Page 87 of Across Time

“Did you like that?” he asks.

I ride him harder, blind now, desperate to finish. “I don’t know.”

He laughs. Allows his finger to brush again. Once, twice—as he meets me with another thrust—and I am done for. I clench him tight as I go over the edge, dissolve into nothing beyond the feeling of us joined there. He flips me on my back and drives into me with four sharp jabs and then he’s cursing, pulling out, coming on my chest, my neck.

When his eyes open he looks a little shocked. “Well that escalated quickly,” he says with an uneven laugh.

I glance down at my ruined dress. “When we move to Versailles, I think I’d like some more clothes. And a washing machine.”

“Anything, ma reine,” he says, collapsing beside me.

* * *

Marie’s brows go to her hairline when I return an hour later, my dress grass-stained, hair a disaster. “Well then. I guess having a baby in this house will liven things up.”

“I’m taking a bath. And you bite your tongue,” I reply. “No children. Not until after the war.”

“If you say so,” she murmurs behind me, sounding as if she is holding in a laugh.

I fill the tub and sink inside it for the second time today, smiling as I lean my head backward against the edge. We did end up talking just a bit in the orchard. I think he would be happy enough to stay on the farm if that’s what I wanted, but I saw that spark in his eye when I talked about moving someday. Living in a city where we can both finish our degrees, where he no longer has to work so hard to make people not take notice of his family. Much of that depends on Marie, of course, but by the time the war is over, she will probably have chosen a path for herself. Perhaps found a spouse who isn’t a priest.

Except maybe it’s the priest she’s meant to end up with. While a priest seems like the least likely candidate to help produce some kind of supernatural being, if the “circle of light” is a child. On the other hand, there’s a lovely sort of symmetry to it: my strict, religious family saw time travel as evil, and from my few interactions with her, it seemed my grandmother viewed organized religion in the same way, but this would be a union of those things. Marie already exists in both worlds, and if there was ever a priest capable of rising above his beliefs and his training to accept something new, it would be Father Edouard. He would do it for Marie, I’m certain.

I put on a fresh dress and emerge from the bath to begin helping Marie with dinner.

“So did you and Henri talk?” she asks mildly, shoving vegetables toward me over the butcher’s block. “Among other things.”

I stifle a laugh. “You’re not going to shame me, you know. Where I’m from women talk about sex all the time.”

She looks at me warily. “I obviously don’t want…specifics, given that it’s my brother we’re discussing. But, is it not painful? It seems like it would be extremely so.”

“I doubt I’d have sought it out if it were,” I reply. “No, it’s the opposite. It’s like a miracle. Or a drug. You’ll see some day, if you ever agree to go on a date.”

Her smile falters. “Xavier asked me out again last week. I put him off, but perhaps…perhaps I should.”

I’ve never seen a woman look more grief-stricken or reluctant to go on a date with a handsome man.

“When you’re in love with someone,” I say softly, “no one else appeals to you. You can convince yourself they do, the way I did with Mark, but it won’t work. It can’t.”

She swallows. Her hand clenches around the knife’s handle and her head goes down, as if suddenly she’s in so much pain she can’t unclench herself. “Then what am I supposed to do?” she asks, her voice rough. “How do I make it stop?”

My heart hurts for her. I know better than anyone what it’s like to want something so badly and be certain you can’t have it. “Before you abandon the idea of Father Edouard entirely, ask yourself what you’d risk by trying. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. There’s not a doubt in my head he’d give up everything with a little encouragement.”

Tears drip down her face onto the butcher’s block. “What if he finds out what I am, though? Even if I chose to hide it, there are times when it might happen. Or we could have a child…like your parents did. And then what? How do I explain what I hid from him? How do I allow a child to be raised the way you were, as if there’s something poisonous inside her? I couldn’t.”

I shake my head. “Do you think Edouard would be that man? If you do, then perhaps you don’t love him like I thought. Or shouldn’t love him in any case. The person you’re describing does not deserve your affection.”

She looks up at me, and swallows again. “You really think he’d accept it?”

It shocks me that she could possibly think otherwise. I suppose even people with loving parents doubt themselves occasionally. “I think he’d accept you, exactly as you are. And I think you will never move forward if you don’t try.”

She bites her lip. “You could perhaps jump ahead,” she whispers. “You know I can’t. But you could go forward a few years and see where things are. If it would all work out the way you say.”

My stomach swims at the idea. I’m not sure I want to see the next few years. We will suffer at least a little, and possibly a great deal, and I don’t want to know. It would seem like the wrong decision anyway.

“I love you, but I won’t do that. Anything the two of you become will happen because you opened yourself up to the uncertainty. He would need to risk a great deal. I’m not sure you’d become everything you should be together if you didn’t risk as well.”

She laughs through her tears. “You’re punishing me for the ankle, aren’t you?”