“A little,” she admitted.
“About?”
“Everything,” she said vaguely. She couldn’t very well say, One of my few long-term romantic relationships was with a woman. And she’s in our wedding party. And has seen you naked. Maybe asking Starr to be one of her bridesmaids had been a mistake. Aggie didn’t like to feel guilty, yet intentionally keeping secrets from Jace had that effect on her.
“Me too,” he admitted.
He held her hand as they followed several paces behind chatting Charity and wide-eyed Mom. At least, he held her hand until the members of his band, along with Dare Mills and Dave Blake, came out of the ballroom. As soon as the rowdy bunch of men spotted Jace, he dropped Aggie’s hand as if she’d suddenly contracted leprosy.
“You know,” she said, “you’re going to be saying some really mushy and embarrassing stuff to me in front of all these guys tomorrow. Are you sure you can handle it?”
Jace took her hand again and smiled crookedly. “Yep.”
The guys were in various states of annoyance over Eric’s rehearsal-dinner after-party.
“You don’t really expect us to wear those clothes do you?” Sed said in his deep baritone.
“You better wear them,” Eric said. “You were the most difficult person to fit. Do you know how rare it was for a human to reach your size centuries ago? You’d have been labeled a freak and had to join the circus as a giant.”
“You’re taller than I am,” Sed pointed out.
“By an inch,” Eric said. “It’s those extra-wide shoulders of yours.”
“That drive the ladies wild,” Sed said with a wink.
“I’d say it’s your ass that drives the ladies wild,” Mom said. And she was not hiding the fact that she was checking it out. With excessive appreciation.
Sed wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her up beside him so she couldn’t ogle what he had going on behind. “My wife gets very jealous when MILFs check out my ass,” he said.
Aggie chuckled when her mom tripped over her feet as the definition of MILF sank in.
The guys followed them outside—ribbing each other as if they were brothers—and over to the church. Aggie’s attendants were already congregated in the back of the building, surrounding the tomb of Queen Katherine.
“Did you know her third husband was Henry the Eighth and her fourth was Thomas Seymour?” Myrna asked anyone who would listen.
“So Aggie isn’t the only woman willing to marry a guy with the last name of Seymour,” Eric said.
“How did she die?” Rebekah asked and was immediately engulfed in her husband’s embrace.
“About a week after her and Thomas’s daughter was born, Katherine died of childbed fever,” Charity said.
“I bet Thomas was devastated,” Rebekah said.
Charity lifted a scandalized eyebrow. “So devastated that he turned to the ladies of the court to ease his broken heart. He was courting a princess within months of Katherine’s death.”
“I can understand that,” Sed said. “Nothing like copious sex with strangers to ease a broken heart.” His words earned him an elbow in the stomach from his enormously pregnant wife.
“He was an ambitious man. Incredibly charming,” Charity said. “And apparently attracted to powerful women.”
All eyes turned to Jace and Aggie. Aggie grinned. She knew for a fact that her man was attracted to powerful women.
Trey whacked him on the back. “Maybe you are related to this dude,” he said with a laugh.
Jace gnawed on his lip, but didn’t respond.
“Did Seymour remarry?” Myrna asked.
“No.” Charity shook her head. “He was beheaded for thirty counts of treason only six months later. He was accused of conspiring to kidnap his nephew King Edward—Jane Seymour’s son.”
“Nice relatives you have here, Tripod,” Eric said.
“History has painted him in a rather villainous light,” Charity said, “but I believe he loved Katherine. He loved her before she married into the royal family.”
“I’m sure I’m not related to the guy,” Jace said. “He didn’t leave any sons to pass on the family name.”
“But he and Katherine did have a daughter,” Aggie pointed out. “What happened to her?”
“She was taken in by her mother’s lady in waiting because her father wanted nothing to do with the child after Katherine’s passing. There are no records of the girl beyond her early childhood. It’s likely that she died.”
“No records?” Aggie said. “Not even a death certificate?”
Charity shook her head.
“So maybe she is Jace’s great-great-great-great-grandmother,” Eric said.
“She would have passed her husband’s name, not the Seymour name, to her children,” Charity said.
Eric lifted a finger and pointed at an unseen idea. “If she married. Maybe she had a child out of wedlock.”
Charity crossed her arms. “Tut! Pure speculation.”
“Indeed,” Eric said, “but it is possible that Jace is the descendant of a queen of England.”
“Queen by marriage, not blood.”
“He does sort of look like her,” Brian said, tilting his head to contemplate the carved visage of Katherine lying in peaceful repose.
“He is quite lovely,” Eric teased and poked Jace in the shoulder. “Definitely my favorite of all the princesses.”
Jace started, released Aggie’s hand, and turned toward the exit of the tomb. “Shouldn’t we be rehearsing?” he asked. “I no longer wish to be in here.”