Sins of Omission

by Irina Shapiro

  “What about you? You don’t need me?” Jem asked, his voice breaking.

  “Jemmy, I love you and need you, but it would be selfish of me to deny you a chance at a better life. I give you my word that I will always be there for you. I will visit you once I return to England, and you will always be welcome in my house. Perhaps we can ask Nicholas to make me your legal guardian should anything befall him before you reach majority. Would that make you feel safer?”

  Jem nodded. He wanted to rage at Hugo and protest, but he knew that what Hugo said made sense and couldn’t deny it.

  “Jem, will you give Nicholas a chance?”

  “Yes, I will,” Jem agreed, but his expression was still mulish. “I will think like a man, and consider my future prospects, but I wish I had a choice in the matter. Sounds to me like you’ve decided everything between you, and my feelings don’t matter much to anyone.”

  Hugo gathered Jem into his arms. The boy tried to push him away, but Hugo just held him tighter until he began to relax. Jem buried his face in Hugo’s chest; his shoulders finally slumping in surrender.

  “Jem, your feelings have always mattered to me, and nothing will change that. They matter to Nick as well. He’s just so overcome by finally meeting you that he’s not thinking very clearly; he wants to make up for lost time. Take as long as you need. Nicholas will wait until you are ready to go. And try to think on the bright side,” Hugo added.

  “Which is?”

  “That now you will have two families. You will always have us, and now you will have a father and stepmother, who is very eager to meet you from what I hear. She’s longed for a little boy all these years, and now she’ll have one.”

  Jem raised his face and gave Hugo a quizzical stare, but didn’t say anything. He was still trying to figure out these convoluted adult relationships and his place in them, but he’d been placated for the moment.

  “I’ve asked Nicholas to stay with us, so you can have time to get to know each other. Perhaps you can show him something of Paris; he’s never been. I wager Nicholas would love to see some of your favorite places, and I know he has a fondness for sweets, just like you. You can take him to that brasserie that you and Frances love. What do you say?”

  “All right,” Jem replied as he slid off the bale. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  Jem was surprised when Hugo held out his hand. Jem took it and shook his hand, making him feel extremely grown up.

  “Thank you, your lordship,” Jem said as he smiled up at the older man.

  “For what?”

  “For not treating me like a baby.” Hugo patted Jem on the shoulder.

  “Jem, you saved my life. You are a man in my eyes, and a man deserves to be treated with respect.”

  Jem smiled and pulled Hugo down to his level. He gave him a warm hug and kissed his cheek. “Can a man say that he loves you?” he asked as Hugo hugged him back.

  “Always.”

  Chapter 61

  I adjusted my bodice after feeding Valentine and hoisted the baby onto my shoulder. The day outside was simply glorious; a June morning that lifted the spirits and made the heart sing. Valentine’s eyes were already closing since it was nearly her nap time, so I grabbed a book from my dressing table, and made my way to the garden. The house was usually quiet at this time, with Frances still in bed, Archie tending to the horses and any other little things that he perceived needed doing, and Hugo spending an hour with Jem in an effort to teach him some Latin. I’m not sure who was more frustrated with these efforts, but they both appreciated the time spent together, especially now that Jem’s prospects had so radically changed.

  Nicholas thought it best not to interfere with Jem’s routine, so he went out for a walk along the Seine. He’d arrived only yesterday, but already it felt as if Nicholas Marsden had been a part of our lives for much longer than a day. Nicholas was a few years older than Luke, and darker in his looks, but he had the same easy charm and good humor, which made it easy for him to fit right in. I was struck by the similarities between him and Jem when I finally saw them together. Hugo thought that Jem favored Margaret in looks, but since I’d never met the woman, I could only see Nicholas in him. There was no doubt in my mind that Jem was truly his son. I didn’t need a paternity test to see that they shared blood. What I found intriguing was the obvious similarity in mannerisms in two people who hadn’t met until yesterday. It reminded me how much stronger nature could be than nurture. I had no doubt that once Jem and Nicholas got past the awkwardness of getting to know each other, they would grow very close and develop a bond that would be rock solid.

