'Anyhow,' he went on, 'when I arrived, I found the back door wide-open and the house deserted. I called out but no one answered, so I went upstairs to check you/ room and saw that your bed was made, which meant either you'd got up early and made it'—his eyes told me plainly how unlikely he thought this idea—'or that you hadn't slept in it at all. At that point I began to worry, and I had just come down here to try to decide what to do next, when you came waltzing in through the back door, staring like a sheep and dripping water all over the floor.'

'Did I say anything?'

'No.' He shook his head. 'No, you just stood there a moment, by the door, then you went right past me and up the stairs to your studio. I suppose I could have waited for you to come out of it naturally, but I'm afraid I rather panicked. Did I interrupt something important?'

I thought of that lovely bracelet, half felt it again trickling through my hand, and heard Richard de Mornay's voice saying, 'You should have bought the bracelet' while he held my wrist in the marketplace. My wrist. Mariana's wrist. I lifted one hand to my forehead and closed my eyes.

'No,' I said, 'it was nothing important.' But I could hear the regret in my own voice, and wondered if Tommy could, too.

'You're lucky you were dressed when it happened,' he commented, eyeing my damp, wrinkled shirt and jeans. 'It would be a bit awkward to be seen roaming the countryside in your dressing gown and slippers.'

I smiled. 'Oh, I made certain that I was dressed. I just didn't allow for my being able to unlatch doors, that's all.'

'I'm not sure I follow.'

'I planned it, Tommy,' I said, unable to prevent a small trace of pride from showing in my tone. 'This was a sort of experiment, you see. I wanted to know if I could trigger a regression myself, in a time and place of my own choosing.'

'And?'

'And it worked, obviously, though it didn't go off exactly the way I'd hoped. I had thought to contain the regression within this house.'

Tom glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen door, which still stood ajar, letting in the invigoratingly damp scent of a late-May morning.

'And Mariana opened the door,' he guessed. 'I see. That can't be the same lock that was on in the seventeenth century, surely.'

I looked at the heavy latch, curious. 'No, but it's in the same place, and the design is similar. You just have to lift it, you see, and the door opens.'

'I do see.' He frowned. 'That's an antique, that is. No protection at all. What you need is a good dead bolt. In fact, we can buy a couple this afternoon, and I'll install them for you myself.'

'You sound like my mover,' I told him, wrinkling my nose. 'He said I needed new locks, as well.'

'Sensible man.'

'You worry too much, Tom. No one locks doors around here, it's very safe. Besides, what if I go back into the past again, and try to open the door when it's locked? I might hurt myself.'

'I don't see how. It would just stop the flashback, then and there, I'd think. Mariana, in the past, would open the door and sail off outside somewhere, but you'd be stuck behind.' He looked again at my damply disheveled figure, curious. 'Where did she take you this morning, anyway?'

I finished my drink and set the glass down firmly on the table. 'Come on,' I said, rising. 'I'll show you.'

'What, now?' He shot a startled glance toward the kitchen window. 'In that?'

It was raining again, lightly but steadily, and I could hear the water gurgling through the downspout from the gutters overhead, collecting in a muddy pond outside the back door.

'I had thought, perhaps, we might use the car,' I explained, with exaggerated patience. 'I've already gone for one walk in the rain this morning.' And I held out the tails of my sodden shirt as evidence.

Tom smiled. 'Right. Sorry, I wasn't thinking. Are you going to change your clothes, first?'

'I suppose I'd better.' I looked down at myself. 'Hang on, I won't be a minute.'

It did, in fact, take me less than five minutes to change into a pair of dry jeans and a bright-red jumper, shrug on my weathered anorak, and join my brother in my stables-cum-garage.

'Which direction do we go in?' Tom asked me, as he slipped the car into reverse. 'Turn left at the end of the drive, then take the right fork in the road once we cross the river.'

Tom followed my instructions in obedient silence, bumping the sporty Ford over the little bridge and turning off the main road to follow the narrower, less-traveled route.

' "Old Marlborough Road,"' he read the signpost. 'This is the way you came?'

I nodded. 'I think so.'

In another few minutes I was sure of it, as the trees thinned and dwindled and the rolling green sweep of Wexley Chase fell away to the left of us. The road was paved and washed with rain—if I had walked this way, I had left no mark—but the richly pastoral scenery had burned a vivid imprint upon my memory.

It had changed in the hour or so since I'd seen it last. Modern houses crowded the road and grew in the fields where sheep had once grazed. There were trees where none had been before, and level flat land where the forest had stood. And yet the road was as familiar as the streets of my childhood, and as we crested the hill and began the descent into Wexley Basset, I could not suppress a tiny homely thrill of recognition.

It was a plain little town, for all that. Nothing more than a cluster of shops around a square marketplace, restored half-timbered facades vying with Victorian redbrick and the ugly utility of more modern buildings. Like many English towns, it was a curious blending of architectural styles and fancies, of progress tempered by tradition, the whole effect being, in the end, one of rather comfortable compromise.