The Earl of Christmas Past (A Goode Girls Romance Book 5)

by Kerrigan Byrne

  She’d been out in that bastard of a storm? This waifish girl? No wonder the Pitagowans had interrupted his peace to prepare the room for her. The laws of Highland hospitality—if there still was such a thing—would not have allowed them to deny anyone sanctuary.

  “You have my gratitude all the same, Mrs. Pitagowan,” the woman said.

  God, how he had missed the dulcet pronunciations of the gently bred ladies of his homeland. It’d been so long. He wanted to bid her to speak, to never stop.

  “I told ye, call us Bess and Balthazar, everyone else does.” The innkeeper trundled over to the door and accepted a tray of tea, which she set on the small stand next to the bed. After, she squeezed around her husband, who’d returned with yet another cauldron of water, to the small brick fireplace on the far wall. Rolling up her sleeves, she squatted to arrange a fire.

  “You must call me Vanessa, then.”

  Vanessa. John tested the name on his tongue, and he thought he saw the woman tense beneath her layers.

  Could she hear him already? The sun hadn’t gone down yet.

  “Where are ye from, lass?” Bess asked, carrying on the conversation.

  John found himself equally curious.

  “My family resides in London, mostly,” Vanessa answered. “Though I am compelled to spend most of the time at our country estate in Derbyshire.”

  John thought her reply rather curious, not only the phrase but the bleak note lurking beneath the false cheer she’d injected into her voice. Compelled. An interesting word.

  If Bess thought it odd, she didn’t mention. “Where were ye headed in such a storm, if ye doona mind me asking?”

  “Not at all.” Bending to drag the case with her, Vanessa rested it by the tea-laden table, out of the way of Balthazar’s and Dougal’s stomping feet. “I was on the road to Fort Augustus on Loch Ness when the blizzard overtook us.” She poured herself a cup of the steaming brew as she answered.

  “Is yer family there?” Bess turned to cast a queer look at her. “Will they be fretting after ye?”

  The lady didn’t bother to sweeten the tea; she simply lifted it to her soft mouth and puckered her lips to blow across the surface before taking a sip.

  A strange, hollow longing overtook John as he watched her shiver with delight as she swallowed the warm liquid and let out an almost imperceptible sigh.

  Christ he’d give his soul to taste tea again.

  “My family is in Paris for Christmas this year,” she answered vaguely after the silence had stretched for too long.

  “And ye’re not with them?” Bess prodded, catching flame to a bit of peat she’d laid beneath the kindling.

  “No. No, I am not invited to—that is, I don’t travel with them, generally. I am more often occupied by my own adventures.”

  An awkward silence fell over the room like the batting of a moist blanket. The lady sipped at her tea, retreating deeper into her cloak and her thoughts as the tub was filled.

  Once Bess had built the fire to a crackling height, she added one more extra-large, dry log from the grate next to the fireplace, and stood with a grunt. She reached in to test the water and flicked it off, wiping her hand with her apron.

  “A strange trunk, that.” She nodded to the ungainly square case. “Not quite a trunk, I suppose, and not a satchel either.”

  “It’s a camera.” Vanessa abandoned her empty teacup to the tray to stand over it. “I was to be on a winter photography expedition at Loch Ness before the storm hit. I left my trunk with my belongings on the abandoned coach.”

  A camera? John squinted at the case. He’d never heard of such a thing.

  Bess clapped her hands together in delight. “Och, aye? Now’s the time to find Nessie, if there ever is one! No doubt ye caught wind of the Northern Lights this year. We could see them snapping across the sky afore the clouds covered them. ’Tis, no doubt, the reason this storm is so powerful. All things are intensified during the Na Fir Chlis. And during the solstice, and Christmas after that…” She let the words linger, winking conspiratorially. “All things are possible, are they not?”

  “That was my hope.” Vanessa smiled broadly, and John felt a catch in his throat, as if the very sight of that smile had stolen something from him.

  “Well, here’s ye a toweling and some soap. Though perhaps not as fragrant and fancy as ye’re used to.”

  “It’ll do perfectly,” Vanessa assured her with a kind smile.

  John had always appreciated a woman who was kind to those beneath her in rank, stature, or wealth. It had been one of his greatest irritations when a shrewish lady was demanding or unfeeling to the help.

