Chapter 7
Seven
GEOFFREY
Father William stood in the chapel doorway looking like a man reconsidering several foundational theological positions.
“That expression rarely precedes good news,” I observed.
“It depends entirely on your feelings regarding temporal instability.”
He stepped aside without another word.
The psalter lay open on the altar, glowing. Gold leaf shimmered beneath the candlelight with a pulse that seemed almost alive, faint illumination moving beneath the vellum pages like breath beneath skin.
Harper stood several feet away from it, her arms folded tightly across herself. She looked frightened. Not the sharp immediate fear she had worn during her first days at Thames. This was quieter. Worse somehow.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It started reacting again this morning,” Harper said. “Father William came to get me.”
“I did not touch it,” Father William added immediately, sounding defensive.
“A wise precaution,” I said absently.
My attention remained fixed on Harper. She had gone pale beneath the candlelight.
Her veil had slipped slightly backward, exposing dark strands of hair near her temples, and I found myself noticing absurd details.
The tension in her shoulders. The way her fingers curled against her sleeves when she was unsettled.
The fact that she had apparently stopped pacing only because pacing near magical manuscripts was unwise.
None of those observations felt useful. That alone should have concerned me more than it did.
“You touched it,” I said quietly.
Harper looked up sharply. “No.”
“You considered it.”
Silence confirmed the answer.
I crossed toward the altar carefully, resisting the deeply irrational instinct to position myself between Harper and the manuscript as though I could defend her from a book.
The psalter pulsed again beneath the candlelight.
My skin prickled. I had spent most of my life believing every problem yielded eventually to sufficient analysis.
Military strategy. Political alliances. Supply failures.
Human behavior. Even uncertainty itself could usually be reduced into probabilities.
But there was no tactical framework for a manuscript that moved women across centuries.
“What does it want?” I asked.
Harper laughed softly without humor. “That’s an extremely concerning question.”
“You believe it wants something.”
“Yes.”
Father William made the sign of the cross.
I ignored him.
Harper stepped closer to the altar before stopping herself again. I noticed the hesitation immediately. Like someone resisting a current.
“The last time it glowed like this,” she said carefully, “I ended up here.”
The chapel went still. A draft moved through the narrow windows, stirring candle flame and incense smoke, and I became suddenly, sharply aware of the distance between Harper and the psalter.
Too close. Not close enough. I disliked both possibilities equally.
“You think it may happen again,” I said.
“I don’t know what I think.” She rubbed a hand across her forehead tiredly. “Everything about this feels connected to timing. Runnymede. The charter.”
“Less than a sen’night now,” Father William murmured.
“Yes,” Harper said quietly.
I looked down at the manuscript again.
A few weeks ago, Harper Ainsley had not existed in my world. Now she occupied an increasingly dangerous amount of my attention.
I had begun unconsciously searching for her in crowded rooms. Listening for her voice during meals. Altering the course of my day around conversations that should have remained purely strategic.
I understood attraction. Neither admiration nor desire was unfamiliar to me.
But this felt less like desire and more like disruption.
Like some careful internal balance shifting one degree at a time beneath my feet.
And now the manuscript threatening to remove her from my life produced a reaction in me that felt uncomfortably close to fear.
That realization landed heavily enough I almost stepped back from it.
Harper was watching the psalter again.
“Do you want to go home?” I asked. The question escaped before I fully intended to ask it.
Harper looked toward me slowly. “Yes,” she said at first. Then she hesitated.
I noticed immediately. I was becoming dangerously good at noticing her hesitations.
“I miss things from my world constantly,” she admitted. “Comfortable things. Familiar things. Coffee. Music. Indoor plumbing.”
“Your devotion to plumbing remains remarkable.”
A faint smile appeared despite her tension. “You have absolutely no idea.”
The smile faded quickly afterward.
“But,” she said quietly, “it’s becoming harder to think of this place as temporary.”
Something tightened unexpectedly in my chest.
Dangerous.
Everything involving Harper eventually circled back toward danger. Not because she was malicious. Because she mattered increasingly more than she should.
Father William cleared his throat softly near the doorway. “I would prefer,” the priest announced, “if no one attempted to unravel the fabric of creation before supper.”
Harper huffed a startled laugh.
I looked at her then. Properly looked. Candlelight caught against the warm russet wool of her gown. Against the loose strands of dark hair escaping her veil. Against the expression she wore whenever she forgot for brief moments to be afraid.
Extraordinary, I thought suddenly. Not the manuscript.
Her.
The realization unsettled me more than the glowing psalter ever could have. Because miracles were dangerous things.
And I was beginning to suspect Harper Ainsley might be the most dangerous thing currently inside Thames Castle.