Page 29 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

L ili spent every free moment she had deep-cleaning her bedroom, sweeping every corner and behind all the furniture, searching out every bit of glass and wood. Mr. Pierce said it would take time for new panes of glass to arrive on the island to replace the broken ones, but for now, the men had stretched burlap over the window frame. If she could clean out the last remnants of the damage the tree limb had done, Armitage could have his room back and wouldn’t insist on sleeping on the floor of the storage room, as he’d been doing for a week now.

The bedding had been washed. She’d quite thoroughly checked for any remaining dangers. The trick would be to convince that wonderful but stubborn man to stop denying himself a comfortable night’s sleep.

She returned his many books to the shelves they’d been on. Mr. Pierce and Mikhail had removed them the night of the storm, though many had already been soaked with rain. The volumes had spent the past week in the parlor, drying.

Someday, she wanted to buy him a book. She didn’t know which one or what it might be about, but she wanted to contribute to his collection and give him something he would love. There was room enough in the bookcase.

In fact, there was more room than there had been. Yet she had brought up all the books that had been drying. Had one or more of them been too damaged to save? He would be so disappointed.

Perhaps he’d taken one from the parlor, deciding it was dry enough, and had brought it to his room rather than hers.

Lili crossed the corridor and stepped into Armitage’s room. He kept books on his desk under the window. There were three there, which was the usual number. A book on lighthouses, which made her smile inwardly. A book of poetry, which would have surprised her when she’d first met him.

And the book about the Révolution.

She stared at it a moment. From the moment he’d told her about it, she’d felt torn. Part of her wanted to read more and learn all about what had happened after she’d left. But there was so much potential for sorrow in gaining that knowledge. That period in French history was not a merely academic interest for her, as it would be for any other person now. It was her life reckoned on a page.

Lili took it from the desk and turned it over a couple of times in her hands. It was heavier than she’d expected it to be. It also looked newer. She’d spent so much time since arriving in 1873 attempting to grasp how far she’d gone from 1793. A book about that long-ago place ought to be older.

She sat on the edge of the bed, the book closed on her lap. She traced the edge of the cover with her fingertip, trying to decide whether she dared open it. Lived Narratives and Records Kept of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, Translated from the French. She breathed with some difficulty. “Lived narratives” meant this book contained the experiences of people who, like herself, had lived during those horrors. The accounts would not be impersonal. She wasn’t certain if she would have preferred that they be.

She opened the front cover, then the frontispiece, sparing only the slightest glance at the decorative illustration there. Her mind had apparently decided, without warning, that she was going to at least look at what the book contained.

She stopped upon reaching the list of the book’s contents. Her eyes slowly scanned the page, then moved to the next. She saw familiar names, a listing of places she had seen or even been inside. There were dates from years she had actually known. Nearly the last item on the list of contents halted her very breathing. “The Perished Thousands.”

Did that reference those lost in all the skirmishes and fighting as well as those sentenced to death? Was there further violence in the streets outside of what she had seen? Thousands . Depending on how long Madame Guillotine had continued her relentless efforts, thousands might have been executed by the Tribunal .

“Do these people pay you to sit around reading?” Géraud hadn’t spoken to her once since before her injuries. To suddenly hear his voice, critical and bitter, in the language of the very Révolution this book spoke of was a little jarring.

She kept her reaction hidden. With equanimity, she closed the book, the front cover facing downward so he couldn’t read the title, and looked up at him. “Is there something I can help you with?” she asked in English.

Géraud had a commanding presence; there was no denying that. As children, she had depended on that when she’d been afraid. After their parents’ deaths, his ability to intimidate had kept them from being sunk entirely. He hadn’t truly frightened her until he’d joined the Tribunal. Even then, she’d refused to be ruled by that fear. She wouldn’t start cowering now.

“Captain Travert is on Loftstone Island,” he said. “The younger Mr. Pierce said as much a moment ago.”

Armitage was home? With effort, she kept her eagerness tucked away. Géraud would not be granted access to her misgivings, but he also would not be permitted to know her joys. Both things, she knew all too well, could be used as weapons.

“I will meet this Frenchman,” Géraud said. “And I will ask him to take me back to France.”

“It is not your France.” She regretted the warning the moment she spoke it. He clearly resented the reminder, and offering it violated her determination to treat him as simply a traveler.

“ Your France died with the first breath of the Révolution.”

She resisted the urge to defend herself, to remind him that she had supported the need for change in France. She had believed in the original intentions of what had become the Révolution. It was the vengeance and bloodthirst she had opposed.

A chance-met traveler . She would better weather the storm he was attempting to create if she remembered that strategy.

“You are a traitor, Elisabeth. No amount of time will change that.”

