Page 40 of No Place in Time

When she entered, the air smelled of spring flowers and smoke from the fireplaces. Servants paused when she passed, curious but cautious.

Baron Stephen de Malet waited in a side chamber. He was taller than she expected, his hair gray, his face lined with age. He studied her with a neutral expression, his gaze sharp.

“You are the woman who wrote to me.”

“I am.”

His eyes scanned her face, then drifted to the wall behind her, where a row of painted panels hung. His gaze stopped on one in particular: a young girl in a garden, her hair caught back with a blue ribbon.

He looked from the painting to Cecily, and his composure broke. He took a half-step forward, his brow furrowed in disbelief.

“It is… uncanny,” he said, his voice softer now. “The resemblance.”

Cecily looked at the image of herself and swallowed. “Yes,” she said vaguely. “I see it.”

He studied her for a long moment. Then he gestured to a chair. “Sit, please.”

She did.

“You wrote to me,” he said. “You wrote the family words.”

“They were spoken often when I was a child,” Cecily replied.

“And who raised you?” Stephen asked.

Cecily gave the answer she had prepared.

“I am related to the de Malets through a lesser, unrecorded line,” she said steadily. “My mother was kin to the family but married beneath her station. I was fostered and raised comfortably, though without title or inheritance. Those who raised me are dead now. I have no other family to turn to.”

Stephen listened without interrupting.

“I do not ask to be recognized beyond what you judge fitting,” Cecily continued. “I ask only for protection and the chance to live quietly. I will endeavor to be an asset and help to you.”

Silence settled between them.

At last, Stephen nodded. “You do not speak like an impostor,” he said. “And impostors rarely resemble their claims so closely.”

He glanced again at the portrait on the wall.

“It is clear enough that you are a de Malet,” he said. “You may stay here as my kinswoman for the time being.”

As Cecily was shown to a small chamber overlooking the inner court, she paused once more before the portrait. The girl in the painting looked back at her, untouched by the years that had passed. That girl had known nothing of cold, or hunger. That girl could afford to wait. Cecily could not. She could not spend the rest of her life listening for footsteps that never came. Whatever had happened to Finn, she could not search for him every morning for the rest of her life.

She was a de Malet again. That would have to be enough.

23

FINN

1298

Finn needed coin for the road to Malethurst Hall, and the Faversham docks were the likeliest place for day labor that asked no questions.

It had taken a full day just to hide the machine in the chalky darkness of the cave, another to walk here. He couldn’t afford to lose a third. The shipwright took one look at his shoulders and put him to work.

The docks were already busy when he arrived. Timber lay stacked along the riverbank, and the smell of pitch hung thick in the air. A small vessel rested in the mud at low tide, its hull propped open, exposing its ribs. Men worked around it, hauling planks, driving pegs, lifting iron fittings into place.

Finn worked until his muscles burned. He held frames steady while others hammered, and he hauled iron from the nearby forge. When they took a break to drink, he sat on an overturned crate and listened to the talk.