  Jem would be leaving us soon, and losing him would be the equivalent of having a limb amputated, especially for Hugo. Jem was such a part of our lives, such a fixture. I couldn’t imagine a life in which Jem was no longer there. Nicholas promised to give their relationship time to develop, but I could see the impatience in his eyes as he looked at his son. He wanted to take Jem home, to start teaching him about the life he was born to, and familiarizing him with the running of the estate. In my modern eyes, Jem was still a child, but by seventeenth-century standards, he was practically a man. Had Margaret lived and Jem remained in Cranley, he’d already be doing an apprenticeship of some sort to prepare him for the life ahead, and enable him to learn a skill which would support him and his future family.

  Even Clarence, who was now fourteen, was already taking on the running of his estate in Kent, and the responsibility for all the people on it who were dependent on him for their livelihood. Childhood was short and often grim in this period in history; innocence and naiveté quickly extinguished as the realities of life set in. One only had to look at Frances to see the difference. How different her life might have been had she been born in the future. Funny, I’d always thought that my life had been extremely complicated, but compared to the uncertainty and hardship I’d endured over the past two years, my life in the twenty-first century had been a walk in the park.

  I put aside my grim thoughts as I emerged outdoors. The garden was bathed in soft sunshine, the bees droning lazily as they made their way from fragrant bloom to fragrant bloom. I settled Valentine on a blanket in the shade of a chestnut tree and sat next to her with my book. I’d have loved a good thriller or even a titillating romance, but I had to settle for a well-read volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets since there were hardly any books in English in the house, and I felt that I was speaking French enough as it was. I turned the dog-eared pages to my favorite sonnet, which I reread at least a few times a week.

  Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  Admit impediments. Love is not love

  Which alters when it alteration finds,

  Or bends with the remover to remove:

  O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,

  That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

  It is the star to every wandering bark,

  Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

  Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

  Within his bending sickle's compass come;

  Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

  But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

  If this be error and upon me proved,

  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

  I closed my eyes, having recited the poem out loud to myself. It never failed to bring me pleasure. I turned my face up to the gentle sunshine, enjoying its golden warmth. It was vulgar for a gentlewoman to have anything resembling a suntan, but I took off my wide-brimmed hat for a few minutes a day, telling myself that it was a good source of Vitamin D, and therefore necessary to my good health.

  I smiled as a shadow fell on my face and blocked the rays of the sunshine. “Sit down, I’ll read to you,” I said without opening my eyes. Hugo frequently joined us in the garden after his lesson with Jem, and having struggled with the boy for an hour, enjoyed a few moments of peace as I read to him.

  “Thank you, but I have other plan
s for the rest of the morning.”

  The voice was pleasant, but not quite right. My eyes flew open to see a dark shadow in front of me. It took a moment for my vision to adjust, but it was long enough for my heart to register what my mind was already screaming. The man in front of me wasn’t Hugo, but Max, and at that moment, I was actually glad to see him. Max looked remarkably well for someone who survived the ordeal of being sent down to the West Indies for indentured labor. His clothes were not fashionable, but well-made and of good quality, as were his shoes. He was leaner, but stronger, if the bulge of his biceps beneath the velvet coat was anything to go on. Max’s hair was longer than it had been in the twenty-first century, and he wore a goatee which only accentuated his lean cheeks and the remains of a deep tan.

  But what had changed the most were his eyes. The Max I had initially known, before his ill-fated attempt on Hugo’s life in a moment of pure lunacy, had warm brown eyes, full of humor and light. They were the eyes of a man who knew his place in the world, and was pleased with his prospects. The Max who stood before me now had eyes that were hard and cruel, but crinkling with a mirth which came from a place of cynical irony rather than humor. My joy at seeing him alive quickly dissipated, leaving in its place a nagging fear.

