Hosts to Ghosts Box Set

by Lynne Connolly

  “Would I do such a thing?”

  She smiled. The tea was good, and she did feel better after her meal. He would get better. They had both decided on that.

  “I need to rest.”

  He’d said it abruptly, and she doubled up. Something broke in her mind and she realized it was the barrier he’d erected to shield her from his pain. It sliced into her, pain from every cell in his body, agonizingly torturing. And her pain was second hand. His was real, almost unbearable.

  She bore it. For him, she bore it. When he lapsed into sleep she felt the diminution of pain, and was glad for him. It was the best way, and she could lose the relentlessly optimistic feeling she had forced on herself, for his sake.

  Examining his injuries she wondered how anyone could ever survive such a thing. Under the bandages his bones were set, but shoved back under the skin, only bound tightly so they didn’t slip. No drugs to ease his way. He hadn’t wanted them. He’d wanted to be awake. Well he was asleep now, breathing deeply, lying on his back, the cover under him already stained with fresh blood.

  She took off her dress and eased herself on to the bed next to him, so he could see her when he woke and felt a dreamy haze drift over her senses. Sarah said she shouldn’t sleep. Karey fought the impulse, fighting to stay awake, but something took over her limbs so she couldn’t move them, get up to move around and keep awake. It was as if a thick blanket descended over her mind, deadening her senses. Just before she lost the battle, she realized she’d been drugged.

  * * * * *

  Susannah Sharman stared around the room. She’d only ever seen it through a veil, the infuriating gauze that always hung between her world and this one. She wasn’t sure she liked it here yet, but it smelled good. Even with that man next to her, the gory mess filling her freshly aware nostrils with a sickly odor of blood and death. Over everything was something citrussy. She swung her legs off the bed and went to the small, shiny white object on the vanity, next to the thing they had called a laptop. The smell emanated from there, like concentrated lemons. Pot pourri magnified. She liked it.

  One thing she definitely disliked was this lack of decent clothing. She only wore a small harness for her breasts, and a tiny pair of drawers. Much too small. Men should be teased, not faced with this blatant invitation.

  She crossed the room, loving the feel of the carpet under her bare feet and opened the wardrobe. Not much and nothing of any substance. Reaching her hand out, she touched a blue cotton dress. It felt softer than the cotton she was used to, very finely woven. The fabric must have cost a great deal.

  Susannah approved of expensive. She drew out the dress, looking for the fastenings. Only one button at the back of the neck. Far too revealing without proper undergarments, but it would do.

  When she dressed, she noticed her legs. Smooth, silky. The usual tufts under her arms were gone, too. She lifted her arm and stared into the mirror. No hair. Interesting. She hadn’t known this person, Karey, had a maid, she certainly hadn’t noticed one, but there must be one somewhere. She liked the smooth texture of her skin.

  Her hair was too tousled to appear all attractive. After fifty strokes with the brush she found in a pile of things on the vanity, she heard a voice.

  “Susannah?”

  “Yes?” She turned around with her practiced lady of the house smile. Bernard stood in the open doorway. “That door opens awfully silently, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. They’re designed that way. When the guests here retire, they don’t want to be woken up by slamming and creaking doors.”

  “Then they did make this a hotel?”

  “A very exclusive one.”

  “Of course.” What other kind of hotel could Belle Sauvage be but an exclusive one? “May I stay here this time, or will you send me back again?”

  Bernard smiled. “You may stay on one condition.” She arched her brow, smiling invitingly. “I want the Blue Star.”

  She froze. The necklace? Was that why he’d brought her back?

  Oh, but to live again, to live without fear! Thomas and his mistress had driven her to madness, to suicide, if it could be called that. Looking back she couldn’t see how she could have acted any differently. She’d tried to be a good wife, a good mother, but she made a mistake in befriending Camille, and another one when she ignored her husband’s affair with the woman. The voices in her head had made matters worse, until she didn’t know who to listen to.

  This time there was no Thomas, no Camille. Just Susannah. In time the voices would go, she knew it.

