Page 50 of No Place in Time

Someone said, “What girl?”

Harrow shrugged. “That girl what showed up at Malethurst seasons ago, ye recall her. Pretty lass, claimed to be distant kin with the baron of Malethurst.”

Finn stared at the fire. He could not look up. If he did, someone might see what was written on his face.

The fair-haired girl. There was only one fair-haired girl tied to Malethurst Hall.

“I seen her once in town,” said one man. “A stunner, she were.”

Harrow continued, oblivious. “Says here she’ll be married soon. Talk is she’ll marry before spring.”

Before spring meant weeks. Not months.

He could not bear to think that Cecily would marry. But did she have a choice? And who was this man intended for her?

He stared into the fire. A thought came to him, quiet and cold, settling in his chest like dust. Perhaps she had fallen in love. Perhaps she had stopped waiting. Perhaps she had let him go. He would not have blamed her if she had. But he could not stay here, not knowing.

He would have to find a way out of the king’s army. Soon.

29

CECILY

1299

Cecily found her uncle in his study, bent over a ledger, a candle burning low beside him. He looked up at once when she entered, and a smile flashed across his face.

“There you are, dear,” Stephen said.

“Uncle, please. You must speak with Julian,” Cecily blurted.

He set the ledger aside and gestured for her to sit, but Cecily remained standing.

“I have considered it,” he said, his fingers steepled. “And it is not a battle I can fight for you. Or for Isabel.”

“A battle? It is his sister’s happiness,” she said, her voice rising.

“It is politics,” he replied, his own voice gentle but firm. “And Julian is not a man to cross for the sake of sentiment. He will not welcome my interference, and frankly, we cannot afford his displeasure.”

“But surely a word—”

“A word will change nothing,” Stephen said. “Many men like of low birth, like Benedict, have been upjumped into nobility through granted titles or marriage. Even our own forebear, Sir Thomas de Malet, rose that way. If I oppose Julian on this, our own standing suffers. I have your future to think of.”

Cecily flinched. She did not like her father’s name used this way, as a justification for Benedict’s rise to power. It felt like a stain on her family’s history, now used to bless an injustice.

“Isabel is frightened,” she said. “This is not a match she wants.”

“Few women are given that choice,” Stephen said, not unkindly. “But she will be provided for.”

Then her uncle looked at her for a long moment. “It is past time you considered marriage yourself, my dear,” he said. “I cannot keep you from it forever, though I wish you never had to leave Malethurst Hall.”

The words were not meant to wound her, but they landed precisely where they hurt most. Waiting to be placed. It was the same language her father had used, the same cage she had fled once before. For all her travels through time, she stood exactly where she had started: as a commodity, her future held in a man’s well-meaning hands.

Cecily left him and made arrangements to ride to Veyron Hall before the day was out.

∞∞∞

When she arrived, Cecily did not linger. She asked for Isabel and was led to her chamber.