Elisabeth might have been deemed a traitor when she’d left France. But Lili was remembered as a hero.

She set her hand lightly on the book. “I wish you safe travels, Monsieur Gagnon. May you find all you wish for in France.”

“ Monsieur Gagnon ?” For just a moment, he looked almost wounded. But that moment passed, and the bitterness that had come to define him entirely replaced the hurt. “And may you receive all you warrant, Mademoiselle Minet.”

He’d only once before called her by the surname she’d used in her clandestine work of thwarting the Tribunal, and it had been an accident then. He was choosing it now.

Géraud didn’t say anything else before leaving the room. Why had he told her of his intention to leave for France? He couldn’t possibly care that he was leaving her behind. Perhaps he thought she would be wounded by his easy abandonment of her.

“Was him unkind to you?” Armitage stepped inside, crossing directly to her. “Him can be cruel.”

“ Je sais. ”

Armitage sat beside her. “I can tell he to leave.”

“He is going to ask Captain Travert to take him to France. He will not be here much longer.” She turned the book front cover up once more. “I hope you do not mind that I have been looking at your book.”

“You’re welcome to every book in this house.”

Lili opened it to the list of contents once more. She pointed at the final item. “‘The Perished Thousands . ’ Perished from the Tribunal?”

He nodded. “That time became known as the Reign of Terror.”

A fitting label. “Is it known how many thousands perished?”

“I don’t think there’s an exact count. But it’s many thousands throughout France.”

“ Tens of thousands?” She hated even asking the question.

“Likely,” he answered. “Not every death was recorded.”

That sat like a weight on her soul. “By the time I fled Paris, twenty-one of my close acquaintances had been executed at the guillotine or imprisoned and never heard from again.”

Armitage took hold of her hand. She needed that touch more than she’d realized.

Her eyes unfocused as all she had seen spilled unbidden from her. “The ground is red with blood, and the air is heavy with fear. One single voice accusing a person of insufficient patriotism or whispered words of conspiracy is enough to snuff out a life. Debtors inform against those to whom they are indebted in order to escape payment. Husbands have been known to inform against their wives as a means of ending a marriage of which they have grown weary. People who have been wrongly accused themselves wrongly accuse others in the hope of being granted mercy. Every word is weighed. Every look is measured. Everyone knows that no one is safe.”

She could hear the quiver in her voice, and it frustrated her. The bleakness of life in Paris had often pierced her, but she’d thought herself more adept at keeping that tucked away.

“We were told all our struggles were the fault of the monarch and the nobility and our nation clinging to the old ways. If only we would rid ourselves of those burdens, we would be blissful and prosperous and free. We aren’t. France is afraid and dying.”

He didn’t correct her use of the present tense, though he must have noticed. The people who’d died while she’d been in Paris were newly dead to her grieving heart. Those who remained behind, in unspeakable peril, still hung in the balance in her terrified mind. It was real. It was still happening. She sometimes felt as though that fear and grief would never truly heal.

“Life was horrid for so many before the upheaval of the Révolution. Something needed to change. But this ... this isn’t what should have become of so beautiful a people.”

He raised her hand to his lips and tenderly kissed her fingers. “I’m sorry, Lili. You shouldn’t have been made to go through so much.”

Lili looked at the book once more. “I want to know at least some of what happened after I left.”

She flipped through the book until she reached the first page of “The Perished Thousands” section.

Beneath the heading was the start of a list. The first column was labeled “Name.” The second read “Occupation.” The third, “Place of Incarceration.” The fourth, “Fate.” And the list filled the remainder of the page. The list appeared to be alphabetical, with all the surnames on this page beginning with the letter A . An entire page, overflowing with names, and it was only the beginning of the list, which continued on for far too many pages.

So many names, and among them, she would likely find people she knew.

“Oh, Lili. Tell me if this is too much,” Armitage said.

She stiffened her spine. “There are answers in this book. I am not afraid to find them.”

He slipped his arm around her shoulders.

Lili turned a few pages, finding where those surnames beginning with D were listed. She searched closely. “The Desjardins are not on the list.” She felt as proud as she did relieved. “They were my last rescues. The ship on which they departed Honfleur must not have been forced back to France.”

She turned another page and silently read name after name. Her breath caught at the name “Jean-Marc Dumas, bricklayer.” She searched for Marie-Francois but didn’t find her name. Had they married as they’d hoped? Had time run out?

Sabine Germain was in the book as well. So was her grandmother. Sabine never got to live by the sea, then. It had been such a simple dream, and it had been stolen from her.

Boniface and Yvette Legrand. The tiny amount of relief Lili felt at not seeing their children’s names on the list didn’t dull the pain of finding theirs.

