It seemed impossible. That was so grandiose an idea. She was just a quiet slip of a woman.

Whom he found curiously attractive.

But surely if she were the one, he would have known it instantly. How could he have known her and loved her through eternity and numerous lives and not recognize her immediately now?

How could he possibly not know?

“I beg your pardon,” she said as the gig bowled by and Amelia waved to him, “but is it possible, Captain Mitford, that we have met before? I am quite sure we have not, but you seem so familiar to me that I feel I must have seen you somewhere.”

Ah.

He turned his head sharply to look at her, and she turned hers to look at him.

The breath caught in his throat.

Was this she?

“I do beg your pardon,” she said again, flushing. “Of course we have never met. How could we? The Reverend Mitford has been here only three years, and I know you have not visited him in that time.”

“Your instinct is right and your logic is wrong, Miss Everett,” he said. “We have known each other for a lifetime or ten. For an eternity, in fact.”

His voice sounded breathless to his own ears. But he managed to smile and speak lightly, as though jokingly.

Could this be she?

“We have never met, have we?” she said, laughing.

“Not until today,” he said. “Will you take my arm?”

She hesitated for a moment, but then placed her hand lightly through his arm and rested it in the crook of his elbow.

His breath seemed suspended altogether.

He was so suffused with familiarity that he felt quite dizzy. He knew that touch.