by Trisha Telep
She straightened and cast him a disdainful look familiar from life. She’d always been haughty and headstrong. “Surely you know.”
He slumped against the wall, folding his arms to stop himself reaching for her. It was torture to be so close to her without touching. “The last thing I remember is stealing you away from the wedding feast.”
“And then you murdered me.” She looked less likely to take to her heels. He wasn’t sure how these things worked, but if he lost her now, it was possible he might never find her again.
“Just like that?” He arched his eyebrows in disbelief. “I went from kissing you in the hall to pricking you with my pocket knife? Or did I come into possession of a loaded pistol somewhere between vowing a lifetime’s devotion and getting you into bed?”
“You have no right to mock me.” Anger sparked in her black eyes. The push and pull between them was familiar, no matter how much time had passed. Although the ridiculous truth was he felt like he’d only seen her an hour ago, when they were both alive and in love.
He shook his head in bewilderment. “It seems so unreal, my darling. That we’re dead and here and it’s seventy years since I held you in my arms. And that you claim I killed you.”
“You did,” she said sullenly, stepping into the room. His heart lurched with relief. “Now you think it’s funny.”
“Anything but.” His tone was grim and he didn’t make the mistake of interpreting her approach as an invitation to touch her.
What would it be like to touch her? Could he even touch her?
He could touch inanimate objects, but what about someone formed from the same indefinable material that he was?
“You pushed me down the stairs in a fit of jealous rage.” She spoke as though her impossible statement ended all argument between them.
Shock held him motionless. Could he have done that? Could he have done that and forgotten?
Their courtship hadn’t been undiluted harmony. He’d loved her to distraction and she, knowing that, hadn’t been above teasing him. From the first, he’d been unsure of her chastity. Even so, he couldn’t imagine killing her. She could lie under every man in the Royal Navy and he’d still want her.
With difficulty, he kept his voice even. “Why? Had you betrayed me?”
She didn’t meet his eyes. “Of course not. I loved you.”
“And I love you.” Foreboding filled him. Her unease was visible. Nor did he miss the significance of the past tense in her statement. “Whatever you did, my beloved, I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” She raised her hands to her ears and turned away in a fury. “I told you what happened. Now go away and never come near me again.”
Her distress lashed at his heart, convincing him further that he could never hurt her. “Isabella, tell me what you remember,” he said urgently.
Her shoulders trembled. Damn it, he’d made her cry. His voice softened and he fought the urge to take her in his arms and reassure her. The edge had come off her terror, but he knew she’d scarper if he pushed her too far. “Sweetest love, tell me.”
She turned. “I . . .”
She raised a shaking hand to her lips as though afraid to say the words. But when she spoke, her voice was surprisingly steady, for all that her cheeks glistened with tears. “I was on the landing at the top of the grand staircase. All the wedding guests were crowded around something below me. I bent over the banister to see and realized that it was me. Lying on the tiles. I . . . I tried to say something, to tell them I wasn’t dead at all, I was here alive. But even though I cried and screamed and shouted and pleaded, nobody paid a moment’s attention. Then my father gathered the men and they rushed upstairs and grabbed you. The family story is you were hauled out of the Chinese bed but it’s not true. You were in the corridor near the staircase. I tried to call out to you but you didn’t hear me either.”
He frowned. “But do you remember me pushing you?”
She shook her head. “No. But everyone says you did. They carried you off to London in chains and tried you in the House of Lords. Then they hanged you.”
Her matter-of-fact tone confirmed her complete faith in what she said. He felt like all the blood drained from his body. Which was absurd. He had neither blood nor body.
Dear God, what an appalling fate. For anyone. Perhaps it was a mercy he remembered nothing.
She was still speaking. “After that, they closed up the house and dismantled the bed saying it brought bad luck. I’ve been here alone for seventy years, barring the few servants who acted as caretakers.” In spite of the misery in her face, her lips twisted in a wry smile. “You’d think, given I was the innocent party, I’d waft up to heaven and you’d linger to expiate your sins down here. Where have you been?”
There was so much he wanted to say, so much he wanted to disagree with in her tragic story. But his resistance to what she’d told him was purely emotional. He had no facts to go on. Nothing she said stirred a shred of memory in him. His history remained a blank from the moment he’d swept Isabella into his arms, the happiest man in the world.
He forced himself to answer, although where he’d been was one of the least important issues between them. “I don’t know. I woke up in the Chinese bed last night. I remember kissing you behind the vase then carrying you up the stairs. That was seventy years ago and there’s been nothing in between.”
“There’s a wedding in this house tomorrow. Perhaps that conjured you from hell.” She didn’t sound like she was joking.
He frowned. “I don’t think I’ve been in hell. Or if I have, I don’t remember it. It was like no time had passed since we wed. When I woke up, I thought I was still alive. That you were still my wife.”
Her lips twisted in an unamused smile. “I suppose I still am. Although we vowed to stay together till death us do part, and death did indeed part us. It’s quite a conundrum. One for the ecclesiastical courts, I’m sure.”
