Page 16 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

L ili didn’t sleep well that night. She hadn’t in a very long time. The usual swirl of violent Paris and Géraud’s angry visage that marked her every dream had mixed with furious seas and raging storms. She couldn’t imagine ever escaping the nightmares.

Fleeing to England was supposed to have given her a measure of peace. Even if she’d managed to reach the England of her time, she was beginning to realize there still would have been no true escape. She would be exhausted for the rest of her life.

She pulled herself from the bed and dressed for the day, telling herself to focus on what needed doing and on surviving. The approach had kept her alive through absolute horrors. Though being eighty years out of her time was complicated and fraught with difficulty, it was hardly the life-threatening danger she had fled from. She would do well to remember that and be grateful.

And she could further be thankful that she wasn’t as cold as she’d been the past mornings. The clothes Armitage had laid out for her were like a warm embrace, comforting in ways that went beyond the physical. His kindness made her feel less alone and less lost.

When she stepped inside the kitchen, Armitage and Mr. Pierce were there. They stood near the stove, drinking their morning coffee. Mikhail, she felt certain she remembered, was assigned the early morning watch in the lantern room; otherwise, he would have been standing there with them.

“I was determined to be the first to reach the kitchen,” she said. “You’ve thwarted me.”

Mr. Pierce looked over at her. He looked tired, poor man. “It was quite a storm last night. There’s more and plenty to do this morning.”

Lili moved to the window. It offered a small view of la Manche. The water looked calm this morning. “Did the storm cause a lot of damage?”

“Not damage but a mess.” Armitage sounded every bit as worn down as his grandfather. “Us fished another person out of the Channel last night.”

Her heart dropped to her toes. “I hope the person wasn’t dead.”

“Wasn’t,” Mr. Pierce said. “Soaked and cold and too battered for doing anything but shiver but living still.”

“The sea wasn’t as selfish last night as it might have been.” She used the description he had when speaking to her about the water.

He smiled as he tapped his finger on his nose. “And I hope that’ll help you to not be too afeared of the Channel even though it tossed another person at we.”

“You’ve told me I don’t need to be,” she said, “and I intend to believe you.”

“You’ll puff me up with pride, Miss Lili.” He chuckled.

She turned to Armitage. “Would that be considered a saintly thing, Monsieur Armitage, to puff up someone with pride? I’d hate to lose the sainthood we declared yesterday was my destiny.”

“Seems you’re risking that, Lili. Best watch yourself.” Armitage winked at her over his cup. He’d never done that before.

“Now you are puffing up my pride.” Her lips twitching in an uncharacteristic urge to turn upward. “Neither of us will achieve sainthood if we aren’t careful.”

“Pulling two people from the ocean in less than a month ought to qualify Armitage there.” Mr. Pierce motioned to his grandson with his coffee cup.

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Armitage gave her a haughty look. “Sounds like I’m leaps ahead of you.”

“It’s a race?”

He nodded firmly, but a grin ruined the earnest effect he was no doubt trying to accomplish.

“Is this person you pulled from the water still at the lighthouse?” Lili asked.

“Sleeping in the barracks,” Armitage said. “The pour soul’ll likely sleep away the rest of the day.”

Lili remembered all too well how exhausting it was to fight against the sea in a storm.

“Be a saint, Armitage,” Mr. Pierce said, “and set my cup in the basin.”

Armitage took the cup and moved to the sink.

In a quick and quiet whisper, Mr. Pierce said, “You’ve lightened he, Lili. Thank you for that.”

Whistling, as he’d taken to doing of late, Mr. Pierce stepped through the exterior door and out into the side yard.

Armitage returned to Lili’s side. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

“Doubted me about what?”

“That you could ease some of my grandfather’s gruffness. You’ve done just that, and I’m grateful for it.”

Reaching out to Mr. Pierce was lifting Armitage. Lifting Armitage was helping her reach Mr. Pierce. Some rescues were like that, all the moving pieces depending on each other.

