Page 80 of No Place in Time

Then the door opened.

Someone entered the solar, a woman moving slowly. She wore fine clothes, a gown of deep blue, sleeves embroidered with silver thread. A veil covered her hair.

She crossed to the open window, her head down, and sank into the chair as if the short walk had exhausted her.

When she turned slightly toward the window, Finn saw her face clearly.

Beside him, Cecily made a strangled sound. He grabbed her arm to steady her.

Fair hair beneath the veil. Pale skin. Delicate features. The woman in the solar looked ill. She was thin and drawn, with shadows beneath her eyes. Her blue eyes had lost their focus, fixed on something beyond the room. But the face was unmistakable.

It was Cecily’s face.

“That’s…” Cecily’s voice came out barely a whisper. “How is it…?”

Finn couldn’t answer. He was staring at the woman in the window, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

He glanced from the frail figure in the window to the girl beside him, her breath warm and solid in the cool air. The same face, yet one was fading while the other was vibrantly real.

The woman in the window picked up the embroidery from the frame. Her hands trembled as she held the needle. After a moment, she set it down again and simply sat, staring out at nothing.

“I don’t understand,” Cecily whispered. “How can I be in two places at once? Is it really me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is she me?”

“I think so.”

“Then how can both of us be real?”

Finn could not answer. Anton’s words echoed in his memory—something about time branching, splitting, if the past was changed. But what had they changed? When? He scrambled for a single moment that could have done this and found nothing. He looked from the pale woman in the window to the Cecily beside him.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice rough. “But I think… that is you.”

They watched the woman in the solar. Lady Veyron. The other Cecily. She looked so tired. So alone.

“Did this happen because we didn’t go forward ten years, as we’d planned?” Cecily whispered. “We only came one year, and now there’s two of me?”

Finn struggled to find words. “Maybe. Or when we first escaped together from our time—when we changed what was supposed to happen—it created another path, a path where things went differently.”

“Then she’s real. She’s actually me, living a different life.”

“I…” Finn shook his head. “I think so.”

Cecily stared at the woman in the window. The woman inside hadn’t moved. She just sat there, her hands folded in her lap.

The door to the solar opened again. Another woman entered. Dark-haired, wearing a matron’s gown.

“Isabel,” Cecily whispered to Finn. “Julian’s sister.”

Isabel sat in the chair opposite Lady Veyron. They spoke, though Finn couldn’t hear their words from his perch in the tree. He could see the concern on Isabel’s face as she reached across and touched the Lady Veyron’s hand.

Then heavy footsteps sounded in the corridor. Both women went rigid. Isabel’s expression became a mask of panic; she stood quickly, whispered something, and fled the room just as the footsteps passed the door without stopping.

The other Cecily was alone again. She sat very still in the fading light. One hand rested on the arm of her chair. The other lay in her lap. She laid her head back and stared out the window at the gardens beyond, not seeing their hiding place in the tree. Finn didn’t think she was seeing anything.

She looks like someone who has forgotten why she walked into a room, but keeps standing in the doorway anyway.