Overseas (43 page)

“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 him 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.

I didn’t hear his footsteps as he approached. His hand, when it touched my elbow, made me startle and whirl around.

“I’m sorry,” he said gravely, looking down at me, his face shadowed by the arriving twilight. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

He was so close, so real. Alive. Just alive. “Please,” I said.

“Kate. Brave, beautiful Kate. You’ve come all this way for
me
?”

“Yes.” I looked down at my shoes. I couldn’t bear the sight of his face: Julian and not-Julian, agonizing dissonance.

“To give up any hope of our meeting again one day?”

“I had to. I couldn’t just let you die. Die, and leave me forever?” I shook my head. “At least this way you have a chance. At least here you’re still alive.”

“My God,” he said, “what an extraordinary girl you are. What a lucky chap I was. Or will be, I suppose.”

“Don’t say that. You
can’t
go. You’ll be killed.”

“But what will happen to you, if I never go forward to your time?”

I looked back out the window. “I don’t know. I don’t… I didn’t really think about that. I just had to do something. You were dead. I couldn’t just
accept
that. I had to do
something
.” I frowned, trying to think things through. It had all seemed so simple, so obvious: keep Julian away from his doomed future. But was it? What could I change, without changing everything? My life, Julian’s life. The lives of complete strangers, probably, who had nothing to do with any of this. Did I have that right?

He picked up my left hand. His thumb and forefinger found the ring on my fourth finger and massaged it gently.

“Would you still be my wife?”

I replied without thinking. “Yes, of course. Always.”

His hand began to ease its way up my arm. “And that, I suppose, makes me your husband.”

I turned. “What? No! I didn’t mean… I wasn’t asking…”

“No, you weren’t. But
I
am.” His face edged closer to mine. “Rather awkwardly, I suppose, and without nearly so much eloquence as you deserve.”

The blood spread through my body, hot and relentless. “Julian, that’s just… That’s not why I’m here. I don’t expect you to… to sacrifice yourself…”

“
Sacrifice?
Kate, how can I look at you, so lovely and so brave, so perfectly captivating, and not want to be the man you married?”

“Julian, you met me two days ago.”

“But I’m the same man, aren’t I, who
will
fall in love with you one day?”

“Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean… doesn’t…” His hand had drawn up to brush my cheek, and my thoughts evaporated. “Oh, don’t. Don’t do this to me.”

“Do what?”

“Seduce me. It’s not fair. I can’t help saying yes.”

He laughed. “Is that what I’m doing?”

“Just by standing in the same room. You always did.”

“Did I?” he asked in wonder, as though he couldn’t quite believe it, couldn’t quite believe his own power. His fingers stroked again, testing me.

“Stop. Please stop. It’s not fair. I’m
his
.”

“Aren’t we the same man, though?”

“But you haven’t fallen in love with me yet. You haven’t married me yet.”

“According to this ring,” he said, touching it again, “I have.”

I went still under his finger. “What do you mean?”

“I mean if you want me, Kate, I’m yours.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t.”

He took each of my hands in his own. “Kate, the past thirty-six hours have been like a dream to me: an extraordinary, luminous dream. A beautiful woman approaches me in the rain, and then falls exhausted into my arms. Every moment I spend with her, I’m more intrigued, more enchanted by her. She’s utterly original, different from any other woman I’ve ever known. So fine and faithful and candid. Vibrant with natural grace. The most exquisite contrast imaginable to…” He paused delicately. “And then, by some improbable miracle, she tells me she loves me, she belongs to me, she’s sacrificed everything to save my life. And she bears a ring that tells me how to love her.”

“What, exactly, is engraved on this ring?”

“Ah, you’ll see,” he said, drawing me close to him. His voice became a breath against my temple. “Can you possibly wonder, Kate, why I feel as though I should die to lose you? To hurt you?”

“That’s impossible.”

