Phantom Bride

by Cach, Lisa

  Serena came through the doorway, telling herself that curiosity about Woding’s visitors had drawn her to the dining room. It was an excuse, she knew: she’d come because she wanted to be near him. She’d stayed away from him for weeks as she focused on harassing his staff, as much because they were easier to scare as because she’d wanted to prove to herself that she didn’t need to linger near Woding. He had no power to draw her, and she was stronger than a few lustful thoughts about licking bathwater off his skin. Truly. She was.

  Now that she’d proven herself able to withstand the strange attraction he held for her, there was no reason not to drift into his presence; she had to get to know her enemy, after all, if she was to find the key to chasing him from her castle.

  Woding’s back was to her, his posture stiff and still, his head cocked slightly to the side as if listening for something beyond the conversation of his friends. Was he listening for her?

  Impossible.

  Coming around his side, she glanced at his face, and a soft sigh escaped her. He was as appealing as she remembered; she’d half-convinced herself he was not half so handsome. It was that hollow between cheekbone and hard jawline that intrigued her so, she decided. Or maybe it was the dark slash of his brows.

  Beneath those dark brows, his sharp sapphire eyes shifted and met her gaze.

  She yelped, and hid her face behind her hands. Her heart thundered; he couldn’t see her, could he? To have such a handsome man see her loathsome scarred face was not to be borne! It was several long moments before she got enough control over herself to peer from between her fingers.

  He still stared at her, but she realized his focus wasn’t quite right. He seemed to be looking through her, not at her; perhaps he could sense her, but he still could not see her. Serena lowered her hands, relieved. She leaned forward and gazed more intently into his eyes, discovering that those dark blue eyes had charcoal rims around the iris. Such beautiful eyes…

  Woding’s gaze sharpened, his eyes narrowing.

  Serena jumped back. Maybe if she didn’t look directly at him, he wouldn’t have such a strong sense of her presence. She turned her attention to the others and sat in the empty chair to Beth’s left. She listened to the woman speak, but her words in this modern accent were so fast that Serena had trouble catching them. She leaned her elbow on the cloth, resting her chin in her hand, her tangled pale hair trailing over the table and the seat of the chair as she gazed at the young woman.

  Beth was so pretty. Such smooth skin, unmarred, and dotted with a few faint freckles across her nose and cheeks. She was a creature from a different world from any Serena knew, and led a life she could only barely begin to imagine. She had an innocent, mischievous light in her eyes, and a playful affection when she looked at her husband. Her husband, in turn, looked to adore her.

  Serena felt a sadness opening up inside her, a sense of loss for all that she had never had and never been. Why couldn’t she herself have led such a life? She reached out her hand to where she could almost touch the blush of Beth’s cheek, then touched instead one of the woman’s dark brown coils of hair, giving herself just enough substance to be able to feel the silkiness of a braid, and to touch the head of a pin holding it in place.

  Beth turned slightly, her hand going to her hair, and Serena inched away, not wanting the woman to feel the chill of her presence and be frightened.

  “Beth, what is it?” Woding asked sharply.

  Serena saw that, once again, he was looking directly at her, his eyes trying to focus on what must look to him to be empty space.

  Beth smiled, shivering slightly. “ ’Twas nothing. A loose pin. It felt almost—” Beth finally noticed that Woding was staring intently to the left of her, not at her, and her eyes widened. “Almost like someone had touched my hair,” she finished on a whisper. “What do you see, Alex?”

  Serena rose. Now was not the time to cause trouble, with an innocent such as Beth here. She indulged in one last look at Woding––luscious man, but too perceptive by half!––and drifted out of the room.

  Alex felt the sense of someone other move away, and as it left the room he became aware of Rhys’s imploring voice and Beth’s concerned murmurs.

  “Alex? Are you all right? Alex? Beth, pour him some wine. Alex?”

  Alex blinked and looked at his cousin, who was half out of his seat and white faced. “I am perfectly fine, thank you, Rhys.” He smiled. “Lost in thought for a moment, that’s all. My apologies.”

