Page 21 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

T he joyful easiness of life at the lighthouse had disappeared almost entirely in the week since Géraud’s arrival. Lili kept very much to herself. Her brother made no attempt to hide his displeasure at being among them. There was so much not being said, and Armitage didn’t know how to cut through it all.

Lili had eagerly accepted Mikhail’s offers to make the walk to the village for her the past week when the supplies had grown a little thin. She’d seemed to enjoy the journey the times before but didn’t want to go anymore. Yet she also didn’t seem overly pleased to be at the lighthouse.

Armitage couldn’t make sense of any of it. He was confused and frustrated, and though it seemed an odd reaction to the distance between him and a woman he’d known mere weeks, he was lonely.

Armitage awoke with a throbbing head and a knotted neck, a sure sign that he hadn’t slept well. He dressed in the dark, too tired to bother lighting a candle. His mind had spun all night, as it so often did, with thoughts of Lili. He had so many questions and so few answers.

As he stepped into the parlor, he was met by the smell of fresh coffee. Grandfather usually had his coffee in his quarters on the other side of the lighthouse, and Mikhail had thus far done the same. Had Lili managed the stove without his help?

Cautiously, he crossed to the galley door. Lili. His Lili. Please, don’t push me away again.

“Did you get the stove lit?”

She spun around. “Armitage!”

The sound of his name in her voice ... He would never grow weary of hearing that.

“I have finally vaincu les matches.” Lili bent in the most elegant curtsy Armitage had ever seen.

“I don’t know what ‘ vaincu ’ means, but I hope you have claimed victory.”

“Vanquished.” She tipped her chin upward. “It means I have vanquished the matches. And”—she took up a kitchen towel and used it to grab the coffee pot off the stove—“I finally have your coffee hot and waiting for you when you reach the kitchen.”

She filled a cup with the hot, dark liquid, then added three drops of milk, exactly the way he always took his coffee. With a look of indisputable pride, she handed it to him.

“ Merci, Lili. ” He breathed into the cup, letting the steam loft upward and warm his face.

“You are smiling at me again.” She looked uncomfortable, maybe even a little embarrassed. “I have watched for you to do so these past days, but I never see it.”

“I didn’t realize I was doing that.”

She returned the coffee pot to the stove. “You are angry with me.” She stated it so matter-of-factly.

“I’m not though. I’m worried.”

She stood very still, her back to him.

“Something is wrong between you and your brother, but I can’t sort out what. And you won’t tell me if him being here will make you miserable or if him is likely to mistreat you.”

“I am not in danger,” she said.

“That isn’t what I was asking.”

Lili didn’t move in the least. “ Je ne sais pas —I don’t know what else to say.”

“Is it that you don’t think I am clever enough to understand the situation or that you don’t trust me enough to tell me what the situation is?” He waited, watching her, silently pleading with her to trust him even a little. With each breath, his heart dropped further, until he couldn’t bear it any longer. “Thank you for the coffee.” Could she hear the disappointment in his voice? He was trying to keep it tucked away. “Congratulations on vanquishing the matches.”

He took a sip of coffee as he made his way to the lighthouse tower. He would be in the lamp room to take over watch from Grandfather before he had to be, but there seemed little point in remaining in the galley.

He’d not yet stepped across the threshold to the tower when her voice, quiet but firm, reached him. “In my France, secrets keep people safe.”

Armitage stopped, listening without turning back.

“If I were to tell people, even people I trust, any of the secrets I have kept, I would not be the only one in mortal peril as a result.”

Afraid this moment of candor would end abruptly if he drew undue attention to it, he slowly turned toward her.

“The couple whose tailor shop I have sometimes worked in are the most trustworthy people I have ever met.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke. “They are, in so many ways, like family to me. They know more of the secrets I hold than anyone else, yet even they do not know everything. They can’t know everything. C’est trop dangereux .”

“In what way is it so dangerous?” he asked gently.

Her eyes slowly raised to meet his. “Horrible ways. Violence. Death.” She stood resolute even as unmistakable pain rolled off her. “No one is safe. I have seen people killed, Armitage. I have seen people dragged to what I know were their deaths. Every face is either angry or terrified. There is nothing but fear and suffering.”

Good heavens.

“The only people who are not terrified are the ones who are cheering.”

“Cheering for violence and death?” He could hardly imagine such a thing.

A breath shuddered from her. “And those who cheer hide themselves amongst those who fear. They could be anywhere or be anyone. The wrong word, the wrong whisper—” She shook her head. “I had secrets, Armitage, that were the precise variety of ‘wrong.’ Keeping those secrets saved people and, for a time, saved me.” Her eyes dropped once more. “Until it wasn’t enough. They were coming for me, so I had to leave.”

He stepped closer to her again. “Is that why your brother left as well?”

That question, as innocuous as he thought it was, made her visibly uncomfortable. It wasn’t the fear or pain of her recounting. What was it about Géraud that unnerved her so much?

“I was not avoiding your question when I told you I do not think I am in danger,” she said. “I do not know what to expect from Géraud, not entirely. But I am safer here than I could possibly be in my France. And while I sort out what -my brother might do, I am leaning on that comparative safety.”

Grandfather was on first watch that night. Mikhail and Géraud chose to remain on Armitage’s side of the keepers’ residence after supper. On Lili’s side, really. She was, he knew with certainty, the draw for both of them. Mikhail considered Lili a friend. Armitage didn’t yet know Géraud’s motivation.

“Miss Lili told a story of when you two were little,” Mikhail said to Géraud. “Will you tell us one too?”

The Frenchman sent his sister a suspicious look. He said something in French, too swiftly for Armitage to sort any of it out.

