Cadan nodded, relieved that the devastated look had faded from her face. He walked to the windows to shut out the sharp scent of sea air and the oncoming storm and then led her out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the library. Though he’d had a home here for most of his long life, he’d razed and rebuilt the main house every hundred years or so, attempting to erase memories as the years tolled on. By the thirteenth house, he’d finally figured out that he was trying to rebuild the home he’d lost so many years ago to the Romans.
He’d stopped building after that, choosing instead to modernize the thirteenth house, built in the early nineteenth century. The ridiculousness of it all had him spending most of his time at his flat in Edinburgh these last two hundre
d years.
He pushed open the door to the library and she preceded him inside. She stopped in the middle of the expansive room and looked around at the towering shelves of books that had kept him company for centuries. Her shoulders relaxed.
“You like it here,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ve always loved books. They gave me a way to temporarily escape my nightmares.” A shelf of particularly old tomes caught her eye and she walked toward it.
“Use your mornings here to research your past. But in the afternoons, we’ll be in the gym on the other side of the house.”
“All right.” She turned to face him and held up her wrist. “Do you think this tattoo could be a clue to my identity?”
“No’ likely. I think the tattoo was meant to draw you to Edinburgh.” To me.
“Well, I wouldn’t have been drawn here if my former soul wasn’t British, right?”
“Aye, you were British. Arthur’s Seat has the strongest magical energy of any place in Great Britain. Reincarnates are often led there by their catalyzing events.”
She sighed. “Research it is, then.”
“How will you start?” He looked around the room, brows drawn. What could she find here? He’d stay with her, help her, and hopefully discover her task before she did. She was braver than he’d originally thought, but the idea of her risking her life made him ill. It was unacceptable.
Tonight, he’d come down and hide the texts that were more likely to give her answers. Then, when he had a moment, he’d see if they held anything useful.
“I’ll flip through books and see if anything reminds me of my dreams. Clothes, weapons, tools, furniture. With history, you can never tell what little piece of evidence will put the whole picture together. Hopefully something will jog my memory.”
Jog her memory? Of his own face, perhaps?
Clothes and weapons were only a few of the clues her dreams provided. The man who had held her as she died was the other part of the mystery. But it had all happened so long ago that she couldn’t remember his face or even his hair color.
“How much do you remember of your past?” she asked. And how much harder would it be for her to remember hers when it was so much older than his?
“All of it. No’ all in great detail, but I remember more than I care to.” He sounded weary, as if the weight of the past bore down upon him. He was so strong, so steady that she couldn’t imagine anything hurting him. But muscle and bone couldn’t protect the heart and the mind.
She didn’t know how to respond, so instead she watched silently as he walked across the soft carpet toward one of the shelves. He reached up and withdrew a delicate volume, then settled himself in a chair in front of the windows that looked out upon the sea, an air of lethal grace about him despite the delicate book he cradled in his hard warrior’s hands.
Her gaze jerked away from him. She needed to stay focused on her own past if she had any hope of getting out of this, not on the devastatingly sexy and very possibly damaged man sitting across from her. But it was hard not to think of him when she liked everything that she learned. She shook the thoughts away and got to work.
Four hours later, after looking through countless texts, her heart sped up with the thrill of discovery. This was why she liked studying history. For the moment when a puzzle piece fell into place and her mind ran a mile a minute while her lungs and heart tried to keep up.
But this was even bigger than that. It felt like a lightning strike. She’d found something. She was dead certain of it. “Cadan.” Her voice trembled. “Come look at this.”
Within moments, he was standing behind her. “What—what’s that?”
“Verulamium.” She read the text beneath the picture of the tumbling stone ruin. “I don’t know why it’s important, but it is, I can feel it, and we have to go there.”
“Nay. Absolutely no’. Too dangerous.”
“Look at what it says beneath the picture. It’s a first-century Roman settlement that was destroyed by the Celts. That falls within the period of my dreams. And it feels familiar. Just like I’d hoped.”
“Feels? That’s no’ very scientific.”
She twisted in her chair and scowled up at him. “Seriously? A magical tattoo and the appearance of demons sent me across the ocean to discover that I’ve been reincarnated and you’re harping on science? Having a feeling that Verulamium is important is no less crazy than that.”
“It’s all the way in the south of England. I’m no’ taking you all the way down there. Demons would be all over you as soon as we stepped off my property. Now, it’s well past lunch and almost time for your self-defense lessons.” He spun on his heel and walked toward the door and she hopped up to follow.