“I’d hoped thesen clothes’d keep you from being so shivery.” He motioned with his head toward the clothes he’d given her.

“I’ve not been this warm since arriving.”

“The cold’s not making you miserable?”

“The air doesn’t bite at me so much now.”

He took one of her hands in his. “Then, what else can I do?”

“What do you mean?”

Armitage set down his coffee cup and took her other hand. “You don’t seem fully happy here, Lili. I want you to be.”

“I’ve not been fully happy in a very long time. That is not your doing.”

He kept hold of her hands, which only added to the warmth she was feeling. “I certainly didn’t help matters, being so suspicious of you when you first arrived dripping on our doorstep.”

“I was très wary of you as well.”

Mischief danced in his eyes. “Then I bought you a book, and all was forgiven.”

She lifted a single shoulder. “It was the shawl, Armitage.”

Armitage slipped the tiniest bit closer. “I wish you would let yourself smile, Lili.”

“The France I knew had no use for smiling,” she whispered.

“But you aren’t there any longer.”

That was true. “It will take time for me to regain the habit of it, I suspect.”

“I will simply have to keep thinking of ways to help you try.”

“I might feel a little giddy if I sorted out how to light the stove,” she said.

Armitage had, once again, lit it that morning.

He stepped over to the frustrating iron box, releasing her hands as he did. “If you put this lever in this position”—he tapped on a metal bar on the side of the stove—“the embers will burn for hours. Add wood when you need the fire to build up again.”

That was enormously helpful information. “ Merci .”

“ Avec plaisir. ” He remembered. “And now I am going to abandon you, Lili from France. Us has a lot to see to today.”

“I’ll make certain there’s something to eat whenever it’s needed.”

“ Merci ,” he said.

“ Avec plaisir, Armitage .”

He smiled at her. She wished returning the gesture came more naturally to her.

Armitage grabbed his coffee cup again and stepped through the door to the lighthouse tower.

Lili pulled off the thick shawl, wanting to make absolutely certain she didn’t spill on it or singe it. She tied a large length of cheesecloth around her waist as an apron, as she’d been doing the past few days. She had a fire to begin with, which saved her the difficulty of lighting one when she’d not found anything to light it with. There were vegetables enough for making more meals. And she meant to read through the instructions in the cooking book on how to bake bread. If she could manage that, they’d not need to buy loaves in the village.

This was familiar footing: tackling a difficult task, accomplishing duties, working hard, helping people. Lili had little patience for self-directed pity, and she had indulged in far too much of it lately. It was time she stopped feeling sorry for herself and put her efforts, instead, into doing something useful.

She crossed back into the parlor and sat at the small writing desk. She pulled a piece of parchment from the desk drawer and found a pencil as well.

One line at a time, she painstakingly began translating the breadmaking instructions into French. Attempting something so unfamiliar while translating in her mind would be a lot to ask of herself. If she could read the instructions in the language she knew far better, she would have a significantly improved chance of success when she attempted to bake.

To make White Bread.

She wrote, “ Pour préparer du pain blanc .”

Take of flour, dressed or household, 3 lb. avoirdupois.

She understood flour . But what designated flour that was dressed or flour that was of a household variety? Avoirdupois was a French word for the old way of measuring, before the Révolution replaced the old system with a new one. The avoirdupois system measured in pounds, and it was abbreviated “lb.”

3 pounds of flour. Trois livres de farine.

Perhaps Mr. Pierce knew what dressed or household flour was.

Bi-Carbonate of Soda, What is that? in powder, 9 drachms What is drachms? apothecaries’ weight.

Drachms, then, was likely another unit of measure, but she hadn’t heard of it. Why did a person need to know the measurements used by apothecaries to bake bread? She studied the uncooperative sentence but knew she couldn’t translate it to French in any way that would be helpful. The next sentence was even more indecipherable.

Hydro-Chloric (muriatic) acid, specific gravity 1?16, 11⒈／⒋ fluid drachms.

