Across Time: Across Time Book 1

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  Instead of pulling away, he sinks to the floor so we are face-to-face. He looks horrified, and sad, and then he pulls me against his chest and holds me there, tightly. I’m frozen, relishing the feel of him and the steady thump-thump-thump of his heart while I wait for the other shoe to drop, for what I’m telling him to sink in: my sister is dead and it’s all on my hands.

  “If you time traveled by accident, how does that possibly make this your fault?” he asks.

  There are ways to spin almost anything to make yourself sound blameless, but I am definitely not that. Just ask anyone in my home town.

  “When Kit died, my mother let people think I did it because I was jealous. And she was right. I was. It happened because I was jealous. That’s why I time traveled.”

  He pulls back just enough to see my face. “An accident is an accident,” he says. “Regardless of the reason it happened.”

  “My mother doesn’t see it that way,” I whisper.

  His brow furrows. “Your mother was the adult. And she should have known that at such a young age time travel is out of your control. She made a poor choice, and continues to make a poor choice, by telling you you’re to blame.”

  I want to believe him. I do. But there’s a decade of recrimination behind me, insisting I shouldn’t get off so easy. "But if I hadn’t time-traveled, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  His face is inches from mine. He gives me a sad smile as he pushes the hair off my face. “My mother blamed herself when my father died,” he says quietly. “She went to visit him where he was posted, arranged a weekend pass for him. His regiment deployed while he was there, so he got sent to another one going to Caporetto, which is where he died. Would he have been killed anyway? Probably. But my mother felt as if his death rested on her head…just as I feel her death rests on mine.”

  I meet his eyes for the first time since the conversation began. “How could your mother’s death be your fault? You weren’t even here.”

  He stares at his hands, now entwined with mine. “If I hadn’t gone away to Oxford, I might have convinced her not to leave. And if I die in this war you claim is coming, Marie will find a way to blame herself. She will be convinced there was something she could have done.” His eyes search mine, darker, urging me to understand. “So if some of the guilt must rest on your head, if you refuse to see that you were an innocent little girl given a task that was beyond you, so be it. But you need to know that it doesn’t make you evil. It just means you’re human. Each of us is presented with infinite choices, and we never know whether they were wrong or right ones until it’s too late.”

  I nod, swallowing around this lump in my throat. What he’s said…it doesn’t relieve my guilt, but it normalizes it. It gives me a single moment or two in which I can believe it’s possible I’m not a monster, not something inherently evil and cursed. Maybe, like his mother, I’m just someone who made the wrong choice.

  "Thank you,” I whisper.

  He rises from the side of the bed and I have to resist the impulse to reach for his arm.

  "You'll be okay?" he asks.

  I nod, but the dream is still too recent. I don’t want to see that empty lake again. He pauses and then goes to the chair across the room.

  “Close your eyes,” he says. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep."

  I shouldn't accept this. He rises early and he's going to be exhausted. But I don’t want him to go. "Thank you, Henri," I say settling into the pillow. "You can ridicule me for this in the morning. I won’t get mad."

  His mouth lifts. “You take all the fun out of it by giving me permission.”

  "Well since you're going to ridicule me anyway, can you pull the chair closer?"

  He laughs but he does it, coming right up beside me and resting his palm on my forehead. "Sleep, little thief. I'll make sure you're kept safe."

  “I know,” I say quietly. “You’ve been doing it since I arrived.”

  And with his hand on my head, I float off into a dreamless sleep.

  19

  When I wake in the morning, the sun is pouring through the windows and Henri is gone, though I know he stayed because when I woke just before dawn he was asleep in the chair, his hand still on my head. No one’s ever done that for me before, but I guess I’ve also never been able to bring myself to ask for it either.

  There’s no sign of the sweet version of Henri when he comes in that day at lunch. He hasn’t shaved and there are circles under his eyes. I blame myself for both.

