Page 39 of No Place in Time

Finn nodded, though he had no plan, no clear direction. Only the certainty that standing still would accomplish nothing.

∞∞∞

By dusk, Finn had salvaged what he could of the machine. He fitted together a crude buggy that could bear weight. He dragged the time machine inch by inch, swearing under his breath, until it rested on the frame. He tested the balance. It moved slowly, but it moved.

Kent lay south, toward land he knew well, where there were old hiding places near his family’s estate. Places where the machine could disappear without question.

And somewhere ahead was Cecily.

Finn tightened the last knot and rested his forehead briefly against the iron frame.

“I’m coming,” he said aloud.

The road stretched out before him, long and full of uncertainty.

He adjusted his weight into the rope and didn’t look back.

22

CECILY

1297

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.