Overseas

by Beatriz Williams

  “The trouble with the modern era,” he said, “or one of them, is that boorish idiots like Banner are allowed to run amok, insulting other men’s wives…”

  “I’m not your wife. And he was pretty drunk.”

  “Men who can’t hold their liquor shouldn’t drink. And you are my wife, as far as I’m concerned. Oh, not a Band-Aid, Kate!”

  “SpongeBob or Hello Kitty?”

  He glared.

  “Kidding. Just humor me for tonight, okay? You can take it off in the morning before anyone sees you.” I began removing the tabs.

  “Kate,” he sighed, “I think I’ve done a reasonable job of conforming to the conventions of this world. I’ve made adjustments, I’ve modernized, I’ve adapted. But one thing I refuse to concede is my right to punch the lights out of any man who dares to insult you. Not because you’re helpless; God knows you’re not. But because no man can stand by idly and see his idol defamed.”

  I gave his hand a last pat and looked up, hoping he wouldn’t notice the sheen in my eyes. “Well, I guess I can live with that. Just try not to hurt yourself, okay?”

  A faint snort. “Men haven’t the least idea how to fight properly anymore. No sport in it at all.”

  “So what did Banner do when you hit him?”

  A smirk hovered, for just an instant, around his generous mouth. “Begged your pardon.” He reached out and cupped my chin. “Am I forgiven yet?”

  “The trouble with you, Ashford,” I said, taking the hand and weaving my fingers inside it, “is that you make it so freaking hard to stay mad at you. So, before I melt completely, can you at least tell me the full story, please? What’s Arthur Hamilton doing in your life?”

  Julian shrugged. “He walked into our offices one morning, right after we started up. It was just Geoff and me and a back-office assistant at that point, and Geoff quite literally fell out of his chair. It was a cheap second-hand chair, you understand,” he explained. “He hadn’t any financial-markets experience, of course, so we took him on in a sort of marketing role, just to give the poor blighter a job.”

  “Had he just, you know, arrived?”

  “More or less. Among his papers were directions on how to find us.”

  “That is just so weird. I mean, how is this happening?”

  “Believe me, I’d give my left arm to find out.” Julian drew me into the armchair with him and tucked me against his chest. “In Arthur’s case, I wonder whether it wasn’t more a curse than a blessing. He wasn’t a born soldier, you know. A bit windy, to be perfectly candid; his letters always bristled with a palpably false cheerfulness. The powers that be rather wisely assigned him staff duties, behind the lines in Amiens, but it didn’t last, unfortunately; he transferred to battlefield command just a few weeks after my own disappearance. I daresay he was fairly miserable, leading his men over the top.”

  “But isn’t he glad to be alive now?”

  He began to stroke my hair. “I’m not at all sure he is. It’s not easy, you know, being lifted away from everything one knows, even in the middle of a hellish war. It’s damnably disorienting. One’s got to find something to live for. I often feel he hasn’t really joined this world, this modern world; he misses Flora, for one thing. She was his mainstay, fighting his battles for him and all that. Now he hardly knows what to do with himself. We try to bring him out, buck him up. He leans particularly hard on Geoff, shares an office with him. Poor devil.” He shook his head. “It’s as though he left his soul behind him. Forgot to bring it along.”

  The silence closed back around us for a moment, lighter now; I felt his hand move in my hair, his steady heartbeat under my ear, and no longer felt like a doll or a caged bird or a whore.

  Just myself.

  “If I married you tomorrow,” I said, “would you tell me?”

  “No.”

  “When, then?”

  “In the fullness of time, beloved. You’ll know everything. My only task is to protect you until it arrives.”

  “Freaking paranoid.”

  “Afraid so. Can you live with that?”

  “I have to. I can’t live without you.”

  “Then”—his voice dropped down to a low whisper—“you’ll stay here with me? No more talk of packing your bags?”

  I bit my lip. “It’s not fair, Julian. You say you’re mine, you’ll do as I ask, but I end up with nothing, don’t I? You win. Again.”

