“We should be all right,” Nicholas said, keeping his voice low. “The trick is not to meet anyone’s eyes—”
It was like he’d been caught on a hook—one minute he was standing beside her, as tense as any of the marble statues, and the next he was running, off like a shot, jumping over the nearest bed of flowers and ruffling their bright heads. Women shrieked as he passed, men screamed after him—Nicholas didn’t bother with the crowded path around the reflecting pool, but simply cut through the water, splashing through the shallow pool and leaping out on the other side. Two little boys attempted to follow him before being snatched back by their nannies.
For a moment Etta stood still, her arm still outstretched after him. Something cold was pressed into her palm by a passing, kind-faced old man: a few coins.
“Wait—no!” she began, trying to give them back. “I’m not—never mind.”
She pocketed the coins and ran after Nicholas, trying to let the sting of being mistaken for a beggar roll off her shoulders. First time for everything, and all that.
It was easy enough to follow his dark shape through the crowds as he ran past the statues of French queens, toward the path that would lead them to the nearest road. Finally he stopped, but his shoulders blocked out what, exactly, he’d been chasing until Etta was standing directly behind him, with the gawkers collecting there.
It was a woman—older, if the lines on her face were any indication, but elegantly tall. Her dark skin was the shade of deep earth, her hair hidden beneath a plain sort of hat. Compared to the other women around her, she was dressed simply, almost as if the outfit was a uniform.
An overturned basket had crashed at her feet. Etta moved quickly, trying to gather up the tins that had gone rolling out of it down the path. When she turned, Nicholas’s hand was still on her shoulder as he spoke in gruff French. “Je suis vraiment désolé. Je croyais…ma mère…”
At that, the look of terror on the older woman’s face disappeared. “De rien.” She smiled at him, patting his hand. “Tu es un cher garçon.”
Etta righted the basket, passing it back to her wordlessly. Nicholas looked stricken, as if the whole of his chest was caving in.
“Au revoir,” the woman said, with a small wave.
“Au—uh, au revoir,” Etta managed, watching her as she hurried away.
Nicholas stared after her, swaying on his feet. Water dripped off his pants, out of his shoes.
“It’ll be best if we go unnoticed, huh?” she said.
Nicholas didn’t reply—he just stood there, rooted in place.
Better to keep moving than risk being seen by guardians nearby, or by the police. Etta hooked her arm through his and led him off the path, weaving through the trees and picnickers until she found a spot she recognized—the Medici Fountain, and the long pool stretching out in front of it.
She negotiated his big body onto the nearest bench. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head, swallowing.
Etta looked through the bag at his side, digging through it to find some kind of food to give him. Nicholas was in some kind of shock. Turning up nothing, she said, “I’ll be right back.”
With the coins the old man had given her, and some careful gesturing, she was able to buy a loaf of bread and a small glass of lemonade from a vendor. A sympathetic man was willing to move the queue behind her along by translating, and giving her the last bit of money she needed.
By the time she had made it back to Nicholas and the fountain, he’d come back to himself and was on his feet, pacing—looking for her. The relief that crashed over his features made her rush over to him, careful not to let too much of the lemonade slosh out onto her hand.
He pulled the food and drink out of her hands, setting them aside, and wrapped his arms around her. She did the same, standing on her toes, arms locked around his shoulders, and did what she’d wanted to do from the moment she’d left him there: hold him until he finally stopped shaking.
She didn’t care about witnesses. When she rocked back onto her heels, releasing him, she gestured to the bread. “I paid good money for that! You’d better eat every last bite.”
“Every last bite,” he promised, even as he tore a piece off for her. He took his seat again with a sheepish look around them. “I have to confess, I’m surprised they haven’t marked us as vagrants and thrown us out yet.”
Etta decided not to tell him where the money for the bread and drink had come from. Instead, she watched his fascinated, puckered reaction as he took a sip of the lemonade.
“My God,” he coughed, pounding his chest. “When does it stop burning?”
“In all of your travels, you never had lemonade?” she asked. “What? Only beer and wine for you?”
“Better than diseased water.” He tore the small loaf in half, bringing his piece up to his nose to smell it. The obvious pleasure on his face gave her a flush of happiness, too.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
He took a steadying breath, looking out over the water again. “I thought that woman…I caught a glimpse of her as she was hurrying across the park, and for an instant, I truly believed she was my mother.”
Etta felt the world shrink around them painfully, tighten around her shoulders, until it hurt even to breathe.
“I know it sounds mad, that it was bloody reckless, but the resemblance was uncanny. Of course it wasn’t her. She’s long dead by this year. I know it, but it was as if—” He folded his hands in his lap, shaking his head. “It was as if, for a moment, the clouds of the past cleared and gave her back to me.”
Etta leaned against his shoulder, wishing there was something she could say. “Did you ever find out what happened to her?”
He nodded. “While I was gallivanting with Julian, Hall finished the work I’d begun in searching for her—she died in South Carolina, in 1773, of a fever.” Nicholas managed to choke out one last word. “Alone. I’m not even sure where they buried her. Hall thought that, even with my papers, it was too dangerous to attempt to find the grave.”
“I’m so sorry,” she breathed out.
He rested his face against her hair.
“I haven’t many regrets in my life,” Nicholas said, “and I suppose I should be grateful that there’s just the one. As much as I do blame Ironwood, I can’t divide myself from the guilt. I should not have accepted Ironwood’s offer, and left the sea to travel. Then, perhaps, I might have found her in time, and purchased her freedom. Julian would not have fallen; I’d be free of every shackle this family has tried to place on me.”
Etta understood all too well what this kind of regret felt like as it burrowed deep inside of you. She would do just about anything to relive those last few moments with Alice, but even traveling was out of the question. She couldn’t exist in the same place—the same year—twice.
But Nicholas hadn’t been in 1773. At least not all of it. She was almost afraid to ask.
“Isn’t there a passage you could take to that year? I know you can’t save Julian, that it would change too much. And if she was sick, not even you could have kept her alive. But maybe…maybe it would bring you both some peace?”
He shook his head. “There isn’t a passage to that year. I’ve thought this through a thousand times—I’ve considered how I could get a message to Hall in the past, to keep myself from going. But as much as I wish I’d made a different choice, I can’t bring myself to be quite that selfish. To risk all of those changes rippling out.”