Across Time: Across Time Book 1

by Elizabeth O'Roark

When I wake, Henri is entering the room with a tray. He’s shirtless, wearing only the pants from before, which are half buttoned and hang from his hips.

  “You’re not wearing a shirt,” I say, eyeing him as if this is something I haven’t seen before. To be fair, it’s something I’ve mostly seen from a distance, back when sliding my palms over all those hard muscles and smooth skin was something I wouldn’t allow myself to do.

  He gives me a half smile. “And you’re wearing nothing at all, beneath that sheet,” he says, placing the tray on the bed. “Which is something I’m going to try not to think about until you’ve been fed.”

  It’s only now that I notice the haziness of the light outside. “It’s dusk? I slept all afternoon.”

  He laughs. “You exerted a great deal of energy this morning. You needed your rest.” He takes a spoonful of stew and holds it to my lips. “Eat.”

  I obey him and then look over his shoulder at the door. “What’s Marie going to think?” I ask. “I should go out there.”

  “Marie is gone for the evening,” he says with a small smile. “She left a note saying she was staying with her friend Anna and would return in the morning.”

  My cheeks grow hot and I cover my face with my hands. “I never heard her come in. Does that mean…do you think she heard us?”

  He pulls my hands away, grinning. “I think most of the town probably heard us, that last time.”

  I groan, picking up the tray and setting it off to the side. “We’ll need to be more careful once she gets home.”

  “I plan to remain every bit as careful as I was earlier.”

  Earlier. I think of it, and I want him again—the thick press of him entering me, that dazed, desperate look on his face before he came, the frenzied way he thrusted as he did. My stomach tightens with want, in a way I’m barely familiar with, and my fingers go to his thigh.

  “I’m sure earlier was an aberration. It won’t be like that with us most of the time.”

  There’s a dangerous light in his eyes, which now linger on my mouth. “An aberration, you say?”

  I struggle not to smile. “An aberration. I’m sure it will be calm…subdued, even, from now on.”

  In a heartbeat he’s pulled me down beneath him, and his mouth is on mine. He pins my wrists with his hands and sits up just enough that he can see my face. “How calm do I seem to you now, little thief?"

  I arch against him. Even through his pants I can feel how hard he is, wedged against my stomach. “Very calm. Nearly asleep.”

  He goes to his knees, pulling the sheet back as he tugs down his pants. “Then,” he says softly, “I think it’s time I woke up.”

  It’s early in the morning when I broach the topic of Marie again. “She’ll be here in a few hours,” I sigh. “We probably need some…ground rules.”

  He runs a lazy hand over my breast. “We won’t have sex when she’s in the same room. That’s all I’m willing to agree to.”

  I laugh, but it fades quickly. “Henri…she’s religious. I can’t imagine she’ll approve of this.”

  “What occurs between a man and the woman he’s marrying is not her concern and she knows it,” he says. “She’s probably just relieved we’re both in one piece.”

  I swallow. “Marrying?”

  He raises a brow. “I said the conversation could wait an hour, not forever.”

  “It just seems a little sudden,” I reply, “given that you were telling me I should have stayed in my own time a few hours ago. I must be ridiculously good in bed.”

  He laughs. “You are definitely that. And it’s not really sudden for me—I’ve been picturing it for months.”

  I lean back against the headboard. “You pictured being married? To me?”

  “I’m trying hard not to be insulted by how astonishing you seem to find that.”

  My smile fades a little. “I guess I was so certain it wasn’t possible that I never let my head go in that direction.”

  His eyes darken. “Because of Mark.”

  I keep forgetting that for him, Mark is still an issue, still competition. He doesn’t understand how completely I’ve left the idea behind. “No,” I say with a vehement shake of the head. “Just that it would mean giving up home, and my own time, which seemed impossible. Plus…the coming years are bad. It’s nothing I ever dreamed I’d enter into voluntarily.”

