might be feeling were due to how hollow and exhausted he was. He really should eat something, he thought. He wished Mistress Penne had left the soup.

He opened his eyes to ask Dudley to send for her but fell silent when he saw the duke and the doctor standing close together, staring out the window where he had been standing a few moments before.

“So. It is done,” the duke said in a low voice.

“It is done,” Boubou affirmed almost mournfully. “And it will be done, as I promised.”

A chill trickled down Edward’s spine. He must have made some kind of noise, because both men

turned to look at him. Edward quickly closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing.

“It won’t be long now,” he heard Boubou say from the far side of the room, then the creak of the door ’s hinges. “A day or two, at most.”

Edward felt a shadow fall over him. “Sleep well, Your Majesty,” came Lord Dudley’s voice, almost tenderly, and the duke’s clammy fingers brushed a strand of hair from Edward’s feverishly hot face. Edward didn’t move, but next to him he felt Pet’s body tense, the beginnings of a growl working its way up through her chest.

He flexed his fingers where they were buried in her fur, trying to put her at ease.

Lord Dudley turned and hurried out, the sound of his footsteps falling urgent on the stairs. Edward opened his eyes. Pet let out a soft, angry bark.

“It’s all right, girl,” he said to Pet.

She turned over to have her belly rubbed. He obliged her absent-mindedly, trying to clear his thoughts enough to interpret what he’d just heard.

It is done. Well, he’d signed the document, so that was probably the it they’d been referring to.

But then Boubou had said, It will be done, and something about a promise. And Edward had no idea what that meant.

And, then, most troubling of all: It won’t be long now. A day or two at most.

It won’t be long now.

He was fairly certain that the it in this instance was his death.

He slept until the nurse returned a few hours later. This time she carried a plate of blackberry pie, piled high with whipped cream.

Edward’s mouth watered.

He had the fork in his hand, a piece of delicious pie nearly to his lips, when Pet snarled. Not growled. Not barked. Snarled. Then she lunged toward the pie.

Edward was so surprised that he dropped the fork.

Mistress Penne was so surprised that she dropped the plate. It clattered loudly to the floor.

He expected to see Pet dash to lick up the pie (he really should have given her some of the venison from his soup earlier), but the dog ignored the food completely. She leapt to the floor between Mistress Penne and Edward, teeth bared, hackles raised, hair standing up all over her body. The sounds coming from her throat belonged to a much bigger animal.

The nursemaid’s watery eyes bulged. “The dog has gone mad,” she gasped.

Edward was inclined to agree. Pet looked truly terrifying.

“Back away slowly,” he advised. “Once you get to the door, run and get Peter Bannister. He’s the kennel master. Send him here. He’ll know what to do.”

“I can’t leave you here.”

“Pet won’t hurt me,” Edward said with more confidence than he felt. He was about seventy-five percent certain, at least, that Pet wouldn’t hurt him.

This was all it took to satisfy Mistress Penne. She took three hasty steps back and then was gone.

Pet’s snarl faded. She sat down. She still did not seem even remotely interested in the pie. She reminded Edward of a statue of a stone lion that his father had commissioned for the royal gardens, standing at attention, back stiff, head high, ears forward.

She was guarding him, he realized. But from whom? Mistress Penne?

Soon he heard footsteps on the stairs again, and Pet stood up, her tail wagging.

Peter Bannister came bursting in the door. His eyes went first to Edward, taking in the monarch’s rumpled bedclothes and pale, strained face, but when he found that the king was unharmed, the kennel master dropped to his knees beside Pet. The dog licked his face, then whined deep in her throat and sat down again near the foot of Edward’s bed.

“There now, my girl,” Peter soothed in his rough peasant’s lilt. “It’s all right. You can come out.”

Come out? thought Edward. Come out of what?

Pet whined again.

Peter crossed to the door and bolted it from the inside, then turned back to the dog. “Fine. Come on, then.”

“What is it that you wish her to do?” Edward asked, out of breath. “Shake hands?”

Pet snorted.

“I know I told you never in the palace,” Peter said, as if he were actually having a two-way conversation with Edward’s dog. “But now I’m telling you that it’s safe.”

