SPOILER ALERT: The following author’s note reveals the generalized ending of the book. A version of this note is included at the end of the book for why the story ended as it did. As stated above, if you didn’t like the ending of Jude Deveraux’s Knight In Shining Armor, I highly doubt you will enjoy this book, although I think the outcome of Forever Mine is much more satisfying than Deveraux’s book, which happens to be on my Keeper Shelf.
Victoria’s and Nicholas’s story is really more of a past-life experience as opposed to a time travel book. While there is a HEA, that happens in the present, not the past. The opening chapter as well as the moments when Victoria hovers between the past and present in the white mist strongly foreshadows the final outcome.
As an author, I was deeply conflicted about the final end of the story. I desperately wanted Victoria to stay in the past with Nicholas. The love between them still grabs my heart every time I think about their story. Yet despite my longing to keep Victoria with Nicholas in the past, the transition back to her time was the right choice for the book for several reasons.
First, it was a logical resolution to the problem of Vickie’s murder by Reardon before Victoria arrives on the scene. From that perspective, Victoria was already living on borrowed time if you apply any type of theoretical physics to the overall story. But in the end, the story direction I took was done solely for my characters and for my own soul as a writer.
Secondly, I needed a bridge to connect the Nicholas of the past to the Nicholas in the present day. The Nicholas of 1897 didn’t argue with Victoria about her claims of being from the future. He loved her in spite of what he believed were her eccentric beliefs, and that’s exactly how Nicholas viewed Victoria’s claims. He had no doubt that Victoria was convinced she was from the future, but Nicholas didn’t believe it. While they were together, he rationalized her changed behavior and eccentricities were due to a head injury. Nicholas found that scenario far easier to believe than the idea of Victoria being from the future.
This is a crucial point about Nicholas’s character throughout the entire book. Even at the moment of Victoria’s death in the past, Nicholas doubted her story. He tries to dismiss the possibility of her claims being true simply by convincing himself that Victoria clawed her way out of a shallow grave. A theory I toyed with too, but eventually discarded.Â
Nicholas in the present is equally hardheaded about why his connection to Victoria is so strong. To that end, I knew I needed to show the overall growth of both incarnations of Nicholas. It was the only way I could resolve my conflicting emotions about the story’s direction. The years between Victoria’s death in 1898 and Nicholas’s death in the early 1940s were crucial ones for Nicholas’s character in both timelines (past and present). The journals show how Nicholas, as the Earl of Guildford in 1897, slowly came to accept Victoria’s truth as his own. In other words, he came to believe that Victoria had really been from the future, and he would see her again.
If Victoria had remained in the past, knowing Nicholas as well as I do, I am convinced he would never have accepted Victoria’s claim that she was from the future. He would simply have avoided the subject or continued to affirm his belief that Victoria believed she was from another time. They would have been happy for the most part, simply because they were together. However, knowing Victoria and Nicholas as well as I do, if Victoria had remained in the past her insistence as to her life in the present would have been a point of contention between them throughout their marriage, and It might even have pushed them apart as the years passed. Worse than that was the possibility that Nicholas would lie to Victoria about believing she was from the future. Nicholas’s love for Victoria was so great I know he would do almost anything to make her happy. I didn’t want either of those two things to happen.
I also needed Nicholas in 1897 to accept Victoria’s truth as his own. I needed to ensure the Nicholas in 1897 came to the realization that he would be reunited with Victoria in the present. More importantly, it needed to be on his own terms (from his perspective as well as my own as the author).
The journals show his transformation from non-believer to believer. Additionally, readers have raged that Victoria left Andrew behind. What they failed to realize is that in their son, Victoria gave Nicholas a reason to go on living after her death. It took him a long time to come to terms with her death, it would have been longer without Andrew (possibly never) needing him. Also Andrew was a direct connection to the love of his life. Not only in temperament, but in Nicholas needing to give Andrew a sense of knowing his mother.
In the present, Nicholas went from being a hard-core skeptic, who scoffed at the possibility of past lives, to a believer in the space of days. Even with all the evidence Nora/Anna provided, it was difficult enough for her to even make Nicholas in the present consider the possibility he had once been Nicholas Thornhill, Earl of Guildford. The journals the Nicholas in 1897 wrote played a major role in helping the present-day Nicholas make that incredible leap of faith far more quickly and realistically. The journals were necessary to ensure the transformation of Nicholas in the future from skeptic to believer. Without the journals, his transformation would have been far less believable if even possible. Just as Nicholas in the past might have said he believed Victoria was from the future simply to make her happy, Nicholas in the present might just as easily done the same. I refused to let Nicholas of either the past or the present, bear the burden of lying to Victoria.
The journals also create a bridge for the reader to see the constant growth of Nicholas in the past. It allows them to believe that Nicholas (past and present) was able to grow and realize time is meaningless when it comes to a love so profound it can only come about with the blessing of a higher power in the universe.
I do warn you that you need tissues handy while reading the entries, which are at the end of the book. I still refrain from reading them because they’re gut-wrenching for me on a deeply profound emotional connection. I still tear up when I think about them. Remember, NEVER settle for anything other than a love that is true and deep. You’re worthy of a love that crosses the boundaries of time and the universe. That, I firmly believe.