  His lips press together. He focuses on the tray, his thoughts unhappy. “I should have the strength to tell you to leave, but I don’t, not yet. But if this war comes like you claim, I want you to go back.”

  “Are you insane? You think I’d leave you here during that? It’s going to be years and years.”

  “If something happened to you, I’d never be able to live with myself. And you could come back to find me when it’s done…you wouldn’t even need to wait. You could just jump ahead to the war’s end.”

  “And I’d never be able to live with myself if something happened to you because I wasn’t here to help. Do you know how many people die during the war? You might not even be alive when I get back."

  He hangs his head. "All the better reason for you to stay safe in your own time."

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I reply, my jaw set hard.

  His nostrils flare. "What about children? You'd want to raise children during a war? When there might be rationing or worse?"

  "Children?" I ask, startled. "You're getting way ahead of yourself."

  "Believe me," he says grimly, "if you remain here, a child or two is almost a certainty. No matter how careful we are, there are going to be many, many times when we are not. And there’s something else I need to tell you before this goes any further.”

  I place a hand over my stomach, waiting once more for pain. “You’ve been dating that girl from the church,” I say quietly. “Claudette?”

  His brow furrows. “Claudette?” He gives a short, abrupt laugh. “No. I wish that’s all it was. I have a feeling it’s very different where you’re from, but here, in this time, people are less tolerant of differences. You probably wondered why the Beauvoirs didn’t even consider Marie for André?”

  I nod. I wondered it many times, actually.

  He sighs. “It’s because of our mother.”

  My jaw drops. “They knew she was a time traveler?”

  “No,” he says, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “They knew she was Jewish.”

  My jaw remains open. Stunned. How, in all the time I was here, could they not have mentioned it? “Not a particularly devout one obviously, as she married a Catholic and raised us as such,” he continues. “But the town has a long memory.”

  My eyes close. Will that matter during the war? Will it be enough to get them sent to a concentration camp? If I’d known, I’d have pushed them so much harder than I did to leave.

  “I’m sorry,” Henri says formally, rising from the bed. “I didn’t realize it would matter to you.”

  I quickly grab his hand and pull him back to me. “Of course it doesn’t. But…it may matter once the war starts, to all of us. I just don’t know what the Germans consider Jewish by law.”

  He rests back against the bed frame and I lay my head on his chest. “Unfortunately I do know the answer to that,” he says. “They’ve already decided it. Something called the Mischling test. If you’ve got even one Jewish grandparent you’re removed from civil service in Germany. If that changes your mind about this, I understand.”

  I shake my head. “No, of course it doesn’t.” But it changes other things. It makes the odds that he and Marie-Therese will survive the war that much worse. It means any child we have could end up in a concentration camp too. When I was warning them about the war, I was so focused on their personal safety I didn’t even mention the extermination of the Jews, when it turns out to be the most important piece of information I could give them.

  God, this whole thing just got so much worse.

  “I need to tell you more about what’s coming,” I say quietly. “A
nd then we are going to make a plan.”

  30

  When Marie gets home around lunch, Henri looks nearly as sheepish as I do. I’m fairly certain if there’s some kind of record for the number of times two people can have sex in twenty-four hours, we just demolished it.

  She looks from one of us to the other. “I assume it’s safe to enter?”

  Henri’s hand slides through mine. “Relatively, yes.”

  “And I take it you’re staying?” she asks with a broad smile.

  I exchange a look with Henri. "More or less,” I reply with a sigh. “Henri thought I should go home during the war, and I disagreed. So we’ve decided to compromise.”

  She looks between the two of us uncertainly. “Compromise?”

  Henri runs a hand through his hair. “I want to know that, if nothing else, Amelie has the ability to escape if she needs to. So she’ll stay here, but return to her own time as often as necessary, just so she doesn’t lose the ability to jump at all.”

  “And once the war is over,” I add, “I will remain here for good.”