  Rhys sat back, letting out a shaky breath. “Good lord, you had me believing for a moment that Serena sat here at the table with us.”

  “She did, I know it!” Beth said. “She touched me.”

  “You said it was a loose pin,” Rhys said.

  “It was her, and she wasn’t frightening at all. I got a very gentle sense of her, more of curiosity, or almost of sadness… yes, sadness. I do think she’s lonely. Perhaps, Alex, your servants should try talking to her when something goes missing. Perhaps she is only try to gain their attention. It must be very isolating, being a ghost.”

  “Beth, darling,” Rhys said. “The man was lost in thought. Serena did not touch your hair, and is not looking for a nice chat and cup of tea.” He had the sound of a man trying to convince himself more than others.

  “You were ready enough to believe in her a moment ago,” Beth said. “You should have seen your face.”

  “I am still not certain, Rhys,” Alex said, “of whether you actually believe those stories you are only too glad to tell on dark nights.”

  Rhys took a sip of wine. “Neither am I, cousin.”

  It was a few hours later, as the sun began to lower toward the horizon, that Alex stood in the courtyard with Rhys and Beth as they made their good-nights, then climbed into the small, one-horse carriage that they would drive back to their large sheep farm in the valley.

  “Come to dinner some evening soon,” Beth invited. “Studying stars is well and good, but I wouldn’t want to see you become a hermit.”

  “Your list of eccentricities is long enough as it is,” Rhys said with a grin, flicking the reins. “We can’t have people saying my relatives are mad.”

  “Good God, you don’t mean you’ve been telling people we’re related? I shall never live it down,” Alex said.

  “Hush, the both of you,” Beth scolded. And to Alex, “Come to dinner.”

  Alex watched as they drove off into the tunnel, where torches had been lit to light their way. He waited, listening, until he was sure they had safely passed the alcove Sommer insisted was haunted.

  The evening air was soft, too pleasant to abandon for the gothic gloom of the castle. He would take a stroll through the garden, then perhaps around the lower wall.

  The gate swung easily under his hand, the hinges well oiled. The high walls of the garden cast much of it in shadow, but the espaliered fruit trees on the east wall still caught the light, and the top half of the old cherry tree as well.

  Whoever had planned the garden had been careful to include flowers that bloomed at different times of the year, so there were many splashes of color among the dark green foliage of summer. He followed the stone flags of the path in their circuit of the enclosed area, then stopped beside the cherry.

  It looked harmless, not at all the frightful tree he recalled as a boy. It had leaves just like any other cherry, and he wondered now if the tree’s obvious age had had anything to do with its late blooming, or if it were simply an unusual variety. He would clip a branch of blossoms next summer and see if he could find their match in a book on botany. Perhaps he would ask Ben Flury about growing a new tree by seed—this one looked as though it had outlived its life expectancy.

  He continued through the garden, then out onto the lower wall. When he got to the corner bastion he leaned upon the parapet, looking out over the countryside. For a moment his fancy took him, and he wondered, if he were a ghost, what would it have been like to have been trapped upon this hill for centuries, so far from l
iving beings? Heaven, or hell?

  Ghosts. Serena. Every strange occurrence at Maiden Castle since he had moved in could be explained away. Even his own occasional feeling of being watched could be dismissed as his imagination, and lingering fears from when he had nearly lost his life here as a boy.

  He would not be swayed by thumps in the night or shivers on the back of the neck. There was that in him that wanted to believe Serena existed, that wanted to believe there was something beyond the life he knew, but he would not cheat himself by letting that desire sway his mind from the facts.

  Intuition was for others. He needed proof.

  In their open carriage, passing between the hedgerows of beech and hawthorn, Beth and Rhys rode in companionable silence, the soft clopping of their horse’s hooves punctuating the birdsong and distant baaing of sheep.

