“But you’re going to stand there looking like my maiden aunt and tell me that you gave your life, you wasted your prime, you wore away your beauty, trailing after me—all because you cared so very, very deeply for a few armloads of dead babies?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, sweetie.”

She couldn’t hold it down any longer: a painful shudder went through her, head to toe. She had forgotten the weakness—the limp, physical weakness—that invaded her whenever he came this close.

No, she had not forgotten. She had fought to believe it was a thing of the past.

“Look at you,” he whispered. “Harper. Trembling. Look at you.”

She made a gulping noise. Rapped her stick convulsively upon the stone. “I …” she said. She took a breath. “I am not the woman I was, Jacob.”

“Oh no? Really? Then why are you here?”

He came swinging around in front of her. She could see him in the candlelight with his head tilted to one side, his smile gleeful, his black eyes smoky and seductive. He looked so vital to her, so relaxed, that she began to feel like a fusty old crone just standing there, frowning at him like this.

But she stood there. Frowned at him. And swallowed hard. “What do you want me to say?” she asked hoarsely. “You’re the philosopher, Jacob, not me. I only know …” She shook her head.

“What?” he said, smiling. “What do you know?”

“I know my spirit opposes you.”

“Your spirit! Oh my!”

“And not just my spirit.”

“Dear, dear. What more?”

“All of it,” she barked. “All of it opposes you. The …” She groped for words. “Oh, all right. The Everlasting Thing.”

Jacob Hope guffawed at her. Threw back his head, one hand on his belly, the other—the one holding the candle—held to his brow. Laughed and laughed, staggering where he stood, his feet among the dead crusaders. Then he shook his head. He daubed the corner of his eye. He wound down to a low chuckle.

And then—suddenly—he roared at her: “For Christ’s sake, woman—look!”

The curtain of his black hair crackled and fizzed as he held the candle up to his own face. The flame seemed to rise along his skin in a caress. The murky depths of his eyes seemed to turn like slow Catherine wheels. Her own image in them seemed to turn like Catherine.

She looked. And she saw that what she feared was true. What she had suspected since Storm had described him to her. It was impossible to deny it now.

He was a man of thirty—of thirty-five at most. As he had always been. As he had been the day she met him.

In all these years, he had not aged a single hour.