  Henri’s hand brushes against mine. We’ve intentionally left out an important part of our agreement—the most important part: sometime over the next year, the three of us will relocate to the United States. I didn’t want to spring this on her upon my arrival, but soon we’ll have to tell her. Their safety, with a Jewish mother, depends on it.

  But only if they’ve already made it through the war, a voice whispers in my head.

  Henri’s fingers twine through mine and I squeeze them hard. I won’t lose him. I won’t lose either of them. Somehow.

  With Marie-Therese back in the house, Henri and I reluctantly acknowledge that it’s time we return to something akin to normal life. He leaves the house to do the chores he’s neglected for days, his gaze lingering on my face before he walks out the door. The moment it shuts, Marie pounces on me.

  “So…?” she asks, eyes bright with excitement. “How was it?”

  I cast her a doubtful glance. “You want me to tell you what it was like to have sex with your brother? Because I have a brother myself, and honestly I’d be scarred for life if someone provided me that information.”

  She flushes and smacks her head. “Ugh. Dieu. No. I meant the reunion. I’m going to forget you even said the rest.”

  I bite my lip, trying to recall the parts of our reunion that weren’t sex. “It was great,” I say vaguely. I think of him pushing me against the refrigerator and want to chase him into the fields for another round. “We argued a bit. He was worried I wouldn’t stay and I was worried he didn’t want me to stay and then it all worked out.”

  “Yes, I figured all this,” she says, waving her hand. “But what are your plans? Have you set a wedding date?”

  I glance at her. I don’t understand how we went from no talk of marriage whatsoever to setting a date. “Um…not yet. I just got here. I’m not even thinking about marriage yet.”

  She raises a brow. “Well, that makes one of you, then. I’m certain my brother would not say the same.”

  I throw out my hands. “We haven’t even dated yet.”

  “Dated?” she asks with an incredulous laugh. “What did you think occurred here all summer? Did you think Henri always takes picnics and goes riding and watches the sunset each night on his own? The two of you courted more than any married couple in this entire province. Possibly more than any couple in this country, if you look at in terms of hours.” Her smile fades. “Amelie, I love you and I want nothing more than for you to be with my brother, but if you’re not serious about him, you can’t do this.”

  “I just gave up living in my own time!” I cry. “Of course I’m serious about him. What I did is far more serious than any stupid piece of paper.”

  “Except that stupid piece of paper is all Henri will have to know you’re bound to him,” she replies. “And you were perfectly ready to agree to that stupid piece of paper with a man you don’t love just a few weeks ago, so why not with Henri? If you’re still unsure, I think you need to tell him that.”

  I know I’m not unsure about him, but she has a point. Why am I so reluctant to go down that path? If Henri and I were living in my time and he asked me to marry him, I’d agree with ease, because I know that world. I know who I am in it. But I don’t have a place in this one yet.

  “In spite of my months here, I don’t really know how to function in your time,” I explain. “It’s just…a lot.”

  “But I’ll help you,” she says eagerly. “I’ll teach you to cook and show you how everything is done. And when you have children, we’ll figure it out together, I suppose.”

  I exhale. When I came back here, I wasn’t picturing much of anything beyond moments with Henri. It seemed so easy to give up my own time because I wanted him. And I still do, enough to suffer in all the ways I will to stay. But I’m not sure that life on the farm is what I want forever. I can learn to cook and clean and do the laundry and rear children in a rural village, but the part of me that wanted to finish college and have a career is still there. And she doesn’t want to spend long afternoons over a copper tub scrubbing laundry or making cassoulet. That future I laid out in Paris, when Henri asked what I’d do if I had to stay—was it a ridiculous fantasy for him? Because it wasn’t for me.

  “It’s not that I don’t think I am capable of doing these things,” I finally reply. “It’s just that where I’m from, women at least theoretically have the same opportunities that men do. There are fathers who stay home while their wives work, and there are couples who share all that stuff. So I’m willing to live in 1938, but Henri will need to be willing to make our lives a little more modern than he may want. It’s not that I’m worried I’ll change my mind. It’s that I’m worried he’ll change his.”