  “I’m worried about Alex,” Beth said into the country quiet. “Did he not look weary to you, as if he had not been sleeping well?”

  “He stays up all night looking at his stars. Of course he does not sleep well.”

  “And the way he stopped and stared over dessert, as if transfixed. I have never known him to behave so.”

  Rhys did not answer.

  “It worried you, too.”

  Rhys continued staring straight ahead, and Beth could see him working on what to say. “Tell me truthfully,” he said, turning to meet her eyes, “without putting into it wishful thinking or imagination. What was it you felt at the table? Was it a loose pin, or did something touch you?”

  Beth touched her hair and the head of the pin, recreating the sensation. “It felt just like this,” she said, “like I am touching my hair now. You will have to make of it what you will, darling. I can tell you no more.”

  Rhys sighed. “It would be just like Alex to get himself haunted. He never could live life the usual way.”

  “I wonder what Sophie would make of this?” Beth mused aloud.

  “For God’s sake, don’t tell her! The last thing Alex would want would be to have his little sister coming to stay, sprinkling holy water about the place and holding conversations with the dead.”

  “I don’t understand what you have against her,” Beth said with a touch of affront. “If it hadn’t been for my friendship with Sophie, you and I would never have met.”

  “She’s batty, and a bad influence on you.”

  “As if I haven’t a mind of my own! And besides, she’s engaged to a vicar.”

  “That does nothing to reassure me of her state of mind.”

  “Such a typical man,” Beth said, looking skyward and shaking her head. “You have no romance.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Daniel Padgett quit today,” Underhill said as he set down the supper tray.

  “He could not be induced to stay?” Alex asked, looking up from where he was translating his star-chart notes into coordinates. It was a cloudy night with a hint of rain on the breeze coming through the tower room window, and he had resigned himself to an evening indoors.

  “This time his bucket was hanging from the chandelier above his head. No one could have put it there without his noticing. They would have had to put a ladder right over him.”

  “He could have done it himself.”

  “I do not see what the point could have been, to keep these pranks up for so long,” Underhill said.

  “It may be that he is trying to drive up his wages,” Alex suggested. “Although I would not have credited him with the cleverness for such a scheme, and indeed it makes no sense for him to quit now if that is so. It continues to be a puzzle.”

  Underhill mumbled something.

  “What was that?”

  “I was saying, sir, that there is one simple explanation for it all.”

  “I don’t want to hear any talk of ghosts!” Alex said. It had become a sore point, his entire staff convinced that Serena stalked them. They were unwilling to listen to reason, and failed to notice that not a one of them had a mark upon their body to show for her supposed efforts. Even if there were a ghost, she was more a nuisance than a danger.

  “Nevertheless, Padgett has quit. Sommer refuses to bring the horses through the tunnel. John Flury will work only at his grandfather’s side, in the garden. Dickie, likewise, has glued himself to Leboff, and will not so much as cross a hall without his company. There is no one to do the laundry, to serve, to clean. We are going to have to hire at least two new staff.”

  Alex sighed. “Then do so. And be sure they are made of sterner stuff than this lot.”

  “Should I let Dickie go?”

  “No, not yet. If Leboff can find enough for him to do, let him stay. Maybe he’ll rediscover his backbone, given a little time.”

  After Underhill left, Alex leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. This sojourn in the castle was not turning out the way he had expected. Yes, he was spending his nights as he wished, but his fantasy of a peaceful household was not being realized. They were almost worse than women, these skittish men.

  A low, rumbling growl came from the corner where Otto lay on his blanket. Otto’s head came up; then he gave a loud bark, scrambled to his feet, and leaped across the room. Whatever he was after apparently evaded him, and Otto turned and galloped back, barking madly at something on Alex’s desk.

  “Otto! Hush, boy!”

  The dog watched something go from the desk to his blanket, where he pounced, snapping his jaws closed on empty air.

  “Otto! Stop it!”

