Phantom Bride

by Cach, Lisa

  A hand walloped her from behind, knocking her off Dickie. She went for Leboff’s bare leg, biting down on the rounded calf. He bellowed, and she scampered out of the way of his fists and kicking legs.

  She went formless and floated halfway up the wall. Then, drawing on her anger, she let herself be seen as a transparent, glowing form. When Leboff’s eyes went round as fried quail’s eggs, she drifted toward him. He backed away, his head shaking from side to side. He grabbed the candlestick from beside his bed and stabbed it at her.

  “Lord Jesus Christ, protect me!” he cried, and she rushed him. He passed out just before she reached him, falling to the floor with a board-shaking thud.

  Dickie, weeping, managed to get to his hands and knees and crawl to the door. Serena left him clawing at the handle, too weak and uncoordinated with fear to open it.

  She went next to the kitchen, taking every knife she could lay hand to and stabbing them into the plaster of the high, vaulted ceiling. She found flour and dusted it over every horizontal surface, then put a single floury handprint on the black back of the fireplace. It was a pity she didn’t know how to write, that she might scrawl something threatening.

  Sommer was sleeping down in the stables: too far for her to go. The end of the tunnel was her limit. The Flurys slept in the village. Daniel Padgett was already gone. That left Underhill.

  She flew through the halls and up the stairs, getting into the rhythm of destruction, for the moment loving that she was a ghost and not human, and able to do the unnatural. She was a fighter, a warrior, and she would fight until the last of them was gone.

  With each act of destruction, the rage in her grew, and as it grew she became more distant from thought and caution. She knew she was expending energies that would cost her dearly, but she was too wrought up to care. It mattered only that there was another to attack, a fresh target for her wrath.

  She stopped outside Underhill’s door and pounded the heels of her hands on the wood, softly at first, then steadily louder. She used her fury to funnel energy into her noisemaking—the sound pounding, pounding, pounding, the whole hallway shaking with the force of it as it grew still louder, like the thudding footsteps of a gigantic beast.

  The door down the hall opened, and Underhill dashed out in his nightshirt. Tricky devil, he’d escaped through Woding’s room.

  Serena pounded after him, and saw that he was headed for the tower. She flashed ahead of him, using the sound of her thundering footsteps to herd him back toward the main stairs. He ran down them, and she followed, chasing him through the rooms of the castle, then out into the courtyard.

  She continued the pounding out in the open, blocking Underhill when he tried to make for the garden or the lower wall. She wanted him in the tunnel.

  He seemed to sense where she was sending him, and tried to escape to the left or right like a frightened sheep, but she kept him in line, coming up right behind him with a noise that he must have felt reverberating in every tissue of his thin body.

  The black mouth of the tunnel gaped ahead, and Underhill finally flung himself inside with a howl of surrender. Serena quit the pounding, standing listening as Underhill screamed his way through the turns of the tunnel, alone now with his terror. She doubted either he or Sommer would be coming back through that passage anytime soon.

  A deep tiredness began to overcome her as Underhill’s echoing cries died away. The thrill of the attack was still with her, still pumping the ghost of blood through her bodiless veins, but underneath it she could feel exhaustion seeping out from her marrow. She turned toward the garden and stumbled. She was more tired than she had realized.

  A fluttering panic rose in her breast. How much of her precious energy had she used? As the blood lust faded under the pressure of exhaustion, the voice of reason began to chide her for her wastefulness. Never had she expended so much at one time. Never had she allowed herself to get so carried away. She would need to spend several days in the unconscious oblivion that was her only form of rest, to recoup.

  She dragged herself into the garden, then allowed herself to float, too tired to go through the motions of footsteps. Her cherry tree was silhouetted against the dark sky, clear to her night-seeing eyes.

  Were those leaves there curling, drying out? She came closer, reaching out to touch them. The leaves crumbled under her insubstantial touch. She brushed her hands along the whole branch, feeling the drained wood. It was only where the limb joined the trunk of the tree that she felt life again.

