Page 88 of Across Time

I smile. “No, I’ve got a different punishment planned for that.”

“Oh?”

“A hideous maid of honor dress. Absolutely putrid. Lime green and covered in bows from head to foot.”

She smiles at me. “I will gladly wear the putrid lime green dress. There’s nothing I want more than the two of you together.”

“Perhaps there’s one thing you’d like more?” I tease.

She flushes. A quiet happiness has come over her face. “Yes. Perhaps.”

31

The next weeks are blissful. A promise of things to come.

Marie is once again absent a great deal, finding ways to spend her afternoons and often her evenings in town. If she’s spending them with Father Edouard, she doesn’t mention it.

The weather grows crisp. When the grapes are ready we all work together, along with the hired help. Marie and I both wear shirts and trousers since there’s so much time in the dirt, and at night when I go to bathe my arms ache so much I can barely remove my clothes—it’s something Henri would, no doubt, be willing to help with, but he is gone. Out in the fields before I rise, returning long after I’ve gone to sleep.

With the hired hands on the farm, our interaction is constrained to lingering glances and a brush of hands as we pass, and on Sunday we don’t even get that much: Henri remains in the vineyard while Marie-Therese at last succeeds in dragging me to mass, insisting that no work should be done on Sunday. I’m once more the object of stares, and this time I have to suffer them alone while Marie sits with the choir, watching Father Edouard with lovesick eyes.

The moment mass concludes I am approached by Madame Beauvoir. I assume she still has no idea that Henri is the one who beat André up or she wouldn’t be speaking to me.

“I thought you’d gone back to America,” she says. I have no idea what people were told so I’m not sure how to respond, but to my vast relief Marie-Therese appears just in time.

“Madame Beauvoir was just saying she thought I’d gone to America,” I tell her with a pleading look.

Her eyes go wide, and then she nods. “Yes. How fortunate for us that storms kept her ship in Le Havre long enough that she changed her mind.”

Madame Beauvoir is looking me over once more like a prize calf. “I will come call today, then,” she says. “I’d like to hear more about your plans.”

I wait for Marie-Therese to make an excuse but she merely gives a small, pained smile. “That sounds lovely,” she says.

* * *

“What is wrong with you?” I demand once we’re walking home. “Why in God’s name would you tell that woman it would be lovely if she came to see us?”

Marie shrugs. “We live in a small town. We can’t afford to alienate our neighbors.”

“You saw the way she was looking at me,” I reply. “She’s only coming so she can find a way to foist her son on me again.”

“Well this time you’ll be there,” says Marie with a hapless smile, “so I won’t be able to agree to anything on your behalf.”

I shake my head. “I definitely will not be there,” I retort. “This is on you. And let me assure you, if you agree to anything on my behalf this time I will clear it up myself and I won’t be nice about it.”

We get to the house and I continue walking, searching the fields for Henri. I’m tired and irritated and it just feels like I’ve had enough of being away from him, of sharing nothing more than a lingering glance or the vague memory of his arrival in bed well into the night.

I find him at the far end of the vineyard, alone, since the farm hands don’t work on Sunday either.

When our eyes meet, he drops his shears, taking five large strides to wrap his arms around me and press his mouth to my neck. “God I’ve missed you,” he says with a sigh. “You seem…upset?”

I groan. “Madame Beauvoir is coming here to try to set me up with André again. Marie didn’t even try to discourage her.”

His breath ghosts along the shell of my ear and goose bumps rise on the back of my arms in response. “A ring on your finger might cure that,” he suggests.

I laugh. “And how do you propose we explain that I married my own cousin?”

His hands drift upward, cupping my breasts. “No one who’s laid eyes on you would blame me if it were true.”