Beatrix nods.
“I want to do everything.”
And that is the problem, isn’t it? Too much world to see, too many adventures to have, too many people to meet and know and love, and so very little time for any of it. It will never be enough.
His brow furrows. “Don’t you?”
Beatrix shakes her head. She has had enough of adventures and people and love.
“But you could do it.” His voice is laced with awe.
“Not everything.” Nothing that matters. Nothing she longs for when she lies awake at night, staring into a darkness she swears stares back at her, threatening to swallow her whole.
“Well, I’m going to try,” Oliver says.
“With time travel?”
“And this.” He pulls a leather-bound notebook from the pocket inside his coat.
Beatrix eyes it skeptically. “Your diary?”
He laughs. “It’s a list of things I want to do, places I want to visit, people I want to meet.”
She scrunches up her nose. “It’s rather small for a book of everything, isn’t it?”
“Time travel isn’t faerie magic. There are rules. I need to be selective,” he explains.
Her lips tilt into a crooked smile. She gives Oliver a knowing look.
“What?” He narrows his eyes at her.
“Which very selective part of ‘everything’ were you trying to accomplish on the streets of Venice with a concealed identity, exactly?” Beatrix asks, feigning confusion.
Oliver opens his journal and flips to a page near the front. He points to a line of text printed in neat, blocky handwriting. “Dance until dawn. What better place than Carnevale in its heyday?”
“You came all the way back here to just… dance?”
His cheeks flush pink.
“Oh, I see.” She grins, and his blush deepens. “What else do you have written in there?” She reaches for the journal, but Oliver pulls it away.
He snaps it shut and slips it into his pocket. “I’m sorry, is the woman dancing through Venice in a stolen dress judging me?”
“Borroweddress,” Beatrix corrects. “I plan on returning it before Lady DeSallowe even notices it’s gone. Which, unfortunately, means I need to get back.”
He offers her his arm. “Walk you to your door? If I’m not too much of a scoundrel, that is.”
She loops her arm through his. “I’ve met worse.”
Oliver contemplates the sea of stars above them as they walk along the canal, the night’s cool breeze ruffling his dark hair. “What are the chances we’d meet twice?”
“You tell me,” Beatrix says. “You’re the scholar.”
He shakes his head. “Impossible.”
But she has learned not to put so much weight behind that word. “Nearly.”
“So, what have you been up to?”