  “Amelie needs a dress for the dance,” Marie-Therese tells him. ”Can you drive us to Reims in the morning?”

  I glance up from the peas I’m shelling. Marie hadn’t even mentioned the dance to me prior to now, but suddenly it’s as if we’ve spoken of nothing else for days on end. I can’t say I particularly share her interest, since I imagine the evening will be spent watching her dance while every other girl within twenty miles throws herself at Henri.

  His eyes linger on me for just a moment. “No,” he says. “I’m busy this week. And she has dresses.”

  I shrug. “I don’t need a dress. I’ll wear the blue. And it’s not like I’m trying to win anyone over,” I remind her with a knowing look.

  “Nor I,” she replies primly. “But the blue is not good for dancing and nothing else you have is fancy enough.”

  Henri’s fork lands on his plate with a clang. “She won’t be doing any dancing, Marie.”

  I frown. I’d come to the same conclusion, but whether I dance or not will be my decision, not his. And why shouldn’t I dance? Is he worried I’ll get in his way with Claudette?

  “I might,” I say sharply. “And it would be nice to get a new dress.”

  “Good luck walking, then,” says Henri. “Because as I already told you, I don’t have time.”

  He’s not that busy, he’s just being an asshole for some reason I can’t fathom. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at being an asshole too.

  “That’s fine,” I say with a smile. “I’ll see if André can take us instead.”

  By some miraculous feat of scheduling, Henri decides he has time to drive us to Reims after all. I try hard not to gloat but he’s surly the entire trip anyway, muttering about a wasted morning and making it sound as if the entire fate of the vineyard will be determined by the hour or two our trip will take.

  Reims is a true city, busy and vital, not that I’m given much of a chance to see it. Henri pulls up to one clothing store, helps me out of the car and informs Marie-Therese we have thirty minutes or can walk home.

  The shop is different from shops back home, or even Le Bon Marché, where Henri took me in Paris. Instead of racks of clothes, a shopgirl brings you dresses to look at, based on your size. Though it’s supposedly elegant, I find it irritating, especially when she pushes me to consider a dress that looks like something a toddler would wear on Easter.

  Fortunately, Marie is hell bent on finding the right dress and sends each of them back with the dignity of a queen until, just before the thirty-minute mark, one finally meets with her approval—a bright poppy red, with a gathered bodice that cuts low across the chest and tiny cap sleeves. She smiles at me in the mirror. “He won’t know what to do with himself,” she says.

  I raise a brow. “Who won’t?”

  She schools her features. “André of course,” she replies innocently. “Who else?”

  The Friday before the dance is the first evening Marie has been gone all week. Henri asks if I want to come outside, grinning in a way that makes me suspicious. He heads out and I follow on the crutches. After nearly four weeks with a broken ankle, I’ve almost forgotten there was a time when I could barely manage on them. He spreads a blanket in front of the hay bale and helps me lower myself to the ground. I let him, even though I no longer need help.

  The sun is already on its way out, solidifying into a fixed ball of color, far to the west.

  "I've brought you a treat—a very large chocolate bar—but you need to earn it."

&n
bsp; I glance up at him. "That sounds dirty."

  He gets a slow smile on his face. "For a woman who's never been with a man your mind certainly goes in that direction a great deal. Do you want to hear about the very large chocolate bar or not?”

  I roll my eyes. “You’re the one making this dirty. Talking about the very large chocolate bar. So how large is it?”

  He meets my gaze. “Shockingly large. Far more than you can fit in your greedy little mouth.”

  Your greedy little mouth. My stomach clenches, an unexpected spike of want deep in my gut.

  “Anyway,” he continues, “do you want to learn how you will earn the chocolate, or do you want to continue to drive this conversation in a very inappropriate direction?"

  In truth, I’d like to continue sending this conversation in an inappropriate direction, but I suppose I’ve already passed into the realm of unladylike and shouldn’t push it. "Fine, how do I earn the chocolate?"