She simply stared. Not a bit of that made sense. Not one bit.

Water, about 25 fluid ounces.

She could translate that part— Eau, environ vingt-cinq onces liquides.

Her French instructions included flour and water and nothing else, and she wasn’t even certain what variety of flour she was meant to use.

She set her pencil down once more, then dropped her face into her palms. She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. She had outmaneuvered the Tribunal and Comité seventy-six times. Yet she was being thwarted by bread.

Seventy-six people in France had escaped inevitable death because of her. Two people here in England were beginning to slip free of the crushing weight of loss, and she was helping with that. She would not surrender to the comparatively insignificant complications of baking.

A knock sounded at the front door, startling her. In the time she’d been at the lighthouse, there had never once been a visitor.

She slipped her book and paper with its two unhelpful sentences, along with the pencil, into the drawer of the desk. A quick smoothing of her skirt and shirt, a few pats to her hair. She knew she still looked unkempt; she’d had only her fingers to comb her hair since her arrival on these shores.

She paused at the door for the length of a breath, not out of fear but in order to strategize. She needed to hide her origins without being suspicious. Language difficulties and a show of timidity was likely her best approach.

Mrs. Willis, Mrs. Goddard, and Mrs. Dixon stood on the other side of the door.

“ Bonjour .” Lili dipped a small curtsy.

“Us’ve come to see how the lighthouse weathered last night’s storm.” Mrs. Goddard raised a basket, the same one she’d offered before. Would there be another suspiciously coincidental book in it?

Lili hadn’t forgotten that she was meant to struggle with English. “ Euh ...” She pulled her brows low, as if thinking hard. “The night storm was ... euh ...” She shook her head. “The men are cleaning from the storm.”

“Oh, good.” Mrs. Willis smiled broadly. “That will let we women gab.”

“ Gab is ‘talk,’ oui ?”

All three women nodded eagerly. J’en ai marre . There was likely no way to avoid this, especially as she wasn’t meant to be able to speak much.

“ S’il vous pla?t .” She motioned the women inside.

“Are you living here, in Mr. Armitage’s portion of the residence?” The diminutive Mrs. Dixon clearly found that possibility both interesting and scandalous. The other two women pulled in sharp breaths, with Mrs. Willis pressing a hand to her throat.

Zut. Being labeled a strumpet was not a good alternative to being declared a madwoman. “ Monsieur Armitage is with his grandfather.”

Mrs. Goddard looked at her with understanding as she sat in the parlor. “Them are together cleaning from the storm?”

“ Monsieur Armitage, while I en visite , is with his grand-père .”

The women exchanged a series of silent looks, an entire conversation without a single word.

Mrs. Willis met Lili’s eye. “Where does the new lighthouse keeper live?”

Lili kept her expression one of confusion.

“Mr. McGuile,” Mrs. Willis said slowly and loudly, quite as if Lili were a bit hard of hearing rather than a French speaker.

“ Monsieur McGuile habite en ... ” Lili couldn’t remember the English word she was searching for. That was both convenient and a bit ridiculous. “He is in the middle.”

“The barracks,” Mrs. Goddard said with a nod of realization.

“ Oui. The barracks.”

The women actually looked relieved, which she hadn’t expected. They seemed to have come expecting to discover the worst in her—hoping to, in fact. It seemed she had misjudged them.

“Is this the first you’ve spent time with Armitage in person?” Mrs. Goddard asked, leaning toward her.

Lili nodded.

Mrs. Willis leaned nearly as far forward. The women would land themselves on the floor if they weren’t careful. “And what do you think of he?”

“Armitage est ... wonderful. And he is very kind.”

They nodded their eager agreement. Speaking well of Armitage was not only easy to do, but it was also turning away suspicion.

“He does not remember much French, but he is trying very hard.” He really was wonderful. “And when he smiles, his eyes dansent. ”

“Does Armitage smile often?” Mrs. Dixon asked.