It was his turn to find her mockery grating. She seemed to accept without question that he’d murdered her. When she’d known how steadfastly he’d loved her. But then she’d had seventy years to come to terms with what had happened. He’d only been extant for one bewildering day.
“Don’t,” he couldn’t help saying.
She cast him an unimpressed glance under her thick dark eyelashes. “Perhaps your spirit is attached in some way to the bed. It’s been in pieces in the cellar since they closed the house. They only finished reassembling it yesterday.”
The theory made as much sense as anything else in this topsyturvy world. So many mysteries. So many puzzles. But just one was important. Had he killed this beautiful bright woman whom he adored?
He forced himself to ask the question. “If you don’t remember, how can you be sure?”
Her eyes held a wary light. “We quarreled in the Chinese bedroom. The servants heard us.”
“We were always quarreling. That was nothing new.” Their wooing had been a tempestuous affair, marked by passionate clashes and even more passionate reconciliations.
She shrugged, but he didn’t find her nonchalance convincing. “Well, apparently this time, your temper attained such a pitch that you shoved me down the stairs.”
The story still seemed wrong. But Isabella believed he’d killed her. Family history confirmed he’d killed her. What was the revulsion in his soul compared to all these hard facts?
“I cannot believe it. I will not believe it,” he said in a flat voice, even as bleak reality battered him, insisted he accept the completely unacceptable.
She regarded him sadly. “No, you don’t want to believe it. Neither did I.” She paused. “But you will, over time. Anything is possible over time.”
When she slipped out of the room, he didn’t have the heart to stop her.
Calista opened her eyes. She lay atop the lavishly embroidered cover of the Chinese bed. The room was still dark. If she’d slept after discovering such astonishing pleasure in Miles’s arms, it hadn�
��t been for long.
She shifted carefully. Her body ached with unfamiliar twinges. But what did fleeting discomfort matter when Miles had opened a whole new world of joy to her? Miles slept at her side, curled around her as if he couldn’t bear to let her go, even in sleep. The closed room was redolent of heat and the scents of sex and sated male.
As she stared up into the darkness, she wondered if she could endure such happiness. If she could endure the possibility of losing such happiness.
Better to die now . . .
She frowned. What prompted that bleak thought? When she reached her peak in Miles’s embrace, she’d believed she’d never doubt his love again.
She stared up at the tester and saw two tiny pinpoints of bright red above her. Two tiny pinpoints of red that focused on her in a way that both frightened and fascinated. She realized with a shiver that the lights were the eyes of that malevolent face she’d noticed this afternoon.
No, this wasn’t happening. She was a devotee of scientific process. She didn’t believe in disembodied voices or curses or spirits.
Except she’d heard that voice most distinctly . . .
Perhaps she was dreaming. Everything else in the room was black and silent. But she was too aware of Miles beside her, the possessive weight of his arm across her breasts, the soft sigh of his breathing, the heat of his body along her side.
She was undoubtedly awake.
And unable to break the hold of those two burning red eyes. They pierced her to the soul. They saw all her faults and inadequacies. All her unrequited longing to have Miles love her for ever.
The eyes mocked. They knew her wishes would never come true.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she whispered. “This is all imagination.”
Beside her, Miles stirred but didn’t wake. The eyes didn’t waver. The steady red glow was uncomfortable, unwelcome, but still she couldn’t look away. Suddenly, in spite of the warmth of Miles’s body against hers, she was deathly cold.
A whisper came to her. Hissing. Caustic. Knowing.
You’ll never be enough for him.
The voice’s cruel assurance sliced through her. Closing her eyes, she insisted again she didn’t believe in ghosts. She’d never been a fanciful woman. She’d been hostile to anything she couldn’t measure with her own senses, scornful of weaker minds that credited influences beyond the here and now.
She felt neither hostile nor scornful now. She felt scared and alone and defenseless. And helpless to combat the truth of what she heard.
Let him go, Calista. Let him go. He’ll tire of you before long. Perhaps even now he dreams of leaving you.
To escape the taunting voice, she turned her head away. Uncannily, the voice said everything she’d told herself over and over since she’d fallen in love with Miles. The voice caught her doubts and turned them into excruciating reality.
“You’re not real,” she whispered. “You’re not real.”
The voice didn’t even bother contradicting her desperate denial. Instead Calista heard a laugh. Low and full of such evil that the hairs rose on her arms.
You’ve had your measure of joy. More than you deserve. Give up and leave Miles free to find someone who will make him happy.
She knew that the voice, the eyes, wanted her to leave Miles’s side. “No,” she said almost soundlessly. She squeezed her eyes shut, although some preternatural element knew the red lights still burned down at her.
You know this happiness won’t last. Come with me. I’ll give you peace.
“I’ve found peace.”
Again, that low, derisive laugh. The voice obviously considered her answer completely fatuous. Unfortunately, so did she.
Still she fought back. When Miles had held her in his arms and touched her, she’d felt his love. He hadn’t lied when he said he loved her. He’d been so tender, so passionate, so eager to show her pleasure. Of course he loved her. He loved her.
He loves you now. But for how long?
“For ever,” she whispered, but both she and the voice knew she lied.