  "By eating it with me down by the lake." He pulls the bar out of a saddlebag and opens it, letting the smell waft my way. I’ve always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with chocolate, or did until I arrived in 1938, where sweets have been extremely hard to come by. Now I think I might punch a small child to get my hands on it.

  I narrow my eyes at him. "I'm not going to the lake."

  He shrugs. "Fine. Then I guess the chocolate is mine." He waves it in front of my face and I breathe it in. I can almost taste its scent on my lips.

  "Wave that thing in front of me one more time and I will snatch it right out of your hands."

  He breaks off a small piece, relishing it as it melts against his tongue. "Such good chocolate too."

  “It’s not that big anyhow,” I reply. “I’ve seen much, much larger.”

  "Next you’ll tell me size doesn’t matter,” he says, laughing as he breaks off another small piece.

  He waves it in front of my face and I’m done. I lunge for it, landing atop him, scrambling, without a thought in the world about whether my dress gets filthy or the weight of my cast bruises his shins. It lasts all of two seconds before I find myself flipped onto my back, his weight pinning me down in the dirt.

  He grins, triumphant. "Did you really think that would work, little thief? I'm twice your size." We are both laughing, struggling like children. There's nothing sexual about it, but my pulse is racing and I feel set free, abandoned from my normal restraint. Nothing matters more than winning. Even if I wind up shoving that chocolate bar in the dirt.

  My hand snakes out and I pinch his side hard, the way I once did with Steven. Somehow I'm certain he’s as ticklish as my brother once was—and I'm right. His body jerks sideways in surprise and I use the momentum to flip him on his back straddling him with my hands pressed to his chest.

  "Give me the chocolate," I demand.

  His expression has changed, eyes glittering with something dark and determined I haven't seen there before, mouth slightly ajar.

  "No," he says. His voice is rough.

  I reach for the chocolate, my face hovering just over his when I feel it. Only his pants and a bit of my bunched-up dress separate us, but there's no denying the size and the status of the thing directly between my legs. His face, an inch below mine, looks tortured and when I shift he flinches, releasing a small sound that contains so many things—pain and restraint and defeat and hunger, all rolled into one.

  He uses my surprise to flip me again, and when I'm under him he holds some of his weight off me, but not all of it. His breathing is heavy as his eyes brush over my face, resting on my mouth. I’m fairly certain my breath has stopped entirely.

  I want what will come next so badly that I swear I can feel it happening. My lips swell with that future kiss, my body taut and tormented, skin eager for the rough press of his unshaved jaw. I already know how soft his mouth will feel, what it will be like to slide my hands through his thick hair and pull him closer. It’s all I can do not to arch into him to make it happen faster.

  He flinches. "You may have the chocolate," he says, removing himself.

  His absence feels like rejection, and it is knife-sharp. It makes me want to lash out at him somehow, or merely have a tantrum I can blame on him.

  "Too much excitement for you?" I ask.

  His eyes lower to my chest, where my nipples are poking against the thin material of the dress. "Not just for me, it would seem," he says, and then he saunters away, completely at ease with the entire exchange while I am left with some combination of furious and confused and so excited it borders on pain.

  And I should be none of these things. I scoot back to the blanket and lean against the bale of hay, looking for any possible way to justify what nearly happened, justify how much I wanted it to happen.

  Mostly I’m just astonished it happened at all. I've never reacted to Mark in that way. Granted, we've never fought over a chocolate bar before—Mark wouldn't act like Henri did, taunting me with it like a child. But still, I wanted that kiss more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. I wanted it like a drowning man wants something to grab onto—desperately, gaspingly. I still do. I've been so proud of my restraint all this time but now I have to wonder if I've managed to hold onto my virginity simply because no one ever made me want to lose it.

  In that moment with Henri just now? I wanted to lose it.

  20

  On the night of the dance, after bathing, I slide the dress over my head. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned and the color suits me perfectly, a swirling red flame that sets off the pale yellow of my hair and the gold in my skin from these weeks in the sun.