  “Kate, Kate.” His arms tightened. “Don’t, sweetheart. On my honor, it’s all for you. If you knew. If…” He cut himself short, then went on, more evenly, “When it’s all over, I’ll devote myself to your every whim, I swear it. No law whatever but yours.”

  “That’s not what I want from you.”

  “Please, beloved.” His voice turned beguiling in my ear. “Say you’ll stay. You know I’m useless without you. Give me just a little more time; that’s all I ask. Have faith in me.” He skimmed his fingers along the length of my arm to clasp my hand, and I closed my eyes, fighting him. “Please, Kate. My only beloved.” He kissed my fingers. “Say it quickly, because the sight of you in that robe makes my head spin, and I’m not certain how much longer I can remain reasonably coherent.”

  The breath went out of me in a snort of laughter. “Fine. You win. One week.”

  “One week?”

  “You have one more week to figure this thing out. If I don’t get answers, I’m going back to Connecticut.”

  “One week.” He frowned.

  “You can come up and visit,” I said. “I’d let you in.”

  “Thanks bloody much.”

  “And I’d take Eric,” I added, though his frown only deepened at that. “Please, Julian. Just promise me no more secrets.”

  “I’m sorry,” he breathed into the skin of my throat. “For tonight, and for all I’ve asked you to bear, you lovely noble thing.”

  My eyelids sank down. “The secrets, Julian.”

  He paused, his lips just shy of my mouth.

  “Oh, all right. You still have a week. As long as it’s nothing to do with this.”

  “This?”

  I waggled my finger between his chest and mine. “You know. This thing between us.”

  “Ah.” He smiled against my lips. “You must be talking about love, Kate.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  His low chuckle rippled the air. “Sweetheart. Then I’ll say it enough for both of us. I love you, Kate.” He kissed my lips. “I love you.” He kissed the hollow behind my ear. “I love you.” He bent and kissed my bare shoulder. “I love you.” He picked me up in his arms and laid me reverently on the bed. “I love you, minx. Though you’re the devil of an amount of trouble.”

  I curled my hands about his face. “That’s why you love me, though.”

  “Beyond all bloody reason.” And he eased off my robe and made love to me, thorough and tender, with the dim lamplight slanting over his skin and only the gleaming red rubies between us.

  “SO THERE’S ANOTHER REASON,” I whispered, as we lay tangled in the darkness.

  “Another reason for what, darling?” he said, sleepy-voiced.

  “Another reason I was a wee bit emotional tonight.”

  “Were you? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Um,” I said.

  “Ah. An interesting sound, that. I wonder what it means.” His hand stroked along my arm, up and down, as if he were calming a skittish horse.

  “It means…” I swallowed, gathering courage.

  “Yes?”

  “It means I’m pregnant.”

  Amiens

  Julian knocked on my door at exactly five minutes to seven.

  “Come in.” I set down my newspaper and rose from the bed.

  “I’m so sorry to be late,” he said, entering in a gust of male energy. “These colonels do go on.”

  “That’s all right,” I choked. My voice had dried up. This was my last chance; I had one final desperate card to play.

  “Have you had a pleasant day? Found lun
ch and so on?” He glanced at the fire, simmering feebly in its tiny wrought-iron surround, and stepped to the coal scuttle.

  “Yes. I went out to that place you took me for breakfast yesterday. The Chat d’Or. Then I did a little shopping.” I watched him straighten from the fireplace and turn to face me. I twirled for him. “It was nice to change out of my travel dress.”

  “It’s lovely.” He paused, putting both his hands behind his back. “I’m sorry to have abandoned you all day. I realize it must be rather dull for you. Rather strange. Not your own time.”

  “Dull? Not a bit. It’s like walking into a history book. The cathedral, all sandbagged. Everybody in uniform. All the signboards and things. It’s amazing. I…” The cheerfulness rang false. My gaze slid down to the unfinished floorboards beneath my shoes, to the corner of a threadbare rug fraying next to my toes.