  Folding her hands to stop their trembling, she lifted her chin in the imperious manner she’d learned from her mother. “Very well. But I cannot remember what I did with it.”

  “I need to send you back. You know I can bring you home, Susannah. Trust me and the minute we find the necklace, I’ll pull you out.”

  It was a risk, but Susannah had more than a hundred years to regret her lack of courage. She would do it now, whatever it took. And then Bernard Foret would take that cursed necklace away. She didn’t want it.

  “Very well.”

  “Drink this.” Bernard walked into the room, holding a glass of iced tea, a mint leaf floating on its surface. “It contains herbs that will help you relax. They will do you no harm, I swear it.”

  She gave him a doubtful glance, but she took the tea and drained the glass. It didn’t taste like it anything she was familiar with. The previous glass, the one Karey had drunk, must have tasted fine. Certainly she hadn’t noticed anything. Too bad.

  A shuddering fit took her before she passed out.

  Susannah had no way of knowing how long she’d been under, but when she opened her eyes again she was Susannah Sharman, lady of Belle Sauvage, standing in one of the guest rooms in the opposite wing to her own. Her clothes were white and lacy, frothing around her legs. She was dressed for the evening, in a gown that showed her décolletage but revealed very little else. Underneath she felt the familiar bones of her corset, cinching her already slim figure slimmer still. Her dark hair was swept up in the style she usually affected, no longer gleaming auburn and loose down to her shoulders.

  “Can you hear me, Susannah?”

  “Yes.” Her voice sounded as though it came from a long way away. She found it difficult to speak. She could see no one but herself in the dim mirror on the wardrobe at the other side of the room, but she could hear his voice, and she knew who he was. Bernard, her savior, the man who would take her out of the limbo in which she existed and give her new life, a body to inhabit. His was the first voice she’d heard clearly for years, the first person she had seen without the choking gauzy mist that surrounded her.

  “Remember your last night on earth, Susannah. Remember.”

  “Susannah!”

  The voice came loudly from outside the room. She shuddered. Thomas. He mustn’t know about Bernard. He would take him from her as he’d taken everything else. Even her life, and worse, her children. She choked when she remembered that for a little while longer her four children were alive, awake and with her, not the tiny wraiths that taunted her with their cries and wails. When she would have welcomed true madness, it never came.

  “I’m in here, Thomas!”

  So it begins.

  The door opened and Thomas came in, filling the room with his presence, his vitality. He smiled. She feared his smiles perhaps more than his anger. At any moment the smile could become fixed, and his hand lash out to deliver a sharp slap, or worse.

  “Is everything ready for our guests?” His dark gaze swept the room, searching out any flaw in her preparations.

  “Yes, Thomas, everything is in order.” Susannah’s mind raced over the preparations. She hated houseguests; she always got something wrong. Others called her a perfect hostess, but she had never yet satisfied Thomas. She’d given up trying to win a smile of approval from him, and settled for being left alone.

  “Before they arrive, I want you to wear this.” He held out a familiar black box. Familiar
not because she had seen this particular box before, but because she’d received others, each a peace offering. Thomas was generous with his gifts, but if she’d dared, she would have left them all locked away.

  He opened the box for her and she gasped at the contents. An array of sapphires, intensely blue, the table cut enhancing their color. They were hung on a chain which would probably nestle just inside her cleavage.

  “This is for you, darling, as a token of our love.” The sapphires gleamed evilly between her breasts after he fastened the chain behind her neck. She didn’t believe his smooth declaration of love, any more than she’d believed his more passionate declarations. The only person Thomas Sharman loved was himself.

  “Wear it tonight, Susannah.”

  “Yes of course.” Her voice was a mere breath.

  He bowed his head and kissed her neck, breathing hotly on her skin. She couldn’t prevent her flinch of fear. He bit her, but not hard enough to leave a mark. “You may thank me later, Susannah. Properly.” He stepped back. “I haven’t always treated you as I should, I know that. This is a token of a new start. I won’t betray you again, I promise. I’ve been so foolish.”

