31
CECILY
Cecily’s hands smelled of thyme and lavender. For two hours, she had worked in the herb garden, the sun warm on her shoulders as bees drifted through the rosemary. Spring had finally come, and with it, a fragile happiness she’d almost forgotten.
“Lady Cecily, your uncle asks that you attend him in the solar.”
Cecily wiped her hands and headed toward the solar, wondering what her uncle needed. Perhaps something about the accounts or the Easter preparations. These days he relied on her to manage the entire household. It made her feel less like a guest and more like she belonged.
She climbed the stairs, knocked once at the solar door, and pushed it open.
There was Julian.
He stood near the window with her uncle. They’d been talking but stopped when she appeared. Her uncle was smiling.
Cecily stiffened.
“Come in, Cecily,” her uncle said warmly. “Close the door.”
Her movements were careful. Julian inclined his head in greeting. He looked quite pleased about something. Whatever it was, she doubted it would please her.
“Sit, my dear,” her uncle said, gesturing to a chair.
Cecily sat. She gripped her hands tightly in her lap.
“Cecily,” her uncle began, his voice full of optimism, “I have wonderful news. Lord Julian has done us a great honor. He has asked for your hand in marriage.”
She heard the words. She understood them. Her mind kept turning them over anyway, as if repetition might change their shape, and all the while her hands sat useless in her lap, belonging to someone else entirely.
Her uncle was still talking. “I know this surprises you, but truly, Cecily, this is an extraordinary match. You are landless, without family beyond myself, and yet the baron of Veyron wishes to make you his wife. You’ll want for nothing.”
Julian stepped forward, his expression kind.
“I hope this news pleases you, Lady Cecily,” Julian said. “I have admired your grace and capability these past months. I believe we would suit one another well.”
She stared at him. At his fine clothes, his handsome face, his easy confidence.
He looked nothing like the indolent drunkard she’d seen at Veyron.
He’d cleaned himself up. And now, with his generous smile, he genuinely thought this was good news.
He believed she should feel honored despite all she’d witnessed of his loathsome behavior.
“I—” Her voice came out thin and strange. She cleared her throat and tried again. “My lord, I… I don’t know what to say.”
“You need say nothing yet,” Julian said, his tone gentle. “I know this is sudden. But I wanted you to hear it from me, and from your uncle, so you would know my intentions are sincere.”
Her uncle nodded eagerly. “The betrothal could be announced at Pentecost. That gives you time to prepare, to become accustomed to the idea.”
Pentecost. Only a month away.
Julian smiled at her. “You need not answer today. Perhaps you might give me your response by Easter? That would allow time for the banns to be read before Pentecost.”
He was being generous. Giving her time to “consider.”
But there was nothing to consider. Her uncle had obviously already agreed. Julian had already decided. She could see it in the way they stood, the way they spoke to her, not asking, but informing. She was a woman, after all. Her will, her desires, didn’t matter.
“Thank you, my lord,” she heard herself say. “You honor me.” The words tasted like cinders in her mouth. “But this is very sudden. I had not thought… I am not prepared for…”
“You’ll have until Easter to prepare yourself, child,” Stephen said. “That’s more than reasonable.”
Cecily’s hands were trembling as she continued to implore her uncle. “But I know so little of married life, of managing an estate of that size—”
“You’ve proven yourself here,” her uncle said.
“And you’ll have Isabel to guide you,” added Julian.
Her uncle’s face was alight with a pleasure she could not bear to witness. Julian watched her with the quiet satisfaction of a man who has just acquired a fine new possession.
“Go along now, child,” her uncle said, his voice gentle but final. He had already turned back to Julian. She was dismissed.
Cecily rose, her limbs stiff. She managed a curtsey and left the solar, her own home suddenly feeling like a trap. She made it to the garden before the full weight of it hit her. She sank onto a stone bench hidden behind the herbs, where no one would see her, and pressed both hands to her mouth.
This cannot be happening.
But it was. It was happening exactly the way it had before, with Lord Alard. A marriage arranged without her consent. Her uncle, smiling and calling it an honor. And she was expected to be grateful, to accept what they had decided for her.
She had fled across time to escape this.
She had risked everything, stepped into a machine she didn’t understand, left behind everyone and everything she’d ever known.
And for what? To end up right back where she’d started?
And with a man of the same family, Veyron, claiming her hand in marriage? A drunkard. A spendthrift.
No, this was worse than before.
