She plucked several perfumed spires, and froze. Someone was watching her. A man—not Will. She felt his presence like a tickle at the back of her throat.
Something about him wasn’t right. Was he of this world or the next? She didn’t scare easily, but the thought of any ghost besides Cole, if that’s what he was, frightened her nearly senseless. And she suspected a brooding spirit haunted Foxleigh. Was this him?
Even if the presence were flesh and blood, that could be worse. He might be armed and dangerous. If only she could hide from whoever or whatever it was. She remained absolutely still, bent near the flowers, afraid to stir. Maybe if she didn’t move and acted as if she hadn’t noticed him, he’d creep away.
Heart in her throat, she said nothing. He didn’t speak or make a move against her. The suspense was unendurable. She had to know who he was. Terrified of what she might see, she straightened and slowly turned.
A solitary figure stood motionless several yards behind her. The lilies spilled heedless from her hands to the damp ground.
“DDD—Don’t be afraid ppp—pretty Julia.”
She slumped over, breathing hard, clutching her middle. “For God’s sake, Paul. Don’t sneak up on people.”
“I ddd—didn’t sneak. I sss—see things.”
“So you said. Before you shut me in the attic.”
She lifted her head, searching his dim shape in chest-fluttering uneasiness. The safety lights had come on overhead in the estate, but only faintly illuminated this part of the garden. “What are you doing here, anyway? Didn’t Dave take you home?”
“I ccc—came back fff—for you.”
Julia didn’t like the sound of that, or being alone deep in the garden with this unpredictable delinquent. “Why?”
“To sss—show you something.”
That seemed innocent enough, as long as it didn’t involve closed doors. “What is it?”
“You’ll see.” Paul stepped nearer until he was right beside her. He hadn’t bathed yet and was still a little rank from the day’s work. Maybe yesterday’s too, although Father Seth had tried to impress hygiene upon him, among other virtues.
Paul held out his fist and uncurled tight fingers.
Julia could just make out his cupped palm in the low light. There in the grimy recess lay a tiny white orb, the pearl from her glove. She remembered with wrenching clarity when Cole had picked it up and slipped it into his pocket. So, her memory had been real, not only some kind of dream.
“You took it after all,” she said weakly.
“YYY—Yes. PPP—Pretty.”
“You can’t just take things that don’t belong to you.”
“I ccc—can. If nnn—no one sees.”
Disdain edged Paul’s stuttering voice, as if he felt himself somehow superior because of his thieving abilities.
“It isn’t right.”
He shrugged. “YYY—You take it back.”
Moisture blurred her eyes as she picked up the iridescent pearl that her fingers hadn’t touched in two hundred years. She closed her hand around the sacred object, last held by Cole apart from Paul’s grungy paw.
Hardly able to grasp the reality of what she clutched, she chided him shakily, “You mustn’t steal from Mr. Wentworth. He’s kind to you, letting you work here and act in the play.”
“NNN—Not that MMM—Mr. Wentworth. Captain Wentworth.”
Her heart almost stopped. For a shuddering moment, she stood gaping at Paul’s shadowed face. It seemed to her that his yellowish eyes shone with an unusually intent light.
“You took it from Captain Wentworth?” She squeezed the words from her constricted throat.
“HHH—His coat.”
“Oh. You mean after he was gone.”
“DDD—Dead,” Paul corrected her.
Julia recoiled from the unyielding tern and the off-handed way he said it. “Then you really took it from Mr. Will. It was his property by then.”
Paul was adamant. “NNN—No.”
The sound of a car driving up the lane distracted him. Will must have come. Thank God.
Paul seemed nervous. “III—’ll go now.”
“Thank you for returning the pearl to me,” Julia said.
“I still hhh—have your glove. OK?”
“What glove?”
“I washed off the bbb—blood.”
The one she’d dropped after binding the napkin around Cole’s arm? Paul had been there? Julia remembered Peter, Cole’s groom. A prickling current ran through her and she sank to the ground beside the lilies. It was difficult even to get her breath.