  His voice broke and, in the mirror, she saw him turn away from her, blinking rapidly.

  “Has something happened, Thomas?”

  “I did something wrong. I need to tell you what I did before our guests arrive.”

  “Yes?” she whispered, and licked her lips to wet them.

  The small gesture caught his attention and she gasped when he returned his attention to her and the blaze in his eyes. “That bitch Camille enchanted me.” He swallowed. “I finished it. My obsession is dead. There’s only you left. Let me make it up to you. Let me love you. Susannah, you’re my only hope!”

  Suddenly he seized her, pressing her to the heat of his body. He shook with sobs. “You’re the only sweet thing in my life, you and the children. I need you now.” She struggled to escape but his arms enclosed her, holding her prisoner.

  He stared down into her face. “You know I’ve been keeping company with that black bitch, Camille?”

  Her hand went to the stones. That was where she had seen it before. Camille had owned it, always claiming it a pretty piece of glass. It wasn’t. It had never been anything but a collection of the largest sapphires Susannah had ever seen. “Yes.” To her surprise, her voice sounded steady.

  He dragged her out of the room and toward their bedrooms in the other wing. She followed, her mind whirling with conjecture. She didn’t notice the lack of servants until they stood outside the door that led to his dressing room. He leaned forward and opened the door, her wrist still encircled by his other hand. She would have bruises in the morning. Not for the first time. That was why she owned so many bracelets and bangles.

  She saw a pair of bare, black feet. By their size they were female.

  He shoved her inside the little room and closed the door quietly behind them. “I need you to help me get her out to the bayou.”

  Her startled gaze flew to his face. He looked expressionless, as though this didn’t matter in the least, that it was just a minor domestic impediment. “You’ve killed her!”

  He shrugged. “So what? She’s only another damned slave.” Sometimes Thomas forgot that slavery was officially over.

  “She’s a mamba! And she was never a slave!”

  “If we get rid of her now, she’ll just be another missing person. If anyone asks, I shall say she went North, and I gave her the money for her journey.”

  Susannah swallowed. She was about to do the most terrifying thing she had ever done. “I can’t help you, Thomas.”

  He didn’t strike her, but his dark eyes hardened into obsidian pebbles, and he stared at her hard for a full minute. She stood her ground, and when she was sure he wasn’t going to hit her, she wondered why. It was almost second nature to Thomas to react physically.

  “Stay here. I’ll go fetch a sheet. We can roll her on to that and carry her out before the servants get back. I sent them on an errand in the other wing, told them I wanted the dining table re-set. We don’t have long.”

  She stared numbly at Thomas, then to the woman lying so still on the floor, then to Thomas, but she only saw his retreating back.

  How like him to expect instant obedience from her, no matter what the situation! She stared at Camille, and saw—she knew it—a slight rise of her chest.

  Thank God, she was alive! Heaven knew she had no reason to love Camille, but she never wanted the woman dead. Energy returning to her, Susannah stumbled forward and dropped to her knees by the woman.

  She touched Camille’s chest. It was cold, so cold! No more movement. She must have been mistaken. But before she could pull her hand away she felt herself gripped by a strong will, as though someone had thrown incredibly strong arms around her. She heard a voice—Camille’s—inside her. “Ah, now I can see again, now I can feel!”

  What was this? Susannah moved, but it wasn’t Susannah, it wasn’t her walking calmly out of the room, to the end of the corridor where the stairs to the nursery lay. She saw, heard, but couldn’t force her recalcitrant muscles to move in the other direction. Someone had taken control.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  A diabolical voice answered. The voice of that witch, Camille. “I am Camille and your husband murdered me. I will have revenge on him. Sleep!”

  Susannah knew nothing else. She felt she was in her bed, that none of this was real. Where was Thomas? Where was she?

  * * * * *

  Camille lifted her hands and laughed. Smooth and white. So she was dead. She knew she couldn’t stay in this body for long. She’d been strong enough to take what was offered, but death called and it would not wait. Just long enough to achieve her revenge. She had no time to think, but luckily, revenge was close at hand.

