Page 19 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

G éraud.

Lili’s heart seized with a painful sort of hope, an amazement too intertwined with anguish to be anything but agonizing. He was dead. She’d spent her time at Loftstone wrapping her mind and heart around the reality that everyone she had known in France, including him, was dead. He’d become someone she hardly knew, little more than a whisper of the brother she’d loved, but her heart had still ached for the person he could have been. The grief hadn’t fully engulfed her; she’d not had the luxury of allowing that. But she had begun to accept it.

And there he stood.

She struggled to breathe through the surge of emotion. Géraud. Her brother. Here in this place and time.

“I didn’t see you in the water when I broke the surface.” He spoke in French, though he could speak English. “I thought you ... I thought you had drowned.”

He had been swept into the sea as well, it seemed. The same storm that had tossed her onto the Tides of Time had taken Géraud on the same journey. Almost. Why had he only just arrived in this time?

Still speaking in French, he asked, “Have you nothing to say to me, Elisabeth?” He took a step toward her.

She inched backward, bumping into Armitage behind her. Armitage set an arm around her to steady her. Lili hadn’t looked away from Géraud; she didn’t think she could have.

“Him is somewho you know?” Armitage whispered.

Lili nodded. “ Il est Géraud .”

Again, Géraud moved closer. Lili couldn’t retreat farther. Part of her didn’t want to. Being on Loftstone Island in 1873 had allowed her to think of her brother as he’d once been. That Géraud had been tugging at her heart.

To Armitage, Géraud said, “ Je suis Géraud Gagnon, agent du Tribunal révolutionnaire. ”

“ Bonjour, Monsieur Gagnon, ” Armitage said. Then in another whisper to Lili, he said, “I didn’t understand what him said beyond his name.”

How could she explain without revealing what she’d been working so hard to keep hidden? Her Armitage, her kind and thoughtful and wonderful Armitage would think she was mad. She didn’t think he would mistreat her if he thought that, neither did she worry she would be in any danger from him because of it. She simply couldn’t bear the thought of him thinking poorly of her.

“How do you two know each other?” Armitage asked.

Lili looked back at Armitage. “He is—” Describing the connection between herself and Géraud was shockingly complicated. He was my best friend when we were children. Or He followed me to Honfleur in order to drag me back to my death. Or He is the only family I have left. Or I love him, but I cannot ever approve of what he allowed himself to become. Or My heart is singing that he is here and alive, but my mind is pleading with me to run. “ —my brother.”

Armitage blinked rapidly. “Your—” His gaze darted from her to Géraud and back. “You said your brother was dead.”

“I thought he was.”

In French, Géraud asked, “Why did you believe I was dead?”

She looked at him again, switching back to their native language. “For reasons you do not yet understand.”

There was confusion in his expression but not the anger she had grown so used to seeing there. She didn’t know what to make of that.

Géraud looked at Armitage. “ S’il vous pla?t, monsieur, j’ai très faim .”

Leaning closer to Lili, Armitage said, “Him said him is very ... something.”

“Hungry,” she translated.

“Of course.” Armitage walked swiftly toward Géraud, motioning him back into the kitchen.

Lili remained rooted to the spot. Please do not abandon me, Armitage. But the two of them continued through the doorway without her.

Géraud was here. Alive. Unaware of what had happened. Pulled by the same storm but to a slightly different time. The folktale book had said nothing about this being possible. Mr. Pierce had said nothing.

What was she to do? He had to be made to understand the situation; otherwise, he would give himself away and her with him. He might already be doing so. Mr. Pierce might offer Géraud the same support he’d offered her, not knowing Géraud couldn’t be trusted. She could not let Mr. Pierce be hurt because of her brother.

Lili allowed herself only one breath more to feel overwhelmed and emotional. One breath. Then she squared her shoulders and moved with purposeful step into the kitchen.

Géraud sat at the worktable. Armitage stood nearby, motioning to the pan containing the remains of supper.

“ C’est ... poacher’s pie.” Armitage looked up at her with a grimace. “My French is horribly lacking.”

“He speaks English.” She dipped her head in her brother’s direction.

“Him hasn’t thus far.”

Géraud shook his head. “ L’anglais est la langue des déplorables .”

“I told them of that sentiment.” For a moment, she wasn’t certain which language she had answered in. She suspected she had returned to French, so she continued on in her first tongue. “They were rightly offended.”

“You will not be in England long.” Géraud kept to French. “You would do well to get out of the habit of abandoning French.”

