Page 31 of The Tides of Time (Storm Tide #1)

A rmitage completed his repairs at the lower light with remarkable speed, then hurried back up the cliff to the lighthouse. Lili would be in the kitchen, so he slipped in through the front door. He wasn’t avoiding her; he simply wanted to surprise her.

He stepped inside the storage room, where he was still sleeping at night. She had cleaned the glass and splinters from her room, but there was still no glass in the window frame, and the room was cold because of it. He snatched up the wrapped parcel that sat atop the trunk of his parents’ things.

“I wish you both were here,” he said quietly. “You’d like Lili, and her would like you, and you both could help me make this place a home for she. Barry’s not helping at all.”

Mum would have laughed at that. They’d jokingly blamed the barometer for any number of things over the years. And Dad would pretend to find the two of them entirely ridiculous but could never quite hide his amusement.

He missed them. The sea was cruel to have taken them from him.

But the sea had brought him Lili, so he could no longer despise it as much as he had for most of the last ten years.

Lili was in the kitchen when he stepped inside. He stood in the doorway a moment, just watching her, amazed at his good fortune. He’d been so unwelcoming when she’d first arrived, yet he hadn’t pushed her away. Fate had been beyond kind.

Lili spotted him there and smiled. He had learned to recognize her small and subtle expressions of happiness, and he cherished them.

“I have something for you,” he said.

“ Pour moi ?”

“ Oui. ” He set the wrapped parcel in her hands.

“ Qu’est-ce que c’est ?” she asked as she accepted the offering.

He chuckled lightly. “Open it and find out.”

Lili set the parcel on the table and untied the twine, looking at him repeatedly with the most adorable expression of excited curiosity. She peeled back the parcel paper. He knew the moment she realized what she was seeing. She actually gasped.

“Oh, mon Armitage . ” She lifted the shawl from the table and pressed it to her heart. “The shawl from Mrs. Willis’s shop.”

“You loved it so much. I couldn’t bear the thought of you not having it, so I went back to get it.”

“ Mon Armitage.” Those beautiful gray eyes held his.

“My self-appointed aunts wouldn’t let me buy it.” He felt he ought to be fully honest. “Them insisted I could have it to give to you.”

“They have been so kind to me.”

“You’ve family and friends here, Lili. And you have me.”

She rested her fingers lightly and tenderly on his cheek. “ Mon cher Armitage.”

“My darling Lili.”

He’d intended to kiss her after whispering the endearment. But she kissed him first. She slid her hand into his hair, pressed her lips to his, and kissed him with every ounce of fervor he felt. There was nothing for it but to kiss her in return.

He pulled her flush with him, meeting her kiss for kiss and reveling in the perfection of her in his arms. Mon Armitage. How quickly he had become utterly and irrevocably hers and she so wholly and entirely entwined in his heart.

“Let me know if I’m interrupting.” Grandfather, standing in the doorway, spoke with an undeniable degree of amusement.

Armitage kept Lili in his arms. “If I told you that you were, would you quit?”

“Can’t say that I would.” He eyed the shawl in Lili’s hand. “I’m wagering Armitage gave you that lovely gift, based on the thank-you him was receiving.”

Lili slipped away. Armitage resisted the urge to reach for her again.

She spun the shawl around her shoulders, pulling it snug around herself. “Isn’t it beautiful? And it is wonderfully soft.”

Grandfather watched her fondly. “It suits you, Lili. And you’ve needed something that truly suits you here.”

Which brought Armitage’s thoughts back to the matter he’d meant to discuss with his grandfather but hadn’t been afforded a chance to yet. Mikhail wasn’t there, and neither was Géraud. He could ask his question now. “I know that you know when her’s come from,” Armitage said. “I know it now too.”

Grandfather simply nodded. “I could tell.”

“Like you could tell her was here off the tides?” Armitage pressed.

Lili was watching them more closely now.

“Something like,” Grandfather said.

“Why is it you couldn’t tell that Géraud had arrived over the tides?” Lili asked. “Why did you not recognize it in him?”

She was a very direct sort of person when she chose to be.

Grandfather’s eyes darted from one of them to the other a few times. A debate was clearly raging in his thoughts.

“The truth, Grand-père ,” Lili said softly and kindly. “I would like to know the truth.”

“Then, I’d best have a seat. It’ll take a bit of doing.” Grandfather lowered himself into a chair at the table. “Armitage’s mother struggled with feeling a bit outcast on Loftstone Island. Even after my son’s heart was held out to she so obviously, her still wasn’t truly at home.”

Armitage didn’t like the idea of that. Did Lili still struggle so mightily to feel welcome and part of life here?

“What made the difference?” The way Lili spoke the question answered the one Armitage had been asking himself. She did still feel a little misplaced.

“My son dedicated heself to learning French.”

Lili didn’t seem to be expecting that any more than Armitage had been.

“Did Mum tell he that her wished he to speak French?” Armitage asked.

Grandfather shook his head. “Somewho else did. Speaking like a Frenchman would make all the difference, them was told. Eleanor hadn’t begrudged he his lack of French, and I don’t know that her would have thought to ask he to learn it.”

“In the end, she was pleased that he did?” Lili asked.

Armitage couldn’t tell if Lili wished for the same thing. He wasn’t starting from a complete lack of French as Dad had. He could build on what he already knew.

“I think her did appreciate it,” Grandfather answered.

Lili was listening, but she was also stroking the soft wool of her shawl. Armitage smiled, watching her.

“Eleanor insisted the language hadn’t been a bother to she,” Grandfather said.

