Page 33 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

A storm broke over Guilford that night. Amelia stood at one of the drawing room windows, trying to breathe while telling herself she was safe even if she didn’t feel safe at all.

“The ocean is angry tonight.” Kipling spoke from directly beside her.

Though she hadn’t heard him approach, he didn’t startle her the way almost anyone else would have.

He was a peaceful person. Perhaps that was why she was struggling to discover what his “garden” was.

Maybe he didn’t need something like that to bring him peace; he brought it with him.

“I have been told many times that storms are more common in this area of the Channel. I don’t think I appreciated how true that actually is. ”

A strike of lightning was followed very quickly by a furious clap of thunder. She wrapped her arms around herself, watching the nearly black night through the window. It didn’t comfort or reassure her. Why, then, didn’t she simply walk away, turn her back?

Because one ought never to turn her back on something as dangerous as the sea.

“You had seemed to be less unnerved by it these past couple of days,” Kipling said.

“I’ve had a few moments in which I almost forgot it was there. Even the sound of it seemed to have quieted.”

Another flash of lightning and a rumble from the clouds made her shudder.

And then, without warning, Kip wrapped his arms around her from behind, holding her in a warm and protective embrace.

She likely should have been shocked. Society certainly would have insisted on her feeling it.

But instead, she leaned against him and set her arms atop his.

“Do people often embrace like this in your time?” she asked.

“Your question makes me think that such things are not done often in this time.”

She shook her head.

“Clearly, I am not doing a very good job of adhering to current protocol.”

“You will eventually have to learn the trick of it,” she said. “But maybe not right this moment.”

When he spoke again he’d leaned close enough that his breath tickled her ear. “I’m rather enjoying the arrangement myself.” He didn’t say it in an overly flirtatious way, but it still made her heart flutter.

She’d known him for such a relatively short amount of time, but she’d come to like him deeply.

Her heart had formed an attachment to him that she couldn’t have predicted.

Perhaps it was that they understood each other in such a profound way: both displaced, both trapped, both finding their footing in an unfamiliar situation.

But she knew it was more than that as well. He was something unique and remarkable.

In this moment, I am grateful for that.

The pounding of the surf grew softer as the flutter of her pulse grew more intense.

And the way his chest rose and fell with each breath pushed from her thoughts the reminder of the unavoidable incursion of the sea on the road.

She wasn’t allowed to take that road, but there was something comforting in knowing it was there.

When the storms raged and it disappeared, she felt even more closed in.

“Feel free to tell me to mind my own business,” he said, “but I’ve been curious ever since our conversation in the corridor a couple of nights ago.”

She wasn’t sure what he would ask about but felt certain she’d be happy to talk to him about anything.

“You lost your parents when you were very young,” he said. “I suspect I might be guessing correctly how they died.”

She closed her eyes against the reminder and held more tightly to his arms. She never talked about their deaths with anyone, not even her aunt and uncle. But most people who heard of her crushing fear of the ocean could piece together the reality of it.

“They were taken by the sea, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” she answered quietly. “Not in this stretch of it. We were in the North Sea, and there was a storm. We thought we’d passed the worst of it, but the ship had sustained damage, and no one realized it soon enough. The ship sank.”

“ We ? You were on the ship as well?”

Again, she nodded, but this time, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

Very few people had survived that shipwreck.

Her father had placed her and her mother in the only rowboat available but had not managed to get in it himself before a wave on the still-rough waters had pulled him under.

Mother had been injured, though Amelia had been too young to remember precisely what that injury was.

By the time their rowboat was found, her mother was close to death, and her father was gone forever. Within a day, Amelia was an orphan.

“I’m sorry you endured that,” Kipling said.

“But I lived,” she countered. “What right do I have, really, to feel sorry for myself when so many others—more than just my parents—died in the water that day? I should feel grateful, but I struggle with it.”

She’d not told anyone that before. She hadn’t dared.

“In my day, there is a name for that feeling, and there are people who’d know how to help with it.”

She turned slightly, enough to look up at him, but not so much that he’d have to drop his arms away. She didn’t want to lose that connection when she felt so fragile. “There is a name for the weight that has sat on my heart for twenty years?”

He nodded. It wasn’t pity in his face but understanding.

“They call it ‘survivor’s guilt,’ the weight and the grief and the, as it says, guilt of being the only person, or one of the few people, who survives an ordeal that others don’t.

That’s a difficult thing for the mind and the heart to make peace with. It eats away at a person.”

To her horror, tears stung at the back of her eyes.

He was describing so perfectly what she had felt for so long.

She usually pushed it down, pretending it wasn’t there because it didn’t make sense.

Guilt at not being dead? Guilt over something she didn’t cause and couldn’t have prevented? She’d always felt so foolish.

He tucked her ever tighter against him, hugging her truly and properly. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around him as well.

A vicious burst of thunder rattled the windows.