  A sense of satisfaction suffused her, better than anything she could ever have imagined. Better than anything in the world. The spoiled brats she had nursed and hated would annoy no more nurses, make no more sounds.

  They lay peacefully in their cots once she’d moved the pillows off their faces. She smiled, feeling her lips curve for what might be the last time. It was time to go. She wanted to kill the white bitch, too, but there was no time for that. Perhaps it was better that way. The woman should see what the theft of the Blue Star meant for anyone not intended to have it.

  * * * * *

  Susannah awoke with a shock. How in heaven’s name had she got up to the nursery? She was supposed to be watching Camille, making sure no one came near. Thomas would punish her if she didn’t return.

  Picking up her skirts she made for the door but couldn’t resist lifting her hand and laying it on the brow of her youngest child in a benediction.

  It came away cold and trembling. It wasn’t possible! She picked up the pillow and dashed it to the bottom of the cot, seizing the baby with anxious hands.

  Her mind whirled. This was too much to take, far too much, never, never, this couldn’t happen, couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t! Laying the baby back down, oh-so-carefully, she took one step back. She couldn’t look at the other children, afraid of what she might find.

  These children were everything. Her complete life. She dreamed for them, cared for them, planned for them. This wasn’t happening, never!

  A voice echoed in her mind, a male voice only slightly familiar.

  “Karey, listen! Karey, are you there?”

  Deep inside Susannah, a memory stirred She remembered auburn hair glinting in the sunlight, saw the face of a beautiful, vital woman, green eyed, pale skinned. She couldn’t remember where she’d seen her, but she knew this woman.

  “Karey, you’re possessed. Something has a strong hold on you and unless you break free, she will take you with her. Karey, listen to me!”

  He sounded angry. She didn’t like anger. It wasn’t good for her. When Thomas got angry, Susannah always ended up suffering.

  “Karey, say something, tal
k to me!”

  “Who—who are you?”

  “Jordan Arcenaux. Jordan, your husband!”

  She knew the Arcenaux. Her family and theirs had been linked since they had first arrived here. The Arcenaux were an old family, originally from France. They had relatives in Paris.

  “Paris! Yes, Paris! Remember, I went to talk to Gillespie Cornell?”

  Cornell, Cornell. No, she knew no Cornell. Wait, though. A mental picture projected clearly into her mind. An extremely tall man, dark and frightening, more frightening than Thomas. She hadn’t met him, but she’d seen his picture. On the—the—

  “Internet. He sent me his photograph. A full length shot, taken with his wife, Didiane.”

  Didiane! Now she knew!

  Somewhere in the inner depths of her being, someone else stirred, like a restless sleeper coming awake. Someone who knew Didiane Merchand, and knew Jordan Arcenaux, too. Very well indeed.

  “Put your hand between your breasts.”

  Unable to protest, she lifted one hand, slowly and obeyed the voice. The cold stones pressed their facets into her palm.

  “Think past that. Feel the coarse fabric and the herbs inside.” The voice sounded controlled, and controlling, something compulsive in the tones. She could not disobey.

  How strange! The stone softened, and at his words she actually felt what he wanted her to feel. There was a bag, full of something fragrant.

  “Stay with me, Karey. Hold that bag and wish. Wish yourself back with me. Back in the now. Come on!”

  “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know who I am!” The world whirled around her as though she’d drunk too much.

  “Then let me do the work. Open your mind. Let it go as blank as possible. I’m not going to let you go, darling, trust me.”

  The endearment shocked her enough to do as she was told. She’d always done as she was told. Gripping the now soft jewels she let her mind go blank, and drifted.

  Images came into her mind and she let them. The vision of a tall, dark man, leanly built, not bulky like Thomas, clean shaven, short, dark hair and cool, gray eyes. He had some marks on his face, but she couldn’t make them out. They looked like bruises. Strangely, she wasn’t frightened. Susannah couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t frightened.