Read No Time Like the Past for Free Online Page A

seen me even if I were standing directly in front of her. She was blind with fear: her dark eyes distended and desperate. She couldn’t have been much more than twenty-four or twenty-five and the little knots of curls on either side of her face made her look even younger. She swept into her room and closed the door behind her. I waited in vain for the sound of the key turning but it never came. She couldn’t lock herself in.
    We wriggled forwards again.
    Sir Rupert halted just inside his own front doors, his chest heaving. Captain Lacey walked slowly to the middle of the Hall and stood, waiting for him.
    ‘You!’ It came out as a roar. ‘You dare show your face here? In my house?’
    Captain Lacey held out his hands. ‘Rupert, be calm.’
    He was wasting his time. Rupert Lacey advanced down the Hall like a one-man cavalry charge. Captain Lacey stepped back warily, keeping out of sword range and that would have been a very sensible move indeed, had not his brother whipped out a pistol and shot him.
    The sound of the shot echoed around the Hall, followed by screaming from Lady Lacey’s room. I could hear her shouting, ‘Edmund! Oh God, Edmund! May God and his saints preserve us’ and I couldn’t help feeling that given her current situation a little more wifely concern for her husband, however insincere, might have been more prudent.
    Edmund fell with a crash and lay still.
    ‘Shit,’ whispered Peterson, which was a bit of an understatement, all things considered. None of this was right. There should be a contingent of Roundheads pillaging the place as fast as they could go. Sir Rupert definitely shouldn’t be here at all, and as for Lady Lacey and her children … I remembered she was to die today.
    No time to think. Without even a glance at his fallen brother, the wronged husband was heading for the stairs, gun in one hand, and sword in the other. He shouted, ‘Margaret! I come for you now,’ and she broke off in mid-shriek. The silence was terrifying.
    Under cover of his footsteps on the wooden stairs, I said, ‘Markham, stay with Captain Lacey. Peterson, watch out for the youngest kid. He’ll bolt for the roof. I’ll stick with Margaret.’
    Peterson made a slight sound that I had no difficulty in interpreting as ‘I’d really rather not go up there, if you don’t mind.’
    I smoothly changed gear. ‘On second thoughts, Markham to the roof and Peterson, you see to the captain. Remember there are three other men somewhere around.’
    They vanished and I pulled myself to my feet and silently followed Sir Rupert along the gallery.
    His family had made a sad little attempt to barricade themselves inside. It didn’t slow him down at all. Finding that the door wouldn’t open, he put his shoulder to it. He was a powerful man and the door jerked open. I could hear furniture scraping across the boards as he heaved. It didn’t take him long to force a gap wide enough not only for him to squeeze through, but for me to see what was happening.
    He burst into what was obviously her private sitting room. The spicy orange smell was stronger in here. Two wooden seats with comfortable cushions stood one on each side of the empty fireplace. There was no library as such, not yet, but a row of some half dozen books stood on one table, held up by two very amateurishly carved wooden horse’s heads. Perhaps a gift from one of her sons.
    A good carpet lay in the middle of the room and a small Flemish tapestry hung along the inside wall, well away from damaging sunlight.
    Her needlework lay where it had been hurriedly discarded. A set of toy soldiers sprawled across the floor in front of the fire. It was a light, sunny, pleasant family room. I could easily imagine Lady Lacey and her sons spending their time here, quietly happy.
    She stood, seemingly trapped, on the far side of the room, between the fireplace and the window. Both boys clung to her skirts. James had buried his face in them. Not taking her eyes from her