Chapter 16

“I can’t believe they would offer their own son as a prize!” I finally voiced my outrage as I paced back and forth in da Vinci’s garden. “Like he’s a, like he’s a...oh I don’t know, prized racehorse or something. It’s barbaric!” I threw my hands up in frustration. “And I was just starting to like the king and queen.” I bemoaned, disappointed.

I flopped down in a chair. Well, flopped the best I could in a stupid dress and corset. I was frustrated and angry. To be honest,...at the risk of sounding like a spoiled brat...I just wanted to go HOME! I was tired of this century; tired of the weird customs and playing with people’s lives as if it were a game; tired of dead rodents and bloody threatening notes, of which I’d received another the night of our grand performance. Thank you very much for the stiff ugly toad with the bulging eyes whoever you are! I reached down and unlaced my shoes and ripped off my stockings. I was tired of those too.

“I’m sorry, Leo.” I looked at my dear friend, who, as always, had that serene look on his face and empathy in his eyes. “I didn’t mean to take it out on you.” I stood up and walked back to the grass, eager to feel its soft plush earthiness between my toes. It seemed to help. A little.

“Oh my dear, do not worry yourself. I suspected you might have a word or two to say after that evening,” he replied.

Sighhh. I walked around the grass, letting it calm me. I’d been dying to get away from the castle and talk with Leonardo. He was the only one I could truly be myself in front of. And as much as I loved my new friends, I was tired of talking to them about the whole matter. Nicole was ecstatic. She kept telling me I was going to win. Little did she know how hopeless this whole thing was.

“Even if I win, it would never work,” I continued my diatribe. “Technically, I’m not even alive yet. And to my knowledge, there has never been a queen in France called Isabelle.” If only I could look that up to double-check. Maybe it was best I couldn’t.

“Not to mention I need to get back, Leo,” I sighed. “But how can I? How can I leave him here? To this!” I felt the squeeze in my heart, the one I felt whenever I thought of actually leaving Charles here. As much as I loved my parents and Anne, and as much as I thought I once loved Zeke, I realized what I felt for Charles was different. It was so much more than I had ever felt before. It was thrilling, and scary and, ugh frustrating, but wonderful all at the same time. If that even made sense. I mean, it didn’t even make sense to me most of the time.

I sank to the ground, lay back in the cool grass with arms outstretched, and closedg my eyes to the warm sun on my face.

“Who do you plan on leaving?” asked a familiar voice that made my heart skip. I opened my eyes and saw an upside-down Charles staring down at me. Oops, how long had he been around? How much did he hear?

“Hello, Charles,” I blinked, smiling up at him. “Would you like to join me?” I asked, patting the ground by my side.

“Leonardo,” Charles called out, “this seems a scandalous scene, does it not? A shoeless, stockingless Mademoiselle lying in your garden?” Leonardo laughed in return.

“I seem to bring out the very best of them, your Highness,” he retorted.

“It’s hardly scandalous,” I protested. “He’s an artist. Can’t you see he’s busily sketching me?”

In truth, he’d been sketching some other ideas I’d discussed with him earlier. Like a water bottle. How dearly would I love a water bottle! No one drank water in this century. No wonder they suffered from so many odd ailments. All they drank was watered-down wine and ale. I had also been telling him about solar power, and how we might somehow harness the power of the sun to charge my phone. He’d made some wire to connect to the battery and had tried using the fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, they didn’t work. Or if they did, it wasn’t enough.

I felt sure that he’d quickly cover his real work if I suggested he’d been sketching me instead.

“I’d very much like to see those sketches when they’re finished,” Charles told Leonardo. He sat beside me on the grass, pulled my head into his lap, brushed my hair back, and picked the odd blade of grass from it. I closed my eyes again. It felt wonderful.

“Now who’s being scandalous?” I mumbled I felt him chuckle.

“So then,” he asked, “again, who are you going to leave?”

I let out a long sigh.“No one. That is, not at the moment,” I hedged. Because I would leave. I’d have to, right?

“You would leave me?” he asked incredulously. “In the evil hands of the Princess of Spain?”

“Hmph,” I answered, “Genevieve was bad enough.” I opened my eyes then and looked up into his face. Oh how I was starting to really, really love that face. “Charles, what are we going to do? Are the king and queen serious about this?”

“I believe they are.”

“Ugh! How can you be so calm!” I sat up, no longer able to relax. I pulled my legs up and hugged my knees tightly. He pulled me back toward him, tugged me into his lap, placed my head against his chest under his chin, and put his arms around me. It felt so good to be held close by him, so perfectly normal. I placed my hand on his chest, and felt his heart beating with mine.

After we’d sat for a moment, he asserted, “It’s simple. You are going to win.” I slid my hand up to his face to feel the roughness of the stubble on his jaw and tip his face down until our eyes met. I could see resolution in his. I knew mine were filled with doubt.

“What if I don’t?” I whispered. Although something inside me still screamed, what if I do! How in the world did I get myself into this impossible situation? When the time came, would I really be able to leave him behind? Slowly, hand behind my head, he pulled my face up to meet his.

“You will,” he whispered back as his lips met mine in an achingly sweet kiss.

Man, oh, man I’m in big trouble. I thought right before my mind went blissfully blank and I had no thoughts at all.

“Ahem,” came a voice behind us. “If I may make a suggestion?” Leonardo said, his voice dripping with amusement. Oops, guess we kinda forgot he was there.