Lili responded in English. “I told them about the days we spent chasing the sun.”

Géraud actually softened a little. Another bit of French followed.

“It was a long time ago,” Lili answered. “There is likely a lot we have not thought about in years.”

“Will you tell us a story?” Mikhail requested of Géraud again.

The man appeared to be considering the possibility.

Lili sat on the sofa next to Armitage. Her hands, threaded together, rested tensely on her lap.

“Lili ...” Géraud began hesitantly, “broke her arm when she was eight years old.”

Her eyes darted to Armitage. Silently, she mouthed, “English.” He was as astounded as she looked.

“We worked in a fine home.” Géraud’s accent was much heavier than Lili’s. “The family had permitted us to learn English and learn to read and write French. We had every reason to believe we were valued by them. But she was—” His brow dipped low. He looked to his sister. “ Je ne sais pas comment le dire en anglais. ”

“I was . . . euh . . . dismissed,” she finally decided on.

He nodded. “ Oui. Dismissed. I think she was more saddened by their coldness than by the breaking of her bone.”

“I was,” Lili said softly.

Armitage reached over and took hold of one of her hands.

Géraud continued his story. “I asked the ... le cuisinier —”

To Mikhail, Lili said, “The cook.” She had rightly guessed that Armitage was able to translate the French term.

“I asked the cook if I could bring Lili something délicieuse to bring her happiness when her heart was aching.” Géraud looked at her. “Do you remember what it was?”

“Of course. Une tartelette amandine. ”

“ Ton favorite. And you shared it with me.”

“That was the last time I ate one.”

In a voice even quieter than Lili’s, Géraud said, “For me as well.”

Silence heavy with memories and regret hung over the room. Neither sibling looked at the other. There’d been discomfort between them, even distrust, but in that moment, their sadness was the most palpable.

Géraud abruptly stood from the chair he’d been sitting in. “That is enough stories and more than enough English.” He looked quite a lot like his sister with his chin tilted at that precise angle. “ Bonne nuit, tout le monde .” Then he all but stormed from the room.

Lili made a visible effort to steady the quivering of her chin. Redness rimmed her eyes. “He loved me once,” she whispered.

Before Armitage could think of anything to say, she, too, rose and rushed from the room, no doubt aiming for her bedroom.

“There’s a lot of pain in that family,” Mikhail said.

Armitage stood. “I mean to go make certain her isn’t too torn down by the night’s discussion.”

“A good idea.”

He loved me once. That heartbreaking declaration haunted Armitage as he climbed the stairs. So much sorrow mingled with the remembered fear he so often saw in her eyes. He wished he knew how to help alleviate even a tiny bit of that.

Her bedroom door was open. She stood a few steps inside, her back to him. Her posture was ramrod straight, but her head hung. The contradiction was fitting. She was strong and full of fire; she also had a tender and bruised heart.

“I am starting to realize why it is you didn’t want to talk to me about any of this at first.” He hovered in the doorway, not wishing to impose on her privacy but wanting to offer what comfort he could. “I was frustrated that you’d only say that things were complicated, but I don’t know that you could’ve described things any more accurately than that.”

She turned to look at him. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “I have not cried in more than a year.” She pointed at her face. “I hate that I’m doing so now.”

Armitage took the two remaining steps to reach her. Without even needing to invite her to do so, she leaned against him, perfectly placed for him to once again put his arms around her.

“I told myself that I would never again let Géraud’s animosity hurt me. I wasn’t prepared to see him remember that he used to care.”

“What changed?”

“France changed. It needed to. It had to. But that change didn’t have to be blood in the streets. It didn’t need to be murder upon murder.”

Armitage held her tightly, a bit unnerved at the raw emotion flowing from her. She had been so fiercely in control of every feeling and every word. “Why do the authorities not stop the killing?” he asked.

“The authorities are the ones doing the killing. Death comes at the decree of the Tribunal and Comité . There is no refuge and no protection to seek. Carnage is the law.”

What she described was anarchy and mayhem. She had said she’d seen people killed. She was recounting a France steeped in blood. Such a thing could not be happening in Paris without the world knowing. Armitage kept informed enough that he would have heard of such a thing. Yet her sincerity was palpable. She had lived this, and she had fled this.

“Géraud didn’t have to be part of it,” she said. “He didn’t have to choose barbarity.”

“Your brother is one of those who is ‘cheering’ for the violence and murders?”

“He is part of the Tribunal . ”

She had said this Tribunal was the decreer of these deaths, backed by the power of the law. “Why would him be part of that?”

“Our family had as much reason as anyone in the Tiers état to resent les Nobles . It was le Deuxième état that cost us our parents. They are dead because of what France once was.”

His brain stumbled over the vaguely familiar terms.

“Hundreds upon hundreds are dead these past months because of what France is becoming. The demand for blood is growing, and I do not doubt that hundreds will soon be dying every single day without quenching that thirst. It is beginning to feel that France will run out of people before it runs out of anger.”

Hundreds every day? And she wasn’t speaking of this as happening in “her corner” of France but rather throughout the country.

“Mother and Father would despise what he is doing in their names, in their memory. Bringing death because they are dead, hating because they were hated isn’t who they taught us to be.” She took a shaking breath. “I could not quietly allow him to twist our parents’ legacy into one of brutality, and he hates me for that.”

Armitage didn’t let go. He kept her in his arms, though she didn’t keep speaking. And in the silence, his mind spun. Because he had at last recognized the French terms she’d so naturally used in recounting her life, her experiences, her France.

Tiers état . Les Nobles . Le Deuxième état.

She was speaking of the Revolution.

A revolution that had been over for seventy-four years.