Another whine.

“Petunia,” Peter scolded. “For the love of Pete. Focus.”

Pet stood up, then lifted her front paws onto the edge of Edward’s bed, her neck thrown back like she was stretching. There was a flash of light, as painful as if Edward had accidentally glanced into the sun, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again there was a naked girl standing at the foot of his bed.

His mouth dropped open.

Peter wordlessly lifted one of Edward’s fur blankets off the bed and wrapped it around the girl, who looked a bit dazed herself.

“Give her a minute,” Peter said.

Edward still had his mouth open.

“It always takes time, after the change,” explained Peter, as if Edward was supposed to know what he was talking about. “Especially after spending so long out of human form.”

The girl shook her head as if to clear it, sending her long blond hair cascading around her shoulders. Then she said, “What is a second opinion?” She asked the question slowly, as if she were carefully choosing each word.

“A second opinion?” Peter repeated.

The girl turned to look at Edward with soft brown eyes, and in that instant he knew unequivocally that this girl was Pet. Pet, his dog. This girl. An E∂ian, clearly. A naked E∂ian girl.

He closed his mouth.

“What is a second opinion?” she asked again, shifting closer. She didn’t seem to be at all concerned that she was only draped in a fur blanket.

“I just rubbed your belly,” Edward blurted out.

She cocked her head to one side. “You want to rub my belly?”

“She’s been out of human form for a while.” Peter ’s face reddened.

“You keep saying that you’re going to get a second opinion,” Pet-the-girl said.

Edward wasn’t really listening. He was too busy thinking, I have been sleeping with this dog for a week. Her body against mine. My dog is actually a naked girl. Naked. Girl. Naked.

“A second opinion is when one doctor tells you something bad, so then you get another doctor to tell you what he thinks. To make sure that the first doctor was right,” Peter said.

Pet nodded. Then she was silent for several heartbeats before she said, ever so carefully: “It is my opinion that Your Majesty is being poisoned.”

That shocked Edward out of his my-dog-is-a-naked-girl reverie.

She bent to scoop a handful of the pie from the floor, holding the blanket around her with one hand and the pie cupped in the palm of the other. She brought it to her face and sniffed.

“There’s a bad smell,” she said. “In the berries. A wicked smell.”

She held the palmful of pie out to Peter, who also sniffed it and then frowned.

“Yes,” Peter said. “That doesn’t smell right. Well done, lass.”

Pet-the-girl smiled, the kind of smile that Edward sensed was the equivalent of a tail wag. He was beginning to feel like he was dreaming, the strangest and most inappropriate dream he’d ever experienced.

“So you’re saying that someone poisoned my blackberry pie,” he said.

“Not someone,” Pet-the-girl said matter-of-factly. “The nurse.”

“Mistress Penne?”

She nodded. “Her body is stiff with lying. The scent of fear is all over her. I watched her. She puts the bad smell in all Your Majesty’s berries.”

She was accusing the woman who had changed his diapers and kissed his boo-boos and sung him

to sleep of poisoning his beloved blackberries. It was unbelievable, but Edward believed it nonetheless. He believed Pet. Perhaps only because he couldn’t imagine this plain-spoken creature capable of telling a lie.

“But why would she do that?”

“Because the bad man pays her,” Pet answered.

“What bad man?” Peter frowned.

“The one with the big sniffer.”

Edward rubbed his hands over his eyes. Lord Dudley. Which meant the doctor was probably in on

it, too. It was all falling into place. The it they’d been talking about. Assassinating him. So Jane would be crowned queen and then Dudley could rule the kingdom.

He sighed. It was a bit cliché, really. A familiar story, even for back then. The evil, power-hungry duke, grasping at the crown. The villain.

Which made Edward the naïve, unsuspecting fool.

And he’d married Jane off to the villain’s son.

They were both pawns in a political game.

