“I will come back to Thames if I can.”
Not when.
If.
The reality of the war settled cold beneath my ribs again.
I nodded because trusting my voice felt unwise.
Geoffrey opened the door to see the Baron outside wrapped in a dark wool mantle, one booted foot against the wall.
Father William stood several feet behind him holding a candle and a huge grin.
The Baron’s eyes moved once between us. Not disapproving. Just tired in the way of a father realizing romance has entered his castle with the inevitability of plague or taxation.
“Go saddle your horse,” he told Geoffrey.
Geoffrey looked back at me one last time before leaving. Then he disappeared down the corridor with his father while Father William lingered behind watching me with unbearable priestly perception.
“You are smiling,” he observed.
I didn’t answer, I was too happy to come up with a witty retort.
Thirteen
HARPER
The first briskmorning came in the third week of August. I woke to a cold nose and no fire in the hearth.
Maud arrived carrying a heavier gown before breakfast. The wool was deep russet, the color of horse chestnuts after rain, and cut differently through the shoulders to allow for an underdress I still hadn’t mastered without assistance.
She watched me fight my way into the layers with the composed patience of a woman whose orderly life had been interrupted by someone completely unequipped for sleeves.
“You will be quicker by Christmas,” she said, fastening one cuff.
“I absolutely will not.”
“Then by Easter.”
“Possibly.”
Though I doubted it.
Easter.
Would I still be here then? Would I have a choice to go back before then, or had that single glowing moment in the chapel been my only chance? Did I even want to go back to my own time?
Nowadays, everyone was replaceable. After a few weeks, a month at most, my job had probably been listed, interviewed for, and given to someone with better grant-writing skills and fewer opinions about manuscript humidity.
Did my co-workers think I’d had a breakdown and quit without a word? Didn’t anyone wonder why my cardigan was still hanging on the back of my chair in the conservation room?
Maud adjusted the linen at my throat, stepped back, and appeared to decide I was acceptable for public viewing as lady of the castle.
Not lady of the castle in any real official sense. Just the woman everyone had quietly started looking at when linen went missing, the chapel smelled odd, or the Baron required arguing with.
The river beyond the gallery windows had turned silver-grey overnight, the grass along the bank gone gold at the tips. Down in the kitchens somebody burned the oats, a dog barked in the yard, and the whole household was awake before the sun had properly cleared the trees, because war had turned every arrival at the gate into an event.
The first reports from Nottingham came in pieces.