22
CECILY
One morning, while scrubbing a basin, Cecily realized she was no longer listening for Finn’s footsteps.
She set down the cloth and stared at the water in the basin for a long moment. She had lost count of the days. They had stretched longer than she had believed possible. At first, she had expected him back by nightfall. When morning came, she told herself to wait another day.
Once her arm allowed it, she had worked where she was able, washing, sweeping, helping in Master Nicholas’s stillroom.
Each morning, before the house fully stirred, she walked to the woods and stood where the shed had once been and looked down the path Finn had taken so many times.
She stayed only a few minutes, then returned to her work.
Now she realized she had not walked to the woods in days.
Days had dissolved into more days, and somewhere in them, without her noticing, she had stopped.
That evening, after the day’s work was done, she sat at the table near the window to write a letter to her kin, Baron de Malet of Kent.
She chose her words with care. She could not tell him who she really was, the daughter of a baron long since dead. She did not claim her former place or demand recognition. She asked for protection, and she gave him something only a de Malet would know: a family motto.
My lord, I write to you as a woman of your blood, though long removed from the de Malet household. I am alone and without protection, and I ask only the chance to speak with you. Cecily of Marrowden
Beneath her name she added: Sans plier.
It was the de Malet family motto. Without bending.
She sealed the letter and gave it to Nicholas the next morning. He arranged for it to be sent south.
∞∞∞
The man arrived three days later with a small carriage. He was lean, neatly dressed, and rigidly courteous. When Cecily stepped out of the doorway, he studied her carefully.
“I am looking for a woman named Cecily,” he said.
“I am Cecily,” she replied.
He inclined his head. “I serve Lord Stephen de Malet, the baron of Malethurst. He has asked that you come with me.”
Cecily said little during the journey south. Malethurst Hall, her home, finally came into view.
The hall was larger than she remembered, altered by years of additions and repairs, but it stood on the same ground. The same rise of land. The same curve of trees beyond the fields.
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.