Page 13 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

L ili pulled laundry off the line behind the lighthouse. Memories of France, continued confusion about her current situation, and the serenity of her surroundings all claimed bits of her attention.

And she thought about Armitage. He had bought her a book. That hadn’t been part of the offer of employment he and his grandfather had extended to her. He’d done it as a kindness.

She tucked the last of the clean linens in her large basket just as she spied Mr. Pierce arriving at the cliff’s edge, having climbed up from the lower light. There was a heaviness to him that she recognized far too easily. It wasn’t just the weight of grief. She could see in him someone who had lost hope of escaping that sorrow.

I give people hope, Monsieur Pierce. I have done it seventy-six times.

She carried her basket over to him.

“You’re hard at work, Miss Lili.” He motioned to her basket.

“As are you, I am certain.”

“Always.” He seemed pleased to see her. “Are you beginning to find your place, then?”

“A little, but I am still confused a lot of the time. I am trying very hard not to give myself away. That even your grandson would think the two of us mad for believing what we know to be true tells me I would do best to be very careful.”

“If it sets your mind at all at ease, though Armitage would certainly think us were a touch barmy, and him’d probably think it your influence rather than telling heself that his own grandfather has bats in the belfry, him wouldn’t be likely to go telling anyone or sending a telegram off to Bedlam.”

“Is Bedlam an asylum?”

“The worst sort, though I can’t imagine any are lovely places.”

Everyone feared the asylums for a reason. That clearly hadn’t changed. “What is a telegram?”

Surprise filled his expression first but was almost immediately replaced by understanding. “You come from before the telegraph, then.”

She adjusted the basket under her arm. “I must; I’ve never heard the term before.”

“It’s like a letter, I suppose. Except sent over wires.”

Wires? “The letters are attached to a wire? Like laundry on a clothesline?”

That must have been very much not what a telegraph was, because Mr. Pierce laughed. It was not mocking laughter that made a person feel embarrassed. He seemed genuinely entertained by the picture she had painted.

“Them are electrical wires. Electricity pulses through they, which make machines on either end click in a certain rhythm, and them rhythms represent letters.”

“I have not heard the term electricity .”

His gaze narrowed a little at that. “I’ve asked you before but didn’t get an answer. From when do you come?”

It was a secret she kept tucked away so fiercely that she found herself hesitant to answer, even though she knew he was not a danger. This was the one person she didn’t need to hide the secret from. But keeping secrets had become so much a part of who she was that doing anything other than fiercely guarding one felt inherently risky. She summoned her fortitude. “1793.”

He whistled low. “You are a long time from home.”

“It had not been home for a while. Not truly.”

She should be talking to him about things that would ease the difficulties he carried. While having someone to talk to was never an unhelpful thing, it wasn’t what she was aiming for. “Armitage and I went to the village yesterday. I purchased the groceries without even any help.”

“Well done.” He looked legitimately proud of her. Heavens, she needed that. To have someone who felt like something of an uncle or even the tiniest bit like a grandfather show pride in her touched a vulnerable place in her heart that she hadn’t even realized was there. “Was there much at the grocer’s that you didn’t recognize?”

“Not very much, which gives me confidence. Armitage bought me a book on cooking so I can learn to make more things. I suspect that were his mother or grandmother here, they would teach me.”

Mr. Pierce nodded. He turned up his collar, no doubt because of the cold, but he did so with movements that so perfectly matched Armitage’s that it made Lili smile inwardly. Those two echoed each other and likely didn’t even realize it.

“Them’d both have been eager to help you,” he said, fondness in his voice. “And them would’ve scolded Armitage for being prickly with you when you first arrived.”

“He seems to have warmed to me,” she said. “He bought me the book even though he is, by his own admission, a bit brum.”

Mr. Pierce chuckled low. “You’ve learned a Hampshire word. I don’t know what it says about we, though, that the one you’ve picked up out of all of them is brum .” He smiled at her. “Being a lightkeeper never made anyone wealthy. But it’s in our blood. The Pierces never could manage to do anything else.”

“Did you grow up in a lighthouse?”

He nodded. “In this lighthouse. Our family’s manned it for generations.”

What would it be like to have roots that ran that deep? Her family had been in France since time began, but they had no land or home to claim of their own, no ownership of anything that lasted.

“When did you meet your wife?” she asked him. They were slowly making their way to the lighthouse. She chose to see his leisurely pace as a sign that he was enjoying her company.

“Her grew up on Loftstone Island, same as me. Us always knew each other.”

Then, he would have a great many stories about her. It helped people to talk about their hardships and share memories. Armitage didn’t think his grandfather would talk with her about his late wife, but neither did he think she could truly get past the walls Mr. Pierce had erected and offer him help. Seventy-six people would have told Armitage that she most certainly knew how to help those who needed her.

“When did you first start falling in love with her?” Lili asked.

“I was sixteen years old. Peony was fifteen. Her was down on the beach one day, not far from the lower light. Her stood facing the waves and was singing to the sea.” A sentimental and fond smile pulled at his slips. “My father said her might be a little daft. But I was enchanted.”

“I imagine she had a lovely voice.”

“I don’t know that I ever heard anyone who sang as beautifully as my Peony did.” The memories didn’t appear to be causing him sorrow. This was a good approach. “Her filled our house with music every day.”

“Did she have a favorite song?”

He pondered that a moment. “I don’t know that her did.” He held the outer door to the kitchen open for her. “Her sang a great many songs.”

Lili stepped inside. “Was there one she liked quite a bit?”

“‘Rose of Allendale.’” He sighed, the sound a happy one. “I must’ve heard that one hundreds of times.”

She set her basket of laundry on the worktable. “I’m certain you will be shocked to hear that ‘Rose of Allendale’ is not a song I learned in France.”

His quiet chuckle did Lili’s heart and mind good. She was helping here. She was offering some respite.

“I would offer to teach it to you, but you’d discover I am not a singer.” Laughter was still evident in his expression.

“Is your grandson a singer?”

“Him has a fine voice. But Armitage doesn’t sing anymore, not since losing his parents. Him simply hasn’t had the heart for it.”

Armitage needed some light as well.

“Did your wife ever tell you why she sang to the sea?”

“Her said that the water made her heart happy, and when her heart was happy, her had to sing.”

Lili pressed a hand to her heart. “That is beautiful.”

“My Peony was a beautiful and wonderful woman. Remarkable, as you said a couple nights ago. Her truly was.”

Lili set her hand on his arm. “Thank you for sharing her with me. I think my heart will be happier looking at this sea now too.”

“I hope so,” he said. “The sea is powerful, and it can be selfish, but you needn’t live in constant fear of it.”

Mr. Pierce left the kitchen through the door to the lighthouse tower, whistling a tune as he went. She didn’t recognize it, but it was lovely, and he seemed pleased by it.

Even in the horrors of Paris and facing the peril of all she had been doing there, knowing she was helping people had given her the courage to keep going. It could do so again here.

Armitage stepped through the door from the parlor. His eyes were on the doorway his grandfather had just passed through. “Did him truly talk to you about Grandmother?” His look was both one of bafflement and amazement.

“He did. We had a very lovely discussion. He told me about a song she liked, but I haven’t heard it.”

“You have though,” he said. “The tune him was whistling was ‘Rose of Allendale.’” He didn’t seem to know what to say about that. He simply shook his head. Not dismissal, not frustration. Again, it was amazement.

He slowly followed his grandfather’s path out of the kitchen and into the lighthouse tower.

Lili watched Armitage go. Somehow, she was going to help Armitage the same way she’d begun to help his grandfather.