Paul reached down and awkwardly stroked her head. “PPP—Pretty Julia. I’ll take care of you.”
With that uncertain assurance, he disappeared into the leaves.
****
Julia! Will sensed something was wrong the moment he parked his car and rolled out the door. He shouldn’t have left her alone. Why had he left her alone?
The grounds were pale white near the house and darker in among the stands of trees swaying leafy branches between Foxleigh and the river. The water ran hard after all the rain. Ophelia had thrown herself into just such a flow.
Damn stupid, he chided himself, thinking such a thing.
Julia wouldn’t drown herself. She’d been ecstatically happy the last he’d seen of her only a few hours ago. But he instinctively headed into the garden, not the house.
His gut told him where to seek her. Dew wet the scented earth as he crunched over the pebbled path, but she wouldn’t have stuck to the trail. She loved to be among the plants.
“Julia!”
No answer.
She must have gone further in and the river had muffled his call, or her reply.
He dove through the shrubs and trees flickering with lightning bugs like Fourth of July fireworks. Branches slapped his bare arms beneath his short sleeves as he pushed past, and snagged his hair and shirt. But what did he care?
His heart pounded harder and not only from breaking into a run. “Julia!”
Nothing.
She had to be here somewhere. Unless—a desperate panic seized him. She was in the river. God, no! “Julia!”
“Will!”
Her shaken cry came from the direction of the old wall. Stars shown through breaks in the trees and the faint glow from estate lights revealed the sinuous outline of bricks. Like snake coils, it wound through the overgrown garden, then stopped where the ancient enclosure had fallen into ruin. Clumps of lilies grew on this side of the wall.
The flowers! That must be where she’d gone.
Will could barely see to follow the path, let alone bound through the darkened garden, but he charged toward her. Remembering the penlight on his keychain, he pulled it out of his jean’s pocket and skimmed the small beam over the ground as he ran. Every rock and furrowed trunk took on an unearthly appearance, even age-old herbs. The flowering spikes of monkshood seemed especially sinister. Normally the blue-capped flowers struck him as beautiful. Not tonight, perhaps because the plant was deadly poisonous, also known ominously as wolfsbane.
Shaking off the morbid mood that gripped him, he bore down on Julia. Sweet perfume scented the night shadows, and white bells glistened in his miniature light. There! She’d sunk down among the lilies.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” She sounded small and frightened.
He dodged the spires to reach her and passed the beam over the prostrate figure, lying on the ground chillingly as she had in the play. Unlike rehearsal, though, she blinked dazedly at him in the narrow light.
“Julia? What happened?”
“Paul was here.”
Surely, Paul wouldn’t attack her? He adored her. But she looked so shaken. Will knelt beside her, silently vowing to strangle the youth. “What did he do?”
She raised clenched fingers and opened them. “Gave me this.”
Will flooded her hand with light. A tiny pearl lay in her palm, luminous in the beam. It seemed vaguely familiar
, as though it had been of importance a very long time ago, but he couldn’t think why. It wasn’t big enough to be worth much.
“It’s the button Cole kept from my glove,” she said.
“Oh.” The significance rolled over Will. “How did Paul come by it?”
“He says he took it, along with the glove I lost. Two hundred years ago.”
A crackling sensation charged down Will’s spine. “No. That can’t be. There must be some logical explanation for all of this.”
“There is.” Urgency filled her voice and demeanor. She sat up. “We’ve found our worm.”
Will stared at her in the dim light. “Not Paul. He’s an oddball and has sticky fingers, but he’s not capable of murder. Apart from that, you’re asking me to believe he was here when Cole was killed, in 1806.”
“He was. So were you. What do you remember of that last night?”
Completely taken aback by her question, Will didn’t know how to reply. He reached out, smoothing bits of earth and leaves from her tumbled hair, and hedged, “Not a lot.”
“You must remember something? I do.”
