Grace nodded. “About a month ago, and again last night.”
“Just after I tried to prove my curse to you?”
She swallowed visibly and nodded again. “When I first woke, I thought I’d imagined it all.” Her face flushed. “You know, power of suggestion.”
He wanted to ease her embarrassment. “I think I understand.”
“The dream was so vivid, I went back and read the pages that had been blank before….” The flush subsided.
“Before I told you what was written?” he asked.
“Mm hmm.” She swallowed again. “What you described, what you told me, wasn’t the entire story. Was it?”
Luc studied her a long while. “Why do you ask that?”
Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Because in my dream, I wasn’t myself.”
“That makes no sense.” He would have hesitated to say such a thing as well.
“Dreams don’t have to make sense,” Grace insisted.
Fine, he’d humor her. “Who were you?”
“I was a woman named Grainne,”
He took another step back, and it was his turn to swallow a gasp. His heart thundered. “No. You couldn’t. She died, so long ago.”
Grace wasn’t lying though. His body, his heart, his soul told him so.
“I was Grainne. She came to you here on your ship, and we made love on this bed.”
She said we.
He staggered back two more steps, memory knifing his heart. “That was the night Mawu cursed me. She found us together. She had…”
“I remember—from the dream. I… Grainne was there. I know what Mawu did. I saw.”
“Then where did you… Grainne, go? After Mawu died, I looked for Grainne. She was gone.”
“I can’t tell you. I wish I could, but I woke up just as Mawu uttered her curse.”
“Is this dream why you now believe in my curse?”
Grace nodded. “Partly. That, and reading again in those once blank pages—to confirm what I remembered.”
“You remember what was written?” Luc asked.
“Don’t you?” Her brows lifted. “You wrote the words. At least, that’s what you claim.”
“I do recall what I wrote.” He couldn’t forget.
“You named your lover for that night. A woman called Grainne.”
“She wasn’t a lover for a single night,” he spoke through clenched teeth trying to force back the bitterness that lingered over his lost love.
Grace folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against a bed post. “No, she wasn’t. Grainne was the love of your life, as you were hers. She never loved another man.”
“How can you say that? She married someone else.”
