Page 73 of Across Time

My throat tightens at the thought.

Please God, don't let it be either of those. I wanted Henri to be happy after I left, and I do hope he had a family. I’m just not ready to witness it firsthand.

* * *

Within thirty minutes there's a bustle at the door, and a woman strides in with a retinue behind her. She is in her early forties, perhaps, wearing a Chanel suit and subtle but clearly expensive jewelry. There’s a diamond on her finger that could easily pay for my last year at Penn. To my relief, she does not look at all like Henri. She’s blonde like me, and blue-eyed as well—but they are not the eyes of a time traveler, which is also a relief.

She dismisses Philippe and the men who followed her in with a mere nod of the head, and perches elegantly on the edge of my mattress.

"Hello, Amelie. I’m Cecelia," she says with a fond smile. “You’re probably a little confused right now.”

I meet her gaze warily. "How...how do you know who I am?”

Her smile grows slightly wistful, sad, and my stomach drops. I pray she’s not thinking of Henri and Marie-Therese when she smiles like that.

"You’re so young. I hadn’t realized how young you were,” she says, a hand smoothing over my hair. “But I think it might be best if we exchange very little information. It was brought to my attention that your arrival here would go…poorly. And perhaps I should not have intervened..." her brow furrows. "I hope I've made the right choice. I didn’t want you to suffer the way you would have.”

She knows I'm a time traveler. I feel a small skittering panic and try to rein it in, running my tongue over my dry, chapped lips.

"So you’re friends with Marie-Therese and Henri?” I ask.

Her expression gives nothing away. "Naughty girl. Don’t try to trick me into giving you information. Now I've rescued you, but I have a condition. It will probably sound a bit extreme, but I need to know that my rescue will not change what’s going to happen from here.”

“What is going to happen?”

She laughs to herself and shakes her head. “I’m not telling you that, because telling you would change it. So here is my condition: the next three weeks need to go as they would have, had I not intervened. So you must remain in Paris for that period of time, and you can’t see anyone until it’s through.”

I open my mouth to object and she holds up her palm, very clearly a woman used to getting her way. “Are you glad now that Marie-Therese wouldn’t fix your ankle?” she asks abruptly.

My mouth falls open. How she knows what happened is a mystery, but I can’t argue with what she’s saying, even if a part of me wants to. Denying that I’m happy I stayed also means denying all those afternoons with Henri. It means wishing away our hours on the porch spent reading, the days we went riding, or watching the sun descend. It means there’d be no dancing, there’d be no kiss.

“Yes,” I admit. “I’m glad.”

“I know for a fact that you want the future you will have if you remain for the next three weeks and do as I say. And I don’t know that you’ll still have that future if you leave before then.”

I want to trust her, but she must have a motive of some kind. “Maybe I’ll have a future I like just as much.”

She gives me a look—exasperated and amused, as if she already knows what I will decide but is humoring me by continuing to debate this. “You will gamble so many times in the coming years. Please don’t gamble with this.”

"How do I know you're actually trying to help me? How do I know you're not just trying to keep me here so I don't do something I’m supposed to do?"

She smiles. "You don’t. I suppose this is the first of your many gambles.”

I look at her. She seems nice enough. She did rescue me, and if she wanted to stop me from leaving, she probably has the power to keep me drugged for the next three weeks.

“Okay. So what am I supposed to do here?”

"Recover,” she says. “It’s what you’d have done anyway, just in much more difficult conditions. I’ve arranged a hotel room for you, and everything will be taken care of. You won't see me again, but Louis or Philippe will be nearby at all times and can get you whatever you need.”

"I don't think I need..."

"A guard? I'm sure you do not," she says with a soft smile. "But I cannot risk any harm coming to you here, and I’m changing the past a bit, simply by interfering, so let me reassure myself you'll come to no harm."

A bodyguard is better than being locked up for the next three weeks. I nod, reluctantly, and she rises. “Be well, my friend. We will see each other again."

She leaves, and I find myself alone and awake for the first time since I got back. There’s a TV on the wall across from me. A menu on the nightstand that probably offers all the foods I missed. I ignore both, closing my eyes, trying to picture what Henri and Marie are doing now. No, not now, I correct. In 1938, what are they doing? It’s nearly lunch. Marie is probably teaching English or German and Henri is in the fields. In a month or two he will see me again during my attempt to try out my ankle—and what will happen then?

My last memory is of him running up the hillside, perhaps to change my mind, and his last memory of me is yet to come—it’ll take place two months ahead, and I pray it isn’t a memory of me stumbling away from him after he’s kissed me.