  I heard Julian’s feet shift, creaking the floor; his throat cleared into the silence. “Perhaps… would you perhaps like to have dinner? We might run down to the Chat, or else… I believe there’s another café, near the station…”

  I looked back up at the meandering glow cast across his face from the candle on my bedside table. The electricity had gone out an hour ago, with abrupt finality. “We don’t need to go out. I’ve brought a few things back from the shops. Wine and cheese and bread. Unless you’d rather…”

  “No, no. That sounds lovely. A sort of picnic.”

  “Yes, exactly.” My hands came together in front of me, tangling at the tips. Now. It must be now. “Do you mind… do you mind if we talk for a moment first? There’s something more I want to tell you, and since I’ve been sitting here working up the courage, I might as well do it now.”

  “Of course.”

  The room had only one chair, skinny and wooden, its worn rush seat unraveling precariously. I motioned Julian into it, and then eased down on the edge of the bed. “Um, I’m not quite sure how to begin.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, setting his forearms on his knees, clasping his hands together, and smiled. “Kate, I believe you.”

  “I know. I know you do. But this involves you as well as me, and it’s… it may be hard for you to understand. To accept. You said…” The words jumbled together in my mouth. I closed my eyes and gathered myself, forced my thoughts into the logical train I’d spent the afternoon rehearsing. “You said you had the feeling we’ve met before. That’s not exactly true, but it’s not exactly false, either.”

  “What do you mean? When did we meet?”

  “You asked me my last name before. I told you I couldn’t tell you, because you wouldn’t believe me. Possibly you still won’t.”

  “Why wouldn’t I believe that? After everything else?”

  “Because my name is Kate Ashford. And I’m your wife.”

  His face, so open and ardent, seemed to freeze in place like a death mask.

  “Julian, listen to me. You’re not going to be killed in that raid tomorrow night. You’ll be transported through time, like I was, into the end of the twentieth century. Where you’ll meet me, eventually, in New York City.”

  “You.” The word fell between us.

  “Me.” I couldn’t stop the tears then: they welled around the edges of my eyeballs. “For some… unfathomable reason, you’ll fall in love with me, and I with you. And I never told you that. I never told you I loved you, because it frightened me; I somehow thought that would jinx it all, because you—your love—were all too good to be true. And because I couldn’t say it as well as you, couldn’t put the right words together. Which was so stupid of me, so cruel, when you were always so generous that way.”

  I slid my thumbs under my eyes and gathered the ragged ends of my courage. “So I’ll tell you now. I’ll tell you everything. I love the sound of your voice and hearing you play the piano for me in the evenings. I love the silly little verses you write and leave on my pillow in the morning. I love your brilliance and your kindness, the way you can slaughter fools on Wall Street and then weep at the opera the same evening. I love those old moccasin slippers you wear around the house, when it’s just us. I love the way you hold me in your arms at night and call me your little minx, even though it’s probably really sexist somehow, and the expression on your face when you… when we…” My voice stumbled. I turned away, to the wall, where a small cheap painting of a Madonna regarded us beatifically from the faded wallpaper. “I know I’m nothing but a stranger to you now. But you’re everything to me. You’re my life. Just to have you near me, even the you that doesn’t know me, is like heaven to me.”

  I heard his silence with dread, unable to move my eyes. The rapid heavy thump of footsteps broke into the stillness between us, crossing the hallway just outside the door before receding up the stairs.

  “Do you still believe me?” I said, looking back at last.

  “I… I don’t know. I suppose I must. I believed the rest, didn’t I?” He shook his head and stared down at his hands. “I’ve been fighting the most unreasonable jealousy of this man, this unknown husband of yours. The luckiest damned chap in the world. And he’s me?” He looked up. “Me?”

  His eyes stretched wide, the brows slanting upward, almost pleading. I held his gaze for an elastic second, and then rose to cross the room, where my coat hung on a hook near the door. I drew my BlackBerry from the pocket where I’d kept it safe, all last week, slogging through England, across the Channel to France, down the railway line to Amiens. I turned it on. The startup music chimed into the candlelight, absurdly anachronistic. “Can I show you something?” I handed it to him. “Here. It’s my telephone.”

