Revolution in Time (Out of Time #10) (2 page)

Simon frowned.

“Not enough to fill a thimble,” Elizabeth said.

Teddy grinned. “In quantum theory, that can be quite a lot.”

“Yes, well,” Simon said, calming down some now, “we’ll have to trust you on that.”

“And on other things,” Elizabeth said meaningfully, catching Simon’s eye.
 

“Yes,” Simon agreed.
 

Teddy leaned forward, excited by his task. “I’m supposed to make sure he follows the path, scientifically speaking, that he’s supposed to.”

“And nearly getting him killed was part of that, I suppose,” Simon grumbled.

“Nearly,” Teddy said carefully. “I wish things didn’t have to be the way they were. I would never make you suffer,” he said and then looked down, “if there was any other choice.”

Elizabeth stood and moved to sit next to Teddy. He smiled shyly and scooted over to make room for her.
 

She took his hand. “We know that.”

“Yes,” Simon said. “Forgive me. I’m tired and—”

“Cranky,” Elizabeth supplied, winning a very cranky look in return. “Maybe we should rest a little, too.”

“Yes,” Simon said, his shoulders not quite as square as they had been. “I’m sorry. I’m not quite myself. It’s been a trying few days.”

That was an understatement.

Simon stood. “Quite honestly, I should very much like to go home. Not that I’m not glad to see you, Teddy,” he added in actual sincerity, “but …”

He trailed off and looked to Elizabeth.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

Teddy nodded, again, not surprised.

“You knew that, too, didn’t you?” she said.

Simon frowned. “I get the feeling you know all sorts of things about our future that you’re not telling us.”

Teddy ignored him and gazed at Elizabeth. “It makes you even prettier.”

Simon actually managed to smile at that. “On that, we agree.” Then he came back to himself. “I’m sure you can understand why I’m anxious to get home, but—”

“We sort of lost the key,” Elizabeth said. “It kind of went down with the ship.”

Teddy nodded. But then, he probably knew that, too.

“Do you have another?” Simon asked.

Teddy frowned. “I don’t. It was a very special key.”

Elizabeth squeezed his hand. “I know. And I’m so grateful that we’ve had it.”

“Can you make another?”

Teddy chewed his lip and shook his head. “I can’t.” He looked at Elizabeth. “I’m sorry.”

Simon nodded, more to himself than to them, as though he’d expected to hear as much.

“Well then, it looks like we’re here for the duration. Nearly three weeks until the eclipse,” he added almost to himself. Elizabeth knew how badly he wanted, needed, to be home. “We can find a hotel tomorrow.”

Teddy shot out of his seat. “No. Please? Mrs. Dunlop is right, I don’t have many visitors. People don’t understand me. I don’t understand them, so that’s fair, I suppose. But you do, don’t you?”

He looked at Elizabeth pleadingly. She stood and took his hand again. “I do.” She glanced over at Simon, who nodded. “We’ll stay.”

“Until the eclipse,” Simon added.

Teddy beamed. “Wonderful. I don’t think it will take too long to nudge Mr. Bohr, and then we’ll have all the time in the world to ourselves. Just the three of us.”

She heard Simon sigh softly.