  “My God, Max, I’m so glad to see you alive,” I said carefully as I watched his face for any indication of his intentions. “What are you doing here? How did you manage to escape from Barbados?”

  “So, you know all about that, do you?” he asked pleasantly. “Neve, please take the child and follow me,” Max requested calmly.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I replied as my mind whirred frantically. I didn’t want Max to see Hugo, especially since Hugo was still not fully recovered, but I needed help to thwart whatever Max had in mind. The only person who could take on Max was Archie, and he’d gone out after breakfast and wasn’t back yet. I was on my own.

  Max withdrew a pistol from the waistband of his breeches and pointed it straight at my heart. “Please, take the child and follow me,” he repeated. “I know you think that I won’t shoot you, but believe me, I have nothing left to lose, Neve. I don’t want to harm you, but I will if I must.” Max deliberately moved his arm, pointing the gun at the sleeping child. “Now, milady,” he added, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  I grabbed the child and walked in front of Max as he maneuvered me toward the little-used gate in the back wall. He must have forced the lock because as far as I knew, no one had the key to that gate; it’d been lost years ago. I tried to glance back at the house, but Max pushed the barrel of the pistol against my back, urging me on. “Don’t even think of screaming. It will do you absolutely no good, and wake up the child, which will only complicate matters.”

  A closed carriage waited in the street, the horses stomping nervously as if they sensed that they were involved in something nefarious. Max pushed me into the carriage and locked the door from outside before he jumped onto the bench and took up the reins. The carriage rolled away at a stately pace as if the occupants were just out for a leisurely ride rather than being abducted by a madman who’d risen from the dead and was intent on some kind of twisted revenge.

  I saw the streets of Paris pass by outside the small window of the chaise. It was hard to orient myself without any major landmarks, but I suspected that we were heading south. Why? What was there? Perhaps Max wanted to take me to wherever he was staying, but why? What did he want with me? And how was it possible that he was here in Paris after being sent to Barbados six months ago? How had he managed to escape, and how had he known we were here? Someone must have helped him, but who? Who could Max possibly know in seventeenth-century France, and why would he not try to make his way home to his real life? Had I managed to escape captivity, my first thought would have been of returning to my own place and time. My only chance of getting out of this situation was to understand what Max was about and try to somehow talk him out of it. I couldn’t take him on physically, so my only weapon was reason, but having seen the gleam of insanity in Max’s eyes when he pointed the gun at Valentine, I wasn’t sure if reason was something that could still reach him.

  I tried to remain calm as I cradled the sleeping baby in my arms. “We’ll be all right, my darling,” I cooed to Valentine, but I was really trying to convince myself. How long would it take Hugo to notice that we were gone, and how would he know where to look for us? “Oh, God,” I moaned as memories of another carriage ride, one that took me to Newgate Prison, welled up inside me, turning my anxiety to terror. Max had tried to kill Hugo once, but perhaps he’d hit on another tactic of getting at him, through his wife and child.

  I shivered with apprehension as the carriage finally came to a stop and Max opened the door, inviting me to step out. I wasn’t sure exactly where we were, but this part of Paris didn’t look respectable. It was a slum. There were no houses nearby; and the ones I could see in the distance were no more than tumbledown shacks. The ground was uneven, covered with withered-looking tufts of grass and litter. I noticed a broken shard of pottery; a few planks which had rotted and turned brown, and several pieces of metal, which at some point might have been tin cups or some kind of tools, which were now nothing more than rusted wands poking out of the ground.

  Max took my elbow and pulled me toward a dark opening gaping in the barely noticeable hillock. A wooden lintel indicated that at some point this entrance might have been used for something, but right now, it looked completely deserted. The narrow passage descended steeply into the bowels of the earth where an old ladder protruded from what appeared to be a hole in the ground. I looked at Max, wondering if pleading might help, but Max just shook his head. “Get down,” he said.

