Page 27 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

Q uiet words spoken in French woke Armitage again. Lili was having another nightmare. He didn’t even need to open his eyes. He simply moved his hand about until he found hers. He’d done precisely that many times throughout the night while she’d slept in his bed and he’d fitfully slept in a hardbacked chair beside it.

Lili had been exhausted, nearly to the point of delirium, by the time he’d finished pulling bits of glass and wood from her arm. She’d needed to sleep. There was no bed in the room where he stored his late parents’ things. Her room was still a shambles, though Grandfather had covered the broken window to keep out the rain. So, Armitage’s bed had been her best option.

Armitage heard the door open. He opened one eye. No candles or lanterns were lit, yet he could see the room. That meant morning had arrived.

Géraud stepped inside. He was near about the last person Armitage wanted to see.

“If you’ve come to cause she grief,” Armitage said, “best turn around and go. I’ll not permit it.”

“You have decided to be her champion?” Géraud sneered.

“You have remembered that you speak English?” Armitage didn’t bother doing anything more than open his eyes. He didn’t rise, didn’t straighten his posture. Far better that the man realize how little notice he actually warranted.

“She is a criminal. A fugitive from the law.” Géraud could not have looked more proudly self-satisfied. “I doubt she has told you that.”

Armitage knew something the heartless man didn’t realize he knew. “The laws you know have held no sway for years.”

Géraud’s expression blanked for the length of a single breath. He appeared to be attempting a look of haughty disdain, but there was too much uncertainty underlying it. “ Que voulez-vous dire, monsieur ?”

Armitage leaned his head back, rendering his posture casual to the point of seeming to not care in the least. “If I were to hazard a guess, Géraud Gagnon, you chose to align yourself with fellas like Monsieur Robespierre.”

He could see he’d guessed correctly.

“‘Terror is the order of the day,’” Armitage quoted the leaders of that blood-drenched era in French history. “Your crowd, those, am I right?”

Géraud’s defiance was beginning to tiptoe toward anger.

“Lili, I’ve gathered, didn’t embrace that ‘order of the day.’ To you, your sister is a criminal, a traitor. But do you know how it all ended?”

“How what all ended?” Géraud asked.

“The Revolution? The Tribunal? The terror?”

The man’s mouth pulled in lines of wrath. “In freedom and a new dawn for France.”

Armitage shook his head. “Madame Guillotine devoured it all. Thousands, Géraud. Tens of thousands of Frenchmen, none of whom, history would prove, ought ever to have had their final dance with she. Well”—Armitage held up a hand—“most people agree Robespierre did deserve his meeting with the executioner.”

“He is building a new France,” Géraud insisted. “He is reclaiming it from those who stand in the way of progress. History will celebrate him. Will celebrate us. ”

“History hates you.” Armitage let the harshness of that hang in the air around them. “Those who chose as you have are despised, considered to be, in many ways, worse than those you have just declared heartless.”

“I do not believe that,” Géraud spat. “I will not believe it. We are creating the France that should have always been. Those who oppose us are robbing our country of its future.”

“What you believe doesn’t matter. It is done and over and recorded.” Armitage shrugged. “You lost, monsieur. You failed.”

Far from being humbled by the reality of what he had been part of, Géraud hardened his expression stubbornly. “I will return to that time. Mark my words. And my return will change the outcome.”

“You can certainly try, but no one knows how the Tides of Time work. In the end, you’ll simply be drenched and disappointed.”

With one parting glare, Géraud stormed from the room. He’d revealed more than he likely realized. Armitage was convinced of Lili’s origins. But any lingering doubts that may have been hovering on the edges of his mind were now gone. Géraud had confirmed it all.

Lili was still sleeping, and his hand was still in hers. Careful not to undermine either, he pulled from beneath his chair the book he’d been reading before dozing off: the narratives and recounting of the French Revolution.

It was a topic he had not been unfamiliar with before obtaining the book. But reading accounts of that time knowing Lili had been in France while all these things were happening had added a painful poignancy to it all. He’d wanted to reach through the pages, reach back through time, and shield her from it all.

He looked over at her sleeping fitfully. She was safe from it now. Whatever magic these waters held, it had brought her to him.

Her face had begun bruising already. A gash on her arm had needed sewing up. And she was peppered with dozens of other smaller wounds. Yet even in this state, she was safer than she could ever have been in the Paris of the Revolution.

She muttered again, still in tones of near-desperate pleading, still so quiet that Armitage could hardly make out the syllables. “ Non ... Ne vous approchez pas ... Arrêt. ”

She’d told him once that she dreamed at night of the terrors she’d fled, though she’d not specified what those were. He knew now.

Armitage leaned closer and whispered, “You are safe, my dear. I’m here with you.”

Lili moved again but didn’t speak. She wasn’t sleeping very well, which worried him. Her recovery would be more difficult if she weren’t able to rest.

From the doorway, Grandfather asked, “Do you think us ought to fetch some analgesic powders from the village?”

“Might help,” Armitage said.

Grandfather stepped inside, watching Lili with concern in his eyes. “Her is fortunate not to’ve been injured more severely. The tree limb that came through her window ain’t a creeny thing.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever taken the stairs as swiftly as I did last night when I heard the crash.” Armitage released a tense breath. “I’ve been trying not to think how much worse it might have been.”

“Her’s a dear.” Grandfather watched Lili with unmistakable fondness.

“Unfortunately, her brother’s a—” Armitage bit back the end of that sentence. Lili was sleeping, but he still felt reluctant to speak bluntly what he thought of her one remaining family member.

“I don’t imagine him’ll stay long,” Grandfather said. “And for all our sakes, I hope that proves true.”

Lili groaned softly, a grimace flitting over her features. Armitage rubbed his thumb in a soft circle along the back of her hand.

Grandfather thrust his stubbly chin in Armitage’s direction. “Doing a bit of lighthearted reading?”

His book was on his lap. “I found it at Mr. Vaughn’s shop. It were too intriguing to pass up.”

“Intriguing.” Grandfather nodded slowly. “Enlightening.”

Enlightening was precisely the right descriptor, but Grandfather couldn’t possibly know that. Why, then, was he holding Armitage’s gaze so intensely? A long moment of silence passed between them before Grandfather walked slowly from the room.

“Enlightening,” Grandfather had said.

What did he know?

“ J’ai mal au visage .” Lili’s sleepy whisper pulled Armitage’s eyes to her immediately. “And my arm hurts too.”

“I suspect it does, darling.” He set his book down so he could turn fully toward her and lean near enough that she wouldn’t have to raise her voice to speak to him.

Sleep hung heavy in her eyes. “Did you ever finish your supper?”

“My supper?”

“You hadn’t finished it last night.” How like her to be worried about him when she herself was recovering from such a harrowing experience.

“I ate,” he assured her. He enveloped her hand in both of his. “Are you hungry, Lili? I can fetch you some breakfast.”

“I’m not.” Her eyes opened and closed slowly. “What I am is exhausted.”

“You’ve been through an ordeal.” He lightly kissed her fingers. “And you didn’t sleep well.”

“I dreamed of Paris. I always awaken more tired when I do.”

“Your Paris was not a peaceful place,” he said.

Her eyes barely opened before closing heavily once more. “I need to tell you,” she whispered through a fog of encroaching sleep. “I don’t know how yet.”

Did she truly mean to tell him the secret she guarded? He hoped so. He hoped he’d earned that much of her trust. Yet knowing now what that secret was, how reasonable it was for her to think he wouldn’t believe her, he understood her reluctance.

“I love you, ma Lili. ” He carefully kissed her forehead. “Don’t ever doubt that.”