Page 2 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

L ili didn’t panic; she never did.

She pulled her eyes away from the departing ship and studied her surroundings. Remaining in the open was the worst thing she could do. She needed a place to hide while she sorted out what her next move was.

She slipped back into the crowd, moving slowly among them, doing her utmost to look as though she belonged with each group she hovered near. She passed a woman loudly chastising a child for some infraction. The woman’s thick-knit shawl hung limp over the basket she carried, having slipped from her shoulders.

Lili carefully but swiftly plucked the shawl and, stepping away, pulled it over her head and around her own shoulders. It was long and dark and hid her hair and her dress. She would be less-obviously herself now, even to Géraud’s expert gaze.

A gaggle of women, chattering among themselves, moved as an ebbing-and-flowing whole toward the port. It was something of an obvious area for Lili to be, the very reason Le Voyageur had met the Desjardinses on the Narrows. But sudden shifts in circumstance required quick changes in strategy.

She slipped into the group of women and walked among them, but she didn’t look at them. That would allow them to assume she just happened to be nearby, not that she was someone they ought to know.

The port at Honfleur was rectangular, not nature-made, but it was efficient. The rainbow of tall, terraced houses followed the lines of the harbor. There was no gap. No place to hide herself. She likely had mere minutes before Géraud spied her.

He had been instrumental in turning dozens of people over to the Tribunal and had testified in countless trials that had resulted in executions. He often hovered around the squares where Madame Guillotine plied her efficient and deadly trade, keeping a score of all whom he’d sent there, buoyed by so public a display of the Tribunal’s power.

Their family had always been poor, which, in pre-Revolution France, had made them entirely expendable. Their parents had toiled in the home of a wealthy and influential family, as so many others of their station had. That same family had killed her parents, directly and without remorse. Their only response had been to denounce the inconvenience of replacing servants.

The shattering pain of that loss had led Lili to swear that she would do all she could to prevent others from dying at the hands of those who considered them subhuman. Géraud, however, had emerged from the cloud of grief determined to elevate their class to a place where they would never again be viewed as discardable.

She’d lost her brother to the promise of power that Robespierre had dangled in front of the mistreated. France had needed to change. Those such as her family, who had never had a voice in the course of the nation, who had been so often discarded with impunity, were promised that they could gain power and prosperity if they silenced any voices opposed to Robespierre’s tactics. Every arrest, every execution quieted criticism of their strategy and brought them ever closer to toppling the social order that had allowed their class to be horrifically mistreated for so long. They would not stop until they were imbued with authority that could not be questioned and lives that could not be taken away on a whim.

It was power soaked in blood, and Géraud had seen in the potent promises of the terror-driven Tribunal a chance to avenge their parents’ deaths and prove to France and to the annals of history that Théodore and Hermine Gagnon had mattered. Even the beheading that awaited his sister should he drag her back to Paris was an acceptable penalty if it furthered the aims of the Tribunal and his end goal.

Activity aboard a fishing boat still tied to the dock caught her attention. They didn’t appear to be unloading. Could it be that this ship intended to set sail soon? Dared she risk asking for passage? One never knew who was in the pocket of the Tribunal and who was willing to take chances.

A woman emerged from the deck below. She crossed to a crate and put something inside. Women weren’t necessarily less likely to be loyal to Robespierre and his associates, but she was far less likely to consider the presence of a woman on board a ship to be bad luck.

Lili stepped up to the edge of the dock. “Pardon me.”

The woman looked at her but not, to Lili’s relief, with suspicion or annoyance.

“I’m in urgent need of leaving Honfleur,” Lili said. “Do you happen to have a corner where I might put myself? I’ll not be a bother, I swear to it.”

“I don’t know.” The woman didn’t look set against the idea. At last, a bit of luck.

“I’ve a few coins,” Lili said. “I’ll give them all to you. Please.”

With a quick twitch of her hand, the woman motioned her on board. “Be fast about it though. We’re to leave port in only a few minutes. Need to catch the tide out.”

“Thank you.” Lili glanced over her shoulder but saw no signs of Géraud.

“The coins you promised?”

Turning back, she saw the woman’s hand outstretched.

Lili pulled from the pocket tucked under her skirt two quart d’écu, all the money she had left in her possession. She followed the fisherwoman down a ladder to the lower deck. A man who was likely the woman’s husband stepped from a room, then eyed Lili with suspicion.

“Stowaway?” he asked in gruff tones.

The woman shook her head. “Paid for passage.”

A grunt was all the response she received.

“You can stay in here until we hit open water,” the woman said. “That’ll keep you out of the way while we navigate out to la Manche.”

Lili nodded her understanding. The room she’d been shown to was a small and dark bedroom. Not a single bit of space was wasted.

She laid her ill-gotten shawl on the bed, then sat there as well, tucking herself against the wall. Letting out a sigh that was too tense to be one of true relief, she wrapped her arms around her middle.

Géraud would, she did not doubt, manage to keep hidden from the Tribunal that he had unwittingly been her source of information in planning and carrying out her now seventy-six rescues. But he would be hard-pressed to explain to their satisfaction his failure to capture her.

She hadn’t wanted him to be in danger. She still didn’t.

But the lives he had ruined—had indirectly ended —couldn’t be ignored. She knew the pain of losing family to another’s insatiable hunger for power. She could not simply sit back while her own brother unleashed that pain on innocent people. She’d had to do something.

And that something had led them here.