For long minutes, she and whatever malign spirit inhabited the room conducted a silent battle. And all the while, doubts scuttled through her heart like cockroaches.
She resisted until the pull became too strong to withstand.
Slowly she sat up. Miles’s arm fell away from her. She immediately felt the absence of his protective embrace.
Even as her mind insisted she was being ridiculous, that she still possessed an independent will, she tugged her nightdress over her head.
Come. Come with me . . .
Now it had her cooperation, the voice was no longer evil. Instead it was sweet. The sweetest sound she’d ever heard, apart from Miles telling her he loved her.
Would she ever hear him say that again?
Come with me, Calista. Come to a place where you’ll never be sad again.
She could no more ignore the voice than she could tell herself not to love Miles.
As she rose from the bed, she heard Miles stir, but some force prevented her from speaking to him or looking back. Instead she drifted toward the door, already open, although she knew it had been firmly shut when she and Miles lay together.
Purpose gripped her as she turned down the corridor toward the staircase. The moon floated behind the huge mullioned window, showing her way. Brighter than the moon were those two red lights luring her further along the hallway.
“Calista?” Miles’s voice behind her was thick with sleep.
She struggled to answer but her trance-like state robbed her of speech.
“Calista, where are you going?” Through her daze, she registered that he sounded concerned, loving. She heard the bed creak as he shifted.
He doesn’t really love you. You know that.
The voice no longer taunted, even when its words cut her to the quick. The words only cut her so sharply because they were true. Miles might believe he loved her now. Even she believed he loved her now. But she was too awkward, too plain, too adoring, too clever. Too . . . Calista Aston for him to love her forever.
That’s right. That’s right. Better to save yourself a lifetime of pain. You know it’s what you want.
The voice promised rest, an end to the spiteful chatter in her mind. She thought she’d found rest in Miles’s arms but she’d been deceived. She turned toward the twin red lights almost in relief, ignoring Miles calling for her.
Her mind knew it was dark, the middle of the night. But she could see as clearly as at midday. Ahead loomed the staircase, winding steeply to the black and white tiles in the hall below.
The same black and white tiles where seventy years ago they’d found Isabella Verney with her neck broken. A woman betrayed by her lover. That lover had paid with a humiliating execution and a pauper’s grave.
Miles will betray you too. You know that.
“But he hasn’t betrayed me yet,” she whispered, even as she took another reluctant step toward the top of the stairs. Her feet felt weighted with bricks, but still she couldn’t cease her forward momentum.
He will.
“Calista? Calista, what is it? Did I hurt you?”
As if through a mist, she heard the slap of running feet behind her. Miles grabbed her arm. After what they’d just done, his touch was heartbreakingly familiar.
“Calista, speak to me.” The bewildered concern in his voice pierced her daze. “Are you sleepwalking?”
She turned to him, blinking slowly. It was odd. A strong light shone on him although she couldn’t discern its source. It was brighter than the moonlight. He looked handsome, ruffled, worried. He’d tugged his breeches on. Her wondering gaze traced his body, as though she saw him for the first time. The powerful, lean torso, the long legs, the elegant bare feet planted on the polished boards of the floor. Even his feet were beautiful.
All of him was beautiful. Too beautiful for her.
Yes, too beautiful for you.
Her rational mind insisted she question wha
t was happening, resist. But it was easier, almost pleasant to accept the voice’s dictates and float at its command. Without speaking, she faced toward the stairs, edging closer to the void. The eyes hovered ahead of her now. Chips of burning ruby.
“Calista!” She heard genuine panic in Miles’s voice. “You’re too close to the edge. Be careful, darling, it’s dangerous.” His hand tightened on her arm and he wrenched her back.
“No . . .” she moaned, straining toward the stairs. The one word shattered whatever spell held her mute. She turned to stare at him and said what she’d always believed but never been brave enough to say aloud. “You will stop loving me.”
Astonishment made him drop his hand and shift back. “What bloody nonsense is this?”
“It’s true.” She spoke almost indifferently. With every inch closer to the stairs, the pain of her endless longing receded.
Temper darkened his eyes. “After what just happened between us, how dare you say that? Don’t tell me it’s because you don’t love me. The woman who lay in my arms tonight was incandescent with love.”
An eerie calm had descended upon her soul. She summoned a regretful smile. Didn’t he understand this was for the best? “Of course I was. I love you. And I know you believe you love me. But it won’t last.”
“Like hell it won’t.” He sounded angry and confused. “We’re getting married tomorrow. I’ll swear my life to you.”
“And you’ll regret it.”
“Rot.”
He was so brave and honorable. Her heart overflowed with love, love without the bitter edge that so often accompanied her recognition of how vulnerable he made her. In a few moments, she’d never be vulnerable again. “Goodbye, Miles. I have loved you so dearly.”
“Damn it, Calista, answer me. What’s happening?” He dashed forward and his grip closed hard and strong around her arm as if confirming he’d never betray her. “This isn’t you. You’re a fighter. It’s one of the things I love about you.”
He kept insisting he loved her. A moment’s doubt pierced her certainty that no good could come of their marriage tomorrow.
He’s lying. You know what you have to do.