He wanted to stand up. He wanted to pace and scream and break things. He wanted to send somebody to the dungeon. Torture. The executioner ’s block. He wanted to become a lion and roar down the stairs and find the duke’s throat. But even the thoughts tired him, and instead, as if to remind him of his body’s current frailty, he was wracked by a violent coughing fit, which held on to him so long that his vision dimmed and he was afraid he was going to pass out.

“Your Majesty is still breathing?” Pet-the-girl said softly, when he could hear anything outside of his own noise again. He felt her head upon his shoulder, her body against his, offering comfort the way she would in her other form. She still smelled like dog: her breath, a woodsy musk emanating from her skin, mixed with a scent he recognized as his own cologne.

He tried to sit up. “I’m fine.”

She pulled away and smiled at him. “Fine. Yes. You are a fine person. My favorite.”

Peter cleared his throat. “You must excuse my daughter, Your Majesty. As I said, she’s been out of human form for a very long while.” He took Pet-the-girl by the hand and tugged her off the bed.

Her brow furrowed. “Have I displeased Your Majesty?”

“No, Pet.” Edward turned toward Peter. “She’s your daughter?”

Peter nodded.

“Are all the dogs in my kennels E∂ians?” Edward wanted to know.

“No, Sire. I have three sons and two daughters in the kennel, is all.”

“Oh, is that all?” Edward said wryly, but he couldn’t seem to find his smirk.

“My family has served your family in this way for generations,” Peter said. “We have guarded your palaces and your lands. Sat at your feet. Protected you on the hunt and in the home.”

Pet-the-girl’s chest swelled with pride at her father ’s words (not that Edward was noticing anything about her chest), as if the man was reciting an ancient oath.

“I didn’t know,” Edward said. “Why did no one tell me?”

It seemed that he’d been in the dark about so many things.

Peter shook his head. “No one knew, Your Majesty. Not even your father.”

Pet-the-girl was smiling at Edward again. “Your Majesty chose me, out of all the others, to come inside the palace. Your Majesty likes me best.”

“Indeed,” he agreed faintly. This was becoming too much for him. He felt dizzy. The cloudiness

was obscuring his thoughts again. He fell back against his pillows and took several deep breaths. His stomach gurgled loudly. He was still hungry, but how could he trust anything anyone offered him?

Mistress Penne. Dudley. Boubou. The people he had counted on most were trying to kill him.

He was angry, of course, but more importantly, this just really hurt his feelings.

His eyes burned. “What am I going to do?” he murmured.

He felt Pet-the-girl’s hand come down on his shoulder. “I will keep Your Majesty safe,” she said.

He felt something like a warm breeze on his face, and when he looked up he saw Pet was a dog

again. She jumped up on the foot of the bed and lay across his feet.

Edward didn’t know whether or not he should object.

Jane

So. Her husband was a horse.

And no one had told her.

Not her mother, not Edward, and certainly not Gifford. She’d had to find out as it happened and get the details from a servant. Outrageous.

Jane paced the hallway outside Gifford’s bedchambers, listening to the horse clomp around inside.

She squeezed the broken stems of her poor, mauled bouquet. It wasn’t that she was opposed to marrying an E∂ian. On the contrary, she found that rather exciting. But there was the small matter of Gifford seeming to despise her, and the larger matter of no one telling her.

Well, she couldn’t be sure her mother had known about the equestrian aspects of her husband, and Gifford was a drunken debaucher so of course he couldn’t be expected to tell her the truth. But Edward! Edward had known. He’d said he thought she would find Gifford’s condition intriguing, but where she’d assumed he meant Gifford’s nighttime women habits, now she knew he’d actually meant Gifford’s history of daily horsehood.

From others, that omission would have been forgivable, because others sought only to use her in their schemes and politics. But Edward was her best friend. She had never kept any secrets from her cousin, and his silence on this matter was unpardonable.

And he deserved to know that.

Inside Gifford’s bedchamber, the clomping paused and something decidedly wet sounding plopped on the floor. A rank odor came from the room.

Unacceptable.

Jane hurled her bouquet stems at the door, marched out of Durham House, and ordered a carriage

to take her to the palace.

The whole ride there, Jane practiced what she would say to Edward. She would lay out the points for him: the breach in trust, the disappointment, the hurt, and the reminder that she had married this horse boy because he had asked.