  Oh, God. She had killed an entire branch with her stunts tonight. She wrapped her arms around the trunk, tears slipping down her cheeks to soak into the cracks of the bark. For nearly five centuries this tree had been her key to maintaining an echo of life. Without it, death would take all of her.

  Once again, if she were not careful, her efforts to live the life she desired would bring about her own destruction.

  Chapter Nine

  “Leboff quit, and Underhill will sleep only in the stable quarters with Sommer,” Alex said, stepping around a sheep. “Dickie, who’s had the worst of it, remains in the castle. Underhill hired Dickie’s sweetheart, Marcy, as a maid, and I think Dickie is afraid she’ll lose all respect for him if he leaves.”

  “We heard you’d started hiring women,” Rhys said, climbing over a stile into the next of his pastures. “The word is, no man in his right mind would spend the night at Maiden Castle.” He cast a grin over his shoulder. “So much for your plan to live in a bachelor’s haven, free from the repressive presence of women.”

  Alex followed Rhys over the stile, and they followed the sheep path down to the bank of the river, where it ran alongside the water into the cool shade of the trees. “I begin to think an all-male house was a foolish idea. Look at Dickie: he puts on a much stronger front with Marcy there. And Leboff could have learned a thing or two from Daisy Hutchins, the young widow woman we found for the kitchens. Do you know of her?”

  “I’ve met her at church. A more stolid, unimaginative person you will not find.”

  “Leboff might have stayed if she were there to begin with, shaming him with her good sense,” Alex said, pausing to look into the darkened river for trout.

  “I hear there were actual teeth marks on his leg.”

  Alex grimaced. “So that part got out as well? Then it’s no wonder only women were willing to hire on. I’m assuming they all believe the part of the legend that says it is only men Serena dislikes.”

  “There’s an element of competition to it now,” Rhys said, tossing twigs into the water. “Every woman for ten miles is using Marcy and Daisy as her proof that when push comes to shove, women have more backbone than men. They are laying bets on it.”

  “I can only hope, for the sake of my clean shirts, that they win those bets.”

  Rhys stopped his twig tossing and looked at Alex, his brows drawn together. “Did Leboff truly have bite marks on his leg?”

  Alex shrugged and resumed walking along the wooded path. “Yes, but in the chaos of the dark, I think it just as likely that Dickie bit him as that a ghost did.”

  “You’re still trying to explain things away. God, Alex! I should think it plain even to you by now that something is wrong at that castle.”

  “There have been no disturbances since that night.”

  “Most likely because Serena got what she wanted. The only males who will sleep there now are a frightened boy and you. Have you seen nothing unusual yourself?”

  “Nothing I would swear to.” He could not be certain he had seen that white mist, after all, and in the light of day he could make himself doubt that his desk had shaken, or his pen been pulled from his hand. An experience was not necessarily proof, no matter how real it had seemed at the time.

  Rhys narrowed his eyes at him. “Don’t play word games with me. I didn’t ask if you would be willing to tell the tale to a judge.”

  Alex shrugged. “I’ve done my share of imagining, along with the rest. I’m not willing to completely be
lieve any of it, though.”

  “You should leave that place. There are other houses with good views. There’s no reason to stay.”

  “I won’t be chased out of my home by something that might not exist. Maybe there is something going on up there—but I don’t know what, and I cannot be absolutely certain there is a ghost. There is no evidence.”

  “What more do you need?” Rhys demanded.

  They came out of the woods, walking back up the sloping pasture. Alex stopped, looking over the green fields and up at the soft, hazy blue sky. “I don’t know what would convince me. Perhaps being led to a previously unknown tomb, or an ancient goblet appearing out of thin air. Something concrete and unknown. I can’t let myself believe in the supernatural, while there yet remain other explanations, however far-fetched.”

  Rhys slapped Alex on the shoulder. “You are one stubborn bastard. Serena could sit on your lap and give you a kiss, and you still wouldn’t believe.”

