Title: Last Night
Author: UESider84
Summary: A/U. Modern day. On a train ride from New York to Boston, journalist Anne Boleyn meets CEO Henry Tudor. The rest, as they say, is history.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except the words in this story.
Anne Boleyn was standing on a train platform at Pennsylvania Station. She was remarkably beautiful and regal: her long, curly black hair rolled down to the small of her back, her pale feet in a pair of six inch heels, and her pale hands clutched a crocodile skin purse. The kind of purse that a doctor would have carried one hundred years ago on home visits to his patients.
Her eyes gazed intently on the board above her head with its flashing red letters. In her free hand, she was holding a ticket for a train to Boston that would supposedly depart in the next half hour. The board spelled out the same thing that it had for the last forty minutes. The train was delayed in Washington D.C.
She walked over to one of the ticket windows and placed her ticket in front of a middle-aged woman who wore bright red spectacles.
"Can I help you?" the woman asked.
"Yes," Anne replied in her soothing alto voice. "I need to get to Boston by eight o'clock tonight and my train is delayed in Washington."
"You want a transfer?" the woman asked as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
"Yes," Anne sighed. "If that's at all possible, I would be eternally grateful."
The woman turned in her swivel chair towards a computer that was standing next to the white-washed walled. Anne watched her as she typed in a series of numbers and letters. She scanned the results with her finger until she stopped at bottom of the screen. She looked up towards Anne, smiled gently, and asked, "Would you like to take the express train?"
"Sure," Anne smiled.
"Can I have your ticket?" the woman asked as she swiveled back to the window.
Anne slid the stub into a small metallic tub located underneath the window. The woman picked it up and went back to the computer. The furious typing resumed. Three minutes later, she handed her a new ticket. "It leaves in fifteen minutes from Platform 16," she informed Anne. "If you want to get there before it leaves, I suggest you get a move on."
"Thank you," Anne replied looking down at the ticket. Then she looked up at the smiling face in the window, "First class? I didn't ask for an upgrade."
"It was the only seat left."
She said goodbye to the kind woman and flew through a crowded hallway filled with passengers. She tottered among tourists and hikers carrying backpacks taller than their heads, smartly dressed businessmen in pin-stripes suits, teenage girls texting their boyfriends on their cell phones, children whimpering to their mothers about lost toys, and numerous other New Yorkers that made up the DNA of this city that many considered to be the center of the world.
She did not look at them, but she knew that they were not that different from the others she had met on the flight this morning from Heathrow or those crowds of faceless, nameless persons she had seen on the Paris Metro two weeks before. Although they called themselves French, American, or English, they were still members of the same family: the human family.
Anne continued running until she saw the number 16 high above her head. She made a sharp turn to the right. The platform was crowded with more people moving in various directions. There were conductors in blue and gold uniforms who looked over the tickets and stamped them. There were also some porters who carried the luggage to a special car in the back or wheeled elderly women and men towards the cars while the elderly ladies and gentlemen whispered their thanks.
She looked down at her ticket and pushed her way towards the front car of the train. The conductor stopped her at the steps. "Can I see your ticket and identification, please?" He asked courteously.
She handed it over. He looked it over with a flash light, glanced down at her ID, and placed them back in her outstretched hand.
She smiled and walked up the steps. Inside, everything was in flux. As she passed compartment after compartment, she watched those privileged members of the first class car making themselves at home. They pulled out their iphones and ipads, their ipods and laptop computers. There was a furious clicking and a soundless whirring. Sometimes, a voice would filter through an open compartment door: "Yes, John, that's right. The meeting is tomorrow afternoon. Right. I'll see you then."
She found her compartment towards the back. There were three seats on each side and a small metal table in the middle as well as coffee cup holders in the arm rests. A sign on the arm rests sternly warned the passengers about that the train company would hold the passengers accountable if they spilled coffee all over the leather seats.
Calmly, she placed the crocodile skin bag over her head. She turned on her iphone, put the headphones in her ears, and closed her eyes as the soft post-rock music rolled in waves over her body.
She heard someone open a door, enter, and sit down across from her. In her sleep, she turned her face towards the sun. She heard the other person do the same thing. She resisted opening her eyes. After the day she had had yesterday, the last thing she wanted was another pointless conversation about the weather, the mess the American government was making in Iraq, or whether she had read the latest Sophie Kinsella or Anne Rice novel.
