51
CECILY
Two years. Two years to manage her father’s negotiations, two years to prove her patience, two years until Finn could ask for her hand.
Their entire plan rested on a single fact they’d learned in another life: in two years, Alard de Veyron would be dead.
Cecily stood before the small glass in her chamber and let her maid fasten the last of the ties on the blue gown.
Two years felt like forever and like nothing at all.
She let herself imagine it sometimes, in the quiet moments before sleep.
Finn coming to her father, formally, properly, to ask for her hand in marriage.
The look on her mother’s face. The wedding, small, she thought, in the chapel at Malethurst, with her parents, her brother, and Anton and Beja.
And after that, Veyron Hall as it should be, warm, well-run, open to the tenants who needed it.
Children someday, she thought, and felt her cheeks warm.
Children with Finn’s dark eyes and, God help them, her stubbornness.
She would do great things for the region.
She would make her parents proud. She would be exactly the kind of mistress of a great house she’d been trained to be, and Finn would be beside her.
She had known what she wanted since the morning she’d woken in a freezing barn with her head on his shoulder and felt, for the first time in her life, perfectly safe. The kiss at the physician’s house had only confirmed it.
Waiting had never been her gift. It felt possible now because she had waited before, across centuries, across timelines, across a separation she had not believed she would survive, and she had come through it.
She smoothed her skirts. Outside, a carriage was rolling through the gates, and she could hear her father’s voice in the yard below.
She had her parents back. She had Finn. She had a plan that might actually work.
Two years, she told herself again. She could manage that.
∞∞∞
Garlands of summer lavender and white campion decorated Veyron Hall for the feast. Their blooms caught the torchlight as Cecily followed her parents through the gates.
She had been here before, in another life, in another century. She hated to think of the other Cecily. Tonight, she shook her head as if to shake away the memories.
Tonight she would see Finn.
Veyron Hall looked different. It was warm, lit, and full of voices, a mid-summer feast hosted by Lord Veyron to entertain and impress the nobility.
Cecily smoothed her skirts and followed her parents inside.
She had chosen her gown carefully. It was the blue one, a color rich as a summer sky, with a cream-colored undergown that showed at the sleeves and hem.
She hoped it would make her eyes startling enough to catch Finn’s.
She had dressed with only one thought in mind: Finn would be there.
The great hall was already crowded. Trestle tables ran the length of the room, loaded with roasted meat, bread, and great pitchers of ale.
Candles burned in iron stands along the walls.
Musicians in the gallery above played a lively estampie that rose above the noise of conversation and laughter.
The smell of roasted meat, rosemary, and warm bodies filled the air.
Cecily found Finn before she had taken ten steps into the hall.
He was standing near the far wall with a group of young men she didn’t recognize.
He was dressed in a dark green tunic, looking exactly as he always did, tall, composed, a little apart from the people around him.
He saw her at almost the same moment. Their eyes met across the hall and held for just a second before they both looked away.
That look was enough to set her pulse racing.
The lord of Veyron, Sir Alard, received them near the high table, effusive in the way of a man who was pleased with his evening. He bowed to Rosamund with practiced courtesy, clasped Thomas’s hand, and turned to Cecily with a faint smile.
“Lady Cecily,” he said politely. “You are a welcome sight.”
She curtsied. Beside her, her mother’s hand briefly found her elbow.
Finn appeared at his father’s shoulder a moment later, as though summoned.
He greeted Thomas and Rosamund with easy courtesy, and then turned to Cecily with the polite, faintly distant manner of a young man being introduced to a guest’s daughter for the first time. She matched his demeanor perfectly.
“Finn.” Alard touched his arm before he could move away.
“A business associate of mine will arrive later this evening. He’s been of considerable service to this house.
” He paused, and his tone carried the weight of a man reminding his son of his obligations.
“See that he is shown every hospitality. I want him to feel welcome here.”
“Of course,” Finn said, bowing lightly to his father.
Alard nodded, already turning back to Thomas. Finn glanced at her, a quick, careful look that said everything he couldn’t, then he turned and disappeared into the hall.
∞∞∞
The feast began with food. Servants moved through the hall in a steady procession, bearing dishes that filled the air with the smell of roasted meat and warm bread, a whole pig glistening on a wooden board, a great pike in herb sauce, pastries stuffed with dried fruit and spiced with cinnamon, platters piled with soft cheese and honey.
Pitchers of ale and spiced wine made their rounds without stopping.
The noise of the hall rose with each course, louder, warmer, and more generous.
Cecily was feeling reborn. The food was delicious, and she ate with genuine appetite for the first time in months.
The music made her want to move. The room was warm, and the hall was full of voices.
She was wearing her blue gown, and Finn was across the room, and everything—for this one golden evening—was exactly as it should be.
Across the hall, she spotted Finn again. Once, between courses, he glanced up and found her already looking. She lifted her cup slightly. He dipped his head, the ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth. His dark eyes sparkled above the rim. They both looked away before anyone noticed.
When the last of the dishes were cleared and the trestle tables pushed back toward the walls, Alard rose from the high table and clapped his hands twice.
The musicians in the gallery stirred, and the first notes of the dance floated down into the hall.
Conversation gave way to movement as couples formed on the open floor.
Cecily watched Alard descend from the dais. She felt her shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly. Was he going to claim her for the first dance?
