Chapter 33
She recognized the dour look in his eye. The same expression had been plastered on his face when they first met all those months ago. Hands clasped behind his back, he followed her slow gait whilst looking ahead at the pale brown hills in quiet contemplation. His distant demeanour made her heart ache in a strange way. It was clear he was holding something back. She had to find a way to break the ice.
She nervously played with the hem of the tartan shawl. “So, what did you and Phoebe speak about?”
“I was simply thanking her and Mr. Randall.”
She could read between the lines of his humble words. Knowing Henry, his simple thank-you was probably monetary compensation, and she was both relieved and embarrassed by the possibility. She wanted to ask more and dispute his kindness, as she had saved up months to repay the family, but was tongue-tied and nervous. Why was she so nervous?
Because you need to finally tell him the truth.
Her stomach flipped.
“Mrs. Randall mentioned a black man becoming president of the United States,” he said.
She halted in her tracks. “How … how the heck did she know that?”
A slow smile spread across his face. “So, it is true.”
“Yes, but wait. How did she know, and why did she tell you?”
“It would seem you often spoke about your futuristic world when under the influence of laudanum.”
She pressed a palm to her forehead. “God, she must think I’m a real loon. I wonder what else I said.”
“I believe you also spoke kindly about a Mr. Asheford.”
“Haha, real funny.”
“Nothing funny about that. How did Mrs. Randall put it? Ah, yes, that you spoke about me with nothing but endearment.”
“So, you’re telling me all this time Phoebe knew I was from the future and I was infatuated with a man called Henry Asheford.”
“It would seem so.”
The bothered edge to his voice made her nerves spike.“I feel like an idiot.”
“Shall we blame it on the laudanum? The devil’s drug can loosen all lips.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Expression hardening, he looked away. “I will not force the conversation if you’re not ready to speak about it.”
He stood tall with a stoic look in his vibrant eyes. There wasn’t a hint of chaos in them. Even his posture had changed. He was no longer vibrating with uncontrolled emotion, and with his gauntness gone, the once twisted husk of metal was hammered into something reinforced and shiny, seemingly overnight.
She swallowed hard. Huh. How had she not noticed that change before? Had she been too blinded by her need to protect his fragility to notice signs of his recovery? The realization that maybe she had used his so-called fragile state as an excuse to not speak out made her stomach sour.
Enough with the excuses already.
“I am ready,” she said, the words falling out with ease. “Follow me.”
She turned and walked down the path toward the village. As the wind picked up, she tucked her chin into her shawl and kept her gaze firmly on the ground. They rounded a corner, and the wiry, crooked oak came into view. It was the same tree she had brought Elias to.
Sat alone looking over the valley of burnt red, its turning leaves swayed in the wind. The morning sun was gone, replaced by an approaching storm of cold grey. Below, the valley was a vast, empty land with jagged stone markings and fading auburn hills. The air was frigid, a blend of damp soil and eroding vegetation.
“It’ll soon rain,” Henry said, his gaze fixed on the valley.
The incoming rain was another push for Eva to move forward. Without allowing herself any time to reconsider, her hand slipped in the crook of his arm, and she guided him to a faint trail that descended the slope. Mud squelched beneath her boots. Dried bushes nipped at her skirt. The lower they went, the more they were sheltered from the frigid wind. Once they reached the foot of a hill, she let go of Henry’s arm and proceeded to climb.
There was something important about doing this last part of the trek alone. She was on a pilgrimage to her past, reliving her haunting trauma to find answers to the injustices she had faced. The higher she climbed, the more her nerves electrified with hope. It gave her an odd sense of solace to know she would face the spot where she had almost died with a newfound strength and courage. It would be a final screw you to the people who had brought her there, the last shedding of fear, a rebirth into the strong woman she wanted to be.
Upon reaching the small stream, a strong wind billowed her skirts. She held out a hand to shield her face from the blistering cold.
“This is where I was found,” she said, a little too loudly.
“Here? By the stream?”
“You told me to find water.”
“Pardon?”
“I was so dehydrated that I began to hallucinate you. For days after I escaped, you followed me, pestering me to find food and water. I told you to go away. Of course, that didn’t work, because fictional Henry had the balls to say he’d become the prickle in my behind. Or maybe you were the gorse bush,” she added, recalling their earlier conversation at Bondieux House. “Whatever you were, you were always with me.”
Without a word, he held still as he fixed his gaze on the stream.