“The person who suggested it must’ve been convincing,” Armitage said.

“Very.” Grandfather’s gaze unfocused, his expression one of reminiscence. “I was there when the plea was made.”

A plea? Armitage had never heard anything of this history.

“Us was down on the beach, twenty-five years ago now,” Grandfather said. “There’d been a storm, and the lower light needed checking for damage. A stranger, worse for wear, came upon we there. Called me by my name.”

“This stranger knew you?” Lili asked.

Grandfather nodded. “And knew both of Armitage’s parents. Asked my son if him had learned French.”

No digressing from the topic at hand, then.

“This stranger said it’d be crucial that him learn to speak French fluently, to not put off the learning of it. But us weren’t told why or what purpose it’d serve. Only that him had to learn and had to learn it well.”

Lili, still holding her shawl cozily around herself, leaned back against Armitage. He set his arms around her from behind.

“What has this to do with recognizing a traveler of the tides?” Armitage asked.

Quick as anything, Grandfather’s expression turned somber once more. “The very first thing the stranger said to we.” He met Armitage’s eye. “Walked right over and asked, ‘What year is this?’”

Lili grew entirely still. She seemed to be holding her breath.

With a softening of his features and voice, Grandfather spoke directly to her. “A quarter of a century ago, I met somewho who sailed here over the Tides of Time. I’ve known since then that the tales were more than legends.”

Armitage kept close hold on her. She was quite obviously shaken by the revelation. He was more than a bit upended too.

“And I’ve known since I first saw you in the parlor, Lili Minet, that you knew the truth of the tales as well.”

She leaned more entirely into Armitage’s embrace. “Because meeting that person taught you to recognize—” She shook her head. “No. You didn’t recognize it in Géraud.”

Grandfather spoke again but didn’t answer the question implied in Lili’s words. “Armitage was taught French alongside his father, which I’m beginning to suspect was the reason behind the plea. You don’t remember all the French you once knew, but the words are there, and you recall more of them all the time. And that’s been a fine thing for you, especially of late.”

It had been.

“The stranger from the Tides of Time has my gratitude for that,” Lili said. “And I suspect your daughter-in-law was grateful to be able to speak French with her husband.”

“And her son,” Grandfather added.

“Does Armitage look like his parents?” Lili asked Grandfather.

“Has her not seen the photograph?” That question was aimed at Armitage.

“I don’t keep it out.” Armitage hadn’t since his parents’ deaths. Seeing their faces was too painful. But how often had he said that he wished she’d known them and that they’d known her? This was the closest thing he could claim to that. “Would you like to see it?”

She turned and faced him. “ Je ne sais— I don’t know.”

He took her hand. “I’ll not force you.”

“I meant, I don’t know what a photograph is.”

“A main lot’s changed over the years,” Grandfather acknowledged.

“A photograph is like a painting in a lot of ways,” Armitage said, “but it’s an exact capturing of a moment or a person or a place.”

She looked even more puzzled than before. “That does not make any more sense than friction matches or trains or music boxes or iron stoves or any of the other endless things that do not make sense here—that don’t make sense now .”

“This’n’ll make more sense once you’ve seen it.” With her hand in his, they walked into the parlor. “Them are rare, especially for folk who aren’t wealthy.”

“How did you come to have one?” Lili asked.

“A photographer—that’s a person who creates photographs—had a project to photograph lighthouses. He photographed ours, then offered to take one of we gathered around it.”

He reached behind the books on the shelf second from the top of the bookcase and pulled out a small folding case. He carefully opened it, revealing exclusively to himself the five painfully familiar faces inside. One, his own at almost fifteen years old. Another belonged to Grandfather. The rest were people lost but never forgotten. His late grandmother, who’d died four years earlier. And his parents, who’d been lost to the sea within months of this image being captured.

He forced himself to breathe. Then he looked up from the still faces and at Lili once more. Memories of her horrified reaction to the train gave him pause.

“I don’t know how best to prepare you for this. I can’t say if you’ll find it fascinating or terrifying.” He couldn’t remember the first time he’d seen a photograph or what his reaction had been.

“Does it look drastically different from a painting?” She did look nervous.

“Eez. Photographs look ... real. There’s no color. Otherwise, you think you’re looking right at the person in it. Feels like the image’ll start moving around.”

She took a step back, looking alarmed. “I don’t know that I want to see that.”

“I’ll not force you to,” he promised. “But I can’t promise you won’t come across a photograph elsewhere. You ought to at least know what one is.”

She rubbed at her face. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. “I’d rather face the shock of such an unsettling thing here, where my surprise will be understood.”

There were likely few people who realized just how brave and tenacious she truly was. She’d survived more than anyone ought, and how he wanted her future to be filled with hope and happiness.

“And I would very much like to see tes parents ,” she said.

Armitage held the photograph facing himself, offering her a little insight before showing it to her. “You’ll recognize the lighthouse. And my grandfather looks much the same. This was ten years ago, so I was only fifteen, but I look like myself.”

“I’d enjoy seeing a fifteen-year-old you,” she said with a soft smile.

He glanced at the image again. “My grandmother is in the photograph, and so are my parents.”

“Your expression is both happy and sad when you look at it. The image must resemble them very closely.”

“It’ll resemble them exactly ,” he said. “That’s what photographs do.”

He turned the frame around and set it in her hand. She slowly lowered her gaze. She recoiled a little in shock and confusion, staring at something she would have never seen before and for which she had no reference.

The moment of shock was broken by a sudden, furious pounding on the front door.