  Alex grimaced. “Let us hope it never comes to that.”

  The clock was striking two a.m. when Alex finally lifted his eyes from the pages of Ivanhoe, turning the book over on his leg to hold the place while he rubbed his eyes and pushed himself up straight in his chair, feeling the ache in his neck from holding the same position for too long. He yawned, and then as he looked around the library he felt the hairs slowly rise on the back of his neck.

  She was in the room; had been for some time, perhaps.

  It was not so strong a sensation as he had had before, else he most likely would have been stirred from his reading, but the sensation was definitely there.

  The last time he had spoken to her––or whatever it was––his staff had had a night of hell. Beth’s theory that Serena was lonely and simply wanted attention was obviously flawed.

  Tonight he would try a far saner course than speaking to the invisible: he would not acknowledge the sensed presence in any way. He would not look toward it; he would not speak to it. This way he might even teach his own imaginative psyche that there was nothing there.

  He was privately worried that the more he let himself even think about the possibility of there being a ghost, the more likely he would come to believe it to be true, whether or not there were facts to support the conclusion. He had seen the same thing happen too often with acquaintances who, like him, were interested in the sciences. Their own thoughts became more real to them than the physical world they were trying to study, and they became incapable of seeing evidence that contradicted their theories.

  Clearly, the best course was to ignore any strange sensations he had of being watched. There was no purpose in doing otherwise. If Serena existed, she would have to write him a letter saying so, as well as draw a map pointing to the location of her moldering bones.

  With that thought in mind, he rolled his head to work the kinks out of his neck and then rose, taking the lamp and book with him up to his bedroom and thence to his dressing-cum-bathing room, making a conscious effort to ignore the sense of something following him. It was much like trying not to think of a blue zebra, once someone has suggested that you not let the image enter your mind.

  He opened the cold water cock and filled the tub, then lit the circulating water boiler and checked its water levels and valves, still cautious of the modern, luxurious contraption that Briggs had had installed. It must be one of only a handful of such bathtub water boilers in England, and he had little faith in such new technology.

  He stopped in front of the door to the replica of a medieval garderobe that Briggs had had built, albeit without a hole shooting out into a moat. His resolve to act and think as if he were alone faltered at the idea of tending to his body’s most private needs with the presence in attendance. A dim remembrance of a childhood fear of monsters in the privy flitted to mind.

  Serena stood a few feet from Woding, watching as he stepped into the garderobe. She couldn’t bring herself to follow. She hadn’t even followed Briggs into that small chamber, remembering too well how her own brothers had made a joke of trying to disrupt and embarrass her at similar times. She’d dosed William’s food with enough tansy to send him to the garderobe for a day and a half, in revenge for one particularly humiliating episode.

  Her haunting of Woding’s staff, although draining, was proving reasonably successful. Unfortunately, there were always more workers willing to be hired, a fact that had become abundantly clear when Marcy and Mrs. Hutchins showed up. Serena had eavesdropped on a few of their conversations, hearing their boasts that they would prove the men cowards. She couldn’t help but cheer them on, and did not want to disturb the women in any way and make them give lie to their boasts.

  It was best, therefore, that she direct her efforts to where they should have been all along: to Woding. His awareness of her presence had given her a devastatingly simple idea for how to wear him down. She would be by his side day and night. Minute by minute, hour by hour, this man who appeared to value solitude almost as much as she did would have to endure her constant company. He would feel her standing behind his shoulder, sitting across from him at dinner, leaning against the parapet of his tower, and even lying beside him in his bed. Day in, day out. It would drive him mad.

  And the beauty of the plan was that she would not drain energy from her tree. She could haunt him this way for half a century, and it would be nearly effortless. She’d had centuries of learning patience, and could endure the pain of being in such close contact with the living. Woding would break long before she would.

  Her plan most definitely was not inspired by a wish to hover near him. No, she was not happy to gaze upon his face, watching his expressions. The movements of the fine muscles in his hands while he wrote did not concern her, nor did that tender space of skin that showed on the back of his neck, between collar and hair. His voice did not tremble through her.