  The dog spun and ran at the desk again, crouching down this time and trying to fit his nose under the drawers to one side, his rump in the air, barking all the while. Then all of a sudden the barking stopped, and Otto’s head came up, his ears flattening, his eyes going round and white as he stared at the doorway. A soft whine crept from his throat.

  The hair at Alex’s nape began to rise. He, too, stared at the doorway, and his eyes widened as a vague, transparent white form moved through the space between door and frame. It stopped just across the threshold, as if watching him. Otto inched his way into the well of the desk, bumping aside Alex’s legs.

  The white shape started to fade from his vision, as if he had lost his focus on it, and in moments was no longer visible, but he still felt a presence in the room with him.

  “Will you tell me what it is you want?” he asked aloud. The room remained silent but for Otto’s whimpering, yet at that moment he fully believed something was listening. “You’ve done a good job of frightening my staff, innocent people who mean you no harm. It does seem that you are seeking something from us.”

  Had he gone mad? He was glad Underhill was nowhere near, to hear him talking to an empty room like this. As the seconds stretched into minutes with no reply, he began to chuckle at his own foolishness. He was as bad as the rest of them, certain he was being watched.

  “Perhaps you’re a coward, and afraid to speak,” he said, picking up his pen to go back to work. It was jerked from his fingertips and thrown across the room. His desk started to shake, papers and weights vibrating, then was just as suddenly motionless. A touch brushed through his hair, directly over the scar.

  He was shocked into gap-jawed silence. And then, a moment after the disturbance ended, his annoyance at the petty display and all the mischief this ghost had caused came roaring to life. “You are a coward, terrorizing the simple and the innocent— even animals, for God’s sake. You’re a coward and you’re cruel, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he scolded. “You might succeed in frightening my staff, but you will not frighten me. I’ll be damned before I’ll see you chase me out of my own home with your silly tricks.”

  He pulled his supper tray over in front of him, gave a last, disapproving stare to where he felt the presence to be, then began to eat.

  Serena gaped at Woding, so calmly forking into his cold kidney pie. He was so… so… reasonable. What was wrong with him? He didn’t react to anything like he should!

  Once again he had immediately known she was there
. He had spoken to her.

  He’d called her a coward.

  No one called her a coward, after what she’d been through in her life. No one. She’d been angry enough to snatch his pen, shake the table, and then, so he’d make no mistake about who she was, she’d touched the scar on his forehead.

  And what had he done in response, instead of scream and cower? There’d been a gratifying moment of slack-jawed gaping, true, but then he’d once again called her a coward, and lectured her! He called her cruel! How dared he talk to her like that? How dared he? He had no idea what she had been through, what reserves of bravery she had had to call upon during her life. She had had to fight to survive, and she had fought for what she wanted. And what she wanted now was for Woding to move out, handsome face or no.

  She wanted the men gone, every last one of them. And she wasn’t going to be nice about it any longer.

  Woding was still chomping determinedly through his meal, pointedly not looking at her.

  Ignore her, would he? Maybe he had the guts to do so, but his staff didn’t.

  Woding’s staff were at the breaking point—after tonight they’d all be leaving, and then, when he was alone and vulnerable, it would be his turn. The only cowardice she was guilty of was hacking at the arms and legs of the beast that was this household, rather than the head. She’d finish her hacking tonight; then, woe to Woding!

  Serena moved quickly through the house. Entering the room shared by Dickie and Leboff, she grabbed Dickie by the feet and pulled him off his bed. He woke up at the same time he hit the floor, the sound making Leboff stir. Still holding his feet, she began to drag him across the floor.

  “Leboff! Leboff!” Dickie screamed. “Aaaaiieee! Leboff!”

  The big man came awake, sitting up in bed, staring blindly round the dark room. “Dickie! What is it? What’s happening?”

  Dickie was struggling against her, so she dropped his feet and pounced onto his chest, her form solid but invisible as she crouched on his rib cage. She lightly poked her fingertips all over his face, in his mouth, his ears, plugging his nose. He started to make bleating sounds.