Page 47 of The Lovers
“I’m starving,” Rhys announced.
“Why am I not surprised?” Quinn laughed.
“Oh, come now, we’ve been at it for hours. Let’s go get some lunch.”
“All right,” Quinn conceded. “I suppose I could eat.”
They walked to Osteria Dell’Angolo a few blocks away—Rhys’s suggestion. Rhys leaned back in his chair after they placed their order and studied Quinn across the table, his expression inquisitive. He looked as if he was about to say something, but he remained silent instead, waiting for her to speak. Quinn noticed that he did that from time to time, silently manipulating his companion into filling the void. It was a good way of getting people to talk, and Rhys liked information.
“Why are you looking at me that way?” Quinn asked. She felt disconcerted by his intense stare. It wasn’t unfriendly, just full of expectation.
“There’s something you are not telling me,” Rhys informed her.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Quinn countered.
“Quinn, I watched you go through those registers. You weren’t just searching, you were looking for something specific.”
“Of course I was. I was looking for any mention of Lord Edward Asher.”
“It wasn’t him you were interested in. You were looking for a particular name. You came across a record of his first marriage and the baptism of his daughter, but you barely glanced atthose. You kept searching, and you found the person you’d been looking for. Elise. How did you know her name?”
“Are you always this irritatingly observant?” Quinn asked in an effort to hide her discomfort. He’d noticed. She tried not to be too obvious, but her delight at finding Elise’s name in the parish register had been difficult to hide. She’d given herself away.
“You know, I think I’d like a glass of wine after all,” Quinn said, looking around for the waiter who seemed to have vanished when she needed him most.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Was I?”
“Obvious tactic,” Rhys joked. “Please, tell me.”
“I’d rather not.” Quinn looked away, unable to meet his steady gaze. She’d kept her secret for so long, but suddenly she longed to tell him the truth. He didn’t seem like the type of person who’d make her feel foolish and ashamed of her gift.
“Quinn?” Rhys prompted.
“It’s complicated,” she mumbled, still hesitant to share with him. Rhys might find it fascinating, or he might immediately dismiss the possibility that her gift was real and relegate her to the category of a cheap charlatan who tried to capitalize on something she’d invented in her mind and was foolish enough to actually believe in. When faced with something otherworldly, most people were skeptical at best, filled with derision and disbelief at worst.
“What is it? What are you hiding?” Rhys persisted.
Quinn finally looked up to find Rhys’s gray eyes watching her. He reached across the table and took her hand in his.
“Quinn, why won’t you tell me how you know? It’s not as if you’re psychic. You found a reference to her somewhere.”
Quinn laughed nervously. “You see, the thing is that I am.”
“You are what?”
“Psychic. I’ve never really told anyone. Gabe knows, but I never even told Luke, my boyfriend. I thought he’d laugh at me. He was ever so much the scientist.”
Rhys shrugged. “I won’t laugh at you. I know there are a lot of scammers out there, but I do believe that a chosen few have the ability to see into the future—or the past. Are you one of those?”
Quinn nodded. “I can’t see into the past at will. It’s only when I hold an item that belonged to someone who’s passed. I can see images of their life. And I can also feel some small measure of what they felt during certain events in their life.”
“That must be amazing,” Rhys breathed. “Especially for a historian, or a filmmaker. What I wouldn’t give to see things as they really were, not as we envision them.”