“It wasn’t green lightning, was it?” In her own question, she found the answer to why she had tortured herself that night by watching the storm. Green lightning. She was beginning to believe the tales—more than beginning.

“No green flashes,” he said. “For the time being, I’m the only burden the Tides of Time intend to bring you.”

Though she could hear the laughter in his voice, his declaration still pained her. She looked up at him. “You aren’t a burden, Kipling Summerfield. I promise you aren’t.”

“That is because I have been on my best behavior.”

“Are you usually prone to mischief?”

When he laughed in response, she did as well.

“I am exceptionally good at mischief,” he said. “At the moment, though, I’m choosing to focus on another talent of mine.”

“What talent is that?” she asked, knowing she would be delighted at whatever answer he gave.

“My ability to give remarkable hugs.”

She did like that answer. She leaned into his embrace once more. The storm continued, and the thunder still made her jump, but she felt safer.

“I’ve been pondering the declaration you made regarding the house you hope to someday purchase for yourself,” he said. “I think you should add another item to your list beyond its being a place that doesn’t need a great deal of repairs.”

“What should I add?” It was not at all the done thing to have a conversation with a gentleman one was not married to while standing in his embrace, alone, in an entirely empty room. Even with the door open, they were pushing the bounds of propriety. And yet she didn’t care.

“I think you should find an estate far away from the ocean,” he said.

She smiled broadly. He hadn’t made the remark in tones of mockery but a lighthearted teasing rooted in truth. “An excellent plan,” she said.

“Chatsworth is landlocked,” he said. “Perhaps you ought to see if the family’s willing to sell.”

She laughed. Chatsworth was enormous, beyond grand and elegant. It was the sort of home that made the royal family wish for the ability to seize properties with equanimity as they’d once been permitted to do.

“I have heard of Chatsworth,” she said.

“I have been to Chatsworth,” he said. “It is overwhelmingly impressive.”

“Then it is still standing in two hundred years?” Wasn’t that a remarkable thing?

“It is, and is a popular place for people to visit.”

“It’s open to the public?” People of their class who happen to be in the area could sometimes receive a tour of fine homes if their timing was good. But the general public certainly didn’t.

“Things are quite different two centuries from now.” His hand was slowly rubbing her back, and she found it both soothing and thrilling.

“Smudge warned me I’m supposed to be careful what I say about things to come, because it is believed that the things a traveler over the tides does in the past could change things in the future.

I suspect I’m permitted to say that it’s very different. ”

She hadn’t really thought of that. If he revealed things that changed what people did or said or chose now, it might alter things yet to come. How very precarious.

“Even if I were to discover that this house was one open for public tours in years to come, I don’t think it would change the way I’m approaching my work here.” At least she didn’t think it would.

There was an added stillness to him. Was he trying to decide if he ought to tell her something?

Perhaps Guilford was one of those homes available to be toured and enjoyed by a great many people.

If it were still used in two centuries’ time, that must mean she had managed to restore it. Or that someone had.

And quick as that, she understood the perilousness of learning things yet to come.

Because she suspected what he wasn’t telling her was precisely what she had guessed at: She now knew that, one way or another, Guilford would be put to rights.

And if she didn’t manage to do it, her uncle likely would, using at least some of her inheritance.

And it added a franticness to the situation that she didn’t think was entirely helpful.

She took a deep breath, hoping some of the tension would leave her shoulders and that the knot in her stomach would untie.

“One consequence of incredibly effective hugs,” he said, “is I can tell that you’ve grown very suddenly tense. I’ve said too much, haven’t I?”

She wanted to deny it entirely, but she didn’t feel comfortable being untruthful with him. “I’m pondering the ways in which knowing things about the future could change that future. It’s a smidge overwhelming.”

“Well, I can tell you, Amelia, that being in this time when I’m not at all used to it is exceptionally overwhelming.”

She looked up at him again, and he looked back in that very instant. He had such beautiful eyes.

“I can help you know how to live in 1803,” she said. “I think Smudge will help too.”

Kipling nodded. “At the moment, I’m too unaware of what I don’t know to even ask questions.

” His smile grew once more, adding a measure of merriment to his already expressive eyes.

“Though I am in full receipt of the information that this arrangement”—he managed with a single lift of a brow to indicate their current embrace—“is not at all the usual thing in 1803.”

“Not even a little bit.”

While his smile was disappointed, there was no finality to it. “Then I will require myself to behave for the rest of the evening.” But before he stepped away, he bent and placed the lightest and briefest of kisses on her forehead, the tiniest whisper of his lips.

That she managed to stay on her feet was more of a miracle than she knew how to express.

He was dressed in out-of-date clothes and moved with a gait that didn’t quite feel right but somehow fit him perfectly. He was not from this time or this place and would likely never entirely fit. But the Tides of Time had not brought her a burden at all.

The virulent sea, which had taken so much from her, had this time brought her a miracle: a remarkable man who’d begun to lay claim on her heart.