Only as she stomped up the palace steps, receiving raised eyebrows from members of the esteemed noble class, did she realize she was still wearing The Gown and all her wedding attire. The Gown rested askew on her chest and hips, and the headdress listed to one side. The plaits in her hair had come undone in her sleep.

Well, it had been very late at night by the time the wedding was over, and there’d been no spare clothes for her in that wretched room, not even a nightgown. Certainly she wasn’t going to sleep naked in the presence of that—that—horse boy.

“My lady.” A nose appeared, Lord Dudley following close behind. “I’m surprised to see you.”

She smoothed back her hair as the duke approached her. “As I’m sure you’ve guessed, my new

husband is indisposed right now.”

Lord Dudley grimaced. “Ah, yes. Of course you know about my son’s . . . condition.”

Embarrassment flashed across his face, and Jane had the sense he wasn’t used to discussing the equestrian affliction with anyone, and therefore wasn’t used to disguising his feelings on the subject.

She smiled and threw back her shoulders, anxious to take out her frustrations on someone. “Of course I do. He’s quite a magnificent creature, don’t you think? Very strong. Regal. I can see you only purchase the finest quality hay for him. What sort of diet does one feed a beast like that? Horses are herbivores, if I’m not mistaken. But human men can be quite carnivorous. I assume you considered the logistics of a meat diet on a horse stomach years ago, though. I’d be interested to see your research, my lord.”

Her husband’s father turned pale.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to acquire a horse of my own. I thought I might get outside more

and enjoy some exercise. Imagine the benefits of riding a horse that truly can understand your every command, and spot potential danger not just on an instinctual level, but a human level as well. No more shying at wheelbarrows or cows or other harmless things.”

The duke’s frown was turning into a glower. “Gifford is my son, not an animal.”

“Given his E∂ian existence and his rather promiscuous nocturnal activities, I would think you’d have realized long ago that being your son does not preclude him from also being an animal. The two states are not mutually exclusive.”

Alarmingly, Lord Dudley gave her an oily smile when he should have shriveled further.

“Promiscuous perhaps, my lady, but you appear to have thoroughly enjoyed the benefits of his experience.”

Jane immediately turned red.

“Can we expect happy news soon? I have been looking forward to the idea of more

grandchildren.”

Her face felt like it was on fire, but as the duke turned away, a superior set in his expression, she called out, “I’m surprised you don’t have a hundred already!”

Then she realized that was not quite the stinging quip she had intended, and actually dug her deeper into the losing side of their verbal battle. As the duke vanished around a corner, she crossed her arms and shifted her course to a small powder room where she could begin to make herself presentable—not that Edward ever cared how she appeared, but she didn’t want everyone in the palace to assume she’d had a rambunctious night with her new husband.

She spent several minutes adjusting The Gown as best she could, and then she went to work on her hair, first carefully removing the headdress. Untangling the mess took a bit more work, followed by some finger combing, and then she pulled her hair into a low bun and pinned it into place.

After she inspected herself in the framed silver mirror, she proceeded to the turret room where Edward spent all his time lately.

A pair of guards stood watch at the base of the stairs.

“I’m here to see the king,” she announced.

The two men glanced at each other, and the one with a big, bushy unibrow said, “His Majesty is

asleep. If you’d like to wait in the library, someone will be along to tell you when he’s ready to receive you.”

Jane frowned. Edward had never been a late sleeper before. Then again, he’d never had “the Affliction” before. He’d looked so pale and worn last night that it was a wonder he’d even been sitting straight by the end of the feast.

Well, there were worse places to wait than the library.

“Inform me as soon as the king awakens. I want to know the instant he’s available.”

“Of course, my lady.” The guard stood at attention once more and resumed looking through her.

Jane headed for the library, a familiar place filled with memories of time spent with Edward.