  He gazed at the object in his hands. “Telephone?” he said numbly.

  “Yes. I told you about these last night, remember? You can carry them around with you, take pictures with them.” I reached over and scrolled through the menus before his astonished stare. “Look. Here we are sailing last summer. The marina guy took that one.” Our bodies sprang bright and sharp into the dim old-fashioned room, standing on the deck of Julian’s cutter, my arms wrapped around his waist, his arm enclosing my shoulder. His laughing face was half-turned to mine, as if he’d just given me a kiss; he rarely missed an opportunity for that. I wore a short strapless beach dress, my skin gleaming in the sunshine, and the smile on my face was so wide and delighted I nearly wept. Happy Kate. All-unknowing Kate.

  The phone began to shake in his hands. “I’m sorry.” I tried to pull it back from him. “That was too sudden. I didn’t mean to…”

  “No.” He held on firmly. “You look beautiful.”

  “I was happy. So happy.” My voice wavered.

  “Is there more?”

  “Um, yes.” I reached over and scrolled for him. “Here you are, lying on the grass at the cottage. I think I’d caught you napping. Oh, gosh. That’s the beach. You don’t need to see that. My stupid bikini. Sorry, all the girls wear those.”

  “Good God.”

  “I could show you your… your messages. You were always so funny and tender and…”

  “You speak,” he said, looking up, “in the past tense.”

  “I told you I was a widow.”

  “I’m… I’m dead?”

  “Yes.” I sat down on the bed. “That’s why I’m here. To save you. To keep you from that raid tomorrow, from being transported to my time. Because you’ll die.”

  “Die? But I thought… but how?”

  “We were only just married. You went off to… to find me, to rescue me, and then they took you away and they…” I swallowed. “They killed you.”

  “What? Who? Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s too complicated to explain. But do you see now? Do you see why it’s so important that you avoid that raid tomorrow? Take no chances at all?”

  He didn’t answer. A profound quiet settled into the room. I couldn’t imagine his thoughts: reeling, no doubt, as mine once had. He sat there, with my BlackBerry still in his uncomprehending fingers, saying nothing at all, and I let h
im be. It seemed enough that I had this present moment with him at all. He existed, his living self, a few feet away: his beating heart, his flickering brain, his long clean limbs still whole beneath the unknown layers of his clothing.

  At last I heard him clear his throat. “Is that your wedding ring?”

  I looked down at my hands. “Yes.”

  “May I see it?”

  I hadn’t expected that. I fumbled with the ring, trying to remove it, but my swollen flesh clung stubbornly to the metal. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I haven’t tried to take it off yet.” I glanced at the candle on the nightstand and reached to take a bit of fallen wax from the pewter holder; I rubbed it into my finger until it softened, and at last the slender band gave reluctantly away. I placed it in his palm.

  He looked at it closely, clinically. “I can’t quite make out the engraving.”

  “There’s engraving?”

  He stood up and went to the window, and rolled my ring in his fingers until the inside was exposed to the dim rain-washed light from the glass. The color deepened and spread along his cheekbones. He looked back at me. “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

  “You gave it to me, when we were married. You put it on my finger yourself.”

  He said nothing. He studied me a moment longer, and then went back to the chair and sat down and took my left hand. “Allow me,” he said, and slid the ring back on my finger and kissed it and placed my hand back in my lap.

  “Do you believe me now?”

  “Yes,” he whispered back.

  “What does it say?”

  “You can see for yourself, if you like.”

  I looked down at my hand. “No. I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose because even though you’re sitting there, the same man, I’m still grieving. For the Julian Ashford I left behind. The one who knows me, who loves me. The one who…” I stopped.

  “The one who what?”

  I fled to the window, staring out at the darkening street outside, at the unfamiliar shapes and the faint gleam of the wet cobblestones below, reflecting the light from the nearby houses.

  The one who would take me in his arms right now.