Page 100 of Across Eternity

“If she wants honesty,” he growls, “I’ll have plenty for her and Edouard in turn.”

I shouldn’t have brought it up. He’s mostly made up with Marie, but if he thinks she’s pressuring me to leave, his anger will ignite once more.

My palm presses to the side of his face and I tip my head just enough to press my lips to his.

“If you’re trying to use sex to distract me,” he says, pulling me closer, “you’ll probably succeed.”

I laugh. “We can’t have sex here,” I whisper. “Until the war ends, we may never have sex again.”

“Of course we will,” he says, sliding down the bed. “You’ll just need to learn to be quiet.” He lifts my nightgown up and spreads my legs.

“Oh, I’m the one who makes too much noise?” I ask drily, pushing up on my forearms.

He grins. “Shall I prove it to you?” His tongue darts between my legs, over me and then in me and I gasp, holding the pillow over my face.

“Fine,” I whisper. “It’s me. Keep going. I’ll learn to be quiet.”

48

SARAH

Spring arrives. We fall into a routine, and our days are busy but happy. Food is scarce—mostly tinned food sent by Genevieve, augmented by what Henri and Edouard manage to trap in the woods—but there are luxuries that come our way occasionally. Flour, sugar, chocolate, fresh fruit. It certainly doesn’t feel as if we’re suffering.

All the adults take turns teaching, though our cumulative knowledge is less useful than we’d like, and nights are spent sitting at the long table Henri and Edouard built. The children eat with us and then play until it’s dark, making our time here feel, in some ways, like an extended vacation, albeit it one with terrible food and cramped accommodations.

Tonight, before dinner is even over, Cecelia grows tired and climbs over Charlotte’s lap to reach me, yawning as she rests her head against my chest.

Charlotte plugs her nose. “She needs a diaper change.”

I start to rise, but Henri takes her from me. “I’ll get it,” he says. “You sit. You’ve been on your feet all day.”

Rachel’s eldest, a twelve-year old named Daniel, frowns. “I’m never going to change a diaper.”

“When we get married,” Charlotte informs him, “you will need to help.”

Henri makes a sound that is either laughter or choking, perhaps a little of both.

“You’re six years younger than me,” says Daniel, flushing. “I can’t marry you.”

“When I’m eighteen, you will be twenty-four,” she informs him. “And it won’t seem like so great a difference.”

“Charlotte will be a beauty one day,” Marie says later, after the children are in bed, “and Daniel will wish he hadn’t been quite so dismissive.”

I squeeze Henri’s hand. “You’ll have to beat back so many boys who come for Charlotte and Cecelia both.”

“So you’ve decided to go forward after the war to have your child?” asks Marie. Her voice is so hopeful and grateful it makes me wince.

“No, she hasn’t,” Henri snaps. “We don’t even know that this is the hidden child she carries.”

“Of course it is!” cries Marie. “What are the odds that two of the four first families would come together to produce a child?”

“If Sarah can get pregnant once, she can get pregnant again,” Henri says, staring hard at the table, apparently ignoring the fact that it was our daughter herself who told me she’d never met him. “And we don’t owe it to anyone to keep the child in another time.”

Marie’s jaw drops. “Henri, be reasonable. This is about more than the two of you. It’s about more than any of us. Have we not seen firsthand how much harm a powerful time traveler can do?”

Henri’s nostrils flare. “Who, Coron? He wasn’t a time traveler.”

“You’re right,” she snaps. “But imagine how much worse it could have been if he were. Imagine a powerful time traveler with bad intentions—or even a family of time travelers. They would be undefeatable if they wanted something. If they fail, they can just keep going back.”