Did they think Armitage had been rendered so wholly unhappy with her there?

“Quite often. He is a very happy person.”

More exchanged looks she couldn’t make sense of.

“And Monsieur Pierce is very caring and attentive. I did not know mon grand-père , but he is beginning to feel like a grandfather to me.”

“Selwyn is caring and attentive?” Mrs. Goddard didn’t seem to believe her. The other two ladies didn’t appear to either.

Lili nodded. “ Je l’aime beaucoup . And I know I would have liked his wife. All he tells me of her, c’est charmant ... lovely.”

Mrs. Goddard’s eyes widened further. “Him speaks to you of Peony?”

“He ... euh ... he whistled the songs his wife liked to sing.” Speaking slowly and pretending to struggle recalling English words was a ruse she wished she didn’t have to continue with. “I am learning the tunes, which je m’apprécie beaucoup —I am enjoying very much.”

“Merciful heavens,” Mrs. Dixon whispered. “What miracle are you doing here?”

“ Je suis très far from home,” Lili said, “but Mr. Pierce has helped me feel like I am not très far from ma famille . He is allowing me to share his.”

Mrs. Willis pressed a hand to her heart. “Oh, Miss Lili, you have to stay on Loftstone. Please promise you will.”

“ Euh ...” She was too surprised to manage a response of any kind.

“You like Loftstone, do you not?” Mrs. Goddard didn’t seem to be blinking.

“The island est très belle. La Manche a beaucoup de humeurs, et toutes sont magnifiques. ”

Mrs. Dixon smiled broadly at her friends. “ Très belle means ‘very beautiful.’”

“ Oui ,” Lili said, legitimately pleased.

“But you like being at the lighthouse?” Mrs. Goddard wasn’t distracted from her questioning. “With Armitage and Selwyn?”

“I like being with them très beaucoup .”

Mrs. Goddard bounced a little on her chair. “Armitage seemed so much more his old self when him was with you in the village. Since losing his parents, his spirits have often been heavy. Us has worried about him.”

“We sat on the low wall yesterday and watched la Manche,” Lili said. “I hope we will do so again. C’était agréable .”

“Please stay,” Mrs. Willis pleaded. “Please.”

How tempting it was to imagine herself doing precisely that. Could she? Could she simply stay?

“Good morning, ladies,” Armitage said from behind her.

She spun about. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, eyeing the gathering with hesitant amusement.

“Armitage,” she greeted. “ C’est merveilleux , they have come to visit me. How wonderful for them to visit me.”

A little sadness tiptoed into his expression. “Have you been lonely, Lili?”

She hadn’t meant to make him feel guilty or sorry for her. “I would not keep you or ton grandpère from your work. But the house is, euh ... très quiet all day.” Oh. If he let slip that he did, in fact, still live in this section of the lighthouse keeper’s residence, they’d be in difficulty. “Have you a moment?”

“Is something the matter?”

“ Non. I have a question dans la cuisine .” She motioned to the kitchen behind him. “ S’il te pla?t .”

Armitage stepped back inside, and she hurried to join him there.

Not wasting a moment, she dropped her voice to a tiny whisper. “They were scandalized, thinking we were sharing a house together while I am here.”

Understanding pulled his mouth into a small O .

“I told them you are staying with your grand-père .”

“Quick thinking.” He nodded in approval.

“I did not wish to make trouble for you. I could not avoid the lie.”

He slipped his hand around hers. Her heart absolutely melted. It had not done that in years and years.

“I heard they ask if you’d stay on Loftstone,” he said. “Seems to me you’ve won they over.”

She shook her head. “They didn’t ask out of love for me but out of worry for you.”

“For me?”

“They think you have been happier with me here.” She watched closely for his reaction, holding her breath.

He smiled softly and tenderly. “I have been, Lili.”

It was the best answer he could have given her. The joy of it overflowed.

“Your eyes are smiling,” he said.

“My heart is smiling, too, and that is a very new experience for me.”