October 16, 1793

Anne saw that Louis was observing events of earth and, being curious, joined him. He glanced up at her approach.

"I do this very rarely, as it hurts me so to see what the insurrectionists are doing to my beloved France, but I have to watch today," he told her. "Today is the day Marie arrives here."

Anne watched as a cart containing two men and a woman moved down a street in Paris. The woman was a fair-skinned, blue-eyed blonde. She wore a white dress and a white cap with a black ribbon in it, and her hands had been tied behind her back. Crowds jeered as the cart moved along.

It finally came to a stop just outside the Palace of Les Tuileries, where Anne saw what she guessed must be the guillotine. It was simply a very large, very sharp blade suspended between two boards on a scaffold, with a basket beneath it virtually identical to the one beneath the scaffold on Tower Hill.

As the three climbed out of the cart and the executioner and his assistant assumed their usual places beside the guillotine, Louis quickly turned away and covered his face with both hands.

"I can't watch anymore," he moaned. "In spite of everything, I simply cannot watch the woman who bore my children die."

Anne put her arm around his shoulders in a gesture of comfort, wondering whether or not Henry had watched her own death. She quickly decided that she truly didn't want to know the answer to that question.

A few minutes later, the woman in the white dress stood directly in front of Anne, facing her. The look on Marie Antoinette's face was haughty, defiant. Her gaze fell first on Louis, who stood watching with something akin to reproach in his eyes, then on Anne, whom she regarded coolly. Anne took one step closer to the other woman.

"Did you truly love him?" she asked quietly.

Marie's expression changed from defiance to sulkiness, then finally to shame. She hung her head and walked slowly away.

Anne turned to Louis, her eyes full of tears.

"I'm so very sorry." Her voice was choked with sobs. "She doesn't know what she had."

"Please don't cry for her, cherie." Louis' voice was soft, consoling. "She's not worth your tears."

"But you are." Anne tried to meet his eyes but couldn't.

"But there's no reason to cry for me." Louis lifted her chin ever so gently and looked directly into her eyes. He was smiling serenely, and his own eyes were shining with an emotion that made her heart flutter and her knees go weak. "I do know what I have."

"Do you mean..."

"Were you worried?" He sounded almost amused.

"Worried?"

"Did you fear that seeing her again would stir feelings of desire within me?"

Anne suddenly realized that that was exactly what she had feared.

Louis laughed and shook his head. He embraced her, and she hugged him back fiercely. She felt dizzy with relief and...something else.

"Je t'aime, Anne." He whispered the words because he lacked the courage to say them aloud.

He wasn't sure that she had heard him, but she had.

"I love you too, Louis," she whispered back.

Suddenly, they found themselves in a huge room occupied by a large canopied bed with very expensive-looking covers and lots of fluffy white pillows.

"Where are we?" Anne asked.

"The master bedroom of the Palace in Versailles. I momentarily forgot how powerful our thoughts are now," Louis said apologetically.

"Why, that's perfectly all right!" Anne laughed. "This is perfect. You're perfect." Her eyes traveled impishly down Louis' body. "But it looks to me as if your pants are uncomfortably tight. Here, let me help you."

"Do you mean that we can, even now? But I always just assumed..."

"That we can't anymore now that we've crossed over? But why couldn't we? We still have bodies, don't we?"

Anne swiftly and deftly removed Louis' clothing and was pleased to discover that he was better endowed than Henry had been. She couldn't resist pleasuring him with her mouth, which he obviously enjoyed so immensely that Anne was touched. She wondered whether or not Marie had ever done that for him, and concluded that she probably had not.

When Anne realized that Louis was almost over the edge, she switched to kissing him passionately on the mouth as he timidly began to undress her. She helped him and, when she was completely naked, they both climbed onto the bed, which proved to be so comfortable that Anne felt as if she were floating on clouds. She felt Louis enter her and moaned appreciatively.

It ended very quickly, which embarassed Louis acutely.

"I'm so very sorry, mon amour. It's just that it's been such a long time..."

"Oh, that's quite all right! Please don't worry about it, darling Louis."

"But I wanted you to experience pleasure as well..."

"As I did."

Louis looked greatly relieved.

"This bed is so comfortable that I think I want to stay on it forever," Anne said.

"I've always been somewhat partial to it myself." Louis laughed and held her close, caressing and kissing her. She closed her eyes and felt deliciously warm and drowsy.

"It's amazing," Louis told her. "I've never before felt this unity, this oneness with the soul of another, that I feel with you right now."

"Not even with Marie?"

"With her it was primarily for the sake of producing heirs." He suddenly thought of something. "That's no longer possible now, is it?"

"I don't think so. In more than two hundred years, I've never heard of it happening even once," Anne told him. "I suppose it's no longer practical to reproduce ourselves when we can continue on forever here."

"I never thought of it that way, but you must be right."

"Of course, it was primarily my failure in that department that led to my premature departure from the world below." There was only the slightest trace of bitterness in Anne's voice.

"I want to meet him."

"Henry? But why?"

"I don't really know why," Louis confessed. "Perhaps I just want to find out for myself what kind of man could have done what he did after...after...oh, Anne." Louis' voice broke and he couldn't finish. All he could do was to hold Anne as if he would never let her go, whispering endearments in French. Anne didn't understand all of them, but she knew that they were for her.

"I will take you there, darling Louis, if you're sure that's really what you want."

"Only if it won't cause you any additional pain, of course."

"Oh, no, that's quite all right."

Within seconds they both stood just outside a white fence bordering heaven's stables, watching a man with a shovel busily at work. He was tall and very large, with auburn hair plastered to his head with sweat. His clothes were dirty, and no crown adorned his head now.

In the distance an angelic band played a haunting tune.

Henry sensed that he was being watched and turned to face Louis and Anne. Louis' arm slipped protectively around Anne.

Henry just stood staring at Anne, speechless, his eyes filled with a mixture of longing and remorse.

"Now I know it's true that sometimes people really do create their own hell," Louis said softly.

Anne recognized the song being played by the angelic band. It was 'Greensleeves.'

"That's a beautiful song, but I don't believe I'm familiar with the words," Louis commented.

"I'll be happy to teach them to you," Anne told him. She didn't feel the least bit sad.