Florimond Moreau. So wonderfully kind, the sort of person no one could honestly accuse of being worthy of execution. She’d longed for one of Florimond’s hugs these past weeks, for his words of encouragement.

She continued looking through the unending list of names. The shock and horror of seeing so many she knew was almost overwhelming. But she didn’t cry, didn’t let herself so much as gasp. If she let herself feel any of it, she would have to feel all of it, and she knew she couldn’t endure it.

These were her friends, her neighbors, her confidants ... She’d wanted to believe they had lived long lives, finding happiness and peace. She couldn’t bear to think of them walking to their deaths at the Place de la Révolution.

Pierre Tremblay had helped her get messages all across Paris as she had sneaked people out of France. His name wasn’t on the list. M. and Mme Romilly, the tailors she worked for, weren’t listed. Théodore Michaud, who’d more than once allowed her to hide in his home from the agents of the Tribunal, was also not on the list of the executed. She likely could spend days poring over the names, searching for more and more people.

Lili bent lower, a name grabbing her attention immediately. “ Qu’est-ce que c’est ?” she whispered.

“What’ve you found?” Armitage asked.

“This woman has my name.” She tapped it. “‘Minet, Elisabeth, seamstress.’” It was her same occupation. “Executed by guillotine on December 12, 1793.”

Executed. Lili swallowed down the sudden thickness in her throat. That was the fate she had been facing.

“When did you leave Paris?” Armitage asked.

“The 20th day of Brumaire in the year II.” She slowly closed the book. “Even the days were changed. We were so careful never to speak the old way of marking the year.” Lili took in a deep breath, then released it slowly. “That would have been the 10th of November 1793.”

A month before the execution date listed. For a seamstress. The Révolution had its roots in upending the social order to the benefit of the common people. A seamstress was no noble, no part of royalty. She was one of the very people who were supposed to have been lifted up by the Révolution.

A seamstress. Like her.

“This date is after I left,” Lili repeated out loud the thought she’d had an instant earlier. “I was not in France on December 12, 1793. Yet that is my name, and it is the occupation I held. And I was an enemy of the Tribunal.”

“Seventy-eight people,” he said with a nod.

“Seventy-six.” Lili set the book on the bed. She didn’t look away from it, and her thoughts didn’t stray from its contents. “December 12, 1793. I wasn’t there, Armitage. Why is that name— my name —listed?”

“Is Minet a common surname?” he asked.

“It is not un common.” She had known a few people with that name. “And Elisabeth is very common. It is possible, I suppose, that this seamstress shared my name.”

“The book mentions you elsewhere, and us knows it’s you. But you’re called Lili, not Elisabeth. The seamstress could be somewho else.”

She could be. She had to be, didn’t she? Lili hadn’t been in France on the day of execution. She had been in a different time and place for a month before the Elisabeth Minet on the list of perished thousands had met her fate at the guillotine.

“The Tides of Time aren’t like the train,” Armitage said. “One doesn’t schedule a journey and arrive at a given time and place. Even if you wanted to go back—”

“I don’t ,” she said firmly.

“And you can’t, not really. Trying would only see you tossed at random across time, assuming the tides chose to toss you in the first place.”

It wasn’t her in the book. She told herself that a few more times.

“My book of folktales said much the same thing,” she said. “There’s no pattern to the when of the tides and no predicting who will be taken by them.”

“I’d forgotten about the folktale book.” Armitage put his arms around her, standing at her side. “You’ve been carrying the secret of your origins alone for a long time.”

“Not alone though.” She turned enough to look at him without breaking their embrace. “Your grandfather knew.”

“Him knew?” Surprise filled the words but not hurt.

Only after she had made the revelation did she recognize that he might be pained to think she had opened her worries to his grandfather and not to him. “I didn’t tell him. He said he knew I had come from another time. He said he recognized the look of someone who had sailed the Tides of Time.”

Armitage didn’t seem to know what to say or what to think of it all. She couldn’t blame him.

“He has helped me,” Lili said. “And I hope I have helped him.”

“You have, in so many ways.”

She would have loved nothing more than to stay there in Armitage’s arms, letting his love and his tenderness push away the grief of so many familiar names on the list of the executed and the heavy uncertainty of having seen her own. “I should begin preparing supper. I don’t wish the meal to be late.”

“I’ll leave the book on the desk,” he said. “You can look at it again—or not—if you want. It’ll be there either way.”

She nodded as she made her way to the door. Her fragile hold on her emotions would shatter if she read anything more today.

“Lili?”

She stopped and looked back.

“You said my grandfather knew your connection to the Tides of Time simply by looking at you.”

“He said he knew what a person looked like after experiencing that.”

Armitage’s dark brow knit with confused contemplation. “Then, why didn’t him recognize that in your brother?”