  “I can’t; I’ve got the baby.”

  It wasn’t particularly cold in the cave, but I was shivering uncontrollably, my mind racing as my terror mounted. What was Max’s plan? What if he simply took the ladder and left me and Valentine to die? Did he, in some twisted way, blame me for his predicament? I had nothing to do with his arrest or deportation, but perhaps he didn’t see it that way. He’d suffered, that was clear from the look in his eyes, but why did he want to punish me? What had I done? Did he blame me for finding the passage, or for choosing Hugo over him? I’d never made any promises, but for some reason, Max took it for granted that we had a future together. Had I led him on in some way?

  And then it dawned on me, and I nearly fainted as a blinding light of clarity assaulted my senses. Max had attempted to kill Hugo because he feared for his status as Lord Everly. Hugo had been meant to die in 1685, but instead, I’d saved his life, and had brought him to the future to escape arrest for treason and execution. And now, I was Hugo’s wife, the mother of his child, the woman who had altered the past, and therefore, the future. Max didn’t know what he would be coming back to if he allowed me and my child to live. The life he left behind might not be the life he returned to if the succession had been altered. The birth of Valentine changed everything, and if Max chose to leave us to die in this hellhole, Hugo would never know what happened to his wife and child, would not be able to remarry or father another legitimate heir unless they found our remains, and therefore still leave everything to Clarence, allowing Max to eventually inherit as he was meant to.

  “Max, please, don’t make me go down there,” I pleaded, but Max barely paid any attention to me as he took the baby and pushed me roughly toward the ladder. “You can climb or you can fall; the choice is yours,” he growled. I grabbed on to the ladder and made my way down, feeling for the next step in the darkness. The opening above grew smaller as I descended, the darkness more oppressive. Max watched as I made my way down, then followed with Valentine. It was easier for him to hold on with one hand since he didn’t have long skirts to deal with. He handed the baby back to me after finally reaching the bottom, and motioned for me to step away from the ladder.

  Several lanterns sat on a wooden plank, and Max lit them, illuminating the deserted mine. It was relatively wide, with
a low ceiling supported by old, rotten beams. I prayed that he wouldn’t force us to go deeper since the mine seemed to disappear into the darkness, the damp breath of the earth reminding me that it might go on for a mile or more. I nearly screamed as I saw a grinning skeleton propped up against one of the walls, its head tilted to the side as if it were watching us. Several more human bones were scattered around, probably by animals who’d burrowed their way into the tunnel.

  Max ordered me to go a little further into the shaft, but allowed me to stop before descending deeper. There was a makeshift bench, which he graciously invited me to sit on. I clutched the baby, hoping she wouldn’t wake up just yet. I needed my wits about me, and a wailing child would prevent me from thinking rationally.

  “What do you think of this place?” Max asked conversationally. “In two hundred years or so, this will be a major tourist attraction -– The Catacombs of Paris. Thousands of skeletons will line the walls, creating a macabre draw for people who are fascinated with death. Most of them will just walk through the tunnels, taking it all in without ever really thinking about the people whose skulls stare at them in mute horror. But all those people had lived, had loved, suffered, and feared death as much as you and I. Will you be one of those people, do you think?”

  He was enjoying himself; I could see that. This wasn’t something that he’d just thought of on the spur of the moment; this was a well-thought-out plan, and a prepared speech. He was trying to scare me, to intimidate me, and God in Heaven was it working. I knew I had to try to talk to him, to reason with him, but my wits had deserted me. I was numb with fear and panic, but I had to think of something to say. I had to save my baby.

  “Max, why have you brought us here?” I asked, hoping my voice wasn’t dripping with accusation. My only chance of escape was in talking him around, and infuriating him wouldn’t help.

  Max sat down opposite me, placed the pistol on the wooden plank, and planted his hands on his thighs. “I suppose I owe you an explanation,” he replied, smiling at me as if we were about to order dinner at some restaurant and he was apologizing for being late.