Worse still, I remembered the way he looked at me afterward.
Like something important had shifted permanently beneath his feet.
Outside, snow continued falling against the narrow window beside my bed. The sounds of the castle should have felt foreign by now.
Everything here should have. The rough wool blankets. Candle smoke lingering faintly in the room. The distant changing of watches along the walls. The constant awareness of weather, fire, food stores, and war.
None of this belonged to me. I belonged to Boston in 2026.
To crowded sidewalks slick with slush. To museum galleries filled with tourists drifting past medieval artifacts while barely glancing at the placards beside them. To late nights cataloging manuscripts under fluorescent lights while security guards vacuumed empty corridors around me.
I belonged to commuter trains and overpriced coffee and tiny apartments where neighbors lived six feet away without ever learning each other’s names.
That was my world.
Wasn’t it?
I stared upward into darkness while the storm whispered around the tower.
In Boston, entire days passed without anyone touching me.
Here, people noticed if I missed supper.
The Baron asked my opinion before sending letters.
Maud corrected my sewing with visible personal investment.
A kitchen servant named Edith quietly set aside extra honey cakes because she remembered I preferred them warm.
And Geoffrey rode through a snowstorm to get back to me. My throat tightened unexpectedly. Because somewhere between autumn and winter and war, this place had stopped feeling temporary.
The realization terrified me. Not because medieval England was easy. It wasn’t. People died here from illnesses modern pharmacies cured without thought. Winter crept through stone walls no matter how many fires burned. War hung over every conversation like distant thunder.
But nobody here lived half-asleep. Nothing felt disposable. Not meals or loyalty. Not grief and certainly not love.
In Boston, history sat behind glass while strangers shuffled past reading placards without looking up.
Here, history argued at supper and tracked snow through the hall.
I pulled the blankets tighter around myself and closed my eyes, but Geoffrey’s voice moved through my thoughts over and over.
You make this place feel quiet.
Seventeen
HARPER
Snow arrivedat Thames Castle three days before Christmastide.
Not the violent winter storms that rolled off the river hard enough to rattle shutters and send servants hurrying for more rushes. This snow came quietly, feathering across the battlements at dawn while the castle still slept beneath layers of wool and smoke and war-weariness.
I stood at the narrow window in my chamber watching white gather along the courtyard stones and felt something strange and aching settle inside my chest.
The castle looked beautiful. Not the kind of cinematic grandeur Hollywood loved to paste onto medieval England with soaring music and impossible lighting. Thames looked real beneath the snow. Smoke curled from chimneys into a pearl-grey sky. Stable boys stamped through drifts carrying feed. Someone in the kitchens had already started the morning fires because the scent of baking bread drifted faintly upward through the cold.
Homey.
The realization startled me enough that I stepped back from the window.