  All I can think of is Henri’s reaction to it. I picture a repeat of last night—of his hands around my wrists and the feeling of him pressed against me. It shouldn’t matter what he thinks, but I’ve never hoped for a reaction more in my life.

  Will he ask me to dance? Will things be different between us? As hard as it is to imagine, it’s even harder to imagine that they won’t have changed after last night.

  “Dieu,” says Marie-Therese when she enters the room to do my hair. “No one will even look at poor Claudette Loison with you in the room.”

  “And they won’t look at me with you in the room,” I reply as she pushes me into a seat. In an amethyst dress, her eyes look impossibly green and her black hair shines, standing in perfect waves to her shoulders. It seems nearly impossible that André would choose any girl in the country over her.

  “Pah,” she says. “I’m not interested in anyone there.”

  “And I am?” I ask in the mirror.

  Her eyes meet mine. “Aren’t you?” she asks. “Just a little bit?”

  I blush. Is it so obvious, my crush on her brother? God, I hope not. “No, I have a boyfriend, remember?”

  She raises a brow at that but wisely chooses not to say anything. When she’s finished with my hair, she insists on mascara and red lipstick. I’ve never worn red lipstick in my life because the last thing I need is to call more attention to my lips, but she insists it’s the style and I’ll admit that it’s a nice effect, the red lips with the red dress. If it weren’t for the cast, I’d be feeling pretty elegant right now.

  We exit the room just as Henri comes into the kitchen, looking extremely handsome in his freshly pressed shirt. He tells Marie she looks nice and then turns toward me and does a double take—exactly what I’d hoped for, except the surprise of the first glance is followed by unhappiness upon the second.

  “I’ll be outside,” he says, turning on his heel. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Marie hasn’t noticed the slight because she’s busy gathering things, but I feel it deep in the center of my chest. I walk outside, directly to the trunk of the car, and throw the crutches inside myself, ignoring his hand when he tries to help me. All this effort, I realize with a sinking stomach, was put forth on his account. And for a moment when he first walked in the room, I thought maybe he was going to make it worthwhile. Instead he’s acting like it pisses him
off.

  The dance is held in a mansion which was once, apparently, the palace of some lesser prince. Though the decorations are meager, the place is already so adorned with crown molding and frescoes and gold filigree that adding anything to it would have been overkill.

  We enter the ballroom to find the dance floor completely full. Most of the couples are full-on swing dancing, something I doubt I’d be able to manage even without a cast and definitely not with one. In my head I’d pictured 1938 as a dark time in the world, a time in which people began tightening their belts and preparing for war. But it isn’t that way at all. These people are my age, for the most part, and they are all so alive, so silly and happy and enthusiastic, just like twenty-somethings anywhere. They still believe this year, this time in their lives, is a big, fabulous beginning and they are exuberant about it. It makes what lies ahead for them that much more heartbreaking.

  We get five feet into the room and Marie is whisked away by some friendly boy who waves to Henri as they go. Henri remains by my side, looming over me with those broad shoulders as if I’m something highly fragile, likely to shatter if touched. We move into the room with his hand on the small of my back, his eyes daring anyone to get close to us.

  Claudette, however, doesn’t heed the warning. The moment she spies him she’s moving toward us, and he doesn’t seem to mind when she gets too close.

  You look lovely, Henri tells her, and my heart begins a long slide to the floor.

  He couldn’t say a single word to me tonight—not when he walked into the house nor on the entire drive here—but two seconds into seeing Claudette and he’s got a compliment at the ready. It stings more than I can begin to admit.

  She grabs his hand, begging him to dance with her, and he demurs with a polite smile, telling her he needs to get me situated first.

  “If she wants to dance, go ahead,” I tell him, gritting my teeth. By all means, Henri, if she’s so fucking lovely, you should dance with her. “I’ll be fine.”