Across Time: Across Time Book 1

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  His smirk is gone, replaced by glittering eyes and a mean set to his mouth. "I’m sure there are. But just so you're clear, in my time, decent women don't give themselves away to the first rich man who makes them an offer."

  "So I guess you were with one of the indecent ones tonight," I hiss. "That shouldn't surprise me."

  His mouth turns up at one end. Another of his arrogant smiles. He runs a thumb over his lower lip. "Ah. So you're jealous. Is that what this is?"

  I force myself to laugh. "In my world, you're a 72-year old man, remember? And I'm practically engaged."

  He crosses the room until he’s a foot away, towering over me. He braces himself against the wall behind me, caging me in. "Except you're not in your world. You're in mine."

  His gaze falls to my face, to my lips, and my heart feels as if it's dropped into my stomach. I'm shaking but it's not fear. It's as if my entire body is so primed, so reckless and raw, that it refuses to allow me to remain still.

  His head dips. Just an inch. There's no longer a hint of a smile on his face. I know exactly what’s going to happen and I want it. I don’t care about our respective ages. I don’t care that I’m nearly engaged. I just want, as if there’s no room in my head for any other emotion. The pad of his thumb runs over my lower lip.

  And then a door opens upstairs and we jump, separating from each other. Within seconds Marie-Therese stands at the top of the stairs. "Surely the two of you can contain your fighting to daylight hours?" she demands.

  I swallow, guilty as a teenager caught in the back of a car with a boy. I can no longer meet Henri's gaze. "Sorry," I mumble, fleeing to my room.

  I'm nearly to my door when I hear him. "Amelie?" he asks quietly. I stop and turn toward him. His eyes flicker over my face. "I wasn't with anyone tonight," he says. “I haven’t been with anyone since the day you arrived.”

  He turns to walk up the stairs, leaving me standing there, relieved and with a bizarre desire to cry for the second time in one day.

  The mystery of Henri's disappearance is solved fairly quickly. When Marie returns from the market she drops the bags inside the door and stares at us both.

  "Someone put a cloth over André Beauvoir’s head last night and beat him within an inch of his life,” she says, her lips pressed tight. “I don’t suppose the two of you know anything about that?”

  I turn to Henri in shock. That's where he was?

  He avoids my gaze, lifting his eyes to his sister instead, looking bored. "He insulted our family," Henri replies. "I couldn't let him get away with it."

  "He insulted our family?" she repeats incredulously. "Are we back in the Middle Ages? What could he possibly have said?”

  His jaw grinds. “He implied there were some rumors about Amelie that…I won’t have anyone thinking of her that way.” I misinterpreted his disgust yesterday, and I’ve never been so relieved to be wrong.

  Marie throws out her hands. “So he said a few things about us. We've lived through worse.”

  Henri's gaze flickers to me. He is being honorable. The story of what happened is mine and he's not going to share it.

  "André did more than insult me, Marie," I admit. "I was able to stop him, but it involved hitting him with my crutch."

  She blinks twice and presses a hand to her chest. For the first time since this whole ankle debacle began, she looks guilty. "Oh." She glances at my cast and I see the thoughts as they cross her face. I suppose they cycled through mine as well—that I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for her refusal to fix my ankle.

  “Yes, Marie,” says Henri with acid in his voice, “you’ve put her in danger with your stupidity about fate.”

  She swallows. “I’m sorry,” she says to me. “Please…forgive me. I know it doesn’t make sense.”

  Henri’s arms go wide. He’s as angry as he was when it first happened. “She could have been raped!” he shouts. “Don’t apologize—fix it!”

  He walks out of the house, slamming the door so hard that the windows rattle and the pans hanging from the copper rack clank against each other.

  Marie hangs her head. “I can’t fix it,” she says, near tears. “But I am deeply sorry.”

