Page 1 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

Honfleur, France 1793

L ili Minet had a price on her head. She stood in the shadows inside Saint Catherine’s Church alongside a family she’d known for only a few days, hopeful that the reward for her capture would increase before the day’s end.

As far as she knew, no one had facilitated the escape of more people from the clutches of the Tribunal révolutionnaire than she. Four more individuals would, that evening, be added to the seventy-two already rightly credited to her. A person ought to have an impressive bounty on her head for such an accomplishment. It was the acknowledgment France owed her as she bid her homeland farewell.

Seventy-two people who would have been snatched from their homes or off the street. Seventy-two sham trials inevitably resulting in seventy-two convictions and seventy-two deaths. Even the children would not have been spared. Madame Guillotine was a demanding mistress, and no amount of blood would ever satisfy her so long as those seeking to do away with the old France were willing to kill any of their countrymen who did not fully support their aims.

Lili had faced down those who sacrificed their fellow Frenchmen to that insatiable thirst. And now they were coming for her head.

The sunlight streaming inside the church slowly turned amber with the approach of sunset. The tides would be flowing outward now. Lili moved through the shadows to a window. Silhouettes passed by outside, but as she was cast in far more darkness than they, she would not be seen.

A whimper escaped from the not-yet-two-year-old child huddling with her family in the darkness. Though Lili had successfully pulled them from Paris, the danger was far from past.

“Remember my warning.” Lili spoke in a whisper. “You mustn’t allow yourselves to look afraid or out of place, not even uncertain.”

“The children may struggle with that,” Monsieur Desjardins said.

“Let us pray they don’t.” She didn’t mean to be harsh, but the last few meters between this family and freedom were guaranteed to be anything but safe. It was not merely the Tribunal that needed to be feared. People in France informed on each other with horrifying regularity. The entire country lived in fear, not merely of those who currently wielded power over the nation but of each other as well. Of everyone. No moment was ever free from that fear. No person ever felt entirely safe in France. Seventy-two people had, through her efforts, left behind that fear. “The dimmer light of evening will obscure their expressions from anyone who might be looking. That will help.”

Madame Desjardins’s voice shook a little. “You said the Tribunal would be looking for us in Le Havre. Else, why are we in Honfleur?”

“Agent Géraud Gagnon is the one tracking us. He is not to be underestimated.” She’d known that for years, though the Tribunal had existed only a matter of months.

Lili stepped from the window. A quick glance at the family she had hidden in so many places since leaving Paris revealed a conflicting tableau. There was unmistakable love between them, but every line of every face, including those of their very young children, revealed fear. Should anyone look too closely as they moved swiftly to the waiting ship, their true situation would be sorted in an instant.

She made her way to the back of the chapel, behind the wooden spiral stairs, where a beam stretched up from the stone foundation. Earlier, she had spied what she’d thought was a small gap deep in the shadow. She tucked her hand in now and found precisely that. She took a cloth bag, one heavy with coins, from her hidden pocket and slipped it into the breach. Should they not succeed in reaching the ship, the money would allow them to hide again until another chance arose. It was nearly all the money Lili had left.

“Your name is spoken with such reverence amongst the émigrés in England,” Madame Desjardins said when Lili returned to the family. “The dozens and dozens you have saved ...”

If the sea were cooperative, by morning, she would also be in England, and Agent Gagnon would be cursing her name. Her actual name, which none of those praise-offering émigrés truly knew.

But first she had to get the Desjardins and herself safely to the boat she had arranged for, unseen and uncaptured. She wanted to believe that the bait she had left for Géraud had proved effective and he was searching Le Havre. But he was clever. Too clever.

From the bell tower next to the church, the hour began to toll. That was their signal.

Lili waved over the rest of the Desjardins family. “Be quick but quiet.”

M. and Mme Desjardins, holding their tiny children, tiptoed through the shadows of the church. Lili reached the small side door a moment before they did.

The danger would be heightened once more as soon as they stepped into the dim light beyond. Even the sun had turned traitor to those who dreamed of a France free from terror and hatred fueled by power. England was not home, but it was also not devouring its own people.