At least with Lord Alard, she’d had family. She let herself wonder if her parents might have protected her, if they could have prevented the marriage if she had only trusted them. But that was a child’s fantasy. She wasn’t there anymore. She was here. And here, she had nothing.
And Julian wasn’t like Alard. Julian was young, handsome, well-spoken. People would expect her to be pleased. They would call her foolish if she refused.
But she’d watched what he’d done to Isabel. She’d seen the way he forced his sister into marriage with Benedict, ignoring Isabel’s tears and protests because it suited his purposes. She’d witnessed his intoxicated behavior. His reckless spending. She knew what this family was capable of.
She recalled her uncle’s hopeful face. A dowry. That was the only explanation. Her uncle had offered one, and Julian, his fortune spent, needed it.
The garden blurred as tears formed. Cecily blinked hard and pressed her palms against her eyes.
“Cecily?”
She looked up. Isabel stood a few paces away, her expression cautious and sad.
“I came with Julian,” Isabel said in a low voice. “He told you?”
Cecily nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Isabel sat beside her on the bench, folding her hands in her lap. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
“I heard Julian mention it to Benedict this morning,” Isabel said.
“So, you knew?” Cecily said. “You knew he intended to ask for my hand?”
“Julian has been asking me about you for months.” Isabel’s voice was careful and measured. “He needs a wife. An heir. You are…” She sighed. “The suitable choice.”
The clinical assessment stung, though Cecily knew Isabel didn’t mean it cruelly.
“I can’t,” Cecily whispered. “Isabel, I can’t marry him. After all I’ve seen.”
Isabel’s hand found hers and squeezed. “I know. But…”
A bee droned past, heavy with pollen. Somewhere across the courtyard, a servant was singing.
“But if you do,” Isabel said slowly, “it would mean you’d live at Veyron. You’d be close to me. I would have…” She stopped, swallowed. “I’ve been very alone, moreso since my marriage.”
Cecily turned to look at her.
“I didn’t choose this either,” Isabel said. “You know I didn’t. But Julian’s cruelty is careless, born of his own wants. It is not the deliberate, watchful kind you see in Benedict.” She paused, her voice dropping. “There are worse men, Cecily. I promise you that.”
Cecily leaned her head against Isabel’s shoulder. Isabel’s arm came around her, and for a moment they simply sat together in the spring sunlight, two women with no choices, holding onto each other because there was nothing else to hold.
“I wish…” Cecily started, then stopped.
“I know,” Isabel said. “So do I.”
But Isabel had no idea what Cecily really wished for.
Finn.
∞∞∞
That night, Cecily sat on the edge of her narrow bed and stared at the wall.
Finn, where are you?
She hadn’t let herself think of him since she’d learned he was a Veyron, born of nobility. What was the point? He was gone. Disappeared, perhaps even dead. He’d forgotten her.
But he had lied. He’d looked her in the eyes and let her believe he was someone he wasn’t. He’d let her trust him, care for him, while hiding the truth. And worse—
He was Alard’s son. The son of the man who had started it all.
She had thought it a cruel irony before. Now it felt like a purposeful design, a trap laid across sixty years. And she had walked right into it, led by a young man with a secret name and a promise he never meant to keep.
And still—still—some part of her wanted him here. Wanted to hear his voice, feel his hand in hers, know she wasn’t alone.
How dare you leave me here, she thought fiercely. How dare you lie to me and then disappear.
But underneath the anger was something sharper, more desperate.
Please come back. Please be alive, she whispered. Please.
Because if Finn were here, if he came back, if he still cared, he was the only person in this entire world who could help her. He knew about the time machine. He understood what it meant to be trapped in the wrong time, in the wrong life.
He, above everything else, was the reason she couldn’t marry Julian.
Cecily lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling beams. Outside, the last light was fading.
There was nowhere to run. No coin, no ally, no path forward but the one they had laid for her. To refuse would be to insult a powerful baron and wound the only family she had left. She had fled across time only to find the same cage waiting for her.
And the one person who held a key was a liar and the son of the man who built her first prison.
Cecily turned onto her side and looked at the wall.
The last light through the window had faded.
And then, like a half-remembered dream, a thought came to her.
The machine. If it was still there, if she could find it, she could run again.
Not anywhere she knew. Just away. To another time, another place, where Julian could never find her.
The thought frightened her almost as much as the marriage did. But she would chance it.
If she could locate the machine.