She was fleeing death at the hands of the Tribunal révolutionnaire. Géraud was pursuing vindication in what that Tribunal had labeled his failures, which she had caused, and there was no overlap or common ground. She had irrevocably lost her brother, and there was not time yet to grieve that.

Footsteps and voices sounded above her head as the boat was prepared for departure. She didn’t even know to where they were bound. What if they were sailing up the Seine and back to Paris?

No, the fisherwoman had said they were navigating out into la Manche, what the English called “the Channel.” Even if she were to be dropped in another coastal town, perhaps a fishing village, Géraud wouldn’t know where she’d gone. She could find some work and earn enough for passage to England.

She had secured safety for so many. Fate owed her refuge as well, but she wouldn’t merely sit back and hope fate smiled kindly on her. All she had learned in saving seventy-two people, now seventy- six , she had put to use saving herself.

The boat began bobbing and swaying. Lili breathed a little easier at the feel of it moving in the water. La Manche meant escape.

Lili closed her eyes. She thought of Paris, of the people she’d known. She thought of its streets, wide and narrow, its buildings, both fine and humble. She thought of the Seine. She thought of the parents she’d lost before violence had descended on France and of the brother who’d been eaten alive by it.

France was lost, and she needed to let it go.

Long hours passed. They’d been sailing long enough that the boat would now be very close to England. Were she abovedeck, she most certainly would have been able to see the English shore, and the sight would likely prove heartbreakingly forlorn. She wasn’t entirely ready to face it.

The movement of the boat had changed. It felt a bit rougher, a bit wilder. She had heard that the water could be tempestuous on la Manche. The changed feel of the journey was owed, no doubt, to that. Rough waters, previously figurative and now literal, had been her constant companion these past months.

Oh, Géraud. It didn’t have to be this way.

They were both very alone now. In a time of unending tragedy, that was almost more tragic than anything else. They had lost their parents, their nation, a life of some peace, and they hadn’t even each other to help them through.

The bobbing of the boat turned to harsher rolling, pulled upward and plunged downward in drastic undulations. While belowdecks was, no doubt, safer, her stomach was rolling nearly as markedly as the boat itself. A bit of fresh air would do her good.

Lili stepped from the pokey room, traversed the narrow passage to the ladder, and climbed upward. She pushed back the door above her head. Cold air reached downward, swirling around her, a relief from the stifling air she’d been sitting in.

Heavy, black clouds pressed down on them from above. Wind blew the waves in pointed, angry peaks, spraying her with water the moment she emerged. Around her, a rush of movement among the boat’s crew saw items tied down and the sails adjusted.

Water lapped over the sides as the boat dipped into a valley of water. She would be safer below.

She turned back, but the hatch was closed.

Géraud stood atop it.

A flash of lightning lit his face. “Did you think I wouldn’t watch the boats in the port?” The wind snatched at his voice, but she could still hear him. “I know you too well, Elisabeth Gagnon.”

“ Lili Minet . I will not share a name with you. Not any longer.” She glanced at the fisherwoman, hard at work keeping the boat atop the waves.

“They won’t help you.” Géraud shifted his weight against the movement of the boat. “I have agreed not to bring them to the Tribunal for aiding a fugitive, but they know I could change my mind.”

Lili stumbled backward as the boat climbed a growing wave. She hooked her arms around a mast, holding on for her life.

Géraud was more surefooted in that moment. His eyes didn’t leave her.

“I am not returning to Paris,” she said firmly against the relentless wind.

“You are.” No emotion or regret rested anywhere on his countenance. “And you will face the consequences of disobeying the Comité and undermining the Tribunal.”

The boat crested the wave it rode and came careening down the other side. Lili held tightly to the mast. Géraud lost his footing and had to snatch hold of a fishing net hanging low above the deck.

Water pelted Lili’s face as the boat climbed once more. A wave crashed against the side of the craft. Lili lost her grip. She flew backward, slamming hard against the gunwale. Water poured over her.

Géraud crawled on the deck toward her. A flash of lightning lit him ominously. Another flash quickly followed the first.

Lili tried to pull herself to her feet, but the fierceness of the storm made it impossible.

Another wave crashed over the boat from the other side. A torrent of water washed over the deck, sweeping her off the boat entirely.

Water everywhere. Above. Below. All around.

She was in the waves.

Her head bobbed above the water for one fleeting moment. She gulped air as she searched for something, anything she could grab hold of.

Overhead, a bolt of pure green lightning split the dark sky.

She was pulled below the water once more.

She fought her way toward the surface. She wouldn’t have strength enough to keep doing so for long.

Her head bobbed out of the water and into bright sunlight. The water was active but not raging. The sky was cloudy but not angry. The intense wind had died down to mere cold gusts. The torrent had become a drizzle.

Lili kicked her feet and pulled her arms in the way she’d been taught as a child. Her strength was waning, but la Manche was not fighting her as it had been.

No storm. No dark of night.

No boat.

Her head dipped below for a moment. She fought upward again.

Below. Above.

Below. Barely above.

A voice broke through her frantic fight to stay alive. The words made no sense. Nothing did in that moment.

A rowboat swayed on the water’s surface. Within earshot. Within reach.

A man leaned over and held a hand out to her. He spoke again, more nonsense. But his meaning was clear.

Friend or foe, she didn’t yet know. But the water would pull her down permanently the next time.

Lili reached up and took tight hold of the man’s hand.