“Walk as if you belong and as if you have nothing to hide.” It was, in Lili’s vast experience, the thing her smuggled refugees struggled with the most.

They stepped out of the church on the side opposite the low sun. No one passed by. Casual and with an air utterly lacking in concern, they strolled along the back of Saint Catherine’s to the other side and descended the steps leading down to the Rue de Logettes.

It was an odd thing, seeing a family of their once-tremendous wealth dressed in the simpler clothes one would be more likely to see worn by a shopkeeper. They had sold what they could of their belongings to fund this desperate journey. Lili had obtained their current clothing from a tailor and his wife, for whom she’d worked for a time doing sewing and mending and from whose shop she had arranged the majority of her perilous missions of mercy.

She would never see them again. That was one of her greatest regrets.

A wandering mind is a dangerous thing . She reminded herself of that often when sentimentality or worry tugged at her focus. There was difficulty enough in every moment; distraction could be deadly.

One turn more brought her and the little family to the port lined with tall, narrow buildings in a rainbow of colors. But they did not turn in that direction. Le Voyageur was docked along the Narrows. The location was more conspicuous, but Lili had not been able to convince the captain of the ship to pull into the port.

There was greater risk in doing what was unusual, but they had so few options.

Mme Desjardins tucked her tiny daughter closer as they walked along the waterway. The sooner they reached the ship, the better. This family would not maintain their impression of ease much longer. The water lapping the shore beside them led to the River Seine just as it spilled into la Manche , the treacherous stretch of ocean that separated France from England. They were so very close. So painfully close.

A prickling at the back of Lili’s neck froze the air in her lungs. She’d felt it many times in recent months. Géraud. He was watching her.

Doing her best not to be obvious, she looked over the people mulling about. He wasn’t among them. But he was there; she knew he was. No boats were on the water nearby. No one appeared in the windows of buildings overlooking their escape route.

Where are you, Géraud?

She would draw more attention by doing so, but she had to check behind her. That was, she felt certain, where she would find him. The swiftest of glances proved her correct.

He was following them, moving slowly, purposefully. And though he was at too far a distance for her to know for certain, she thought she saw anger flash hard in his eyes.

Few things frightened Lili Minet. Géraud Gagnon had become one.

She spoke in a low voice to Monsieur Desjardins. “Agent Gagnon is here.” When panic pulled at the man’s face, she quickly added, “Do not give yourself away. Keep moving. Don’t draw attention.”

“What comes next?”

“Continue on to Le Voyageur . I will lead Gagnon on a bit of a chase and meet you all at the ship before it sets sail at the half hour.”

“You are certain he will chase you and not us?” M. Desjardins asked.

Lili nodded. “His quarrel with your family is impersonal. His vendetta against me is anything but.”

“If he catches you—” Mme Desjardins’s words ended abruptly on a note of horror.

The sentence didn’t need to be finished. If he caught her, she would be killed.

“I can evade him,” she said. “I will be to the ship before it departs. Go. And do not look back.”

Lili slowed her pace. When the Desjardins were far enough ahead that no one would assume she had any connection to the family, Lili paused and made a show of looking into a shop window. But she looked out of the corner of her eye in Géraud’s direction.

He was there. Closer now. Watching her. Expression unreadable to any who did not know him as well as she did. The remarkable group of people she worked with in Paris had depended on her understanding of this agent of the Tribunal. He was the most likely to unravel their web, but she managed to stay a step ahead of him.

“Elisabeth.” He stood near enough to talk but too far to grab her. Those like him, who had known her since childhood, still called her Elisabeth, though she had gone by the nickname Lili for more than half her life. “What brings you to Honfleur?”

She lifted a single shoulder. “The seaside is lovely in the autumn.”

“You’ve come for the fresh sea air?” His words crackled aridly.

“What else?”

“To thwart me. To steal from me.”

Lili inched backward, slowly and smoothly so as not to draw attention. “That is a horrible accusation to make, Géraud.”

