Paris! I immediately picture elaborate gowns, stolen kisses on the Pont Neuf, gossiping with Marie Antoinette...
"I attended a dinner at a friend's house—" He pauses,his gaze moving past mine, centuries away now. "And you were working as a servant."
A servant?
"One of their servants. They were very wealthy. They had many." I lie there, stunned. This is not what I expected.
"You weren't like the others," he says, his voice lowered to almost a whisper. "You were beautiful. Extraordinarily beautiful. You looked a lot like you do now." He smiles, gathering a chunk of my hair and rubbing it between his two fingers. "And also like now, you were orphaned, having lost your family in a fire. And so, left penniless, with no one to support you, you were employed by my friends."
I swallow hard, not sure how I feel about this. I mean, what's the point of reincarnating if you're forced to relive the same kind of painful moments all overagain?
"And yes, just so you know, it was love at first sight. I fell completely and irreversibly in love with you. The very moment I saw you I knew that my life would never be the same." He looks at me, his fingers on my temples, his gazeluring me in, presenting the moment in all itsintensity, unfolding the scene as though I'm right there.
My blond hair is hidden under a cap, my blue eyes are shy and afraid to make contact, and with clothes so drab and fingers so calloused, my beauty is wasted, easily missed. But Damen sees it The moment I enter the room his eyes find mine. Looking past my scruffy exterior to the soul that refuses to hide. And he's so dark, so striking, so refined, so handsome—I turn away. Knowing the buttons on his coat alone are worth more than I'll make in a year. Knowing without looking twice that he's out of my league...
"Still, I had to move cautiously because—"
"Because you were already married to Drina!" I whisper, watching the scene in my head and overhearing one of the dinner guests inquire about her, our eyes meeting briefly as Damen says: "Drina is in Hungary. We have gone our separate ways.''
Knowing he'll be the source of scandal, but wanting me to hear it more than caring what they'll think...
"She and I were already living apart, so it wasn't an issue. The reason I had to tread cautiously is because fraternizing outside of one's class was severely frowned upon back then. And because you were so innocent, so vulnerable in so many ways, I didn't want to cause you any trouble, especially if you didn't feel the same way."
"But I did feel the same way!" I say, watching as we move past that night, and how every time I went into town, I'd manage to run into him.
"I'm afraid I resorted to following you." He looks at me, his face chagrined. "Until we finally bumped into each other so often, you began to trust me. And then... And then we met in secret—stolen kisses just outside the servant's entrance, a passionate embrace in a dark alleyway or inside his carriage...
"Only now I know that it wasn't nearly as secret as I'd thought..." He sighs. "Drina was never in Hungary, she was there all along. Watching, planning, determined to win me back—no matter the cost." He takes a deep breath, the regret of four centuries displayed on his face. "I wanted to take care of you, Ever. I wanted to give you anything and everything your heart desired. I wanted to treat you like the princess you were born to be. And when I finally convinced you to come away with me, I'd never felt so happy and alive. We were to meet at midnight—"
"But I never showed," I say, seeing him pacing, worried, distressed, convinced I'd changed my mind.
"It wasn't until the next day that I learned you'd been killed in an accident, run over by a coach on your way to meet me." And when he looks at me, he shows me his grief—his unbearable, all-consuming, soul-crushing grief. "At the time, it never occurred to me that Drina was responsible, I had no idea until she confessed it to you. It seemed like an accident, a horrible, unfortunate accident. And I guess I was too numb with grief to suspect anything else—"
"How old was I?" I ask, barely able to breathe, knowing I was young, but wanting the details.
He pulls me closer, his fingers tracing the planes of my face when he says, "You were sixteen, and your name was Evaline." His lips play at my ear.
"Evaline," I whisper, feeling an instant connection tomy tragic former self who, orphaned young, loved by Damen, and dead at sixteen—is not so different from my current self.
"It wasn't until many years later when I saw you again in New England, having incarnated as a Puritan's daughter—that I be
gan to believe in happiness again."
"A Puritan's daughter?" I gaze into his eyes, watching as he shows me a dark-haired, pale-skinned girl in a severe blue dress. "Were all of my lives so boring?" I shake my head. "And what kind of horrible accident took me that time?"
"Drowning." He sighs, and the moment he says it, I'm overcome by his grief all over again. "I was so devastated I sailed right back to London, where I lived off and on for many years. And I was just about to head off to Tunisia when you resurfaced as a beautiful, wealthy, and rather spoiled I might say—landowner's daughter in London."
"Show me!" I nuzzle against him, eager to view a more glamorous life—his finger tracing my brow as a pretty brunette in a gorgeous green dress with a complicated updo and a smattering of jewels appearsin my mind. A rich, spoiled, conniving flirt—her life a series of parties and shopping trips—whose sights are set firmly on someone else—until she meets Damen...
"And that time?" I ask, sad to see her go, but needing to know how she went.
"A terrible fall." He closes his eyes. "By that point, I was sure I was being punished—granted eternal life,but one without love."
He cradles my face in his hands, his fingers emitting such tenderness, such reverence, such delicious warm tingle—I close my eyes and snuggle closer. Focusing on the feel of his skin as our bodies press tightly together, everything around us slipping away until there's nothing but us—no past, no future, nothing but this moment in time.
I mean, I'm with him, and he's with me, and that's the way it's meant to eternally be. And while all those prior lives may be interesting, their only real purpose was to get us to this one. And now that Drina is gone, there's nothing that can stand in our way, nothing that can keep us from moving forward—except me.
And even though I want to know everything that happened before, for now it can wait. It's time for me to move past my petty jealousies and insecurities, to stop finding excuses and finally commit to taking that big leap forward after all of these years. But just as I'm about to tell him, he moves away so abruptly, it's a moment before I can get to his side.