He smiled in memory. “Looking back on it, I think the old man who owned the shop thought I wanted to be a collector. But I didn’t want to collect; I just wanted that portrait.”
“Did you get it?” Dougless whispered.
“Oh, yes. My parents thought I was crazy and said an Elizabethan miniature was no possession for a child, but when they saw me, week after week, giving all my allowance toward the purchase of that miniature, they began to help me. Then, just before we left England, when I’d begun to feel that I was never going to get enough money together to buy it, my father drove me to the antique shop and presented the portrait to me.”
The man sat back in his seat, as though that were the end of the story.
“Do you have the portrait?” Dougless whispered.
“Always. I’m never without it. Would you like to see it?”
Dougless could only nod.
From his inside coat pocket, he withdrew a little leather case and handed it to her. Slowly, Dougless opened the box. There, on black velvet, was the portrait Nicholas had had painted of her. It was encased in silver and around the edges were seed pearls.
Without asking permission, Dougless lifted the miniature from the case, turned it over, then held it up to the light.
“My soul will find yours,” Reed said. “That’s what it says on the back, and it’s signed with a C. I’ve always wondered what the words meant and what the C stood for.”
“Colin,” Dougless said before she thought.
“How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“Colin is my middle name. Reed Colin Stanford.”
She looked at him then, really looked at him. He glanced down at the portrait, then up at her, and when he did so, he looked at her through his lashes, just as Nicholas used to do. “What do you do for a living?” she whispered.
“I’m an architect.”
She drew in her breath. “Have you ever been married?”
“You do get to the point, don’t you? No, I’ve never been married, but I’ll tell you the truth: I once left a woman practically at the altar. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
“What was her name?” Dougless’s voice was lower than a whisper.
“Leticia.”
It was at that point that the stewardess stopped by their seats. “We have roast beef or chicken Kiev for dinner tonight. Which would you like?”
Reed turned to Dougless. “Will you have dinner with me?”
My soul will find yours, Nicholas had written. Souls, not bodies, but souls. “Yes, I’ll have dinner with you.”
He smiled at her and it was Nicholas’s smile.
Thank You, God, she thought. Thank You.