“You’re better at recall than I am. My money’s on that Cameron fellow.”
“Maybe they were in this together.”
“What, Paul and some Scottish guy you say reminded you of Lyle? Those two despise each other.”
“Now. Maybe they didn’t back then.”
“Julia, you sound like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when she says, “‘And you, and you, and you were there.’”
“But they were. Will, you have to think back. Who came to your—Cole’s—room after your mother and I left?”
He was losing her again to this ghostly madness.
“Sweetheart,” he said gently. “I can’t really remember those days. I wasn’t born yet.”
Her voice trembled. She trembled. “You were. You’re Cole somehow.”
He pulled her shaking against him. “I have a strong association with him, sort of like memories at times, but that’s all.”
“No. It’s more. You said so yourself,” she insisted as though he were going back on his word.
“To soothe you.”
“Or make love to me?” She jerked away from him, quivering with the hurt in her raw voice.
Will wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back into his embrace. “I never told you anything just to take advantage of you. You have to know this, Julia.”
“How can I?” Her wounded query was muffled against his chest. “You said one thing then. Now another.”
He pressed his lips to her hair. “All I want is to love you.”
She was rigid in his arms. “All I’ve ever wanted is Cole. If you’re not that man, then I’ve betrayed him.”
Will sucked in his breath as though Julia had driven a blade through his gut. She might as well have. The pounding hurt rang in his ears and raged into his very marrow. Surely, it engulfed them both.
Hardly aware of what he did, he let her go, and got stiffly to his feet. Through the blinding pain, he gruffly said, “Come on. You’re not staying the night out here. I’ll see you to your apartment.”
After that, Will didn’t a whole lot care. At least, he was battling like forty strong men not to. Let Cole comfort her. Will had had enough of Julia Maury, Morrow, he vowed, knowing full well he’d never wanted a woman so much in his life and that without her it was over. He overflowed with a burning caldron of want. Enough for two lifetimes. And it nearly choked him.
He shone the light among the fragrant lilies, searching for the path. Julia followed, sniffling, behind him. Her utter wretchedness goaded his conscience, but not enough to turn and try again. She’d clawed him once after his tender declaration. He wasn’t risking another attack. Her next blow might well be lethal.
“Will, I’m sorry,” she said in a strangled voice.
Not enough. Not nearly enough. He kept on walking.
****
Will sensed a familiarity about the scene unfolding around him as if he were in a play he’d enacted a great many years ago. As if he were himself, but different. Everything seemed indisputably real, and yet...
He ran his eyes over the great hall illuminated in the radiance of the chandelier. The faceted light from hundreds of prisms shone over the sumptuously gowned ladies and elegant gentlemen pirouetting in graceful squares. Music soared through the scented air from the musicians seated overhead on the stair landing. Vases of fragrant roses and white lilies were everywhere, and the dancers wafted fine French perfume as they passed by.
Midsummer’s Eve ball...he’d been to these high occasions before. This year’s ball was unparalleled, though, because Julia now graced his life. Hadn’t she sailed all the way from England to be with him? She gleamed in the candlelight like the rarest of pearls, but he was painfully aware of having offended her. Somehow, he must make amends.
He bowed to her, his partner for the quadrille, and then the three other couples in the set. Her lovely eyes reproached him in an exquisite face as he reached out a gloved hand and clasped her dainty fingers. Her soft white skin showed through the lacy cloth. Hair the color of burnished sunlight flowed in curls down over her back and the white gown draped her in snowy splendor as if she were a bride.
She would be, and soon, if Will had his way.
How he wished they weren’t the center of attention in a room full of curious matrons whispering behind their fans. He yearned to have done with the conventions of society and gather Julia in his arms here and now. Given her present mood, though, she just might strike him on the cheek. There was nothing for it but to see this tedious formality through.
Lifting her chin, she studiously ignored him throughout the turning forward and backward, going to the right and left, all the exacting steps of the prescribed dance.