A nervous sensation fluttered in her belly, like a thousand frantic moths. Yes, he had always been with her. Not only as a helpful teasing hallucination but as the recurring devil that haunted her nightmares.
“Do you remember what I told you about how I came to be here?” she said.
“You were kidnapped, beaten and taken up north. They are words not easily forgotten.”
“And I was drugged and managed to escape.”
He inhaled. “Thus, finding yourself lost on the Yorkshire moors.”
Her hands began to shake. “Drugs have a funny way of making you forget things, don’t they? For the longest time, I couldn’t remember details of my attack. Yesterday, when we passed a white inn in the foothills of a valley, I remembered his name.”
“Vic,” he sneered.
“Do you know him?”
“Unfortunately. He is one of Angelo’s henchmen. The same brute I boxed shortly before my engagement announcement and who was also coincidentally at my engagement party in London.” He paused. A restlessness roiled behind his eyes, dark and cold. “Did he hurt you?”
She stilled.
“Eva,” he said, his gaze direct and tender. “Did he do more than beat you?”
“I don’t know. All I remember is the nightmare that followed nearly every night since.”
He approached, his regard intense. Jaw set in a hard line, he reached for her cold hands and nestled them against his chest.
“I’m listening,” he said.
A rush of panic overtook her. Like several times before, her body was ready to shut down, her mind willing to ignore what might have happened to her. Her senses were being bombarded by the heat from Henry’s touch, the cold, drizzling rain, the boom of her heart in her ears, the anxiety that her nightmare would harm him. But it was the warmth from his strong hands and the conviction in his aura that urged her to confess.
“It always starts in a dark room,” she spat out. “That song from your engagement party plays, a candle flickers and a devil appears.”
“A devil?”
“With black hair, black eyes, bloodied skin and a smile of a thousand sharpened teeth.”
“Certainly resembles the Vic I know. And what does this devil do?”
“He comes for me and I fight. I scream and I kick, but nothing stops him from reaching me. And just as his claws grip my neck, his”—she took a shaky breath—“his black eyes change to a startling sea blue.”
Brows furrowed, he gave her a hard look. “Sea-blue eyes,” he said, after a pause. “Do you mean to say you imagined me or – I don’t understand – did your mind imagine me as the devil that did this to you?”
“I think my brain made the connection because you were the only one I could blame for the assault.”
“And this is why you pushed me away at the inn.”
She meekly nodded.
His face turned ashen and he stepped back. She watched as he paced, emotions flashing in milliseconds as he tried to make sense of her confession. It made her feel sick. This was it. This was the moment she would undo all his healing progress.
He turned to her. “During my first week in New York, Vic told me how he had a good time with an American woman in London. In fact, he suggested that he hadn’t had the chance to have his way with her due to her feistiness and his physical injury. If his words prove true and you were the woman he spoke of, it would seem your assault was only external, hence your lack of memories surrounding the question of whether he did more.”
Her mind blanked. That wasn’t what she had expected to hear.
“It could have been another woman,” she managed.
“No.” He shook his head. “Now that I think back on it, I do not believe it would be.”
“But … but he said an American woman.”
He softly smiled. “I do not believe Vic smart enough to distinguish between a Canadian and an American accent. Besides, you were the only North American woman at that party, aside from my wretched wife to be.”
She searched his face. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“Think about it,” he said. “Vic made a point of personally telling me this story. If he knew we were lovers, it would have been an easy way to get under my skin.”
That … that did make sense. As she debated the idea, all the puzzle pieces fell into place. Henry was telling the truth. With that realization, something in her chest broke. Like a tidal wave of relief, it washed out months of worry. She reached for him, as though he would hold her in place from washing away.
He pulled her into his embrace.
She melted in the warm space between his arms. Tears tickled her eyes. “Thank you for telling me that.”
“Do you still see me as the monster in your nightmares?”
“Not for weeks.”
“Do you still fear me?”
She held onto his torso tighter. “Not anymore. I’m so sorry, Henry. I was deathly worried telling you would affect your recovery.”
“I’m still standing, aren’t I?”
She drew back to peer at him. “You truly don’t want to run off and drown your sorrows with the drug that shall not be named?”
An exhausted smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I’ve learned how to feel without letting it consume me whole. And whilst I may not be good at it yet, I’m determined to practice every day. You no longer need to worry for my sake; I am a changed man. That is a promise I make to you and to myself.”
