“It’s time,” Nicholas said quietly, offering his hand.
Again, she felt her desire for music swelling in her like an ache. Her fingers pressed against her side, and she imagined how she would try to coax a song of hidden depth, and warm, wild life, from the strings. And when she passed through the damp jungle air into the electric, shivering fingers of the passage, she mourned the fact that she would never see this place again.
ETTA FOUND HERSELF AWAKE, SPRAWLED out on the grass beneath a generous cover of shade, ears ringing, head throbbing—but awake. And not just awake, but also free of the sickening swoop of dizziness that had come hand in hand with the last passages.
She sat up, brushing a red leaf out of her hair. The crisp autumn air was practically golden as it came down through the fiery shade of the leaves overhead. When she turned, Etta wasn’t the least bit surprised to see the Luxembourg Garden laid out in front of her, a vision in the warm afternoon light.
“You were correct.” Nicholas was sitting with his back against the same tree, rubbing his face. “C’est le Jardin du Luxembourg.”
Etta couldn’t stop her small, ridiculous smile. “Say it again.”
“Pardon?” he asked.
Say it again, she thought. His voice did something incredible to the French language. The words moved through her like warm honey.
“C’est le Jardin du Luxembourg,” he repeated, visibly bewildered.
“So…what day do you think it is?”
“The same day as when we woke up in London,” he answered. He knew what she was thinking.
Etta’s dress had torn in several places at the hem, and had turned from sky blue to a brown usually reserved for muddy rivers. Her boots were crusted with dried dirt and mulch, and she didn’t need to touch her hair to know that it was standing straight up in several places.
Nicholas took a quick look around—to make sure they weren’t being watched?—and began to smooth her wild waves down, collecting her hair at the nape of her neck. He was careful not to touch her skin as he pulled a ribbon from their bag and used it to tie the mass of it back. Etta was careful not to give in to the urge to lean against his shoulder and wrap her arms around his narrow waist.
Seven days. Less.
“Shall we?” she asked.
“Let’s make a slow and careful approach of this,” he said. “I want to make sure we don’t raise too much alarm.…”
And she wanted to make sure that it would be safe for him.
The odd thing was, as they passed through the last of the trees and stood on the edge of the path, Etta couldn’t get a sense of where they were in time. The women’s fashions were somewhere between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—brightly colored, finely tailored jackets with long skirts that were bustled up in the back or decorated with layers of ruffles, exaggerating the natural curves of their bodies. Hair was hidden beneath bonnets and hats, all decorated with flowers and ribbons.
The men accompanying them, or playing games of cards or chess, wore suits and top hats. Some strolled around a large basin—a central reflecting pool—with canes. Children ran through and around the artists and their easels; women sat beside one another on benches, talking idly. It was not all that different from the Luxembourg Garden of her own time. At the head of the garden, past the large reflecting pool, was the palace itself, as stately as she remembered, standing like a section of Versailles that had broken off and wandered away.
“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.