There was none.

Which did not necessarily mean that she was not the one.

The thing was that his soul mate never looked the same in any two lifetimes. He had seen that with some fascination when revisiting some of those lifetimes under the guidance of his guru in India. In one lifetime she had been a lean, dark-complexioned washerwoman for a noble family in ancient Egypt, and he had been a priest at one of the royal temples—far above her in station. In another life she had been the lithe, black-haired daughter of an aboriginal chief in the Americas, and he had been a captive from another tribe. She had been the daughter of a Russian landowner once, he a serf on the man’s land. And she had been a nun in medieval Italy, he a papal guard. It had been a forbidden love that time.

There had always been some impediment, of course—and always a chance to overcome that impediment, to conquer all with the power of their love for each other.

They had never made that conquest.

Not yet. But they would.

And so they were fated to meet again and again through countless lifetimes until they found the courage to choose love above all the forces, petty or otherwise, that so often appeared of more importance. This particular lesson related to romantic love, but there was more awaiting them once they had mastered it. If they could learn to choose love in its romantic guise, they could eventually learn—together—to choose it in all its many guises and to move beyond any guise to an understanding of the vast, unending breadth and height and depth of love itself.

Of the one love.

Of the one.

It had all seemed perfectly clear to Robert while he was in India recovering from his wounds. He had been able to see other lifetimes and how each time courage had failed him, or her, or both of them. He had been able to see the spirit world between lifetimes and what he and she together had discussed, with the help of their spirit guides, what they had planned and hoped to accomplish during their next incarnation.