Often, they would choose a topic and whoever produced the most facts about it by the end of an hour would win. (Jane had won a lot, a fact she loved to remind Edward about. Those few times she’d lost still haunted her nightmares.) It was here she’d first learned about E∂ians, how they’d been persecuted for centuries, and that the gift typically ran in families, though neither she nor Edward had been blessed with an animal form. Edward, and everyone else, might have been frightened of his father ’s second form, but Jane had always been jealous of her mother ’s (very secret) magic.

Did Lady Frances know about Gifford? She was outspoken in her dislike of E∂ians (in spite of being one herself), so maybe no one had told her, assuming she wouldn’t approve the match otherwise. (Few people realized just how desperate Lady Frances was to marry off her daughter.

She’d have married Jane to a tree stump if it had been allowed.)

Jane sighed and wandered toward the selection of books on horses: feeding, caring for, history, anatomy, potential illnesses, and how to braid a tail.

She spent a few hours lost in old texts describing the process of driving the nail through the shoe and hoof, the importance of equine companionship, and the necessity of grooming not just the fur, mane, and tail, but picking rocks out of the hooves as well. Furthermore, what to do if the hoof was split.

Fortunately Billingsly was probably responsible for all that, and maybe Gifford didn’t need shoes, as he likely didn’t want iron nailed into his bare feet when he transformed every evening. She’d have to ask.

By noon, Edward had not emerged from his chambers and Jane was getting hungry. She put away

the books and returned to the stairwell. The same two guards were on duty. “Has the king awakened?”

she asked.

“I’m afraid His Majesty is not taking visitors today.” Unibrow Guard didn’t break his stance.

Jane scowled. “He will see me. Tell him that Lady Jane—” She stopped. Her name was Lady Jane

Dudley now. Jane Dudley. Terrible. She swallowed hard. “Tell him that his cousin Jane wishes to speak with him.”

“The orders are that he sees no one today.”

“Go up and ask if he will see me. Because he will.” Jane crossed her arms and leaned her weight on one hip. “I’ll wait right here.”

“No one is allowed to see the king today, my lady. If he wants to see you, he’ll send for you.”

Jane bristled. “This is ridiculous. You must allow me to see him immediately. There won’t be any problem, you’ll see.”

“My lady, if you continue to insist, we will call for someone to escort you out of the palace.”

Her face was hot with anger. How dare they block her from seeing her cousin?

Unless . . .

Unless Edward was getting worse and had ordered himself into isolation, but why would he isolate himself from her?

As she left the palace—without an escort—she decided to write a letter to him.

She stopped just before entering her carriage and glanced up at the turret.

A silhouette filled the top-floor window for a moment. Edward? Before her return to Bradgate Park, she’d have recognized the shape of her cousin anywhere, but now he’d grown so thin she

couldn’t tell if the shadow had been him or not.

She stepped into her carriage and drove away.

Jane spent the afternoon in Chelsea, avoiding her mother ’s questions as Adella and a handful of maids packed for the honeymoon. She’d written a few notes, had the letter to Edward sent out, and then took an hour to decide which fifty books she would bring to the country. They’d be there for weeks, and she wanted to be prepared for a lot of quality alone time. Apparently Gifford would be spending his days as a horse, and thus useless for company.

Maybe that was all right.

A little before dusk, she took a carriage back to Durham House and returned to Gifford’s bedchambers. He was still in horse form, sleeping, as far as she could tell. The bed had been moved to one side, and in the corner sat a cold pile of, well, the expected result of a large animal being trapped inside a room all day. She pressed a handkerchief to her nose and opened the window to air out the stink, then went to the wardrobe, where she found a shirt and trousers.

She lit a few candles, and then sat on the bed to wait while the sun fell toward the horizon.

Last time, the change had been sudden, just a burst of light she hadn’t expected, and when she’d finished blinking away the sparks, her husband had been a horse.

Now that horse stood there sleeping, his sleek coat shining in the last rays of sunlight. It seemed incredible that those slender legs could carry the entire body, and not just carry, but run and jump and prance. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d told Lord Dudley that his son was a magnificent beast. If only he could control it. Well, it was fortunate he’d married her, as she knew quite a lot about E∂ians. If anyone could help him learn to govern his gift, it was Jane. And her books.

Then it happened. Light flared and the sleeping horse became a sleeping man, lying naked on the floor.