“I didn’t flirt with Miss Patterson,” Will whispered, crossing hands for the next step. “She flirted with me.”
Lips tight, Julia flashed him a dubious look.
That hadn’t gone well. Certainly not as he’d hoped. Damn that curvaceous brunette, stirring up all this contention. Miss Patterson meant nothing to him. Julia was all. Will chaffed impatiently for this rigid dance to end. As head couple, they must perform the entire figure, repeated by the side couples.
At last, the quadrille was done amid polite clapping.
He’d had enough of this lifeless formality. Gripping Julia’s elbow, he walked her past the sidelong glances and Miss Patterson’s coy smile. Julia made no protest with a crowd goggling at them, but Will suspected she would the instant he got her outside.
The assembly blurred before him. She, alone, mattered.
Still, she didn’t speak, but her tension spoke for her as he escorted her out the front entrance onto the portico and down the steps. He led her across the lawn and into the trees, glittering with a hundred lanterns. Whether she liked it or not, he was taking her in his arms, and did, holding her delightful softness to him.
“Julia, darling, I never meant to upset you. Please forgive my foolishness.”
She didn’t put up much of a struggle and he cherished her perfumed sweetness.
She laid her head on his chest and was quiet for a time. Then she whispered, “I suppose you can’t help it if women adore you, as long as you don’t adore them in return.”
He pressed his lips to her flowery hair. “I could say the same of you regarding men.”
“Mr. Cameron means nothing to me.”
Cameron. Didn’t she mean Lyle?
Will glanced down at his jacket and noticed for the first time that he wore scarlet tails, the formal coat of an expert huntsman. White breeches fitted his legs and black riding boots. A splendid sheathed sword hung at his side.
What on earth?
Julia lifted her hand to his face. “Don’t be troubled. I forgive you, dearest Cole.”
“Thank you.” Uncertain what more to say, or do, in this surreal moment, Will simply held her.
Music floated to t
hem from the open windows of the house, a Viennese waltz. “May I have this dance?” he whispered.
“Out here?” She laughed softly. “You may.”
Closing one arm around her waist and the other higher up her back, Will circled with her through the trees. She giggled as he swept her faster in the flowing movements of this most romantic of dances. Her gown swirled milky white and she followed his lead in perfect union.
Will lost all sense of time. He only knew they waltzed among the glowing lanterns and fireflies in the scented night...and he wanted to be with her forever. But Julia faded from his arms. He couldn’t hold onto her any more than he could have the moonbeams that silvered her face.
Aching to restore her, he awoke in the ridiculously frilly bedroom bewildered. The lilting waltz still echoed in his mind. That had only been a dream. And yet, was it possible he had once danced with her like that?
Two hundred years ago, he reminded himself. He must be losing his sanity along with Julia. Even if he were, it had been a wonderful flight of fancy. Maybe reality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
A voice booming up the steps disrupted his drowsy thoughts. “You’d better get your pretty-boy ass down here, Wentworth, and see what we’ve found!”
Lyle bellowing in typically crude form.
Will shot a glance at the clock. Damn. He’d overslept. “What are you yelling about?” he shouted, leaping up from bed and pulling on last night’s jeans over his boxers.
“We’ve turned up a bloody skeleton digging for the wall! Looks like a bloke. Right off, I’d say he was murdered!”
“What the—” Reeling in shock, Will stuck his head and arms through a T-shirt as he tore out the bedroom door. “When was he killed?”
“A hell of a long time ago! You missing any ancestors?”
****
Puffy-eyed and late for work, Julia stepped from her quarters, a steaming mug in one hand and blueberry muffin in the other. She didn’t feel much like breakfast, and ached to her innermost being from wounding Will last evening. She felt equally pained in return. She’d tried to apologize, hadn’t she, even though she’d felt betrayed? She wanted to shout at him for striding away and hold him close at the same time, but her empty stomach growled. If she didn’t eat, she’d grow light-headed.
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