  I sigh. I don’t know why I care that Marie feels guilty, but I do. Aside from this one odd anomaly, she’s been unbelievably kind and gracious throughout my stay. “It doesn’t matter. My cast comes off in a week. Though I can’t imagine what you believe is going to change between now and then.”

  Her head still hangs as she walks away. “I don’t know either. Not what I hoped.”

  22

  During my final week in the cast Henri spends every afternoon with me, regardless of Marie-Therese’s plans. On the last afternoon before we see the doctor, he comes in and tells me the horses are saddled, ignoring his sister entirely. She doesn’t seem at all surprised but instead settles into a chair and shrugs.

  “Good,” she says, “I’ll have a quiet afternoon to myself.”

  He's gentler with me when he lifts me onto the horse, and also when he removes me. I'm not sure if his hands linger at my waist or if I'm just so much more aware of them today. They're so big I think they could span my entire rib cage if he tried.

  We are quieter as we sit out on the blanket. He is sitting slightly closer than he usually does. I barely notice the magnificence of the setting sun, the glory of the wildflowers. I’m only aware of the heat of him next to me, the thud of my heart, overloud in my chest.

  Is this love? It feels nothing like what I have with Mark. My love for Mark feels like the hours before a big dance, when you are a little giddy with the excitement of it all, when the possibilities for the evening seem fun at the very least and almost infinite.

  This feeling for Henri is different. It hurts. It leaves me feeling desperate and reckless and it clouds my brain in a way that makes rational thought difficult. I’m not sure if it’s real or just some version of Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve been with almost no one but him for months. He’s the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen and we’ve found ourselves in increasingly heated positions. Maybe any woman in my shoes would feel this way.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. It doesn’t matter anyway, I say to myself. You can’t stay for good. And he’s never once implied that he’d like you to.

  “A very exciting day for you,” says Doctor Nadeau when I arrive at his office.

  I struggle to smile as I agree. In truth, the experience is bittersweet. I'm eager to regain my mobility, but regaining it also means I must leave. And it’s definitely time for me to go—there’s a chance if I remain too much longer I won’t have enough of a spark to even make it back home at all. But I will miss my life here more than I want to admit.

  Henri looks a little unnerved as the doctor prepares to saw open my cast. He hovers nearby as it begins, his hands in his pockets, his jaw clenched tight.

  When the cast is split the doctor cracks it open into two even halves, revealing my ankle—pale and atrophied, but otherwise normal.

  "You'll be weak and stiff for a few days," the doctor warns. “So use caution.”

  Henri helps me climb off the table. His protectiveness is ridiculous but also sweet. At last I understand the appeal of being treated like something delicate and precious, just as I'm about to leave it behind for good.

  He links his elbow through mine and guides me carefully out to the car. When we reach the door, he stops. "You heard what Doctor Nadeau said. I hope you don't plan to leave until you've got your mobility back completely."

  I turn toward him. We are probably standing a little too close for supposed family members, but I don't care. I rest my hands against his chest. I will miss this chest. I will miss the way he looms over me when we stand close. I will miss the way he treats me when his guard is down, as if I am worth more to him than the rest of the world combined.

  "No, I think I'll need to stay a bit longer. A week maybe."

  His palms fold over my hands for one long moment. "Good," he says. "That's good."
>
  We've entered a new season of Henri, I realize. The one in which he's willing to admit he likes having me here, that he possibly cares. It's probably for the best that he’s arrived at this position so late because, with enough time, I might just be persuaded to stay.

  When I return home, Marie is waiting. She winces at the sight of my weak, pale ankle. “I hope you won’t try to leave just yet,” she says quietly. “And you might want to test landing on it, just to make sure you’ll be okay?” I’ve rarely seen her look as depressed as she does right now.

  I’m sure she’ll miss me, just as I’ll miss her, but her sadness right now is more than that.

  I nod. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted me to come with you to 1918.” I suspect she hoped for other things too, but I can’t even bring myself to suggest it or I might be the one to cry instead.