How little he understood. “I do not intend to leave, Géraud. You might yet make the same decision once you understand where you truly are.”

His eyes grew hard once more. “The Tribunal is waiting for me, and for you.”

A heavy sadness washed over her. “No, they aren’t.”

Géraud allowed only the briefest moment of surprise at that before encasing himself in confidence once more. “Do not underestimate them, Elisabeth. There is nowhere they cannot reach you.”

In 1793, that had likely been true. But even the mighty power of the Tribunal and the Comité could not snatch her up in 1873. Whatever version of them existed now believed her long dead. Though he didn’t yet know it, they believed the same about Géraud as well.

Armitage spooned the rest of the poacher’s pie onto Géraud’s plate. “If you’re still hungry after thissen, us’ll find more for you.”

“ Merci, monsieur .”

Armitage tossed a grin to Lili as he repeated the phrase she had retaught him only recently. “ Avec plaisir. ”

She wished she could take part in his enjoyment of that moment, but her mind was too heavy. Armitage seemed to notice; he motioned her into the lighthouse tower.

She could guess at the questions he would be asking, but she didn’t yet have any answers.

He closed the door behind them. “Him truly is your brother?”

Lili dropped onto the low steps of the spiraling stairs. “He is. Géraud Gagnon, mon frére a?né .”

“I don’t know that last word.”

“Older. He is my older brother.” She propped her elbows on her legs and rubbed at her temples with her upturned hands.

“You have different surnames,” he said.

“It is a complicated story, Armitage.”

He sat beside her. “Seems to me it’s a complicated relationship. Hearing you talk of your brother, I’d’ve thought if you miraculously saw he again, you’d hug he and cry and be ... happy. But you don’t seem to be.”

“I am not unhappy.” That wasn’t exactly the right way to explain. “I am shocked that he is not dead, but I am also glad he isn’t—though not entirely glad. I am surprised and confused and ... I do not know what else.”

“This is your brother, Lili. The brother you chased the sun with. The brother you struggled to speak of when you had to tell Mikhail that him was dead. I’ve seen the grief in your eyes every time you’ve mentioned he.”

“All of that is true.”

“And seeing he now, you can only say that you’re shocked, glad but not entirely, surprised, and confused?”

She nodded. “That is also all true.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Lili?”

She pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. “It is too complicated.”

“You needn’t make a perfect explanation or an elegant one. Tell me what you’re holding back. Us can sort through it.”

She looked up enough to meet his eyes again. “I can’t.”

His posture grew a little stiff. “You can’t tell the story, or you can’t tell me ?”

“It is—”

“Complicated,” he finished for her on a note of frustration. His eyes shifted to the doorway. “Are there a lot of complicated things you’ve not been telling me?”

“The France I fled did not lend itself to trusting people.”

“And I haven’t proven myself an exception to that.” The quiet response was not a question. “Will it be a difficulty for you having your brother at the lighthouse?”

“He means to stay?”

Armitage rose. “Géraud is in as difficult a spot as you were when the sea brought you here. It’d be unfair to toss he out when us didn’t do that to you.”

“I’d not ask you to be unfair.”

He looked back at her. There was something pleading in his gaze. “Unless you can tell me something that changes the situation ...” He left that unfinished, clearly inviting her to take up the topic.

But “the situation” was something different than he thought it was. She couldn’t tell him that. He wouldn’t believe her even if she did.

“Oh, Lili.” He sighed. “I suspected early on that you were hiding things and lying to me.” He shook his head. “I really didn’t want to be right about that.” He walked back through the door to the kitchen, not quite closing it behind him. She wanted to stay there, to let herself be sad for a time, be frustrated at fate for continually ripping away from her every chance at happiness.

She’d rescued seventy-six people from certain death. She’d given them a path away from the threats of their present to a future where they would be safe. She’d begun helping Armitage and his grandfather to heal from their pasts. Yet her past continually punished her.

There would be no escape, no rescue.

The door muffled the voices in the kitchen, so she didn’t know what Armitage and Géraud might be saying. Until she could talk to her brother, try to help him see the danger they were in and all that had been changed for him by the Tides of Time, she couldn’t risk not being present while he spoke to either Armitage or Mikhail.

During the glorious weeks she’d passed here, she’d let herself be part of this home. She’d indulged in visions of a life and future without the echoes of violence and danger she’d somehow escaped. She’d lost that dream now.

Perhaps she’d never actually had any claim on it to begin with.