Chapter One

The second portrait hung on the landing of the stairs, looking thoroughly out of place. From below Brianna could see the ornate gilded frame, its heavy carving quite at odds with the solid, battered comfort of the house's other furnishings. It reminded her of pictures in museums; this homely setting seemed incongruous.

As she followed Jenny onto the landing the glare of light from the window disappeared, leaving the painting's surface flat and clear before her.

She gasped, and felt the hair rise on her forearms, under the linen of her shirt.

"It's remarkable, aye?" Jenny looked from the painting to Brianna and back again, her own features marked with something between pride and awe.

"Remarkable!" Brianna agreed, swallowing.

"Ye see why we kent ye at once," her aunt went on, laying a loving hand against the carved frame.

"Yes. Yes, I can see that."

"It will be my mother, aye? Your grandmother, Ellen MacKenzie."

"Yes," Brianna said. "I know." Dust motes stirred up by their footsteps whirled lazily through the afternoon light from the window. Brianna felt rather as though she was whirling with them, no longer anchored to reality.

Two hundred years from now, she had — I will? she thought wildly — stood in front of this portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, furiously denying the truth that it showed.

Ellen MacKenzie looked out at her now as she had then; long-necked and regal, slanted eyes showing a humor that did not quite touch the tender mouth. It wasn't a mirror image, by any means; Ellen's forehead was high, narrower than Brianna's