Page 15 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

A ferocious storm broke over Loftstone Island shortly after the sun set that night. Though heavy clouds had been gathering all day, the fierceness of the weather seemed to surprise both Armitage and Mr. Pierce.

Lili saw very little of any of the men as darkness settled over the island. They rushed about doing whatever it was lighthouse keepers needed to do when the sea was angry. The three of them took it in turns to eat their supper before rushing back to their duties.

With wind still punishing the walls of the house and lightning flashing in every window, Lili cleaned the kitchen and straightened the parlor before using the parlor fire to light a candlestick—she was not yet comfortable with the paraffin lamp, neither had she sorted how to light anything herself when this house appeared to have no flint—and made her way up to her bedroom. There was a chair in there with a table next to it, the perfect spot to sit and very carefully read the section of her cooking book that explained how to light the stove. Armitage had seen to it every morning she’d been there, but she needed to learn to do it herself. Beyond simply lighting it, she also needed to heat different parts of it so she could use a frying pan or bake ratatouille inside.

She’d known upon leaving France that she was headed for a life that would be different in many ways than what she’d known before. Life eighty years ahead of when she’d been was more than different. In so many ways, it felt nearly impossible.

She found, neatly folded at the foot of her bed, what looked to be clothing. She set the book and candle on the small chairside table. The light was close enough to the bed for her to see.

A gray-blue shirt in a thicker fabric than her dress. And a striped gray skirt, heavy and practical, while somehow still very feminine. And socks as thick as the ones Armitage had lent her but not nearly so oversized for her much-smaller feet. The skirt and socks had, she would guess, belonged to his mother, just like the shawl he’d lent her. She wasn’t certain about the shirt. It seemed too small for a man, yet women didn’t wear such things.

At least, they hadn’t in 1793.

It was the right size to be worn by the same person who had worn the skirt. And the two were color coordinated, hinting that they might have been meant to be worn together.

It was a set of women’s clothes, and of the type made for this place and time.

The version of Armitage Pierce she’d first met had been like so many she’d known in Paris. But in the time since, he’d shown himself to be kind and thoughtful, like the friends she had left behind. They were merciful, selfless. She knew people like that existed. She knew they were not so rare as the past years in Paris had too often convinced her they were.

Compassion had often felt as much a foreign country to her as this England of the future did now.

She carefully placed the clothing Armitage had left for her inside the clothes press, then slipped out of her dress—the one he had purchased for her—and folded it as well, placing it beside the other items. Her stays went in a drawer as well. She’d studied the other ladies in the village and knew she’d been correct, that the odd fit of the dress was owing as much to the change in stays as to her rather wiry build. She’d found needles and thread in a drawer of the desk in the parlor and had begun making adjustments to the dress at night. It didn’t hang off her as drastically, and she’d been able to cut off excess fabric that she was using to create a new set of stays that she hoped would, to a degree, mimic the effect of those used in this time.

It was a very fortunate thing that she had worked for Monsieur and Madame Romilly for a time in Paris. The skills she had refined there were proving invaluable.

A person could likely purchase a set of stays already made, just as Armitage had purchased her dress. How very strange that was. As was cooking on an iron box with a fire inside. And paraffin lamps. And fires lit without flint. And the train.

Heavens, that train.

How am I ever to belong in this time?

At least she had Mr. Pierce. He understood her situation. He could explain things to her. And even though Armitage didn’t know the truth about her, he was proving a source of help and strength as well.

And she was beginning to help the Pierce men, which eased much of her anxiety. Helping and rescuing and facilitating escapes was who she was. It was the most significant part of herself that she could offer Armitage and his grandfather.

She pulled off her shift and then pulled on the nightshirt she’d been sleeping in since arriving.

Lightning flashed in the window, followed shortly by a crash of thunder. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she’d all but forgotten the storm raging outside.

Lili set the soft shawl around her shoulders as she walked to the window. It faced the island and not the sea. The lighthouse lantern high above shone in the other direction, leaving this side of the house quite dark. Another flash of lightning momentarily lit the lane below and the trees on the other side. A harsh wind was twisting the branches in an angry dance. The ocean was likely whipped into a frenzy as well, just as it had been when it had thrust her eighty years out of her own time.

