Moonlight spilled across Sarah's quilt as she leaned forward over the diary, tracing her fingers over the elegant script as if she could absorb Emily's memories simply by touch. The ancient house creaked around her, its moans joining with the sound of turning pages.

"May 12, 1784

Tonight, at the hawthorn branch, weighty with blossom, Thomas placed my hand against his heart. 'See how it beats for you,' he said. Even if our families would have us hang for this treasonous love, I would walk through fire to own that beat.

Sarah drew in her breath. The words vibrated off her skin, beckoning her into a world of rustling silk and candlelit sensuality. She could smell the trampled grass where Emily and Thomas had been lovers, hear the distant notes of a harpsichord played somewhere in a long-forgotten ballroom.

A gust rattled her bedroom window, and for a whirling moment, the flowered wallpaper resolved into garden walls draped in ivy. The scent of night-blooming jasmine flooded her senses—impossible in October with a hint of frost. She pinched her eyes closed and opened them again. The vision had fled. but the diary in her hand throbbed like a living thing.

Feverish now, she turned forward.

"June 3, 1784

We've been discovered. Aunt Charlotte spotted Thomas leaving my room this morning. She threatens to inform Father unless I keep it from him, but how do you sever your own soul? Tomorrow we flee to—"

The next page was torn out.

No!" Sarah's cry woke up the sleeping tabby that lay next to her. She flipped through the rest of the pages—empty. The book had ended in mid-breath, with nothing but one dry hawthorn flower folded against the back cover, its petals to dust upon contact.

Her phone rang abruptly on the bedside table. Message from her best friend Lila:

You alive over there? Haven't heard from you since you found that creepy diary.

Sarah bit her lower lip, then typed: Not creepy. It's. Her thumbs poised over the keyboard. How to explain how her heart pounded when she imagined Thomas's storm-gray eyes—eyes exactly like Lucas's?

There was another message—not from Lila.

Miss Montgomery—

Garden gate loose. Could we talk repairs tomorrow? 10am? —Lucas

Her phone fell from her grasp. Out of her open curtains, she could see the quiver of Lucas's studio light on the lawn. Watched, her heart racing, as his shadow walked past the window. hesitated, as if sensing her gaze.

A floorboard creaked in the house somewhere. The diary was open again to Emily's last entry, the writing now cutting as new blood:

"Even if we cannot be together in this life, I swear we will be in the next."