Outside, it had grown dark, and the September evening was chilly.
Libitz fastened her coat, then stopped to look up at him.
“You know…I was just thinking…if your great-uncle hadn’t given my great-grandmother that advice…” She took a breath and held it as she stared up at him. “I mean, I might not be here today. Maybe she wouldn’t have left France.”
“I thought of that,” said Jean-Christian, fingering the object burning a hole in his pocket. “It almost feels like—and I know this is crazy, Lib, believe me—but it almost feels like my great-uncle saved your great-grandmother’s life so…well, so that you could save mine.”
She giggled, shaking her head back and forth. “No. It’s perfect.”
“Is it?”
“That two cynics find out that they were meant to be before they were even born?” She shook her head and laughed. “The universe has some sense of humor.”
He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against his chest, his voice husky. “Did you know…I was drawn to you before I ever knew you? At Ten and Kate’s wedding, I couldn’t keep my eyes off you.”
“I remember,” she said, smiling up at him. “I wanted so badly not to fall for you.”
“Baby, I had sworn off commitment for life.”
“I honestly thought I was going to end up with Neil.”
“Never,” he said, the words almost blasphemous to his ears.
“Never,” she agreed, standing on tip-toe to kiss the frown off his lips.
Grinning at her, he reached up to caress her cheek tenderly, smiling into her eyes. “You were chosen for me before I was ever born. I think—in the simplest of terms but with the most profound gratitude—you were meant for me.”
As he said these words, his hand slipped from her cheek, and he lowered himself to a knee on the sidewalk, reaching for her hand, gazing up into her wide brown eyes.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“From Camille Trigére to Libitz Feingold…from Pierre Montferrat to Jean-Christian Rousseau. It took seventy years for us to find each other, and I don’t want to wait another minute to be together.” He grinned as her eyes brightened with tears and she took a step closer to him, her hand shaking in his.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the emerald he’d had set in Marseille on Saturday morning while she rested at the hotel. The emerald owned by his great-uncle. The emerald in a necklace worn by her great-grandmother. The emerald that symbolized their journey to find each other, and the emerald that would symbolize their love and union forever.
There was no panic in his head or his heart as he held the ring between his fingers, looking up at the woman who had changed the entire course of his life. All he felt was the soul-deep rightness of the question he was about to ask her and the fervent hope that she would give him the answer he so desperately wanted.
“You’re my person,” he said. “You’ve always been my person. Long before I was breathing, you belonged to me.” He paused for just a moment, searching her eyes, and then nodded. “Marry me, my darling Elsa? Please?”
Laughing and crying, Libitz nodded as Jean-Christian slipped the emerald rock onto her hand. “Yes. Y-yes. God, I’m not a crier, but oh, God…this is so…so…”
“Perfect,” he said, standing up to gather her into his arms.
He kissed her tenderly—this tiny, dark-haired, brown-eyed woman who he’d never seen coming but who now held the key to his happiness, and his heart, in her hands.
Both were safe there.
They were—finally, at long last—exactly where they were supposed to be.
EPILOGUE
September 9, 1939
Camille Trigére Lévy sat by the small window of her third-class cabin on the Holland–America SS Volendam, finishing the needlepoint she’d started in Boulogne-sur-Mer, watching the emerald-green coast of Ireland grow smaller and smaller in the far distance.
She was officially at sea.
Everything had happened so quickly.
Six days ago, France and England had declared war on Germany, and the following day, her parents had sat her down in their kitchen for a very serious conversation that they’d obviously been planning for some time.
Her father took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “We heard the whisperings about changes from our relatives in Poland, and now…now, as you know, the worst has happened. The Germans have invaded.”