His eyelids fluttered and his nose wrinkled at the stench of his own manure. Jane leaned over the side of the bed and lowered his trousers in front of his face.

“Thank you, Billingsly.” His voice was groggy.

“You’re welcome.”

Gifford’s eyes went wide as he snatched the trousers and shoved the wad of fabric over his nether region. Jane sat back on the bed while her husband scrambled to his feet.

“My lady, please! I am indecent.”

“You are,” Jane agreed. “Not to mention the fact that you are also unclothed.” She slipped off the opposite side of the bed, away from him and his nudity, but also away from the pile of unfortunate smells. “Is there a reason, Gifford, that you didn’t tell me about your condition?”

“Please call me G.” He adjusted his grip on the trousers, letting the legs hang in front of him as though he were wearing them. Almost. “Everyone calls me G.”

“I’ve never heard anyone call you G. Besides Billingsly, but he is a servant. He would call you Josephina if you ordered. Anyway, you haven’t given me an answer as to why I spent my wedding night attending an ale-stinking sot, and the morning after sharing a bedchamber with a horse.”

“Well, when you put it that way . . .”

“I’m sorry, but how would you put it?” She refused to grin, even though his discomfort was delicious. After the utter mortification of earlier, both with Lord Dudley and the guards, she reveled in this feeling of power over him. It was about time something went her way.

“I would say you spent our wedding night with a charmingly tipsy gentleman who was hesitant to

pressure an obviously virtuous lady to rush into . . .”

Oh. That.

Jane blushed and glanced out the window toward the busy street. She chose a passing cart full of apples to find fascinating, but it was quickly gone.

“And as for the equestrian awakening, I fail to see a downside.”

“You mean the thing no one warned me about? It seems like a subject that might come up. For example, ‘Oh by the way, your future husband changes into a horse as soon as the sun rises every morning.’”

He shrugged.

“Do you even try to control it?”

“It’s a curse, my lady. Controlling it would defeat the purpose.”

“And what is the purpose?” Perhaps if she knew the nature of it, she could better help him solve this pesky problem.

“I don’t know.”

“Gifford, you never get to see the light of day.” Yet he failed to see a downside. “I fail to see an upside, except for the possibility that I will one day need a quick escape, in which case it will be useful to have a fast horse.”

Gifford grunted. “There will be no riding the horse! In fact, I believe this is an opportune time to set some ground rules for this marriage.”

“Like what? Hay preferences?”

“Number one.” He went to tick off the number on his forefinger and subsequently dropped the trousers. She took a moment to admire the ceiling. Then Gifford retrieved his trousers and continued without the visual aid. “Number one: there will be no riding the horse. Number two: there will be no bridling the horse. Number three: there will be no saddling the horse.”

“Well, then what is the point of owning a horse?”

“You do not own me!” He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “My lady, would you mind exiting

the bedchamber while I dress?”

She tilted her head. “No, I don’t think I will, because I have a few rules of my own.”

He slumped a little. “All right.”

“Number one: no touching my books. Number two: no chewing on my books.”

He snorted indignantly. “I would never chew on your books.”

“You ate my bridal bouquet.”

He looked surprised, as though he’d forgotten. Then he nodded. “So I did. Continue.”

“Number three: I will never find hay in my books.”

“Do all of your rules pertain to books? I suppose I understand why, since your social shortcomings mean books are your closest friends.” He momentarily seemed taken aback at his own rudeness.

Jane narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure your true E∂ian form isn’t a jackass?”

“Very funny, my lady. And that reminds me”—he pointed a finger at her—“no horse jokes.”

He was making it too easy. “Ah, my lord, why the long face?”

“That’s it!” After a frantic look around the room, he grabbed a book from the nightstand. The trousers hung dangerously to one side as he let the book flop open. “I don’t recall you mentioning anything about bending the spine of a book.”

Alarm filled her. “Put down the book.” She wanted to look away, as he seemed distracted from holding the trousers in place, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the book. What if he hurt it? What if he followed through with his threat?

“No horse jokes,” he said.