“I’ve never been more sincere in my life.” His head bent; he lifted my hands and kissed them, one by one. “Dearest Kate. What will happen to you tomorrow, when my pass expires and I go back up the line?”

“I… I’m not sure. I guess I’ll have to find a way back to my time, if that’s possible. Or else make my way here, somehow.”

“Stay with me here. Be my wife.”

He said it quietly, hardly more than a whisper; at first I didn’t think I’d heard him properly, that my brain had rearranged the words to suit its own private longing. My lips wavered, trying to form some question or objection, some reasonable thought.

He reached out and drew his thumb along my jaw. “Kate, please. I want you to stay here, to let me take care of you. To marry you, or rather to honor the marriage already between us.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“I mean it passionately.”

“You hardly know me!”

“Ah, but that doesn’t matter, does it? I
will
know you. I’ll love you. And I have the luxurious confidence of knowing that for a certainty.” He eased me back into his arms, against his chest. “Stay with me, Kate. Stay here. Be my wife. After the war…”

“Julian, the war won’t end for years. There’s a battle coming this summer, a complete disaster. Even if you avoid this thing tomorrow, you’re going to be slaughtered at some point. I’m saving you from one death, only to leave you to worse.”

“Stay with me. Please stay. I’ll find a way. After all, what’s waiting for you in your own time?”

I looked up at last. “Either way, I lose you.”

“At least here we have a chance.”

It was true. I’d rather stay here, hoping he’d survive, than find a way back to my own century and face a long bleak future with no hope at all. Wasn’t that, really, the reason I’d come here at all? To lure Julian back to me, because I couldn’t bear to live in a world without him? I gazed at his
face, trying to examine it all logically, trying to work past the dawning recognition of my own ignobility, but he stood so close, his scent and his touch, and I couldn’t focus on anything else.

His lips brushed against mine, a question.

I gave up then. I had no more resistance. It had always been like that for me, with him; he burnt me to a cinder just looking at me. I brought my hands up around his neck and kissed him back, savoring the touch of his lips, the familiar taste of him, exactly the same as I knew it, marking him
mine
. I felt tears well in my eyes, spilling onto my cheeks; he felt them too, and drew away. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d ever do this again.”

His eyes wandered over me in amazement, in disbelief; his hands came up to clasp my face, brushing my tears with his thumbs. And then he kissed me in earnest, in true honest passion, not quite so skillfully as I remembered, but with such fervor my brain spun. “Wait,” I said, “stop. Stop. Before I…”

“I’m sorry,” he gasped out. “Do you not want… I’ll stop, if you want…”

“Oh God. No. Don’t stop.” I reached out and unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his khaki wool tunic, his shirt, until he stood before me, quivering, his pale apricot skin gleaming in the dusky candlelight. “Is it all right?” I whispered.

“It’s all right.” He took my left hand and pressed it to his lips. “Mrs. Ashford.” He said it just as he once had, or would do; the sound sent a shiver all the length of my body. He turned me around and began to undo the long row of buttons, his breath on my nape and his fingers trembling against my spine, until my legs nearly gave way beneath me. The dress loosened and slipped downward, pooling about my feet; one by one I slid the straps of my bra—suddenly so strange and modern—over my shoulders and reached back to unhook the clasp. I turned to face him.

The look on his face was priceless: so exactly like a boy in a candy store. I laughed. “You’re just saying all this to get me in bed, aren’t you?”

“I should tell you something,” he murmured, dragging his eyes upward. “Or perhaps you already know it. You see, I haven’t the faintest idea how to proceed, at the moment.”

“That’s all right.” I took his hands into mine. “I’ll show you everything.”

23.

His hand went still on my arm.

“Julian?”

“
What
did you say?” His voice was an asthmatic strangle.

“Um, I’m pregnant.”

“You’re…”

“Pregnant. Yes.”

He shot upward. “But that’s impossible!”

“Well, no, it’s not. I sort of… I messed up, Julian. I don’t know
what
happened. I… I forgot to start the new pill cycle, and…”