Mary Balogh - Bespelling Jane Austen

“Is this,” she asked him, “what you learned in India?”

“Part of what I learned there, yes,” he said.

“That we all have a soul mate?” she asked him. “And you have come home from India to find yours?”

“Yes,” He had not removed his eyes from hers, and she found it impossible to look away. There was a buzzing in her ears. This should all sound utterly alien to her. And surely it did.

And bone-weakeningly familiar. Where had she heard it before? How did she know it?

“And have you found her?” she asked. She forgot to breathe.

“I believe so,” he said, still gazing directly at her.

She opened her mouth to speak, found words impossible, licked her lips and turned her head jerkily to gaze sightlessly at the lake.

“Me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe so, Jane.”

She got abruptly to her feet, her hands grasping the sides of her dress.

“May I ask you something?” he said. He did not wait for her permission. “When Gerald handed you down from the gig outside the vicarage earlier and introduced us, you paused before curtsying and speaking to me. Why did you pause?”

“I…I thought I knew you,” she said.

“You asked me as we were leaving the vicarage,” he said, “if we had met before. By then you must have known beyond all doubt that we had not. Why did you still believe that somehow you knew me?”

“I do not know,” she said.

“Jane,” he said softly, “are you afraid?”

“I am not afraid,” she said quickly. “Why would I be?”

“Jane,” he said again.

He ought not to be calling her that. She had not granted him permission. He was a stranger. Three hours ago she had not even met him.

But he had always known her by name. She had always known him.

“Yes, I am afraid,” she said, whirling on him. “I am afraid because if you speak the truth, then the last time we met I was the daughter of your great-aunt and you were the son of a duke, who had come to visit with her son, my brother. And you left me because your rank would not permit you to marry the daughter of a mere country vicar. You left me brokenhearted. And then a mere two weeks later you died when you crashed your curricle and I died a few days afterward when I cast myself into the river in a despairing search for oblivion.”

“Jane—” He reached out a hand toward her, his face pale and troubled.

She took a step back from him. She had never spoken those details aloud until now. She had not even realized she remembered them.

Remembered?

He was on his feet now, too, supporting himself on his cane.

“I have upset you,” he said. “I am so sorry. In India I saw a number of lives in which we loved and lost each other because we would not reach out across the barriers that held us apart. But I did not see that particular life, the last. It was not imagination, though, Jane. All that really did happen to my great-aunt’s daughter and the man who deserted her.”

“I must have overheard the servants talk,” she said. “Servants do talk.”

“Forgive me,” he said, reaching out a hand for hers. “I have upset you.”

He had. She, who never suffered from the vapors, felt very close to fainting now.

She looked at his hand and drew a few calming breaths before setting her own in it. She watched his fingers close about hers and felt his touch all the way down through her body to her toes.

And it felt so very right, this stranger’s touch.

“Was that you? ” she whispered, closing her eyes. “Was it really you?”

“I believe so,” he said, his voice low. “Miserable coward that I was.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. Oh, he was so handsome. And he was a stranger. Except for his eyes. If she kept gazing into his eyes, she could see all the way to…

“And there were other times?” she asked him. “Other lives?”

He nodded.

“We have known each other for a long, long time, then?” she said. “Forever?”

She did not know whether she wanted him to say yes or no. Terror warred with exultation.

He did not say, either. He looked at her with those fathomless, blue eyes.

“And how will it end this time?” she asked.

“That,” he said, “is up to us.”

And he raised her hand and held it against his lips.

She closed her eyes, and with a rush of sensation she felt an overwhelming sense of homecoming.

And terror.

And exultation.

ROBERT TURNED HER HAND and rested it, palm in, against his heart. He rubbed his own hand over the back of it and gazed into her eyes.

This really was she.

She looked so very different from what he had expected, though he did not know what he had expected. Not this dainty, pretty lady, certainly, with her light muslin dress and straw bonnet. Yet here she was, known consciously for the first time in human form.

His soul mate from eternity to eternity.

He took her other hand in his, raised it briefly to his lips, and held it against the right side of his chest.

He sought out her mouth with his own, touched his lips to hers, and gave himself to the kiss. For the moment there was no sexual passion, only a yearning gratitude that he had found her at last, that they had the rest of a lifetime to be together if they chose, the rest of a lifetime in which to love.

Her lips trembled against his and then withdrew. She took half a step back, though her hands remained spread over his chest.

“This is madness,” she said. “We are strangers. A few hours ago we had not even met.”

“Yes, we had,” he said.

“But that is absurd,” she said, her eyes searching his. “It has to be. This is England in the nineteenth century. The land of sanity. The age of reason. This talk of soul mates seeking each other out over centuries of lives is nothing more than insanity. A century or two ago we would have been burned at the stake for such talk.”

“Perhaps that is why,” he said, “we were not allowed a glimpse beyond the veil until now. Why is it we have both been given that glimpse this time if it is not true? And why the coincidence of our both doing so and then meeting today if it was not meant to be, if we do not belong together?”

“There is no veil,” she said. “And I have had no glimpse beyond something that does not even exist.”

“How did you know the story of Mary Mitford?” he asked her.

“As I said, I must have heard the servants at Goodrich Hall talking,” she told him.

“How old were you?” he asked.

“Four,” she said. “I went with my mother to meet Mrs. Mitford, and I was delighted to announce that I had used to live at the vicarage and that she used to be my mother. I expected everyone to rejoice with me.”

“And instead,” he said, “they all persuaded you that your words were the product of an overactive imagination, fueled by something overheard from the servants.”

“And they were right,” she said firmly.

He curled his fingers about the palms of her hands and moved them down to rest against their sides. He laced his fingers with hers. He could feel her thighs warm against his. He could feel the tips of her breasts brush lightly against his coat. He could smell the slightly floral scent of her soap. He breathed it in, the essence of her human form.

His mind was still trying to cope with the reality of it all. He had found her. He knew it was not wishful thinking. She was the one.

“There is nothing to fear, Jane,” he said, lowering his head to featherlight kisses along her jaw. “Life cannot harm us. Nothing can. We are immortal beings, encased in flesh for the purpose of educating ourselves and learning to saturate ourselves with the wisdom of love. Even if—yet again—we do not get this specific lesson right this time, we will have another chance. Endless chances. The spirit world is eternally patient.”