“My lord, I apologize for the horse joke. If you put down the book—unharmed!—I will give you

a carrot.”

He brandished the book at her. “Was that a horse joke?”

“Neigh.”

“Was that a horse joke?”

Before she could respond, a maid barged into the room to turn down the bedcovers, only to find

Gifford with his trousers pressed against his waist, Jane with her face flushed, and a pile of shredded clothes (from this morning’s transformation) on the floor. The maid gasped and held her hands to her mouth, then fled the room with an embarrassed cry.

A slow smile pulled at Gifford’s mouth. “She thinks we consummated.”

Jane’s face burned as she snatched the book to the safety of her arms. “My lord, I will leave you to properly attire yourself. A carriage is waiting to take us to our honeymoon.” (The word honeymoon was quite new at this point in history, and actually involved a month’s supply of mead for the newlyweds rather than a romantic getaway, but for the sake of delicate sensibilities, we’ll pretend honeymoon meant then what it does now.)

Gifford held the trousers over his hips once more. “I anticipate your books are waiting for us as well.”

“Don’t worry. I left space for you.” She took her book and fled.

Jane wasn’t sure when Gifford had packed, or if Billingsly had done it for him, but her new husband’s trunks were in the stowage area on top of the carriage. There hadn’t been room for her books up there, so she’d been forced to construct a small wall of religious, scientific, and philosophical texts between herself and Gifford.

“Is all this really necessary?” he asked when he arrived and spotted her fortress of books.

“Considering that this country house they’re sending us to belongs to the Dudleys, and I’ve seen the way your family treats books, I couldn’t be sure there would be enough to keep myself occupied during the day.” She stroked the spine of the nearest book: An Analysis of E∂ians’ Paintings and Their Impact on Society: Volume Three.

“How many of these will you finish by the time we arrive?” He eyed them warily, as though the

books were some sort of army of knowledge. Some of the corners were rather sharp, she supposed.

“None.” She sniffed and indicated the lantern, which cast only a dim glow over her side of the carriage. “It’s not bright enough to read by and I don’t care to ruin my vision. Instead I’m going to knit until I’m too tired to care that I’m trapped in a carriage. I didn’t have the luxury of sleeping all day. If you were truly a charmingly tipsy gentleman, you’d have insisted we rest tonight and make the journey in the morning.”

“But I’d be a horse.”

“And infinitely more useful for pulling the carriage.”

“That would violate rule number two: no bridling the horse.”

“Carriage horses use halters.”

“Did you learn that from a book?”

The carriage jolted and they were carried down the long drive. “I learned it,” she said, “from being observant.” That wasn’t half as cutting as she’d have preferred, but he wasn’t paying attention anyway. (Thus making her point.) He’d tied his hair into a tail and had his head leaned back on the high seat. As they drove past a street lantern, his profile was silhouetted: it was the perfect blend of

soft around his mouth and sharp over his (curse-free) nose. The fan of his unfairly long eyelashes flashed as he opened his eyes and glanced at her.

She lowered her gaze to the knitting on her lap, hiding her flush behind a veil of hair. He was attractive. She was married to him. She could look. She should look.

As long as he didn’t know about it. The last thing she needed was for his ego to get any bigger.

They rode in silence while she knitted, but when at last she held up her work, the scarf was far from scarf-like. The tragedy of wool was short, and skinny in the wrong places. It almost resembled some sort of fat rodent.

“What is it, may I ask?” Gifford asked, squinting at her handiwork.

“None of your business.” She lowered her work and began unknitting an entire row of stitches one at a time, erasing their tangled existence with much more finesse than she’d created them. (She had a lot of practice unknitting things. She could unknit entire wardrobes. You’d imagine that lots of practice unknitting would mean lots of practice—and improvement—knitting, but your imagination forgot to account for Jane.)

Jane tried again, this time making sure to count the knits and purls, and pull every ply through the stitch. By the end of the row, the scarf had grown fat and twelve stray plies stuck out in little loops. “I think you’re getting better.” Gifford leaned one elbow on her books. “I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to be, but it looks more like something than it did a few minutes ago.”

