'All right.'

'Good. Just slide by sometime in the afternoon, then. I'll be at home all day.'

'I'll do that. Good night, Geoff.' I felt for the door handle. "Thanks for the lift.'

'Anytime.'

It seemed natural, somehow, that he should reach across and give me a good-night kiss. Natural, too, that I should lean a little closer to accept the gesture. It was a purely casual and friendly contact, and yet I could feel the warmth of it even after the Vauxhall's taillights had disappeared down the road leading back to the village.

With a little sigh, I turned and started across the lawn toward the house, dragging my feet in sudden weariness. The wind had picked up considerably since supper time. The night air felt heavy with the threat of rain, and to my right a distant rumble of thunder could be heard above the moaning of the wind through the creaking trees.

I was still several feet from the front door when it suddenly flew open, spilling a slanting slab of yellow light across the lawn and framing the silhouetted figure of a man, who stood watching my approach with his arms folded across his chest.

'Uncle,' I said, but my voice was lost in the wind.

The thunder sounded again, and my steps faltered for a brief instant. Summoning my courage, I lifted the dripping hem of my dress clear of the grass, and forced myself to walk the final yard to the doorway.

The man lifted his head a fraction, and I could see his features more clearly—my mother's eyes, set in a hawklike face that showed no trace of her tenderness. I raised my chin and gazed mutely up at him. I had intended to smile, but for some reason his expression did not seem to invite such familiarity. For a long moment we stared at each other, while the storm rose and swelled behind us and the wind mounted to a frenzied wail.

'So,' he said finally. 'You've come.'

Eight

It is difficult to describe the sensation of sliding backward in time, of exchanging one reality for another that is just as real, just as tangible, just as familiar. I should not, perhaps, refer to it as 'sliding,' since in actual fact I was thrust—abruptly and without warning—from one time to the next, as though I had walked through some shifting, invisible portal dividing the present from the past.

When that happened, at the moment that I passed through the portal, I was blissfully unaware that anything had changed. That realization, and the full impact of its significance, would come later, when I had returned to being Julia Beckett.

But as I stood on the front steps of Greywethers that evening, staring up at the man who blocked the doorway, I was no longer Julia. Julia, and all her jumbled memories, had been stripped from me. My thoughts were someone else's thoughts, my body not my own, and as I moved, I lived each new experience for the first time. I was Mariana, and it was with Mariana's eyes that I looked now at my uncle.

Jabez Howard was a tall man, with powerful shoulders and a heavy bull's neck. He needed no padding beneath his stockings to give the impression of muscles, and the woollen broadcloth of his narrow breeches and coat stretched taut at the seams, as if the clothing had been made for a much smaller man. His head, shorn close to permit the wearing of the fashionable new periwigs, looked oddly grotesque and inhuman in that strange light. But when, at last, he smiled, I saw again my mother's face, and my cold misgivings were displaced by a warm sense of homecoming.

'I did not hear the coach’ he said, peering past me into the darkness.

'One of the horses went lame, and the coachman would not risk the team any farther on such a night. He set me down at the village inn.'

'And you came on alone. You should have waited for morning.'

'I was eager to come to you.' The furtive, insistent voice of the leering coachman and the stench of ale, tobacco, and traveling men had combined to overcome any fears I might have had of walking alone on the open road. The landlord had been kind enough to give me directions, and had promised to hold my box for me until I could collect it.

My uncle made a disapproving noise and turned away, motioning me to follow him inside. The wide hall was bright with what seemed like a hundred candles, their flames dancing in the reflecting sconces and gleaming on the darkly burnished paneling. 'Close the door,' he instructed me shortly, and I obeyed, shutting out the darkness and the coming storm and sliding the iron bolt in place.

'You spoke to the landlord of the Red Lion?' he asked.

I knew what he was asking me.

'I told him I was your sister's daughter, from Southampton, and had come to stay with you awhile. It was Aunt Mary's tale, and her advice that I should use it.'

Uncle Jabez nodded, satisfied. 'My brother John, for all his faults, did marry well,' he said. 'Your aunt is a good woman, and a clever one. Mind you remember her advice. There is great fear of the plague here, and travelers from London are not welcome.'

'I am grateful,' I told him, remembering my manners, 'that you do offer me a home here, when you yourself must fear infection.'

His eyes were mild. 'I have no need to fear the plague. I am a righteous man. Come along.'

He led the way down the narrow passage to the back of the house, and I trailed after him, my borrowed gown dragging heavily at my weary legs. Two days of rough travel had brought me to the brink of exhaustion, my fair hair darkened with dirt and grime, my blue eyes deeply shadowed and rimmed with red. The dust from the road clung everywhere, turning my green dress an ugly gray colour and catching at the back of my throat with an irritating tenacity that even repeated coughing could not dislodge.