  She looks at me blankly for a moment. “1918?” And then she laughs, a mournful, resigned sound. “I never thought I’d persuade you to go anywhere,” she says as she walks away. “It was rather the opposite.”

  I spend the remainder of the day walking around the farm and helping with chores, waiting for my ankle to lose its stiffness. When it does I’m both relieved and disappointed. A part of me thought I might be stuck here a little longer, but by the time I go to bed my ankle is already feeling close to normal, bringing home the fact that it’s really ending, all of it. The horseback rides, the picnics, the afternoons with Henri reading on the porch, sipping on that Beaujolais I didn’t care for when I first arrived.

  I long for time with Henri alone, but it doesn’t come. Marie-Therese, sensing that my departure is imminent, suddenly decides to stick around the house. I spend the day helping her make preserves with my eyes on the window the entire time, hungering for the sight of her brother.

  On the third day, though, comes a reprieve. When I walk inside from watering the pumpkins early in the afternoon, Marie is just hanging up the phone and bouncing with excitement over the fact that her friend Jeannette is in labor. She begins hastily packing a basket.

  “Her husband is at the Maginot Line so I’ll need to stay and mind her daughter until her mother can get here from Paris. Tomorrow morning at the earliest.” She looks up at me with the brightest smile on her face. “A baby! Can you imagine?”

  I smile back. Ankle ordeal aside, Marie-Therese would make such a good mother, if she would just move on from her crush on Father Edouard. She could settle down with Xavier. Even Luc, as abrasive as he was, could probably give her the things she needs: children, a home of her own, an easier life.

  “I think you should go out with Xavier,” I tell her. “Just once.”

  Her brow furrows. “How has the conversation gone from the miracle of life to a boy who went to a school with my brother?”

  I shrug. “Because a boy who went to school with your brother could lead to the miracle of life.”

  She pauses. “Yes, I suppose he could.” But her joy is slightly diminished, and it makes me wish I hadn’t said anything.

  She leaves for Jeanette’s with Henri, and when he returns he comes inside rather than heading straight to the fields.

  “It might be a nice day for a ride,” he says. He throws it out like a challenge, but his eyes are uncertain. All this time our rides have had an element of charity to them, as if they were a debt he was paying for his role in my immobility. Now I don’t need them, and he no longer needs to offer them.

  There’s no denying the slight relief on his face when I agree.

  We ride side by side.

  The farm has changed a great deal since I arrived at the end of May. All the colors are more saturated, and everything is full and lush now, the grapes nearly ripe.

  "What's it like here, in the fall?" I ask.

  He glances over at me for a moment too long. "Beautiful. The sky is a deeper blue. All these trees will look like balls of flame and the air will be crisp. We bring in help for the harvest, but our days are very long. You’d like it, though, I think.”

  I wish I could stay. I wish for it so much that I have to swallow down the urge to say it aloud.

  I’ve only just realized we aren’t heading to the meadow when the lake comes into view. I draw Fleur to a halt. "Why would you bring me here, after what I told you?"

  He stops alongside me. "Because I think it's time you faced this fear of yours. Replaced your unhappy memory with a pleasant one. Wouldn’t you like to go through your life without shuddering at the sight of every lake? It’s no way to live.”

  I’ve thought this before myself. Once I have children, the way I’ve kept myself in a bubble won’t be possible. They’ll want to swim, and God knows I’ll never let them go alone.

  What could possibly go wrong if we sit by the lake? Nothing. I’m like Kit as a small child, certain there’s a witch in the closet no matter what common sense tells me.

  "Fine." I take a quick breath.

  He climbs down and then lifts me off my horse, setting me gently on the ground. We walk down the hill, him hovering close in case my ankle gives way. And when we reach the bottom, he untucks his shirt and reaches for the top button.

  "What on earth are you doing?" I demand.