She scowled and jabbed his elbow with the point of her free needle. “No touching my books, remember?”

Gifford withdrew, and Jane put aside her knitting.

“So there is something you aren’t good at,” Gifford mused. “You don’t seem like the kind of person to continue something she’s not immediately perfect at, so why knitting?”

“Practice makes perfect,” she answered primly. “And I wanted to make something for Edward. He

gets cold sometimes now. . . .”

Gifford was frowning. “I take it you and the king are close,” he said quietly.

“Yes. Quite.”

“But how close are we talking, here? Old-childhood-chums close, or former-paramours close, or

still-can’t-live-without-each-other . . .”

Jane had no idea what he was going on about. Fortunately, the sound of screaming ahead saved her from having to figure it out.

“What is that?” Jane thudded the heel of her palm on the side of the carriage. “Driver, halt!”

“Screams mean danger, my lady.” Gifford reached for her, but the book wall prevented him from

getting very far, and then the carriage had stopped moving and Jane was out the door, into the night.

She picked up the hem of her dress and ran toward the sound, stumbling over the rutted dirt road, which ran on a hill above a long stretch of farmland.

“My lady!” called the driver, echoed shortly by Gifford.

But Jane didn’t stop running until she was well ahead of the carriage, and standing on a prominence overlooking a wide field where, on the far side, a single cow lowed in bovine terror.

The moon was high and full enough to illuminate the events unfolding on the outskirts of the field below: a handful of people brandished sticks and pitchforks and various other farming tools, attempting to block the path of a pack of wolves.

“Jane, what are you doing?” Gifford caught up with her, and he saw what she saw. “God’s teeth.”

“Gifford, you must do something.”

“Do what?” His face was drawn and pale in the moonlight. His eyes hadn’t shifted from the wolves

below.

“Save those people. The wolves are trying to attack their cow!” Most of the people below were adults, both men and women, but a few couldn’t be older than eleven or twelve. “The wolves will go through the people to get to the cow.”

“And how do you propose I make this daring rescue? Shall I hurl books at the wolves? Throw myself in front of the cow to save it?” He looked at her askance as one of the children screamed and began to flee from the wolves. The pack leader yipped, and two of its pack mates leapt toward the child, who crumpled into a ball to protect his head and neck as the wolves nipped at his arms. A man broke the blockade and ran to help the child, and the wolves took advantage of the chaos. A couple of wolves lunged toward the whole group, forcing them to defend themselves while the rest of the pack moved around and began a steady lope toward the mooing cow.

“If you won’t help them, I will!” Jane scrambled back toward the road and scanned for a place with a shallow enough incline to descend, but there was nothing easy, aside from a series of protruding rocks she could climb down.

Gifford was running after her, and the driver looked uncertain whether to leave behind the carriage.

Jane reached the outcroppings of rocks and stretched to find footing on the first one. Below, the wolves had reached the cow on the far side of the field. The cow’s scream rang across the night. A man shouted, “This is what you get, if you mess with the likes of us!” Jane realized then that this man was not one of the farmers, but a better-dressed fellow who was running alongside the wolves. And there were three more men with him, armed with swords and bows.

Why were there people with the wolves? It made no sense.

Tears blurred Jane’s vision as her foot finally touched the first rock, and she crab-crawled downward. But before she made it very far, two strong hands plucked her up by her underarms, and lifted her away from her mission.

The villagers were still screaming, though the wolves had abandoned the child and the other farmers. The cow was dead. The four men with the wolves were dragging it away.

“It’s over, Jane.” Gifford didn’t release her; his hands were hot on her ribs.

She stared beyond him, where the peasants were regrouping, consoling one another. Their voices

drifted up from the field. “Third cow this week,” someone said.

“The Pack will take everything unless we hunt them down,” a man replied. “The children will starve.”

A small meep came from Jane. The poor children.

“Is he going to be all right?” someone called, looking toward the people surrounding the child who’d been attacked. Jane held her breath. Even Gifford turned to listen.

“The bites aren’t deep. As long as they don’t fester . . .” Their conversation grew too quiet for Jane to hear.