Overseas (24 page)

“Wish what?”

“Wish I’d know you then, I guess. You would have been much kinder.”

“Kinder
?”

“When it ended. When you were over me.”

He gazed at me for a moment; then he took my glass from me and, together with his own, set it on the coffee table. He placed one hand on either side of my hips and leaned in close to my ear. “Tell me,” he said, “what do I have to do to convince you of my sincerity?”

I felt myself grin. “Well, we could start with mind-bending all-night sex.”

His laugh tickled my neck. “Kate, Kate. You’re killing me.”

“Why not, though? Don’t you believe
me
? Or is it the moral thing? No sex before marriage?” The word darted from its mental crevice before I could trap it.

He looked at me a long time, his green eyes soft and glowing, until I could feel each distinct cell of my flushed skin as it scraped against my clothes. “When I saw you in that conference room,” he said at last, in his low coaxing voice, “all I could think was
there she is!
I’ve found her at last. I meant to woo you properly, Kate. To marry you. I’d forgotten, for the moment, in the
elation
of having found you, that I was a freak of nature. That to ask you to stay, to be mine, meant forcing you to share it all with me, and who knew what might lie ahead for me? I couldn’t ask that of you.”

“And so you pushed me away.” I felt the beat of my heart, trotting eagerly to some unknown destination behind my breast, and raised my hands to the curving angle of his cheekbones, to that beautiful face of his, filled just now with an expression of deep longing, of passion held just in check. I held him there for a moment, letting my eyelids drift downward to better collect the sensation of his skin, warm and intimate, against my palms. “What changed your mind?”

He answered without hesitation, in a hard flat voice. “When I saw that man attack you in the park. I’d never felt anything like it. Not during the worst moments of the war.”

My hands slipped down his jaw, his throat; I loosened the knot of his necktie and drew it free.

He closed his eyes. “I’m the most selfish being alive, wanting you to stay.”

“No, you’re not.” Delicately I unfastened the top button of his shirt, and then the next. “You’re lonely.” I dipped my lips into the hollow of his throat and felt him tremble. So large and so capable a man, and yet I could make him tremble. “You need this. You need
me
.”

“I haven’t the strength to do the right thing anymore. I don’t even know what the right thing is.”

“This is the right thing.” I tasted his skin.

“This
can’t
be right.”

“It is, in my century. The century you’re living in now.”

“You haven’t thought it through.”

“I don’t need to think it through.” I nibbled along, trying to keep my wits, trying to find just the right words to convince him. “It’s not the kind of thing you think through. I mean, who reads the full prospectus, line by line, before buying the offering?” I felt him quiver under my lips. “You are who you are. It’s the
essence
of you that matters to me. The man inside, the man I adore. The rest of it is just details.”

“Details, that I was born over a century ago? Details, that I’ll always be hiding things, keeping secrets, from our closest friends? What if it happens again, without warning? Think of all the ways, Kate, in which this complicates your life.”

I drew back, searching his face. “It was always going to complicate my life, Julian.”

“Don’t remind me,” he said bitterly. “I should have told you before. I should have stayed away from you, before you could be hurt.”

“Impossible. Because it was already too late, from the very first meeting.”

“And in ten years, twenty years, when you’re tired of hiding my secrets?”

I pushed that aside. “I’d never see your past as anything other than a gift, Julian, because it’s what brought you to me. It’s what makes you so particularly
you
, like no one else in the world.”

“Someone else may find out.”

“We’ll manage.”

“Kate, it’s an impossible burden…”

“Well, I’m not going to let you go on bearing it alone! I’m
here
now, Julian. You did this. You bound me to you, and what I learned today doesn’t change that at all. So deal with it, okay? Take me upstairs. I need”—tears, for some reason, began to seep around my eyes again—“I need that reality. I need—I can’t explain it—I’m reeling with all this, just barely hanging on, and I need you to take me in your arms and just…
please
… just
unite
us…” I seized his hands, knitted my fingers through his, tried to communicate.

