He Was Reborn to Claim Me, But I'm Already Married novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Spring Reception
Reborn a year before her husband, Audra holds up her wedding ring in front of the Prescott garden. Her sister's painting wins, and Leighton puts a white rose in Jocelyn's hand. Jocelyn looks at Audra and mouths no.
Until the moment I died, Leighton Prescott was still demanding to know where my sister was.
I let him lean close to my pillow.
It was the only kindness I ever gave him.
"She's still alive," I whispered.
Then I laughed, and that laugh was my last breath.
I floated above the bed and watched him shake with rage.
"You're playing games on your own deathbed," he said to my body.
I watched him bury me in a plain cemetery outside Boston.
I watched him spend fourteen years searching for Jocelyn, day after day.
Just before he died himself, he came to my grave to spit on it.
"You took her place and got her killed in that fire. And you never told me where she's buried."
"If there's a next life, stay the hell away from me."
Then I opened my eyes at twenty-three, in my childhood bed, with a full year to get ready.
Leighton woke up a year after I did.
I knew the second I saw him.
It was the last Saturday of April, and the Prescott spring reception was in full bloom at their Brookline estate.
Peach petals covered the lawn.
Sixty young women stood at easels in the garden, painting flowers and watching one another.
Cornelia Prescott called it an art morning.
Everyone knew she was choosing a wife for her son.
"Hold still," Jocelyn said.
My sister straightened my collar with two quick tugs and stepped back to look at me.
"There. Now you look like someone who's allowed to be here."
Jocelyn was twenty-six and wore red lipstick to everything.
She had a little clutch bag under her arm, and when she dug in it for a hairpin, I saw her passport tucked in beside the lipstick.
"You brought your passport to a garden party?" I said.
"I bring it everywhere," Jocelyn said. "I like knowing where it is."
She pinned my hair, kissed my cheek and went back to her easel.
She was painting the peach trees in the corner of the garden, and it was easily the best canvas there.
I had told her to paint something plain, and she had laughed at me.
I let it go.
I had a wedding ring, and I had told myself that was enough protection for both of us.
A hand closed around my wrist.
Leighton turned me around by it.
He was twenty-eight again, fair-haired, in a trench coat on a warm day, and his eyes were wild with a very old anger.
"My mother chooses my wife today," he said low. "Don't you dare switch your sister's painting with yours again."
His grip hurt.
I looked at his hand and then at his face, and I felt something strange.
I was amused.
Last time, I had begged Jocelyn to swap our canvases at this very reception.
Mine took first place.
Leighton had pressed a white rose into my palm.
I had thought, maybe, that he liked me.
I never saw that he was furious.
He let go and strode off across the petals, his coat swinging.
Romy Greer stood behind me with a plate of tiny sandwiches and her mouth open.
"Audra Winslow, you're already married," she said. "Why is Leighton Prescott talking to you like that?"
"Because he never once looked at the ring," I said.
I rubbed my wrist.
The ring was gold and plain, and I had worn it since October.
I could have let him go.
But Jocelyn was laughing at her easel, and a year ago I had promised myself I would not stay quiet in this garden again.
So I walked after him.
"Leighton."
He turned, annoyed, and the girls nearest us stopped painting.
I held up my left hand where the whole lawn could see it.
"Next time you grab my wrist, ask my husband first. He's particular about it."
Leighton looked at the ring.
His face emptied out.
"Husband," he said.
"Mrs. Sturgis," I said. "Since October."
A brush hit the grass somewhere behind us.
"Mrs. Sturgis?" said a warm voice at my elbow.
Cornelia Prescott was holding two glasses of lemonade, and she held one out to me.
"You poor thing, you look flushed," she said. "Have you eaten? I'm so happy you came. Which Sturgis is the lucky man?"
"Ethan," I said.
Cornelia smiled and set her own glass down on the garden table.
She did it very slowly, so that it never clinked.
"How lovely," she said. "We must have you both to dinner."
At noon the bell rang and the paintings were turned to face the lawn.
Cornelia walked the rows with her hands clasped and her head tilted.
She stopped at the corner.
"Peach blossoms," she said. "The light in this is wonderful. Who painted this?"
"I did," Jocelyn said, and gave a small curtsy.
Cornelia said the Winslow girl had won.
Applause rolled across the garden.
Leighton came through the crowd with a white rose in his hand.
He put it in Jocelyn's palm and closed her fingers over the stem, and he looked at her.
Jocelyn stared at the rose.
Then she looked past him, straight at me.
She shook her head and mouthed a single word:
No.
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