“You will be able to escort Amelia home later, Rob,” Gerald said, rubbing his hands together and looking pleased.

“And it is only right that a young lady have an escort,” Great-Aunt Dinah added.

Miss Jane smiled sweetly at her.

“You will all come to Goodrich Hall tomorrow evening,” Miss Louisa said. It was a command more than an invitation. “Father and I will honor Mrs. Mitford’s birthday with a gathering of our neighbors.”

She looked about her with condescension as though she were conferring a great honor—as, Robert supposed, she was. Her mother must be dead, since there had been no mention of her. Miss Louisa, then, was mistress of the hall, and her father was a baronet. She was a great lady.

So was Miss Jane Everett.

And he was a mere army captain. It would quite possibly put something of a strain upon his father’s purse to secure his promotion to major, though his father was quite insistent that it must be done.

Ah. Robert had a sudden thought and smiled inwardly. There was an impediment. Miss Jane Everett was his social superior, and if the father was anything like the eldest daughter, that fact would be of some significance.

Perhaps she really was the one.

Gerald bowed Miss Louisa Everett out of the house. Amelia followed, looking rather pathetically gratified, and Miss Edna Everett followed her, looking aggrieved that she had not been given due precedence.

“Shall we?” Robert asked Miss Jane Everett, and she turned to hug his great-aunt once more before stepping out of the cottage ahead of him.

Could this possibly be she, he wondered as they walked along the street past the church. The one he had loved and lost through life after life? The one he had loved through an eternity of between-lives? The one he must learn to love without condition through a human lifetime so that they could return to the between-time with their souls one significant step closer to the union of perfect love?