20. February 24, 1711 Venice, Italy
Beatrix studies Oliver in the moonlight reflecting off the canal. Whatever thought he is lost in, she can’t read it on his face. “Why do you want more time?”
Oliver straightens, and his hands fall from the white stone balustrade. “Do you remember in the piazza, when I asked what you wanted to do before you die?”
Beatrix nods.
“I want to do everything.”
And that is the problem, isn’t it? Too much world to see, too many adventures to have, too many people to meet and know and love, and so very little time for any of it. It will never be enough.
His brow furrows. “Don’t you?”
Beatrix shakes her head. She has had enough of adventures and people and love.
“But you could do it.” His voice is laced with awe.
“Not everything.” Nothing that matters. Nothing she longs for when she lies awake at night, staring into a darkness she swears stares back at her, threatening to swallow her whole.
“Well, I’m going to try,” Oliver says.
“With time travel?”
“And this.” He pulls a leather-bound notebook from the pocket inside his coat.
Beatrix eyes it skeptically. “Your diary?”
He laughs. “It’s a list of things I want to do, places I want to visit, people I want to meet.”
She scrunches up her nose. “It’s rather small for a book of everything, isn’t it?”
“Time travel isn’t faerie magic. There are rules. I need to be selective,” he explains.
Her lips tilt into a crooked smile. She gives Oliver a knowing look.
“What?” He narrows his eyes at her.
“Which very selective part of ‘everything’ were you trying to accomplish on the streets of Venice with a concealed identity, exactly?” Beatrix asks, feigning confusion.
Oliver opens his journal and flips to a page near the front. He points to a line of text printed in neat, blocky handwriting. “Dance until dawn. What better place than Carnevale in its heyday?”
“You came all the way back here to just… dance?”
His cheeks flush pink.
“Oh, I see.” She grins, and his blush deepens. “What else do you have written in there?” She reaches for the journal, but Oliver pulls it away.
He snaps it shut and slips it into his pocket. “I’m sorry, is the woman dancing through Venice in a stolen dress judging me?”
“Borrowed dress,” Beatrix corrects. “I plan on returning it before Lady DeSallowe even notices it’s gone. Which, unfortunately, means I need to get back.”
He offers her his arm. “Walk you to your door? If I’m not too much of a scoundrel, that is.”
She loops her arm through his. “I’ve met worse.”
Oliver contemplates the sea of stars above them as they walk along the canal, the night’s cool breeze ruffling his dark hair. “What are the chances we’d meet twice?”
“You tell me,” Beatrix says. “You’re the scholar.”
He shakes his head. “Impossible.”
But she has learned not to put so much weight behind that word. “Nearly.”
“So, what have you been up to?”
Beatrix considers how best to consolidate one hundred years of her life. “I survived the plague.”
Oliver looks horrified, but she laughs. Sometimes that was all she could do.
They are almost at the manor when he glances down at her with an amused smile. “You haven’t asked me a single question about the future. Aren’t you curious?”
The times will change. Living across four centuries has taught Beatrix that lesson well. Still, she’d rather not know exactly how. Her days already blend together without knowing what comes next. “I’d rather be surprised, like everyone else.”
“Fair enough,” Oliver says. “No spoilers from me.”
Beatrix gives him a quizzical look. “Spoilers?”
Oliver grimaces. “Forget I said that.”
They reach the manor, a four-story brick building the color of bisque, with white stone balconies and arched windows. Beatrix leads Oliver through the tiled courtyard to the servants’ entrance, but she can’t bring herself to open the door. “Thank you for the unforgettable evening.”
“The pleasure was all mine,” Oliver says.
She opens her hand and offers him his coin. His fingertips brush against her palm, and the memory crashes over her like a wave. A different coin. A different city. But the same man, one hundred years later. Impossible and real and here and now.
Her heart races. Oliver has met her twice, a century apart. Couldn’t they do it again?
“Can I meet you next time you’re around?” She hopes she doesn’t sound as desperate as she feels. “I wouldn’t be any trouble.”
Oliver smirks at her, and it eases the tension in her chest. “Says the woman who picked my pocket.”
“No more trouble than usual, then,” Beatrix says.
Oliver’s half smile falters. “I won’t be back for another six years.”
“I don’t mind waiting.” Six years is practically no time at all.
He frowns. “I only get twelve hours in the past before I’m recalled to my time. Not a second more.”
Beatrix squeezes her eyes shut. He is trying to let her down gently, and she is making a fool of herself.
He has just said he’ll never have enough time to do everything he wants—that he has to be selective—and here she is, asking him to waste that time with her.
She opens her eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You need to use your time wisely.”
Oliver looks like she’s slapped him. “What? No, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then how did you mean it?” Her heart pounds against her ribs.
The look in his eyes is caught between horror and pity. “You’d really wait six years for a twelve-hour visit?”
Beatrix thought she’d be used to the constant ache of loneliness by now, that it would have dulled with time.
But it is still sharp, still raw. Still hollows her out a little more each night as she lies awake in the dark, wondering how much of her will be left when another year or ten or fifty have passed.
“Yes.” The truth is she’d wait longer. She’d wait for less.
Oliver smiles. “Then I guess I’ll see you there.”
Her heart swells.
“London,” he clarifies. “The second of March. In 1717?” He says it like a question, like Beatrix might have second thoughts.
“I can’t wait,” she says, though that is precisely what she will do.