He moved through the hall with the easy authority of a man in his own domain, nodding to guests, pausing to exchange a word here and there. He was heading in her direction. She kept her expression pleasant and her hands very still.
And then he walked straight past her.
He stopped three paces beyond her, in front of a fair-haired girl Cecily didn’t recognize, the daughter of some neighboring noble family, who had been laughing at something her companion had just said. Alard bowed. The girl curtsied, surprised and obviously pleased. He led her onto the floor.
Cecily didn’t move for a moment.
Then she looked across the hall. Finn was watching her. His expression was carefully neutral, but his eyes said everything.
Do you see that?
She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling too broadly and gave the slightest nod, a silent confirmation passing between them.
Yes, it was working.
A few minutes later, Alard was dancing with another attractive lady, dark-haired this time, a little older, with the confident bearing of a girl who knew she was admired. Alard was attentive and charming. His eyes did not wander toward Cecily once.
She felt Finn arrive beside her without hearing him approach.
They stood together at the edge of the hall, watching Alard lead the dark-haired girl through the final figure of the dance.
“I think it’s working,” Finn said quietly.
Cecily let out a breath that felt like she’d held it for weeks. “Hush, you’ll curse it.”
He almost laughed. “I’m serious. Look at him. He hasn’t looked your way in an hour.”
∞∞∞
The music shifted to a round dance, and someone pulled Finn and Cecily into the set before either could decline. Suddenly, they were facing each other in the line with a dozen other couples.
The dance brought them together and pulled them apart in the way such dances always did, hands meeting, releasing, circling back.
Cecily was acutely aware of every moment of contact.
The warmth of his hand on hers. The way he moved, unhurried and certain, even in something as frivolous as a feast dance.
They came together in the center of the set, close enough to speak without being heard above the music.
“You’re a better dancer than I expected,” she said.
“Surprised?”
“I am a little.”
“I’m full of hidden talents,” Finn said gravely. She laughed, and the dance pulled them apart again before she could answer.
When they came back together for the final movements, his hand found hers and held it a beat longer than the dance required.
“You look beautiful, Cecily. I wish I could kiss you right here,” he said quietly.
The words were so simple and so direct that it took her a moment to find her breath. Heat rose in her face before she could stop it.
Finn glanced at her, and his expression changed into something warm and insufferably pleased. “You’re turning as pink as the campion,” he said.
“I am not.”
“You most certainly are.”
“Someone will see us,” she said, but she was smiling too, and the dance ended before either of them could say anything more.
∞∞∞
The hall had grown warmer as the evening deepened.
Cecily slipped away from the high table and moved toward the entrance passage at the edge of the hall, where the air was cooler and the music came through muffled and distant.
She could still see the dancers through the archway, still hear the voices, but here the noise fell back and she could breathe easier.
Finn found her a few minutes later.
They stood close together in the passage. Behind her skirts, his hand found hers. At his touch, the sounds, sights, and smells of the evening receded into a drifting blur.
From somewhere outside came the distant sound of horses in the stable yard.
“Do you think it will take hold?” Cecily asked. “Will your father consider me too wild and willful for a sensible man to take as wife?”
“I think so.” Finn was quiet for a moment. “He’s interested in the Hartley girl. I’ve seen him talking to her father twice tonight.”
Cecily absorbed this. “That would be—”
“Yes,” Finn said. “It would.”
“Fortunately for me, I like wild, willful young ladies.”
“That’s fortunate for me too.”
They stood close in the passage, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him beside her.
She wanted to lean into his shoulder the way she had in a dozen cold and desperate places over the past years.
She wanted to say things she couldn’t say here, in this passage, with the hall full of people and his father twenty paces away.
Instead, she watched the dancers through the archway and felt the weight of two years pressing down on her like a physical hand on her shoulder.
“Two years,” Cecily said quietly. It wasn’t a question. She knew it would be the longest two years of her life.
Finn turned to look at her. In the candlelight, his face was very close. “Two years,” he agreed. “And then—” He stopped. More quietly he said, “And then I’ll come and speak to your father properly. With something to offer.”
Cecily looked at him. The candlelight. His steady eyes. The future laid out between them, fragile and possible and almost within reach.
“I’ll be waiting,” she said.
The sound of the entrance doors opening behind them made them both step apart. A servant crossed the passage carrying a folded cloak, heading toward the rear of the hall. They waited as his footsteps faded.
Then Cecily noticed a man standing near the entrance.
He had his back to them, straightening his tunic after the journey, smoothing his dark hair with one hand. A tall, lean man, whose stillness seemed to command the space around him.
Something about that stillness stopped her. She had seen that stillness before. That composure.
At Veyron Hall in 1301, at Julian’s shoulder.
Finn had gone absolutely rigid beside her.
The man turned.
His face was handsome in an angular way. Sharp cheekbones. A mouth arranged into a pleasant smile. And eyes—sharp, moving across the entrance passage until they found her—that held no warmth at all.
Benedict.
Cecily felt Finn’s hand find hers in the shadows, his grip sudden and tight.
Then she understood. The machine. It must have returned to 1301.
And Benedict, somehow, had found it. He had followed them.
He was here. He was not Veyron blood, not part of the history they’d tried to change.
Whatever they had done, he had survived it.
Benedict’s pleasant smile did not waver as his gaze moved from Cecily to Finn.
“Hello, Finn.”