40. December 5, 1916 Barnbow, England #2
Oliver’s hand stills in her hair. His fingers graze along her chin, tilting her face until she is looking into his eyes: the summer sky, darkened by storm clouds tonight.
“I’m glad you are.” And something about that look in his eyes, that strained note in his voice when he says it, makes her believe him.
“I’m glad you’re here, too.” She means here, sitting on the bathroom floor, holding her. Here, in 1916. Here, in her impossibly long life. She hopes he knows.
Oliver helps her off the floor. She refills the tub, and he leaves her alone with a worried, weary glance.
She doesn’t leave the bath until the water has gone cold, her fingertips wrinkled like dried currants.
She dries herself with one of the inn’s scratchy white towels and slips Oliver’s button-down over her shoulders, breathing in the scent of him.
Beatrix steps out of the bathroom, her hair still damp down her back. The room is empty. A single lamp casts a warm, dim glow from the bedside table. The blankets have been turned down on the bed, inviting her to sleep. To forget. Beatrix sinks down onto the mattress.
He didn’t even say goodbye.
Oliver has never stayed the night. She shouldn’t be surprised he’s gone. But tonight it hurts, deeper than anything she has felt in centuries. Because he is gone, and she is alone, and this is how it ends. The opposite of déjà vu, a premonition of her inevitable future.
The door creaks open. “I thought I could find you something to eat, but—”
Beatrix springs to her feet and rounds on Oliver.
Because he has made her feel like this. Despair and joy and longing in a single breath—an ache in her bones when he is gone, and a lightness in her heart when he is here.
Because she doesn’t want to let him go, doesn’t want to count the years until he returns to her.
The days.
The hours.
She knew, the moment he left her at the Great Exhibition, that she was wrong. It was never about letting him go before she loses him. It was about letting him go before she loves him.
Too late.
“Don’t you ever leave me like that!” Her voice breaks with the weight of her fear and her sorrow, of what she can’t prevent and can’t escape. She thought she had no tears left, but she’s crying again, too exhausted to stop. Too raw. It hurts too much to think about losing him tonight.
Oliver wraps his arms around her, whispers, “I’m sorry” over and over into her hair as she falls apart, until the words are just the sound of his voice, anchoring her in this storm.
When her tears have stopped falling, he takes her face in his hands and he kisses her, gentle, but sure. She can taste salt on his lips.
“I am so sorry, Bea. I didn’t mean to…” His voice trails off as he hugs her to him, and she wonders what he didn’t mean to do.
Didn’t mean to scare her? Didn’t mean to hurt her? Didn’t mean to make her fall stupidly, hopelessly, in love with him?
“Stay with me. Please,” she whispers. And she means now, tonight, but maybe forever, too. “I don’t want to be alone.”
He places a kiss on her temple. “Okay.”
She almost cries again.
Beatrix climbs into bed. She slips between the cool sheets and pulls the patchwork quilt up to her chin.
Oliver sits on the edge, the weight of him shifting the mattress beneath her.
He slips off his shoes and pulls off his sweater, tosses it into the corner with his coat.
He reaches over and turns off the bedside lamp before lying next to her, a reassuring presence in the darkness.
She slides closer to him, lays her head against his chest, listens to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat through the thin cotton of his T-shirt. He wraps his arm around her and holds her close. His fingers graze the curve of her waist.
Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me.
The words echo in her head, in rhythm with Oliver’s heartbeat. An impossible hope, lulling her to sleep.
Beatrix wakes at dawn, her body pressed into Oliver’s, his arm draped across her.
And she thinks maybe, if she keeps her eyes shut, keeps the world out for a moment longer, she can hold on to it.
Hold on to him. She commits the feel of his body against hers to memory—the warmth and weight of him, his even breath in her hair—afraid that when she opens her eyes, it will all slip away like a dream.
Afraid she will never have a moment like this again.
But when she opens her eyes, he is still there, still with her.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
He doesn’t stir.
The sun breaks the horizon through the crack in the drapes, spilling a golden light over Barnbow.
Beatrix slips out of bed and pads over to the window.
She pushes the curtain aside and watches the sun rise over the sleepy town.
Do they know what happened? She grazes her thumb against the spot where her iron ring should be sitting.
She’s left it—everything—at the factory.
“How are you feeling?” Oliver studies her from the bed, as if he’s trying to decide how fragile she is this morning. Or maybe, now that he has seen the effects of the faerie’s curse with his own eyes, he simply can’t believe she’s real.