  Not at all.

  All right, maybe a little.

  She went and sat on the edge of the tub. It was lined with lead and perfectly smooth, and she wished she could know what it felt like to step into such a bath. There would be no danger of finding a splinter in one’s backside while one wallowed about in the steaming water. And what luxury, to have the water heated while in the tub, rather than be hauled by hand from well to fire, and fire to tub!

  She swung her feet over the edge and slid down into the tub. She was a tall woman, but the tub was long and deep, and with the back of her neck on the edge of the tub she didn’t even need to bend her knees, her feet just reaching the end. She lay there, pretending to be covered in water, then slid down deeper, pretending to hear the water fill her ears, and to feel it close over her face.

  She heard Woding come out of the water closet; then after a few moments he appeared beside the tub. She looked up at him as he looked down, faint flickers of emotion dancing in the muscles across his face. It was his habit to bathe in the evening, and she wondered if he was reluctant to do so now. He might have some sense that she was in his tub.

  Whatever internal debate Woding had been waging while he looked down into the tub, he had settled it. His jaw tight, he reached over and twisted the cock to let in hot water.

  Serena shrieked, pulling back her feet, then snorted at her own foolishness, sticking her feet back under the pouring he splashed his hand in the water above her belly, testing the temperature. He moved away, and she heard cloth on cloth, and uneven steps: the sounds of a man undressing.

  She scooted up and peered over the edge of the tub, her one previous view of his buttocks still vivid in her mind. She had persuaded herself that spying on him at his bath was necessary to her purpose, and had little to do with her own curiosity about his body.

  He had his back to her now, bent over as he stood on one foot, peeling off a stocking. All he wore was a pair of white drawers, his shirt and other garments lying over a chair. She watched the flexing of muscles in his legs and back as he balanced on one foot, then tossed the stocking atop his shirt, standing straight again.

&nb
sp; His hands went to the waistband of his drawers. Her own hands gripped the edge of the tub. He seemed to hesitate; then, from the flexing and angle of his arms, she knew he was at work on the buttons. He slid them off, stepped out of them, and placed them on top of his other linens.

  For a long moment he stood motionless, long enough for Serena to feel a blush in her own cheeks. He knew she was watching him. The thought of being known as a voyeur embarrassed her, but not enough to stop looking. As long as he didn’t acknowledge her presence, she thought she could stand the shame.

  He turned around. Her lips parted as her eyes roved over his firm body. She could see every flex and ripple of his muscles as he walked toward the tub. Dark hair spread across the top of his chest, then tapered to a single faint line down his abdomen. His forearms and lower legs were dusted with dark hair, but the rest of his skin was bare, somewhat pale from lack of sun, but free of a single mark or blemish.

  He looked like the statue in the castle chapel of a naked, alabaster Saint George, standing with spear in hand atop the writhing serpent. Her eyes went to his manhood, staying there as he came closer, and she found herself unable to look away from the dusky form. It was longer and thicker than Briggs’s, surrounded by dark hair, and the sight of it stirred some unnameable hunger deep within her. He stopped at the edge of the tub, that strangely entrancing organ mere inches from her face.

  She looked up at him. His cheeks had gone pink, and he was staring determinedly at the wall, but a moment later he stepped into the tub. She scooted back toward one end, giving him room. The water sloshed as he sat, his face wincing at the temperature. He stretched out his legs, forcing her to climb up to the edge of the tub, out of his way. She took off her leather shoes and let her stocking feet dangle in the water she could not feel, her toes inches from his ankles.

  She sat, and she watched.

  Alex had to fight the urge to don a nightshirt after his bath. The sense not only of a presence, but of an intensely observant one, had persisted all through his bath, setting his nerves on edge. It had been a battle to ignore it, and then once he had accepted his inability to do so, a battle to accept the sensation and carry on regardless.