Eternal

You know that mark on his face, just below his right eye?”

Cece nodded. “Yeah, that little scar.”

“It’s there in the portrait. He says he got it the day before his birthday, fencing with his sister. Without a helmet,” I added. “Isn’t that creepy?”

“Well, only because it was, like, a hundred years ago.”

“Yeah, and he still has it now.”

“Hey, guys,” Marissa said, striding in. “Where’s everybody else? I thought I heard Tyler squawking that Max and Joshua were back with the food.”

“They are; they’re about to bring it in.” Cece hurried over to the door that opened out onto the great hall. “Sophie!” she called out, then turned back toward us. “She said she was going to the morning room. Isn’t that just across the hall?”

“You’re asking me?” Marissa answered. “I’m going to need a map to find my way around.”

“Food!” Joshua bellowed, bursting into the room with Tyler and Max trailing behind him. “Get it while it’s hot.”

“And even better, beer!” Tyler added. “We’re actually legal here in jolly old England. Can you believe that shit?”

“Kind of takes the fun out of it,” Sophie said, wandering in just in time. “It’s going to make our twenty-first birthdays so anticlimactic.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure it’s climactic for you, baby,” Tyler said, wrapping his arms around Sophie from behind.

Marissa wrinkled her nose. “Eww, you did not just say that.”

Aidan came through the door carrying a stack of plates and silverware. “Careful with this stuff,” he warned. “It’s my grandmother’s china.”

“Your grandma’s china?” Cece shrieked. “Are you crazy—it’s got to be ancient! We can’t eat on that. How’d you get it, anyway? You’d think it’d be locked up or something.”

“Oh, it was.” Aidan nodded gravely. “But I know the china safe’s combination. Anyway, who better to use it than us? And besides, this is a special occasion.”

“Hear, hear,” Max said, raising a bottle of beer.

“Everyone gather ’round,” Tyler ordered while Joshua handed out the beers. “A toast,” he continued. “And then we eat, because I’m fucking starving here.”

Max nodded his agreement, an arm wrapped possessively around Marissa’s waist. “Nicely said, Ty. Nicely said.”

“To us,” I said, raising my bottle.

“To us,” Cece echoed. “The Winterhaven Warriors.”

Marissa raised her bottle. “To Sophie, our valedictorian.”

“Smartest chick I ever met,” Tyler added enthusiastically. “To my roomdog Max and his band—what is it you call yourselves?—who finally got themselves a real gig.”

“The Screamers,” Max answered with a grin. “Next month at the Mercury Lounge.”

“To our elegant host, the Viscount Brompton,” Sophie called out. “And his grandma’s china.”

Laughing, I glanced over at Aidan—who looked marvelously inelegant in his rumpled jeans and T-shirt. “To Matthew Byrne,” he joined in, catching me by surprise. My heart twisted a little bit with regret. “Otherwise known as Dr. Hottie,” he continued, “who wishes he could be here with us tonight.”

Beside me, Sophie elbowed me in the ribs. “Hey, you told Aidan that we call him that?”

My cheeks burned guiltily. “What can I say? Occasionally I slip up.”

“To Kate,” Cece said, sounding solemn now.

“And Jack,” Sophie added.

“And . . . I think that’s everyone, right?” Cece raised her bottle high in the air. “Cheers!”

“Cheers!” we echoed in unison, clinking our bottles with gusto.

I glanced around the room at my friends as they scrambled for seats, thinking that I was perhaps the luckiest person alive. I took a mental picture of the moment, a still life of friendship captured on the canvas of my mind.

Tyler sat at the head of the table and reached for a plate. “Now rub-a-dub-dub, pass me some grub!”

Aidan shot him a deadly glare. “Violet, would you mind telling your little friend that he’s sitting in my seat?”

At once, everyone turned to stare at him. We seemed to be holding our collective breaths, waiting.

And then Aidan smiled. “Come now, you didn’t think I was serious, did you?” he asked with a laugh. “My seat is right here beside you, of course.”

Smiling broadly, I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

* * *

“What time is it?” I asked Aidan while I perched on the edge of the bed, admiring the room. “My body is so confused.” All this back-and-forth to Europe was wreaking havoc on my sleeping schedule.

“It’s about two in the morning, local time. Are you tired?”

I shook my head. “Not really. So . . . this was really your room?”

“It was.” He stood at the foot of the bed, looking around. “They’ve changed it around some, of course. That portrait wasn’t there, for one.” He indicated a painting above the fireplace. “The bed, though . . . it’s the same. I assume the duvet is a reproduction, but it’s an exact one.”

The bed. This was the bed, I realized. The one from my vision—antique mahogany with four spindly posts. I’d seen it on the website, too—with the blue damask duvet trimmed in gold that I was sitting on now.

I tried to remember the vision, to remember what had seemed so ominous about it, but my memories were mostly hazy. It had been a long time since I’d replayed it. All I remembered was that Aidan and I were in the bed and that my hair was short. Like it was now. I hadn’t even considered that when I’d gotten it cut. It wasn’t like I’d had a choice, not with a big chunk of it burned off, anyway.

What, exactly, was going to happen if I got in this bed with Aidan? “Maybe we should sleep somewhere else,” I said tentatively.

Aidan gave me a puzzled look. “I thought for sure you’d want to stay here. We could move you to the master suite, if you’d like. You can take my mother’s bed.”

Out of respect, no one had claimed his mother’s rooms. His sisters’ suites had been fair game, though. They were among the prettiest, with elaborate dressing tables and huge windows that opened out to the gardens below. Sophie and Marissa had immediately laid claim to those, leaving Cece to battle it out over the remaining rooms with Tyler, Joshua, and Max. Of course, the choices seemed endless—Brompton Park boasted an entire wing of guest suites.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Wouldn’t that be a little weird for you, me sleeping in your mother’s bed?”

“Not particularly,” he answered with a shrug. “Anyway, it’s up to you.”

I gave the bed a sidelong stare, still unsure.

“Are you worried that I’ve . . . in this bed?” A faint flush stained his cheeks. “Never, not in this room, if that’s what’s on your mind, Violet.”

“I wasn’t thinking that. Of course, now I’m curious. If not here, then where?”

He leaned against the bedpost, watching me curiously. “Are you asking me where I lost my virginity?”

I closed my eyes, trying to banish the images. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

“Because back in those days, you—”

“Stop! Don’t tell me. Just . . . forget that I said anything about it, okay? We’re fine here. I don’t want to have to move all my stuff.”

“You know what I just remembered?” he said abruptly, pushing off the bed and walking over to the adjoining dressing room. “I wonder if it’s still here.”

I rose, following him. “If what’s still where?”

He pushed the dressing table away from the wall and knelt down behind it.

“What are you looking for?”

“Can you hand me a pen or something? From the desk?”