His words brought on another wave of relief. For too long she had lived with fear. Fear that something more had been done to her, fear that her ability to love had been taken and fear that her confession would trigger Henry into a spiral of self-hatred. In the end, none of this had come to pass.
She cried now. Big, hard tears of relief.
They stood beneath the drizzling rain, the air quietly vibrating with suppressed tension. There was more to be said. They had spoken about their ordeals. They had fought, cried, supported and forgiven one another. But what did that mean for their relationship? Could they continue where they left off? She wasn’t sure.
For one, she imagined they would take several more months to fully heal, and two, something unresolved lay between them. The decision to stay in the nineteenth century or to return home. It was a decision she had been ignoring since the arrival of Lottie’s letter. She didn’t know the answer and, quite frankly, she was tired of asking difficult questions. If she could stop time and forever hold Henry, she would.
“I am so sorry for the hell I have put you through,” he finally said. “I will forever be unequivocally and desperately apologetic.”
“I’ve forgiven you, and you need to forgive yourself, too.”
“Forgive myself?”
“Not just for this, but for your brother’s death, your sister’s safety being threatened, your father’s madness. None of it was your fault.”
“Easier said than done,” he said quietly.
“Then we take it one day at a time.”
He grew quiet.
She searched his expression. It was unreadable. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Not at all.”
“Then why are you giving me that look?”
He sighed. “This is not the right moment for this conversation, but I … well, you spoke of our days, and as we are on the topic of self-healing—”
“Spit it out.”
“Demanding as always.”
“It’s about my decision to stay or go, isn’t it?”
There was a tense pause.
Blood rushed through her ears as he regarded her with a guilty look. Guess there was little choice now. She had to face the big fat time-travelling elephant in the room.
“All right,” he said, lifting his chin and squaring his shoulders. “I want you to speak earnestly with me. Have you given any more thought to whether you’d like to return to your world? I would not fault you for wanting to after what you’ve been through.”
The fluttering in her stomach intensified. “To be honest, I haven’t really considered it. Can’t we just travel to Lottie and decides what comes after?”
“I cannot do that,” he said sternly.
“Why not?”
“It’s a simple question. Do you want to return to your home?”
“That’s a simple question? Really?”
“Yes, it’s simple,” he replied.
Annoyance flared within her. “But it isn’t, is it? You of all people should know that.”
“What I know is that you miss the way you were and the things you had. You told me yourself in that Scottish abbey that you feel as if the pendulum keeps swinging, and you don’t know on which side it will rest.”
“And I know strange things keep happening to indicate that my presence here was meant to be, like Lewis and the pocket watch.”
“And that is indicative of you wanting to stay?”
Mouth agape, she hesitated. The ever-lurking thought of should she or shouldn’t she returned with a roar.
“You see? More hesitation. It’s fine to admit what you truly want,” he said.
“How can I admit what I want if I sincerely don’t know yet?”
“But you do know.”
A hot current of anger ran through her. She withdrew from him. “What do you want to hear? That I miss home? Yes! I miss my world, my people, my customs. I miss being able to parade around in pants all day without being arrested, swearing without anyone clutching their pearls, doing anything and being anyone I want … I miss it all. It’s like a phantom pain, always trailing me. But, guess what? It isn’t as easy as hopping on a train and going home.”
“Lottie has your ticket home. All you must do is decide.”
“All I must do is decide?” she said, astonished. “Well, I’ll be damned. Henry Asheford is letting me decide this time around and not forcing me against my will.”
His jaw clenched. “I was trying to protect you.”
“And what about now? Is it protection, or do you sincerely no longer want me around?”
“I’m giving you the freedom of choice.”
She scoffed.
“Because that freedom was taken from us months ago,” he continued. “Because I cannot continue our amorous days with the looming eventuality that our relationship will fall like a house of cards. Because the clock”—he paused, the pained edge to his voice forcing a lump in her throat—“Eva, the blasted clock is perpetually ticking. How many more reasons would you like? I am certain I can conjure another handful.”
“Cannot continue our amorous days? What … what are you saying?”
“That I cannot be in a romantic relationship with you while you are undecided about your fate.”
She felt an erratic thud in her chest. “But we’ve been through so much, and I don’t feel ready to make that decision. I don’t want to have to make that decision. Not when … not when…”
Not when I just got you back … not when we just made up … not when I love you.