She pulled the shawl more tightly around herself. Every inch of her remembered how cold she’d been in the water. Her heart thumped the same terrified rhythm it had as she’d fought the unforgiving waves. Had the Desjardins family survived the storm? They’d not been bound for this area of England; she hoped that meant they hadn’t been pulled through time.

Had Géraud?

Lili closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe. He would have dragged her to Paris and to her death. How was it she still worried for him and grieved for him, knowing that? The brother with whom she had chased the sun, that was the Géraud she missed and mourned. Regardless of his fate on the sea that day, he was gone now. And that pierced her through.

She had set the folktale book among the others in the room and hadn’t pulled it back out. But she felt drawn to it in that moment. When she was wasn’t a mystery any longer. But why remained elusive.

With the storm still battering the house, she took the book, then sat in the chair near the window. The light of the candle illuminated the page marked by the ribbon.

Lili hesitantly brushed her finger over that ribbon. Someone had placed it there, marking the precise chapter that pertained to her. Coincidences were not to be trusted. The book had been placed in the basket she had been holding. She was meant to find it. And she was meant to read this chapter. Someone had seen to that.

Someone who must have known, or at least suspected, what she was working so hard to keep hidden. Mr. Pierce would have simply given the book to her had it come from him. And he hadn’t been in the village when it had been placed in the basket. That meant, she very much feared, that someone else knew or suspected she was well acquainted with the Tides of Time.

Slowly, struggling with the language but determined to learn all that she could, Lili read.

Sailing the Tides of Time

The waters of the Southern Coast, particularly those in and around Loftstone Island, possess a magic all their own. That magic, centuries of tales and legends and experiences testify, holds sway over time itself.

Travelers over the waters surrounding the island have found themselves journeying not merely from land to land but from time to another time entirely too.

The earliest such tale whispered amongst the island’s inhabitants occurred before the arrival of the Normans, before the Vikings reached England’s shores. A mariner washed up on the rocky beaches of what is now known as Loftstone Island, disoriented and lost. So great was his confusion that the long-ago ancestors of the island’s current inhabitants believed him mad. Only centuries later, after encounters with other arrivals, did the truth become apparent: the mysterious madman had arrived across the Tides of Time.

The recounting didn’t explain how that conclusion was arrived at, though that would have been helpful to one who was trying to keep hidden the fact that she, too, had made that perilous journey. But it did confirm what Mr. Pierce had warned her of: that speaking of her arrival in truly truthful terms would see her labeled mad.

Folk stories have been known to insist that hundreds of people have been pulled through time in the waters around Loftstone Island and the nearby English coast. The unintentional journeys are declared to have varied in length. Some travelers reported having arrived from a distance of no more than ten years. Others had crossed more than one hundred.

Eighty, then, was not outside the established pattern.

The tales, though still shared to mirthful laughter among the villagers, are not considered true as they once were. The Loftstone inhabitants view their ancestors’ explanations as fanciful and imaginative but not rooted in reality. Not many generations more and much of what was once believed about the Tides of Time will no longer be known.

A decorative flourish followed the words, beneath which was a section not written in paragraph form but as a list.

While the precise mechanisms of travel over these Tides of Time was never part of the folklore, the many tales do reveal a few consistencies:

These Tides deliver travelers during storms on the ocean, but not all storms. Some travelers were said to have come from times earlier than those in which they were found, while others journeyed backward from a future time. All tales speak of these journeys as unintentional and unable to be guided to a predetermined time, though some tales whisper of a mysterious traveler who managed to partially tame the Tides. The gatherer of this book of tales was unable to definitively discover whether the legends indicated that travelers could make these unwitting journeys together or if the Tides of Time always pull people through time alone.

Many unique and otherworldly tales are spoken of and shared throughout Hampshire, but perhaps none is so intriguing as the once-believed relationship between time and the unforgiving waters surrounding Loftstone Island.