There were issues with alerts for the last chapter, so check you've read that one before you start this. I noticed there were a lot less hits and reviews, so I think some of you missed it.

Chapter Twenty-One

Carlisle

"Well, I call it a curse, but I don't think everyone would…"

Bella closed her eyes, and she looked pained, and then she looked at me, and a flash of something indefinable crossed her face.

"I woke up in the seventeenth century, in the north of England."

Alice gasped, and her gaze fixed on me. I nodded slightly and held up a hand to her. Of course, I knew the significance of what Bella was saying, but I didn't want to interrupt Bella to tell her the rest of my story.

"I have no memory of my life before, I'm not even sure I had a life before, but I had full knowledge of the world I was living in. I could read and write, and my body seemed well-fed, so I assumed I hadn't been a peasant if I did have a life. I had other knowledge, herbs and treatments of an apothecary." She frowned. "I think I did have a life. It seems like the most obvious answer to what I knew and was. There was no one around me, but for some reason, I thought I was called Bella." She smiled slightly. "Whether or not that was true, it's the name I have always used since, though I created different surnames for myself with each life I had after."

"It was," I said without thought. "You were called Isabella."

Her gaze snapped to me, her eyes wide and incredulous. "How can you know?" she asked.

"Can I tell you when you've told us it all," I asked.

She frowned but nodded and went on. "I found about my… curse… after only a few months. I worked on a farm, and there was an accident with a scythe when we were bringing in the harvest. I cut my wrist. It was deep, I lost too much blood, and I…" She flinched. "That was the first time I died. I woke up alone in the field, and I was coated in blood. I would have believed I'd just passed out and then come to, but the wound was gone."

"Dear lord," I whispered.

She smiled slightly, and her eyes became distant as if she was seeing something outside of Alice and me and the room we were in. "I went to the stream and cleaned the blood from my skin, and then coated the bloodstains on my clothes with mud. I knew that I would be called a witch if what happened was discovered, it was a time in which people believed in the supernatural, so I knew I needed to leave. I was scared."

"Of course," Alice said. "You must have been terrified."

"I was," Bella agreed. "I thought maybe I was a witch, that the herbs I knew about and the treatments were witchcraft that I'd forgotten how to do. I swore to myself I would never do it again if I remembered, that I would never use it to hurt anyone. I left the farm in the night and went south. I reached Dorset and set up a smallholding of my own. I lived there for eight years, three years after I should have left as by then, I realized that I wasn't aging. I don't know how old I was, physically at least, but I guess at early twenties."

Yes… I thought. Perhaps twenty-three. Her father said she was an autumn child, and I knew I was born in summer as that was when my mother had died giving birth to me, and we'd been born only a season apart.

"I went to Plymouth and found a job with a wealthy sea captain's household," she said. "I stayed a few months and then stowed away on a trading ship to India."

Her face became dark, and I wondered if she was imagining the difficult days that would have passed for her, hiding in the ship's darkest depths and surrounded by rats, and at the mercy of the men that might have discovered her.

"I died again in Bombay. One night I was passing through the city, and I was mistaken for a prostitute. When I fought the man that wanted me, a sergeant in the East India Company, he cut my throat."

Alice pressed her hand to her chest, and her eyes became sad. "Oh, Bella."

Bella shook her head slightly and said, "He must have dumped my body in the Ulhas River as I found myself on the shore when I woke. I realized what had happened and ran from the city. I didn't think I would ever see him again among so many people, but I was scared. If my secret was discovered, I would have been killed again, and I had learned then exactly what that meant for me before and after." She frowned down at her hands, clasped in her lap. "It's not a peaceful experience."

I flinched and shook my head briskly as Alice opened her mouth to ask a question. I was sure she wanted to know what exactly it was that happened when Bella died, but I didn't want Bella to have to tell us. It was obviously traumatic for her, and she had already been through too much to ask her for more than she was already giving.

"It's happened so many times in so many ways, but I always come back," she said. "I can't age, I can't change more than basic physical needs, and I heal from minor wounds. And no matter what happens to me, I can't stay dead."

She looked at me, and I thought she could see the pain I was feeling because of the story she was telling me. She smiled slightly and seemed to decide to curtail her story.

"I moved around India and then came to Europe in the late eighteenth century. I then went to the colonies in the 1820s. I moved back to Europe later that century and then… I never settled for long, I couldn't, so I've lived all over the world." She looked at me, and what I hoped was a genuine smile spread across her face. "The meal I made you, I learned how to make it in Siam in the late nineteenth century."

"It was… delicious," I said, and Alice laughed softly.

"What?" Bella asked, looking between us both.

"We don't eat human food ordinarily," I said. "We are wholly sustained by blood. Food doesn't taste the same to us as it does you. It's…"

"Horrible," Alice supplied, seeming bolstered by the lightening of the atmosphere around us.

Bella's lips parted, and she looked stunned for a moment, and then she laughed. "But you've all eaten. Esme had coffee, and Emmett had some of the cake."

"Yep," Alice said. "And he had to purge it later."

Bella laughed again, a sound that made me chuckle, partially from amusement, and partially relief that things had eased for us.

"I guess I should apologize for that," she said. "But he could have just refused. Why did you even accept my invite to dinner if it meant you were going to have to puke it up later, Carlisle? And why did you invite me to dinner at your place? You did it so many times!"

I hesitated before answering and then decided to go with honesty. "I wanted to spend time with you."

She smiled again, and I felt some of the connection we'd been building returning, a feeling that made my heart soar.