The words lodged in her windpipe. Somehow she couldn’t say any of those reasons out loud. Logically, she knew the sudden ultimatum meant he loved her too, but her head was void of logic. All she could think was that he was shoving her in the friend zone. Tears of frustration pricked her eyes and all that came out was a weak why.
“Because the last few months have forced me to reconsider many things about who I am as a man. I want my life to be moulded by my actions anddecisions, taken in strength and not by some reactionary response. We only have one life and, by God, I’ve been given the gift of a new one. I no longer want to sully it with any more half-considerations or what-ifs—”
“A what-if? Is that all I am to you?” she asked in disbelief.
“No, God no.” He was quick to frame her face in his palms, and his determined expression faded into one of hurt. “No, my beautiful imp. Like grains of sand, you are the future that perpetually slips through my fingers. Do you not understand how continuously questioning that future hurts me? How it hinders my recovery?”
His last few words pierced her, muting her tears. She stared at a spot on his chest, lost for words.
How had she not considered that before?
Of course any form of uncertainty would hinder his recovery. Months ago, he was a man broken by fear. Now he was a soldier. He bore the scars of battle, but he was clearly stronger for it. To prevent more scars, he was standing up for himself, and that tickled something within her chest. Pride? Envy? Heartache? As always, when it came to Henry, her emotions were like a ship caught in a storm.
When she did not speak, he lifted her chin and smiled. It did not reach his eyes.
“I’m not saying goodbye, nor am I leaving your side,” he said. “I’m only giving you the space and time to choose because that autonomy is terribly important to me. Know that whatever decision you make, I am ready to support you, but until then, I cannot fully give myself to you.”
Instinct told her his words made sense, but her heart gave a harsh thump of denial. Had she not gone on an entire journey to hunt moths to discover her autonomy? Did she find it? To some degree. Although this century had grown on her, the fact she was born a woman severely hindered her independence. Was that something she was willing to forsake? Sure, back in June, she had made the snap decision to stay for Henry’s sake. But since then, time had passed, and the reality of living in this century had slapped her in the face.
He’s right…
Deep down, you know you need more time to think. You owe him a concrete answer, not one given on a whim in the name of love.
She took a deep breath. If this is what he wanted – what he needed to heal – then she had to give in, because that’s what you did for those you loved. And didn’t they always say if you love something, set it free. If it’s meant to be, the universe will align itself to make it happen, just as it had many times before. Still, that did not excuse the monumental task of deciding to leave or stay.
She looked at his hand covering hers upon his chest. Always warm, always protecting. An ache tore through her heart. Only days ago, they had nearly been reunited as lovers. Now all that had changed again.
Because he’s right.
“You’re asking me for the impossible,” she said bleakly.
“Eva.”
She reluctantly met his gaze. His expression was sad, yet reassuring.
“My little imp, my fallen star, my strange, foul-mouthed woman. You’ve defied the impossible by traversing the realms of time. This is nothing you cannot handle.”
Her lower lip shook.
But I need you.
He planted a soft kiss upon her forehead.
Something sparked where his lips touched her skin. His soft kiss felt like a final farewell, a poignant goodbye veiled in love and sorrow. It was enough to prompt fresh tears of frustration and hurt. Her fingers curled more tightly around the lapels of his jacket.
I don’t want to let you go.
I can’t…
In that moment, she was reminded of Arthur’s words. Are you happier having gone with the current? It’s made you stronger, hasn’t it?
Back then, the answer had been no. But now? She had forgiven Henry, she had healed from her injuries and she had learned the importance of letting go. It turned out that going with the current had made her stronger. This ultimatum was nothing more than a new current, and despite feeling heartbroken and a little lost, she made the decision to dive in without a fight.
She released his jacket.
His palms fell from her face. Frigid air rushed between them, like plunging into an icy pool in midwinter.
“For what it’s worth,” she finally said, wiping the tears from her face with a sleeve. “I’m proud of the man you’re becoming.”
Controlled as he was, his lips quivered as a parade of emotions flashed in his glassy eyes.
She was breathless and disoriented. “How long until we get to France?” she said.
He cleared his throat. “Two weeks with good weather,” he replied hoarsely.
“Two weeks.” She could barely get the words past her constricting throat. “I promise to give you my answer by then.”
Soul set aflame, she turned to face the barren moors. The spot where Lewis discovered her was a silent reminder that, amidst the uncertainty, answers would always be found. With a newfound resolve ignited within her, she walked forward, knowing that the strength gained from their adversities whispered of a brighter path waiting to be forged.