“Yes, how horrified the dear departed would be to discover their daughter has chosen to be a thief.”

Tension pulled her lips tight. “And even more horrified to learn their son has chosen to be a monster.”

Géraud shifted the tiniest bit closer. She shifted backward. They’d undertaken this dance before.

“Le Havre, Elisabeth?” He shook his head. “Do you think me so thickheaded that I wouldn’t realize you were stealing information from me? Did you think I, a celebrated agent of the Tribunal,”—how proudly he spoke of the prowess with which he participated in the violent horrors that body perpetrated against the people of France—“was not clever enough to turn that against you?”

That was how he’d found her, then. He knew she had been double-crossing him.

“We would be at an impasse, then,” she said, “if not for the one thing our parents would not be surprised to discover.”

His eyes, once so beloved and dear to her, narrowed fiercely. “And what is that?” The words spat from him.

One more small movement backward put her directly beside a narrow alleyway. “That I am still far swifter than you.” She darted up the alleyway.

“Elisabeth Minet!” Géraud’s voice exploded behind her. Were she not focused on both her escape and the Desjardinses’, she might have taken a moment to enjoy the fact that he had, likely without fully realizing it, called her by her recently adopted surname rather than the one they shared.

“Elisabeth!” His voice broke her name into extra syllables, a sure indication he was running.

Perfect.

Her contact in Honfleur had given her a hand-drawn map of this area of the town so she could find the launching place of Le Voyageur . Lili had committed it to memory, not daring to risk being caught with it. That image in her mind would be her salvation now.

There was almost immediately a fork in this road, and then it didn’t break off into so much as a narrow bend for a long stretch. That was a dangerous situation in a chase. She needed options.

She took the fork leading back toward Saint Catherine’s. Narrow streets stretched out in all directions from the church, lined by tall buildings standing shoulder to shoulder in an impenetrable line. In every direction were shadows and darkness.

But nowhere to hide.

She turned the corner at the end of the short street. Fast footsteps pounded the cobblestones behind her.

Taking her skirts in her fists, she pulled the fabric up enough to give her legs full room to move as broadly and swiftly as she needed. Her final words to Géraud had not been untrue; she was swifter and more agile than he. But she could not escape him too quickly, lest he turn his attention to finding the Desjardinses.

She turned down an alleyway so narrow that she had to pull her elbows in against herself to fit. Halfway to the other side, she spied an open gate of solid wood and slipped beyond it. She closed it quietly and engaged the latch. She then stepped aside, tucked against the stone wall and away from any gaps that might be found in the gate.

Footsteps rushed past. “Elisabeth!”

Once his steps were distant, she slipped out once more. She let the gate make the smallest of noises, knowing it would pull Géraud’s attention back in her direction.

And it did.

A little more running and the Desjardinses would, without question, be aboard Le Voyageur , out of sight and out of immediate danger.

Her brother’s eyes met hers. She flashed him a smile, then rushed out of the alley once more. Up and down more streets. In and out of more alleyways. He kept pace with her, almost.

Time enough had passed for the Desjardinses’ safety. It was time to shake Géraud from her heels and get herself to safety as well.

Lili aimed for a small alleyway, and on the map she consulted in her mind, its entrance appeared to be somewhat hidden. It also would lead her toward the Narrows, where the ship would be docked for a quarter hour longer.

She ducked into that alley, rushed to the other end, and spilled onto a busier street and into a small crowd of people.

She quit running and did her best to hide her belabored breathing. She’d draw less attention in a crowd of unconcerned people. Weaving through them, she made her way to the far side of the small square, and when she reached the other side, she could see the water. Time and plenty remained for her to board and hide belowdecks while the ship pulled away from the launch.

She climbed over a chain separating the cobbled open area from the waterside walk.

There was no ship. The small launch where Le Voyageur was meant to be sat empty. And the Desjardinses weren’t standing about looking confused.

Lili reached the short boat launch. Out on the water was a ship— Le Voyageur emblazoned on its prow.

It had left without her.