Page 48 of With You Here
“A colossal-sized white elephant sitting between us?”
She squeezed his hand in support.
“I wish I knew. One couldn’t tell from looking at us now, but we used to be really close. In fact, Orhan and Yara remind me of us when we were little.”
“How so?”
“Life wasn’t easy growing up. We lived below the poverty line in a crime-ridden section of London. Mum worked hard, but she barely made enough at her job to pay for the hovel of a flat we lived in and the meals made from food bought with coupon clippings. A lot of times, Kayla and I were left at home by ourselves so Mum could pick up a double shift. It was just us, me and Kayla, against the whole world it seemed.”
“That must have been tough.”
“Life usually is. But because we didn’t have a lot of money, we had to find our own ways to entertain ourselves. I’d kick aluminuim cans between the dumpsters in the back alley, and Kayla would take broken pieces of chalk and create beautiful art.”
He drew in a breath. “One day, I was in the abandoned parking lot on the other side of the street from our flat. I’d found a ball in the dumpster. A few leather patches had been torn off, but the ball still held air. Felt like Christmas to me. A few other teens in the neighborhood realized I was playing with a real ball instead of a can or a ball made out of rubber bands wound together, and they came over. We started a game. Every day after school we played with that ball—Kayla, me, and a dozen other kids. For an hour we were allowed to put off the concerns that only adults should shoulder. We didn’t have to worry if there would be dinner on the table that night or if the electricity would be shut off again because the bill couldn’t get paid.
He paused, thinking back. “Then a black sedan pulled up along the street and parked. No one got out. It just sat there while we played. Showed up the next day and the next for a week. On the seventh day, someone finally got out of the car. Jerry Applewood, the chief executor of the Premiere League.”
He blinked, the vividness of the memory playing out before him. “My life, and my relationship with my sister, hasn’t been the same since.”
He pulled to a stop, Amber with him, and he looked down at her. He hadn’t told anyone his story in a long time. Not after the initial interviews following his signing. The fans had eaten up the underdog, rags-to-riches tale, and now it seemed everyone thought they knew him. But his life wasn’t a story, no matter how inspirational some claimed it to be. And now he was sharing it—him—not with the world, but with one very special woman. Would she see beyond the hype of a headline? Beyond the stories that sold newspapers and tabloids and filled football stadiums?
Her eyes softened and her lips parted.
“Mr. Marshall!”
His head jerked up. Whipped around to find a familiar voice calling for him. The flash of a paparazzo’s camera caused stars to blink in his vision and an anchor to sink in his gut.
Chapter Nineteen
Holy Roman Empire, 1527
“Three persons depart the castle and yet seven return.” Kampff, Duke of Schlestein, blocked Christyne’s path. His lip curled in disdain as he looked down upon her. The landsknecht captain, who seemed sewn to his side, was standing on his right, gaze sweeping across the small party of people behind her. His calculating gaze weighted his inspection.
Would he notice anything amiss? The absence of an upper class bearing? A stitch of clothing undone? One small whiff of suspicion and this heretic-hunting hound would sink his teeth into all their throats.
Christyne lifted her chin. She refused to be cowed by either of these insufferable tyrants. “It would behoove you,Herzog,to remove your person from before us. You impede theReichsfürst’sguests.” She stressed both his and her father’s stations. While he presided over the duchy of Schlestein, her father held more power and prestige as a prince of the Holy Roman Empire.
Clare stepped forward. “She is correct, Herzog Kampff. And in addition, you sorely vex me with your insinuation that my personal friends could in any way be an enemy of either His Holiness Pope Clement or Emperor Charles V.”
Kampff’s already thin lips pressed together until they disappeared altogether. In a blink, he forced those lines to bow, transforming them into the most insincere smile. “I cry your mercy, princesses, and beg a thousand pardons.”
Clare sniffed and beckoned with her hand. “Bytzel, Katherine, come and I will show you the chapel where we can rest in prayer.”
Christyne hid her grin as she stepped into line behind the other women, not daring to even notch her gaze upward lest Kampff or his mercenary friend discern their true nature. God had spared them discovery this time, but no one had escaped the hound’s sharp fangs as yet.
Nikolaus escorted Peter, Katherine’s husband, toward the stable. They had agreed that he would pose as the ladies’ servant, as his borrowed clothing did not match the finery of their own. Katherine glanced across her shoulder and watched her husband disappear, worry digging grooves across her forehead.
Christyne laid a hand on Katherine’s shoulder. “All will be well.”
Katherine’s chin trembled, but she gave a small smile nonetheless. “The Lord’s will be done.”
“What is this?” Prince Ernst’s voice boomed across the courtyard, causing their party to stumble to a halt upon the cobblestones. “My betrothed and my daughter have returned.”
“And with personal friends to celebrate the happiest of all days, as told.” Clare reached out and lightly grazed his arm with her fingers before linking her hand to his elbow. Her smile wobbled slightly, but then she blinked and held her head high.
Though the other woman used the prince’s blind preference for his young intended to shield the fleeing dissenters, Christyne noted a hint of something else in Clare’s expression. An acceptance. An openness to where her life had brought her and a willingness to receive whatever blessing that path might bestow. In that moment, Christyne recalled the story of Esther.
The queen that had been a savior to her people often filled her thoughts of late. Could she be as brave as that woman? Take a stand on conviction though it might mean death?
