Page 109 of No Place in Time

“You should have sent word.”

Cecily held her mother’s gaze. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was frightened, and I ran. I’m sorry.”

Her mother looked at her for a long moment. Then she pulled her close again, and this time the grip was less desperate. Cecily felt the tension go out of Rosamund’s shoulders. She felt her own go with it.

Her father appeared in the doorway.

Thomas didn’t rush across the yard. He stood there, watching them. When Cecily met his eyes over her mother’s shoulder, the relief on his face was so plain and unguarded that her throat tightened. He was not a man who showed his heart easily, but he showed it now.

Thomas crossed the yard slowly and put both arms around them, Rosamund and Cecily together, and held them without speaking.

For a moment, Cecily simply let herself be there. Between them. Home.

She thought of the other Cecily, dying alone in that dim room in 1301, with no one left to hold her this way. To have this—her parents’ arms around her, the solid warmth of their bodies—was a treasure she hadn’t understood until she’d nearly lost it forever.

How easy it is to forget what a moment like this is worth, she thought. God, never let me forget again.

She pressed her face into her father’s shoulder and said nothing.

∞∞∞

The warmth did not last long.

They moved inside. Rosamund composed herself with visible effort, straightening her veil and smoothing her sleeves. Thomas’s expression settled back into something more measured. They sat her down in the small receiving room off the entryway, the room where serious things were discussed. Cecily understood that the reunion was over and the reckoning had begun.

“You will never,” her mother began, with quiet precision, “leave this house again without an escort. Not to the village. Not to Anton’s. Not anywhere.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Because I need you to truly grasp the seriousness of your actions, Cecily, not simply to agree with me.”

Cecily looked at her mother and then at her father. At their faces, still slightly pale, still carrying the shadow of four days’ fear. She thought of everything she’d seen. Everything she knew now about the future that they didn’t.

“I do,” she said. “I promise you. I’m done running. Whatever happens, I want to face it here, with you. I trust you.” She paused. “I should have trusted you from the beginning.”

Her mother’s face softened at those words. Thomas watched Cecily steadily.

“I hope you mean that. We are trying to protect you,” he said. “We always have.”

“I know that now.”

He nodded slowly. Then he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and spoke plainly. “Alard de Veyron is not a man to be dismissed lightly. You know this.”

“I know.”

“He has not threatened us directly.” Thomas’s voice was careful. “But he has made clear, in the way such men do, that our trading interests, and our position within the nobility, depend in part on his goodwill. He is well connected. He has the ear of men whose goodwill we cannot afford to lose, as well as King Henry.”

Rosamund kept her hands folded in her lap, very still.

“I will not be bullied into handing my daughter over to a man old enough to be her grandfather,” Thomas continued. His mouth tightened at the corners, as though he’d tasted something bitter. “But I will also not be a fool about it. There is a difference between refusing him and managing him.” His eyes met Cecily’s. “We have been trying to manage him. We have been buying time.”

“How much time?” Cecily asked.

“As much as we can.”

Cecily took a breath. “Then let me help.” She hesitated, gathering her thoughts. “What if you tell him I’m too young? That I’m willful and difficult? You could use what I did, tell him I ran off. Let him wonder if I’m worth the trouble. He wants a wife who knows her place, doesn’t he? Let him think I don’t know mine. If you can postpone things, perhaps his eye will be caught by another young lady.”

Rosamund’s eyes widened slightly. Thomas tilted his head.