  She glances at me uncertainly. “I know my brother will agree to any condition you lay out, but there’s not much here for a woman to do. You could teach, or work in a shop, I suppose. And you’ve seen how much time the farm takes for Henri. You can’t expect him to come home after that and start making the bread?”

  I swallow. “No, of course not.”

  I leave the conversation there, because Marie does not understand that Henri isn’t exactly wed to this life either. He’s doing this for her, but once she’s made her choices, once she’s no longer his to hide and protect, he’ll be free to do anything. And I hope that he will.

  I remain inside through the afternoon with Marie, helping her complete all the mind-numbing domestic tasks that are a part of her day. Despite what I told her, she is determined to teach me how to do these things on my own. It’s impossible for her to understand how much easier life will be very soon— that machines will replace so much of her labor.

  All afternoon as I make the bread and scrub the floor and help with dinner, I’m looking out the window, longing just for the sight of him.

  “Thirty-six,” Marie says out of nowhere.

  “Excuse me?”

  She smiles. “You’ve looked out the window thirty-six times in the past two hours.”

  I shrug, trying to pretend I’m not embarrassed to be called out. “I did just travel back five decades to see him, you know.”

  “You looked out the window back then too,” she says. And then she laughs. “Ah. Poor Amelie. So stricken any time he went to the pump for water.”

  I raise a brow. “I can’t believe I’m taking shit from a girl infatuated with a priest.”

  Her mouth purses. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But if you want to tell Henri that dinner is nearly ready, go ahead.”

  I glance at the stove, where the water isn’t even boiling yet. “Dinner’s nowhere close to being ready.”

  She bites her lip, barely hiding her grin. “Yes, but I thought it might take you an hour or more to get the job done.”

  He is walking up from the field as I approach, with a smile so sweet I can feel it in my blood. He draws me against him, his hands on my face, his mouth seeking mine
. He smells like him—soap and skin and freshly cut grass. God, I’ve missed that smell and I’m so grateful it’s now mine to keep.

  “How were things in there?” he asks, nodding at the house.

  I tip my head. “You say that as if you expected them to be bad.”

  He grabs my hand and starts leading me toward the orchard. “If I know my sister at all, she’s already rung Father Edouard about dates for our wedding and has begun suggesting names for our children.”

  I sigh. “Both topics were raised, yes.” When we reach the orchard, he sits and begins pulling me to the grass, but I hesitate. “We don’t need to worry about snakes?”

  He laughs. “Snakes? There are no snakes here. I was just trying to get you on my blanket.”

  Ah, to have known these things at the time. “But you didn’t even like me then. Why would you try to get me on your blanket?”

  His back rests against the tree as he regards me, a small smile on his mouth. “I liked you then too, believe me.” His hand slides out, and he twines a lock of my hair around his finger. “You looked troubled just now, when I asked about Marie. Did something happen?”

  He wraps an arm around me and I rest my head on his shoulder. “Do you remember when we were in Paris and you asked me what I would do if I had to stay in your time?”

  A laugh comes from low in his chest. “If I recall correctly, you were going to live in Paris with a legion of staff and find struggling artists to support.” That laugh of his does not bode well. He makes it sound like I’d planned to breed unicorns. When I’m quiet he pulls away so he can see my face. “What is it?”

  I sigh. “It wasn’t a joke for me,” I say quietly. “I mean, no, I didn’t think at the time it was a serious possibility, but—”

  “But you don’t think you want to be the wife of a poor farmer,” he concludes.

  I glance up at him. He’s saying what I couldn’t bring myself to say, but hearing the words from his mouth, I’m no longer sure they’re true. “If I have to choose between being with you and the future I’d planned for myself, I choose you,” I tell him. “But in an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to choose.”