“Oh hey, Leo!” I acknowledged, looking over my shoulder after reluctantly pulling away. I felt, rather than heard, Charles chuckle again.

“Do forgive me, Leonardo. I tend to lose my impeccable manners around this one,” he nodded toward me still in his arms. I swatted him as I struggled to get up and straighten myself out.

“Quite,” agreed Leonardo.

“You had a suggestion to make?” Charles asked.

He hesitated briefly and looked at me as I braided my hair back out of my face. “Well, it seems to me that what you need is something that none of the other groups have access to. Something that could give, oh, how do you say…,” he paused, twirling his hand up in the air, “Ah, the element of surprise.”

“I think I pretty much have that every time I sing in court, no?” I sent him a meaningful glance. I mean come on, who else is going to be singing songs from the 21st century?

“If Isabelle performs similarly to the way she did the other night, I believe there is no way she can lose,” the prince added. I flashed him a smile.

“Perhaps,” Leonard allowed, “but there may be something else.”

Like what? Was he hiding an electric guitar and amps? Because if he were, that’d be fantastic. Maybe a microphone? Or even my Mac with Garageband would do. Dream on, Izzy. Both Charles and I looked on expectantly.

“You,” he clarified, pointing to the prince.

“Me?” he asked incredulously. “Me what? Oh no…,” he protested as light dawned in his eyes. “You can’t be serious, Leonardo.”

“I have heard you sing, your Highness. It is a possibility, no?”

I looked back and forth from one to the other; one elderly face with a long white beard and a look of pure mischievous excitement on his face, the other young, and, for lack of a better adjective, yummy, with a look of utter astonishment and disbelief. In fact, was that, is he...blushing? I had to suppress the irresistible urge to laugh out loud.

I looked at the prince, hands on my hips. “Wait a second. You can sing?!” I imagined Prince Charles dressed in a GQ suit, a la Adam Levine, crooning into a microphone and it was all I could do to keep standing on my suddenly weak knees. “But…” I picked up my skirts and started pacing on the grass as I thought. “You asked me to teach you, all those weeks ago, in the garden? Why would you ask me to teach you if you already knew how to sing?” I wondered out loud. I glanced at Charles and noticed the same kind of gleam in his eyes that Leonardo had just had.

Sheepisly, he explained, “Well, a man has to try anything he can to manufacture ways to be in a certain lady’s company.” I stopped, crossed my arms, and gave him the “oh really” look.

“So you really can sing?” I asked in all seriousness.

“Oh, he can sing,” answered Leonardo, rather gleefully, in a singsong voice of his own. The prince threw him a glaring look.

“My dear Leonardo, carrying a tune and actual singing are two very different things. I can do the first. The latter would need some work. So you see, my ask for help in that area was genuine. Although I’ll admit to, ah, rather different motives.”

“Hmmm. Let me think.” I responded. I tried to ignore that last part, even though it sent a little thrill straight to my heart. I paced thoughtfully, feeling the wonderful coolness of the grass on my bare feet again. This could work. This could be really cool. A duet with the prince? Maybe make it a surprise as Leonardo suggested, which would mean even keeping it from the girls. But wait, what if he sounds awful? “OK, there’s no way around it,” I decided as I stopped pacing. “I need to hear you sing.”

“Oh, very well,” he sighed. He did a quick look around to make sure we were still alone. Then he began to sing in a beautiful tenor voice, unsure at first. He seemed encouraged when he saw my jaw hit the ground.

How in the world did he know this Ed Sheeran-Taylor Swift song? How? I moved to stand in front of him, looked at his face, and harmonized with him, this song that made me realize that my life would never be the same. We sang the last note together and stood there like we were frozen in time. Neither one of us wanted to break the spell, but my curiosity was killing me.

“How did you…?” I whispered. “That song.” I couldn’t even utter a complete sentence. He stepped forward and bent down, touching his forehead to mine while twining my hands in his at our sides.

“That first night,” he revealed, “You sang it when I showed you the music room. It haunted my dreams. The words, your voice, your eyes, your name. I went away and could still hear you, see you in my mind. I wrote the poem down, over and over. I knew the moment you stepped into my life...I knew, everything truly had changed.” He kissed my forehead and eased me into his arms, my head on his shoulders.

I knew he was right. Everything had changed. My life, my world, my very existence was wrapped up in his and I knew that in the near future I was going to have to make a very difficult choice. One I didn’t want to even think about.

“It looks as though we may have scared off our good friend,” he said as he turned his head toward the garden. I turned to look with him and had to chuckle. Probably more PDA than the old guy could handle. Something fluttering on the table caught my eye.

“I think he left us a note,” I pointed to the table. We walked over to see what it was. Sure enough, he’d left one of the pages he’d been working on, four rocks holding the parchment down on the table. I gasped at what I saw. I reached out, wanting to touch it, but not wanting to mess it up. It was so beautiful, I was actually moved to tears. I could feel them as they filled my eyes, threatened to spill over my cheeks. I looked up at the prince and attempted to blink them back. He looked down, smiled at me, and wiped away a tear with his thumb. He bent to kiss me.

Fluttering on the table beside us sat a beautiful sketch of the two of us together; me sitting in his lap, hair flowing down my back, my face tipped up to his, hand on his cheek, and him looking down into my eyes. Even in the quick sketch, you could tell those eyes were filled with love. Scrawled along the bottom of the page was Leonardo’s self-satisfied note.

“The element of surprise.” - Leonardo