“Kate, oh sweetheart,
don’t
. I can’t resist that, I can’t…”

“Don’t, then.
Don’t
resist it. I wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t beg, if it were just sex. You
know
that. You
know
what I’m asking for.”

His eyes shut tightly. “I know, darling, I want it too, I want it passionately, you can’t
conceive…
”

I pulled on his hands, trying to draw him up with me.

“No. Wait.” He stopped me, heaving a deep breath. “Even if it
were
all right, there’s still another thing.”

“
Other
thing.” I leaned against the sofa back and stared up at the ceiling in despair. “There’s
more
? What now? Freaking
vampires
?”

He let out an amused noise. “No, a little more down-to-earth than that.”

“Oh, no,” I groaned. “Please, not the moral scruples. I’m already a ruined woman, Julian. I don’t have any virtue to preserve. Neither do you, technically.”

“Well, there’s that, too,” he said, “but I’ve already conceded that point, weak flesh-made man that I am. No, it’s a more practical concern.”

I waited. He remained silent, staring at his hands, looking awkward. “Well?” I demanded at last.

“Kate,” he said, “I’m no expert on any of this, but I do know that when two people, when a man and a woman…” He broke off, and then tried again. “Kate, have you thought about the possibility…”

I began to giggle. “Julian, you Edwardian, are you trying to ask me about
birth control
?”

His cheeks flooded with color.

“Julian,” I said, “I’m on the Pill. So just take me upstairs, already. For God’s
sake
.”

“Kate, I…”

I stood up and held out my hand. “Julian Laurence. Julian Ashford, I mean. Whoever you are. I really don’t care anymore. Come upstairs with me
now
, or you can just find yourself another girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend.”
He shook his head, staring at me intently.

And at last he made his decision: he stood up, bent down and slung me over one shoulder with a single effortless heave. “Fine, then. On your own head be it,” he growled, and carried me into the darkened hallway and up the stairs, two at a time.

Amiens

S
o,” Julian said, “I’ve treated you to a handsome dinner. I’ve been sporting company, with all your tantalizing revelations. And now I think I’ve quite earned the honor of your confidence. Who, exactly, are you, Kate from America? Can I at least have your last name?”

“That,” I said, “will certainly have to wait for later.” I stepped gingerly around a puddle, left over from the day’s rain, gleaming silver in the moonlight. “You’re not going to believe me. And even if you do, it’s going to wipe that charming smile off your face. You’ll storm off in a huff, or else run screaming to the nearest police station.”

“Look here, Kate. This is altogether too much mystery for a straightforward chap like myself; I shall go barking mad in a moment. Would you simply come
out
with it? Careful,” he added, offering his arm to help me navigate a rain-filled gutter. “Public works in a shocking state, aren’t they?
C’est la guerre,
I suppose.”

I felt the scratchy wool of his coat under my hand and leapt over the obstacle. I did not, however, give up his arm afterward; nor did he draw it away.

“Tell me about your husband,” he said.

“My husband.”

“You did say you were a widow, I believe?”

“Yes.” I felt an ache collect at the back of my throat. “You know, I think
I’d rather not talk about that, at the moment. If you don’t mind. It’s still very new.”

His voice fell into contrition. “I’m so terribly sorry. How wretchedly dull of me. Forgive me; army life can be so coarsening.”

“Forgiven. It was a natural question. And I
will
tell you about him, later.” I paused. “I loved him deeply.”

“A very lucky chap, I believe.”

Our feet clacked companionably on the damp cobbles. I looked down and watched the tips of my sturdy shoes disappearing and reappearing next to his larger ones. From around the corner ahead of us, the sound of anxious laughter rippled through the dank evening air, cracking the unnatural wartime stillness: other lives, other histories, all returned to dust by the time I’d been born. I spoke up suddenly. “All right, then, Ashford. You asked for it. Here it is. I’ll just say it. You leave Amiens on Thursday, right?”

“Yes, as I said.”

“You’ll be going back up the line to Albert, and then wait for your turn in the front-line trenches. You’ll have a meeting with Major Haggard, during which you’ll lay plans for a night raid on Saturday, at 0200 hours, on the German front line, in order to gather prisoners for interrogation and intelligence gathering. I can tell you now, if you lead that raid as planned, you won’t return to your trench.”