  His mouth lifts on one side. "Did you think we'd swim fully dressed?"

  My jaw drops. A swim is not what I agreed to, by any stretch of the imagination. "I'm not swimming! I thought you meant we'd just sit here."

  "Come, Amelie. Face your fears. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  My arms fold across my chest. “Do I really need to detail that for you? My sister drowned.”

  He continues unbuttoning his shirt. “And you think I will drown? I’ve been swimming in this lake since I was small. I'm not going to let anything happen to you. And nothing will happen to me."

  "Absolutely not."

  He gives me that shrug of his, so effortlessly Gallic, and pulls his shirt over his head.

  For a moment I gape. I’ve seen him without a shirt from afar, but never like this, standing three feet away. His chest is smooth and perfectly formed, an anatomy lesson of the best possible kind. Every muscle a man can have, he has in spades. He grins, as if he's caught me at something, which he has, and I flush.

  "In my time, undressing in front of a woman without her permission is known as exposure and it's a crime,” I say primly.

  He laughs. "No one is telling you to watch." He reaches for his belt. There's something so sexual about it, so indecent. It's how he would undress for me in some other circumstance. Eager, unapologetic...

  "God," I say, facing away from him. I wait until I've heard him splash before I turn, just catching sight of his perfect, broad back and the most gorgeous male ass I’ve ever seen in my life before he dives under. I hold my breath, waiting for him to reemerge, and don't release it until he's back above the surface.

  "Please don't stay under like that," I ask quietly, my voice desperate. It's probably the first time in our acquaintance I've begged him for something.

  His face softens and he wades through the water until he stands only a few feet away. "I'm a grown man,” he says gently. “Nothing is going to happen to me. This water is perhaps six feet at its deepest point."

  I know he’s right. Swimming in this lake is far less risky than half the things he does, but knowing that doesn’t lessen my fear. "You might hit your head on something. You can drown in an inch of water."

  He grins, pushing his wet hair off his face. "Who will protect me from every inch of water once you’re not here?"

  The question causes a pain in my heart, because I really do want an answer: who will watch over him and keep him safe once I’m gone? Not that I've ever actually kept him safe. I suppose I just like the illusion that I could keep him safe if the situation presented itself.

  He reaches out his hand. "Please come in. I won't allow anything to happen to either of us. I swear it on my life. You are no longer a child. You can control your gifts. You were brave to come here, and you are brave to attempt
the journey home. Be brave one more time. For me."

  My heart pounds in terror, but I know that if this is ever going to happen it has to be now. At least Henri understands that I’m scared, and feels some sympathy for it. Mark won’t. How could he, when he has no idea why I’m scared in the first place?

  "Turn around," I say quietly. When he does, I slip out of the clothes and take a first tentative step on the slippery, moss-covered rocks that lead into the water.

  My breathing is shallow, and every bone in my body wants to retreat to the safety of the shore. I keep my eyes glued to his broad back, as if it’s the finish line. He has the sort of build featured in magazines at home: pure muscle, tapering to a narrow waist. Mark still has the lanky build of a boy, though he and Henri are the same age.

  “Can I turn around yet?” he asks.

  "No!" I cry. “I’m only up to my calves.”

  He laughs. "For a woman who has no problem discussing brassieres in mixed company, you are suddenly quite modest."

  "There's a big difference between talking about something and brandishing it about."

  "You're forgetting I've already seen you naked."

  The water swirls around the middle of my thighs, and then my waist. I feel like I’m not quite taking in full breaths. "You said you didn't see anything!"

  "I didn't see much," he amends. "At the time I was panicked but..."

  "But what?" I take one more step and am in up to my collarbone. "You can turn around."

  "But I remembered it later." He turns toward me with a small grin. We are far closer than two naked people should be when one of them is practically engaged to someone else. “And I remembered it often.”

  I laugh, a hint of nerves underlying the sound.

  His eyes search mine. “How are you?" he asks.