She drifted in and out of consciousness for a good half hour until she finally opened her eyes. The train was moving through the Bronx and was headed towards Connecticut. The sun was playing in the windows of various tall buildings, the water towers were clothed in gold, the sky was a deep sapphire blue.
"Gorgeous afternoon, isn't it?" a man's voice called to her.
"Yes," she said turning her head in its direction.
"Have you ever been to Boston?" a ruddy-haired man in a pin-stripe suit with deep-set brown eyes asked her.
"Many times."
"Really?"
"Yes. Do you doubt me?"
"I don't doubt you," the man chuckled. "It's just that I've never seen you on the five o'clock express train to Boston before?"
"I don't usually ride first class," Anne colored slightly.
"Well you ought to," the man said as he took a seat right next to her. "You look like it, anyway."
"Thank you," Anne smiled.
There was something vaguely familiar about him. His entire bearing from the way his eyes seemed to look right into her to the fob chain dangling in her suit coat told her that he was someone important. She thought that she might have interviewed him for a magazine article, but she banished the idea.
"So what do you do?" He asked as he gazed intently into her eyes.
"I'm a writer."
"A writer?"
"Yes. A freelance journalist actually."
"What kind of articles do you write?
"All kinds," Anne shrugged. "Lately, I've been doing a lot of writing for business journals like Fortune and Forbes. You?"
"What do you think I do?" the stranger beckoned her.
"I don't really know," Anne shrugged.
"Oh come on," he egged her on. "Guess."
"Are you a lawyer?"
"Cold."
"A businessman?"
"Warmer."
"An executive."
"Yes," the man smiled. "My name is Henry Tudor. CEO of …"
"Synergy Enterprises," Anne mouthed. Her face colored red in embarrassment. "I'm sorry that I didn't recognize you before. That was really silly of me. Actually…"
"You thought that I would be ten years younger and twice as handsome?"
"Yes," Anne laughed.
"Everybody says that," Henry said as he shook her hand and brought it to his lips. "Almost everybody thinks that I'm twenty when, in fact, I'm going on thirty-five. How old are you, Miss Boleyn?"
"How old do you think I am?" she asked raising one of her eyebrow provocatively as she crossed her legs.
"No more than twenty-five."
"Twenty-six. Close enough."
"One can't always win at everything," Henry sighed ironically.
"I'm sure you know how to win a woman's heart."
"And what do you know about women's hearts, Miss Boleyn?"
"Well," she pursed her lips slightly and gazed on him head on. "I know that every woman wants to marry an intelligent, well read, multi-talented man such as yourself."
"And what kind of a woman do you think that an intelligent, well read, multi-talented man such as myself deserves, Miss Boleyn?"
"Someone exotic," she said twisting some stray strands of her black. "Someone that can treat you as an equal and not nag you in the same as your mother did when you were a naughty boy."
"You know me very well," Henry laughed. "You really believe these things, don't you?"
"I suppose," she said softly. "Then again, I never really know what I want."
"Surely, there must be one thing that you want more than others?"
"Yes, but I know that it is a daydream," Anne sighed.
"Go on," he urged her. "I won't tell anyone."
"It's silly. Actually, my mum says that it's ridiculous."
"Well?"
"I always wanted to marry a rich, ambitious man. A CEO like Rupert Murdoch or something."
"You could always marry me," Henry interjected.
"I wish I could, but…"
"But what?"
She gazed down at his hand and noticed the golden band around his ring finger. Henry placed his hand over it and shrugged it away. "That's nothing," he explained. "Don't worry about that. I'll get a divorce in no time and we can get married. It's easy. I go to the courthouse tomorrow and it'll be settled by next week."
"You'd let your wife go like that?" Anne asked.
"Why not?" Henry retorted. "She's older than me. She's taller than me. She wasn't even meant to be my wife."
"But you love her, don't you?"
"I don't," Henry shook his head.
"You do," Anne smiled slightly. "I can hear it in your voice. If you didn't love her, you wouldn't hide your ring the way you just did and pretend that you don't care. Even if you didn't, I couldn't marry you right away. We barely know each other."
A slightly pained look came over Henry's face. He glanced wistfully in the direction of the door and then turned towards Anne.
"Let's start over," Henry grinned sheepishly. "My name is Henry Tudor and you are?"
"Anne Boleyn."
A/N: Continue?