50. July 19, 1960 En route to Paris, France
The compartment is still dark when Beatrix wakes, the only light a faint grayness around the edges of the window shades. Her watch is tucked in her bag on the rack; there is no way for her to gauge the time. There is only this moment—her and Oliver, wrapped in each other.
“Happy birthday, Bea,” he whispers beside her. He pushes a strand of wild hair out of her face and kisses her lips.
“Where are we?”
“We just left Dunkirk,” he says. “It’s early.”
Beatrix stretches, then curls into Oliver with a contented sigh. She kisses him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For this.” For everything.
He searches her face. The corner of his mouth tilts up.
“What?”
“You know, I don’t think you look a day over four hundred.”
Beatrix pulls the pillow from under her head and smacks him in the face with it.
“And I won’t be born for another two hundred years,” he continues. “Talk about robbing the cradle.”
Beatrix laughs. She stuffs her pillow under her head again. “We are absolutely absurd, aren’t we?”
“I prefer ‘made for each other.’ ” He grazes his lips along her jaw, trails soft kisses down her neck.
She smirks at him. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you’d planned this. One tiny bed. Hours until we reach Paris.”
Oliver’s brow furrows. “Planned what?”
She’d almost believe his innocence, if it wasn’t for that look in his eyes. More than mischief. She shrugs and tosses back the covers. Swings her legs over the edge of the low bed. Oliver’s arm snakes around her waist. He pulls her back down.
Her insides are suddenly full of butterflies, his desire—hers—laid bare. Her heart thuds against her ribs. He leans over her, lowers his lips to hers, and kisses her again. Not again. He has never kissed her like this before.
He leaves a burning trail of kisses down her neck to her collarbone, sends heat pulsing through her.
Goose bumps rise on her skin. She threads her fingers through his hair, pulls his mouth to hers.
Her hand drifts down his neck to his chest. His heart pounds beneath her touch.
He presses her closer, draws her body into his until there is no space between them, and it is still not close enough.
He fumbles with the buttons of her nightgown. An ache builds low inside her.
It takes everything she has to pull away.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she murmurs in his ear.
Oliver doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.” He pulls back so he can look into her eyes. “Are you?”
Her body is. The inches between them feel like miles. She wants him against her, inside her. She doesn’t want to stop. Doesn’t want this to end in twelve hours or two days or ever.
But it will, her mind whispers.
It always will, her heart beats.
She drops her head against his chest, inhales the faint scent of lavender and apples and woods that will haunt her for the rest of her days. “What are we doing, Oliver?”
He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “The best we can.”
“I can’t do this.” He wants the sex to mean something, and it would. It would mean she trusts him with all of her—her cursed body, her bargained soul, her fragile heart. It would mean she’ll stay with him until his end, mourn him until hers. It would mean she loves him. “I’m sorry.”
He tips her chin until she is looking into sky-blue eyes. “You don’t need to apologize.”
She sits up. Her nightgown slides down low over her left shoulder, her top buttons undone. She reaches to fasten them, to hide the evidence of her longing, of how close she came to losing control of herself.
“What’s that?” Oliver asks.
Beatrix looks down. The edge of a scar peeks out from beneath the cool cotton. “I don’t think you want to know,” she says.
“I want to know everything.” He looks just like he did that night in Venice, standing on the Rialto Bridge, telling her he would believe the story she told him.
Her heart thuds beneath the scar. She has never told a soul how she got it. Not even William. He thought she fell from a tree.
She brushes the fabric aside, exposes the raised pink line. It hasn’t faded with the years, frozen in a moment like the rest of her, forever reminding her of the day she should have died.
The first time.