David had committed to her, pledged his heart to her, had told her that he loved her. If life had taught him one lesson above all others, it was that happiness did not proceed from the breaking of vows. She did not deserve his suspicion. She needed his help. She was under someone’s thumb; she had said as much. And if he truly loved her, he needed to be focused on freeing her.

She was Emily. Somehow. Figuratively if not literally. Magically. Emily. She had to be. He could endure nothing else.

Sky above, sky below, and a question for a man adrift: Could the golden birthmark below Maddison’s navel have been a tattoo?

No. He vividly recalled the texture of it under his finger and tongue. It was not perfectly flat but slightly raised, as had been Emily’s. Tattoos had no dimension. This spot hadn’t been prickled into her skin with needles and ink. It had been real, hers since she had entered the world.

She was either Emily, incredibly untouched by time, and for whatever reason could not reveal her true identity to him, or she was in some way an avatar of Emily, embodying her mind and spirit. He had no clue how such an avatar could exist. His ever-spinning imagination couldn’t produce even a fragile thread of explanation. In either case, Emily or avatar, it was a matter of magic, in which he did not believe. And in either case, she was essentially Emily.

I’m a needy creature, Davey. I need to be loved every day, every hour. I know so well the loneliness of being unloved. Until you, I’ve been starved for love all my life.

Surely not.

But I have. Starved. And now I can’t get my fill. Until you, life was . . . a horror.

Horror? For a girl with your mind, your heart, your charm? How could that ever be?

Loneliness, enduring fear, a sense that society has gone mad and I’m falling, falling through the madness of it. That’s horror enough for me.

In memory, he could hear the haunting quality of her voice, which grew more marked in the last two sentences and which he did not believe she could have faked. She had lived through something horrific, and her heart and mind were scarred by it.

I feel safe here. Only here. With you. I feel so safe. Tell me it’s forever.

If Maddison had only him, it was equally the case that he had only her. She was his to save, and in the saving of her, he might save himself.

Doubt had no place in a true love knot, and suspicion could not untie it.

A great egret, snow-white with long black legs and a wingspan of at least four feet, issued as if out of nowhere and flew low across the lake, seeming luminous, otherworldly, and its reflection in the water was a doubling of the miracle of its sudden appearance, so that David’s heart was lifted.