Bella eased the blanket from her shoulders and curled her legs under her, looking calmer now.

"Well, that's my story. I have lived over three hundred years, moving around, taking jobs and helping when I could, living and dying. I don't know who I was before, I don't know why I am cursed to this. It's my life, and I'm usually happy with it." She looked at me. "I'm sure you can relate."

I nodded. "I am happier with my life now that I have found you than I have been in all life since 1663 when I last saw you."

She started and then said, "You saw me?"

I reached tentatively for her hand and was pleased when she let me take it. I stroked her palm and said, "Bella, you were called Isabella Macey before… it happened. You lived in Long Acre, London, and your father owned an apothecary; you were trained in the craft, too. Our fathers hated each other because my father was an Anglican minister that endangered and ended lives through his pursuit of supernatural threats. Your father refused to worship at his church. You and I were…"

I lost myself in the memories for a moment, and my voice became soft.

"I would watch you every day as our paths crossed for all my remembered human life. When I grew brave enough, I noted the days you visited the market, and I would place myself in your path. It took two years longer for you to notice me, and then…" I fixed my eyes on her, wanting to see every fraction of her reaction to my words. "We fell in love, Bella."

Her fingers contracted around mine, and I held my breath before she relaxed, and then I went on.

"We wanted to marry, but the situation between our fathers complicated it. The last time I saw you was the night I was bitten. I was leading a hunt against a group of vampires, following on my father's mission in his stead, and one of the vampires we were hunting attacked me. I hid through my change and then fled into the countryside, leaving you for your own protection. I went back when I was sure you would be safe from me, but I heard that you'd died. I believed you were dead until I saw you in the hospital that day."

She stared at me, her eyes glassy, and when she blinked, a tear slipped down her cheek. I held my breath again, frozen with stress by the moment, and waited for her to speak.

"Isabella Macey," she said, wiping at her tear-streaked face. "I wasa person."

"You were," I said, stroking her face. "You were a wonderful woman, kind and good, and I loved you more than anything I have or will ever again in life."

Bella placed her hand over mine, pressing it closer to her cheek, and her tears wet my skin.

"I was loved," she said with a hitching breath. "I have been alone all this time, and I didn't think I'd ever been loved, but I had a father." She closed her eyes, and a blissful smile lit up her face. "I had you."

"You did," I said, my own voice choked with emotion.

Alice got quietly to her feet and walked to the doorway, and then she turned back and said, "Bella, can I tell the rest of our family your story?"

Bella opened her eyes and sniffed. "Yes, I think I would like them to know."

Alice smiled and then slipped out, the front door closing softly behind her.

Long after the sound of Alice's footsteps had disappeared, we sat in silence, and then Bella patted my hand and said, "I am sorry."

"For what?" I asked.

"I don't remember you," she said. "And you've had these memories all these years, you love me, and I …"

"You don't love me," I stated, my heart aching with the truth I should already have known as I lowered my hand to my lap.

She reached for me again, and her warmth seeped into my skin. "I don't love you," she said. "I don't remember ever loving anyone in my life. I have had friends, I've had lovers, but I have never been able to let myself love anyone because of what I am. There was never any hope for a future. The longest time I could have with anyone was ten years, and that would be stretching it, so I never tried."

"You could have it with me," I said tentatively.

She smiled. "I could. I feel something for you, I have for a while, but I've not been able to let it become love because I believed I would lose you eventually."

"You won't, though," I said fervently. "We can stay together forever. You'll never have to leave me."

She stroked my hand, and then her fingers traced my cheeks, which were lifted in a hopeful smile. "It seems a strange question, given that you and I have nothing ahead of us but eternity, but can you give me time?"

"I can give you forever if that's what you need," I said solemnly. "I will give you space if that's what you need, or I can be at your side. I will give you anything you need if you'll just give me a chance." I shook my head dolefully. "Even if you can't give me a chance. I will always give you whatever you need as the love I feel for you means I can't do anything but do that. But I have to tell you, no matter what you feel and decide, I will never be able to stop loving you, even if that's what you need."

Bella's fingers found the back of my head, and I allowed her to tug me closer until our lips were millimeters apart. I felt her breath against me, and then her lips were pressed to mine, and she was making a soft sighing sound that made me shiver with exhilaration.

I kept my lips carefully pressed together to protect her from my razor-sharp teeth, though I wished I could part them and give myself to her entirely.

It was the first time I was kissing anyone with more feeling than a sister kiss shared with Esme in public and my daring kisses to Bella's forehead when I was human. I had never felt anything like it in my life; it felt as if blood was flowing through my veins again and my heart was pounding.

Bella pulled away too soon, her breaths coming fast, Her fingers came to my face and stroked around my eyes, down my cheeks to my chin, where she traced a finger back and forth.

"I just kissed a vampire," she said with a soft laugh.

I pressed my lips to her forehead, just as I had the night we'd parted for the last time as lovers, and said, "And I just kissed a miracle."

She laughed softly. "I think we both did. You gave me a life that I never truly believed I had. I know who I was now. I still don't know what happened, how I became what I am, but no one in my long life has ever given me so much."

I stared into her deep brown eyes, drinking her in, and said, "I love you, Bella."

She pressed her lips together, unable to say the same to me, but that didn't matter. I had already been given more than I could have hoped for from her when her lips touched mine.

She had made me feel alive.

So… What do you think? We had a kiss, and we heard Bella's story from her side. I've been anxious about posting this chapter from the very beginning, and I'm dying to know what you think.

Until next time…

Simaril xxx