Elizabeth swallowed her laughter. “I can’t wait.”
 

~~~

Simon scrubbed his face with his hand as he closed the door to their bedroom behind him. “Three weeks.”

Elizabeth patted his chest and walked over to peer out the window of their second floor room. “I know. It could be worse, though.”

The grounds of Teddy’s estate were beautiful. There was a broad lawn in the back with several large shade trees and a lovely garden just reaching out to embrace spring.

Simon sighed again. She turned and walked back to him.

“There are far worse places we could spend a few weeks. It’s a beautiful house, spring is in the air, and we’re together.”

She needlessly smoothed out the lapel of his jacket. “As long as we have that last bit, does it really matter where we are?”

He shook his head and put his arms around her. “No.”

“And don’t be angry with Teddy. He’s not some mastermind behind a grand plan to make us suffer.”

Simon frowned, embarrassed at his earlier outburst. “I know that. It’s just …”

Elizabeth nodded. “I know. When you want to talk about it …”

What she’d been through didn’t hold a candle to what he’d been through on the back of that lifeboat. They risked their lives every time they went back in time, and each time it changed them a little. Usually it was for the better, but this time, she wasn’t so sure.

He tightened his arms around her, pulled her a little closer and stared into her eyes. She wished she could make the flecks of pain she saw in his go away.
 

“The important thing,” she said, “is that we made it. And made a baby, too.”

He laughed lightly at that and smiled, the first genuine smile she’d seen today. “That we did. Miracle of miracles.”

They’d been trying for months. Although, the timing of finding out while aboard the
Titanic
hadn’t been ideal; they were both over the moon at the revelation that she was finally pregnant.
 

He eased her away and looked down at her belly. “How do you feel?”

“Tired, hungry, wonderful,” she said. Elizabeth put her hand to his cheek and looked up into that face she loved so much. “Always remember that no matter how bad things get, we always have hope.”

“And each other.”

Elizabeth nodded, pushed herself up onto her tiptoes and kissed him.
 

“Always each other.”

S
IMON
FINALLY
FELT
WARM
again. Between the unseasonably warm spring days and Elizabeth, Simon was starting to feel himself again. The night of the sinking had tested him. It frayed him around the edges. Only now, a week later, were the nightmares fading.

Across the lawn, Elizabeth laughed as she knocked Teddy’s croquet ball off course. He smiled at her, as enamored as ever. Simon could hardly blame him. 

Since the day they’d arrived, Teddy and Niels had spent nearly every waking minute together—talking, walking, and working on some sort of mysterious machine in the barn. Large crate after large crate had been delivered. Each disappeared into the barn where the scientists spent most of their time.
 

At night, he and Elizabeth could see a bright light shining through the gaps in the barn’s wooden planks and glowing through the glazed windows as the Teddy and Niels worked well into the wee hours. On what, Simon had no idea. Not knowing made him uneasy, to say the least, but he feared actually knowing might be worse.

Teddy and Niels were glued together at the brain, as Elizabeth put it. They were peas in the proverbial pod, speaking a language Simon didn’t understand. While they were off in their own little world, Simon was happily left alone with Elizabeth in his.
 

She took off her sun hat and fanned herself. As if she felt his eyes on her, she turned to offer him a small wave. She’d been right about one thing; Teddy’s was a pleasant enough place to recuperate. Although with the recent depart of Niels back to England, he would have to share Elizabeth now. Not that he minded. Much.

Elizabeth and Teddy continued their game, and Simon remained content to watch. He leaned back in his Adirondack chair and a breeze came up from the North. He shivered. He wasn't even cold; it was a reflex his body had yet to unlearn.

The cold had made its way into him like a virus, into his blood and bones. He'd watched men succumb to death, to the siren’s song of comfort in the dark depths of the sea. They had simply slipped away, let go and fallen, finally resting. During that long night, men had died next to him. The few who came to ask for help when there was no room were turned away. He would never forget their faces. There was no anger, no recriminations. They accepted their fate with a grace he was sure he didn’t possess.

Others were pushed beyond physical endurance by will and love, but the fight slowly drained out of them, hour by hour. Each moment Simon felt his body giving out, he thought of Elizabeth—the sound of her voice, the curve of her cheek, the child inside her. And he found one more bit of strength. One more hour to endure to see her again. There was nothing on earth that was going to keep him from seeing her again, from seeing his child born, from holding them both in his arms.

