My True Love Read Free Page A

mind.
    “Your loyalty to me is admirable, Anne. But it is a trifling matter.” Hannah turned away, busied herself with checking the rising of her dough.
    Anne said nothing, only stared down at the surface of the table. The wood was scarred, and a few marks had been caused by her own youthful exuberance.
    She walked to the lone window in the cottage, looked out over the clearing. It was a peaceful place, this glade. A friendly place to spend a life. Still, she could not help but wonder if it had been enough. But that was not a question she could ask. Instead, she spoke of other things, circling the true reason for this visit for a few moments.
    “I saw him again last night,” she said. Her voice did not betray how deeply the vision had moved her. She stood still and waited, however, for Hannah’s words.
    “Your Stephen?”
    Anne nodded.
    “It has been a while since the last time. I had hoped he would be gone for good.”
    Anne glanced over her shoulder. Hannah was looking at her, the frown hinted at now fixed in place.
    “I remember when you were a child and terrified of him. When did it change?”
    “I was never terrified of Stephen, Hannah,” she said with a smile. “Only of what was happening to me.” She’d seen him often enough over the years, a friend who’d visited her in the moment just before sleep.
    Anne stared out at the view before her. A clearing, a small knoll of land surrounded by large trees. The day was chilly, spring was on the horizon but not yet here. There had been fog upon the loch this morning. Some days it wreathed the small cottage in a cloudlike miasma. She held her hands tight at her waist.
    It might have been easier to have been granted the ability to hear thoughts or predict the future. She might have turned her skills to warning people of their fate, to issuing cautions. A child birth could be predicted, a marriage foretold, a crop saved. But what she saw was of no use to anyone.
    Her visions were like looking through a window just as she did now. Only this view was of Stephen living his life. She could not choose what scenes she might see. Nor had she any knowledge of when the window might open. At times she yearned to see him. But the visions came when they willed, not when she wished.
    She’d been captivated by the small glimpses into a life so alien from her own. He lived in a castle so unlike Dunniwerth that it had enchanted her. Langlinais. Even the sound of it seemed exotic. She had watched him racing over the hills on his black stallion and seen him in quiet times when he sat and sketched the castle. She had even seen London through his eyes and felt his wonder at seeing the port so filled with ships.
    Hannah spoke from behind her. “Pay attention to those men who pay court to you, Anne, not someone in your mind.”
    The words were like small pinpricks. Little wounds that Anne ignored. They had been said too many times.
    “Sentiments that echo my mother’s words, Hannah. Is this mania to get me wed because my birthday will be soon?”
    “You are three and twenty. It is time.”
    Anne nodded. Another statement she’d heard often in the last few months. Not one of the various suitors her parents had suggested to her was without charm. Each was possessed of some attribute, some quality that made him acceptable. None of them drank to excess. Each came from good family. They were all able to provide for her and any children who would be born to them. But they did not have eyes the shade of midnight. Or a face so strong and vital that she recalled it even in her dreams.
    “Have you ever wanted something so much, Hannah, that you would have given everything you owned for it?”
    “What would you wish for, Anne Sinclair, that you are not provided?”
    To touch him .
    Last night’s vision had been the strongest of all. Stephen had stood in a tunnel of darkness, shadows of gray and black swirling around him. His hand had been outstretched as if, after all these years, he could