“Yes, I realize you have an uncanny ability to predict the future, Kate,” he said impatiently, “and I’ll be curious to see if it all turns out as you say, but
why
? How do you know this, or think you know it?”

“No, wait,” I said, “there’s more. And I have to tell you, so you’ll believe what comes next. Julian, I know how and when this war’s going to end. I know how the next one’s going to start. I know… I know Florence Hamilton will marry a man named Richard Crawford in 1921, and bear him three children, Robin and Arthur and Sophia, and Robin will go on to become an MP for Hatherleigh in the 1950s, before involving himself in a Communist spy scandal a few years after his election.”

He came to a stop, frozen there on the wet cobbles, like a military memorial in some village square. “Good God,” he mumbled.

“Next year,” I continued, “the Bolsheviks will start a revolution in Russia, turning it into a Communist dictatorship, and in 1929 the world stock markets will crash, the first disaster in a decade of financial depression. In 1969, men will land on the moon and walk on its surface.”

“Good God,” he repeated.

“What else? Oh, here’s a good one: Great Britain will elect its first female prime minister in 1979. And your Prince of Wales will inherit the throne in—oh, I don’t know the year—the thirties somewhere, and abdicate soon after in order to marry an American divorcée. I’m sorry, I’m having difficulty being chronological about this. The point is, Julian, I’m about to tell you something extraordinary. Something… something you’ll never believe. But I can prove it. I’ve brought proof. Julian, listen to me: I was born in the year 1983.”

He turned and stared at me, as if I were some kind of ghost.

“I was born in 1983,” I said, “and I can tell you just about anything and everything that’s happened in the world until 2008, when I traveled back here, to you. Only a week ago, in my time. Only a week since I was surfing the Internet, drinking a latte. A nice hot freshly… freshly brewed…
latte
.” My voice cracked.

“You were born in 1983,” he said, still staring.

“I know, I know. I felt the same way, when I… when the same thing happened to me. When someone told me about this.” I seized his hands in mine and took a step nearer, close enough to feel the sweet wine-laced warmth of his breath on my face, to bind him to me before he fell apart. “But please, Julian,” I whispered, “try to push past the
how
of it. The impossibility of it. Just take the leap, try to understand…”

“But that’s marvelous!” he burst out, squeezing my hands. “Bloody marvelous! My God! Like the chap in the book! So you’re from the future? It’s really possible?”

My mouth opened and closed. I felt a single raindrop strike my hairline, at just that instant, with memorable conviction. “You
believe
me? Just like that?”

“It makes perfect sense. You’re so completely different, so utterly original. Of course. I should have seen it! Second sight, indeed.” He laughed. “Tell me everything. Tell me… tell me about Mars. Have you been to Mars?”

I took him in: the extravagant mad grin, the eyes wide and glittering in the faint light of a nearby window. “Are you
insane
? You’re not, like, freaked out?”

“Well, it’s extraordinary, of course. But I should have thought they’d find a way, a hundred years from now…” He shook his head. “Have you told anyone else? Where else have you been? Or
when
else, I suppose!” He laughed again. “How absolutely jolly well marvelous!”

I couldn’t help it; I began to laugh with him. “Julian Ashford,” I gasped, between giggles, “you never cease to amaze me. Here I was, expecting this great dramatic scene, with you running off screaming and me begging and pleading… hours of explanation, of trying to prove it to you…”

I found myself talking into his chest; he’d thrown his arms about me in sheer exuberance and began swinging me in reckless circles around him.

“Tell me everything, everything! I’ve so many questions, I don’t know where to start. Do you have your machine with you somewhere? Might I see it?”

“I must say,” I remarked, trying to extricate myself before I suffocated, “you’re taking it much better than I did. I was throwing up at this point.”

He drew back and peered at me. “Really, you’ve the most exceptionally weak digestion. Is that common in the future?”

“Well,” I said dryly, “let’s just say you have that effect on me. Look, can we go somewhere and talk? I think it’s starting to rain again.”