Why his prayers were answered; why he was spared and others were not, he did not know. But he felt the weight of their loss and carried it with him.
 

That night, the future had all seemed a lifetime away. Now, as he looked around at the beautiful spring garden and heard his wife’s laughter, that night was fading just as far.
 

Somehow, he'd survived. They'd survived. He was on the cusp of a dream he'd barely allowed himself to have—a wife and child. A family of his own. Nothing would keep him from them now.

Instinctively, he looked toward Elizabeth again, but she wasn’t standing where he’d last seen her. She was sitting down on the grass at the edge of the garden. Curious, Simon stood. He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and walked over to join her. As he did, he saw Teddy lying on his stomach, his head amongst the flowers.

Elizabeth turned and smiled up at him. “My ball went walkabout. Right into the daffodils. It bent one,” she added.

“Ah.” Simon understood.

Elizabeth moved the skirt of her summer dress aside and held her hand out to him, silently asking him to join her. The sun was bright and warm here, and everything seemed right with the world in that moment. He laid his coat down on the grass and sat down beside her. She leaned back into him and he slipped his arm around her waist.

Next to them Teddy muttered quietly to himself as he worked to right the now-askew flower.

Teddy, brilliant man that he was, took OCD to a new level. It had taken them over an hour to set up the croquet course. He had measured each distance and angle carefully. His garden was comprised of perfect rows of perfect flowers, except for one bed in the middle. It was wild and already starting to overgrow. When Simon asked him why that one patch was uneven and disordered when everything else was so uniform, Teddy seemed confused by the question. It was ordered, just as much as the others. There were patterns; they just weren’t his. There was order in chaos if you knew where to look.

That was Teddy Fiske. He saw things in a way no one else Simon had ever met did. And, Simon was beginning to realize, he saw
them
in ways no one else ever did as well.

Teddy finished fixing the flower and rolled over. He held out a finger to show them a fuzzy caterpillar he’d made friends with while he tended to the flower.
 

“He looks like a Hubert to me,” Teddy said as he marveled at the creature for a moment longer then eased it back onto a leafy stem.

For a moment, Simon considered warning him that his new friend would destroy his beautiful garden, but Teddy wouldn’t care in the least. He was a gentle soul, almost to the point of fault.

Teddy picked up a bright blue croquet ball. “Do you want to keep playing?”
 

“I think I could use a little nap,” she said and then quickly added, staving off any questions about her health, “I’m fine. Just feeling content and nappish.”

Teddy nodded quickly, disappointed, but not wanting to show it.
 

As Simon stood and helped Elizabeth up, the sound of a delivery truck pulling up the driveway took Teddy’s attention.
 

“Would you excuse me?” he said. “I should ….”

“Sure.”

Teddy smiled, took a step away, then came back and gave Elizabeth the croquet ball. With another smile, he hurried off toward the truck, waving to the driver.

“What do you suppose he’s up to?” Elizabeth wondered aloud. “I thought it’d stop when Niels left, but ….”

 
Simon did, too. He’d thought Teddy would be as attached to Elizabeth as he’d been to Bohr, but so far, his attention was split between her and whatever his “secret project” was.

Considering Teddy’s last secret was the discovery of time travel, Simon found the idea of a new secret deeply unsettling but hadn’t pressed the issue. Teddy would tell them in his own time.

Elizabeth rolled her ball back toward the croquet course as they walked toward the house. Once they were in their room, she made her way over to the bed and fussed with the pillows.
 

An enormous yawn overtook her. She gave him a wan smile as she turned and crawled onto the mattress, her bottom swaying back and forth as she did.
 

“I’m no fun,” she said.

Simon laughed. “I wouldn’t say that.”

She turned and, seeing his expression, smiled slyly. Then she lay down and rolled onto her side, propping herself up on one elbow. “I don’t have to nap just yet.”

She gave him a sultry look that was quickly ruined by another overwhelming yawn.
 

“Very sexy,” Simon said.

She laughed, flopped onto her back and closed her eyes. “At least I’m not so barfy anymore.”

Simon covered her with a light quilt. “Thank heaven for small favors.”

He leaned down to kiss her but paused when her eyes opened again. They were sleepy but filled with love and contentment and gratitude.
 

He knew the feeling. They both knew how lucky they were to still have each other, and in moments like this one, the feeling was nearly overwhelming.