Beatrix waves her healed hand. “Good as new.”
He slides out of bed and joins her at the window. He wraps his arms around her and props his chin on her shoulder. She leans into him.
“How are you really feeling?”
She feels unmoored. It is always like this, when she has cheated a death. A brutal reminder that she is not like the rest of the world, that she has no place in it.
She forces a smile. “I’ll live.”
Oliver doesn’t laugh. He steps in front of her and takes her face in his hands. “Talk to me, Bea. Please.”
Looking into his eyes, her smile falters. She lets her mask slip. “I’ll live.” Sharp tears sting her eyes as the weight of her words settles heavy in her bones. She’ll live. And she’ll live and she’ll live and she’ll live.
“I know,” Oliver says. His hands fall away.
Her gaze slides over the horizon, to the spot where black smoke trails into the rose-pink sky. “You knew that would happen last night, didn’t you?”
Oliver steps back so he can look her in the eyes. “I wanted to stop it. I wanted to change it. But there was nothing I could do.”
“Then why did you come?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “I may have looked you up in Aevum’s database.”
Beatrix raises an eyebrow at him. “You looked me up?”
“It was only once!”
“I only asked you to do it once,” Beatrix says. “You said it wasn’t fair.”
“This is different,” Oliver says. But Beatrix can’t see how it is. She only needed one date, one location, too.
“I couldn’t let Lucy send me to 1932 without knowing what happened to you after the Great Exhibition,” he admits.
Beatrix bristles. “I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can.” He sighs. “I just wanted closure. So I put your name into Aevum’s database. I didn’t know what would happen, but I got a hit. An identity tag for a B. Lancourt from the National Filling Factory. It’s in a museum archive in Leeds, in my time.”
Beatrix reaches for the tag hanging from the cord around her neck, her mind spinning.
“They have an exhibit on the disaster. It has a declassified report with the names of the women who worked that night. It said you were there.”
Her eyes widen. “You came back for me?”
“I won’t do it again, I swear,” Oliver says. “I’ll stay away. But last night, I had to know you were all right.”
Beatrix lays a hand against his cheek. “I am all right. And I’m glad you came back.”
“You were never supposed to know,” he says. “I thought I would just check on you. Then I saw you. You looked so lost and then—I don’t know.” He blushes. “I thought I would go back and stop it. Or I would go back to before and tell you to never go to Barnbow.”
Beatrix gasps. “Can you do that?”
Oliver shakes his head. “No. But last night, it didn’t matter. I was going to find a way. I didn’t care what happened. It was like…”
“Like what?” Beatrix prods.
Oliver meets her gaze. “Like nothing in the world mattered except for you.”
Her heart pounds against her ribs. “That’s a foolish idea.”
“Then I guess I’m a fool.”
“But you didn’t do it,” she says, her voice no more than a whisper.
“I couldn’t leave you like that,” he says gravely. “That’s when I knew.”
“What did you know?” Her words sit heavy in the silence between them, a mocking invitation to ruin everything. Because Beatrix fears—knows—what Oliver will say. She can see it in the way he looks at her, hear it in the way he says her name, feel it in the soft touch of his hand on hers.
Oliver studies her face for what feels like hours before he speaks. “I couldn’t let something like that happen again. There’s something coming, and I need you to know about it.”
Beatrix’s eyes go wide. “You can’t.”
Oliver ignores her protest. “It’s decades away, and you can’t tell a soul, but…” His eyes shine with fear. “I can’t bear the thought of you going through something like last night again. Or worse.”
An icy chill runs down her spine. “Another explosion?”
He takes her hand and guides her to the bed. He sits next to her on the edge, his summer-sky eyes dark and serious. “This war will come to be known as the First World War. World War I.”
Her heart plummets. “There’s another one?” Tears well in her eyes. Another bloody war. A world war. Did they learn nothing?
Oliver tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I need you to make me a promise.” His voice is low and urgent. Terrified. “Stay out of London.”
Beatrix pulls away from him. “What?”
“Not forever,” he assures her. “From September 1940 to May 1941, at the very least. Please.”
Her pulse quickens. “What happens in London?”
Oliver avoids the question. “Promise me you won’t be there.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” he asks.
“World War II and you want me to run? I can help.”
“Britain is on the winning side,” Oliver says. “They don’t need your help.”
Beatrix searches his face. “Are you sure?”
Oliver clenches his jaw. He’s not. He can’t be. “London will be bombed for eight months straight. Thousands of people die.”