  “I’ll leave ye, lass,” Bess said with a smile. “I’ll see if I canna find ye something to sleep in. Get warm and dry and then come to the common room for some supper.”

  The moment the door latched, the woman, Vanessa, locked it and immediately grappled with the knot on her scarf. Unraveling that, she hung it close to the fire, pulled the pin from her hat, and discarded it, also.

  John was stunned into stillness at the unfettered sight of her face.

  Lord, but she was lovely. The structure of her visage delicate enough to be elfin, pale and sharp, even in the golden firelight. Her eyes, he was pleasantly surprised to find, were as grey as a winter sky. On many women, such dramatically precise features appeared to be cold and fathomless. But not so in this case. She seemed to glow with this sort of…radiant luminescence that was initiated behind her eyes and spilled over the rest of her like a waterfall.

  What was the genesis of such a phenomenon? he wondered. What would he call it?

  Life, he realized. An abundance of it.

  As someone who hadn’t been alive in—well he couldn’t remember how many years, precisely—he was drawn to the way it veritably burst from her. Like such a diminutive frame could barely contain it all.

  Damned if he didn’t find that alluring as hell.

  After bending to unlace and remove her boots, she turned her back to him, facing the fire. She shucked her woolen cloak and hung it on a wall peg close to the heat to dry.

  Then, she went to work on her blouse.

  Bloody hell and holy damnation. This desirable creature was about to strip bare and bathe. Here. In the room that had been his prison for so damnably long.

  Her movements were harried and jerky, as if made clumsy by exhaustion and the cold.

  John had been bred a gentleman in his day. Over-educated and imbued with codes and creeds and ratified rules of behavior. That breeding tore at him now. He should turn away. He should leave her to wash and dress. This interloper upon his dark, abysmal existence—if one could even call it thus. This tiny creature of light and life.

  He might have done the noble thing…

  If he hadn’t hesitated long enough to watch her peel her blouse down her arms, uncovering shoulders smooth as corn silk and white as rich cream.

  Lord, but he was transfixed. Even though he technically levitated above the ground, his feet were as good as pegged to the floor.

  He watched her unlace her own corset that knotted in the front and wondered when that had changed over the years. Her chin touched one shoulder to glance behind her, as if sensing the intensity of his regard. She looked straight through him, which was a blessing, because if he’d been visible, she’d immediately notice that he sported a cockstand large and vulgar enough to offend even a courtesan.

  His conscience prickled. He shouldn’t watch her…but in this bleak and lonely hell so far from home, she was an oasis of beauty. An English rose among Scottish thistle.

  The firelight silhouetted the fullness of her slightly parted lips, the pert upturn of her nose, and the astounding length of her lashes in stark relief.

  He was helpless to do anything but appreciate the vision.

  Sighing and shaking her head slightly as if to ward off her own silliness, she fiddled with the buckle of a wide belt and pushed her skirt from her hips, drawing down a thin white cotton und
ergarment at the same time.

  Had he knees, they would have buckled. Had he a fist, he would have bitten into it to stave off the hollow groan of longing fighting its way up his chest.

  As she assumed she was alone, she was neither self-conscious nor was she self-aware. This was no slow, practiced uncovering of a mistress, meant to tease and titillate. And yet, the sight of her heart-shaped bare ass as she bent to step out of her clothing was enough to unravel whatever matter remained of him.

  If she’d been facing the light and not away from it, he would have been granted a peek at the intimate cove between her thighs.

  The gods were not so kind.

  She straightened, peeling a simple white chemise from her body with a shivering stretch, and turned toward the bath in the center of the room.

  Toward him.

  A watering mouth was the first thing that alerted him to the fact that he would slowly, with infinite, infuriating increments, regain a semblance of corporality.

  He would have welcomed the sensation, if he wasn’t so utterly distracted by the sight of her in all her nude glory.

  Christ. She was a masterpiece, someone crafted by a loving artisan from some other material than the minerals and mud that forged the rest of man. Every other woman now seemed a clumsy clay attempt at the marble-smooth perfection of her.

  Though her form was diminutive, her shoulders were not; they were straight and proud, held so by an erect spine and practiced posture. Said posture displayed her tear-shaped breasts to perfect effect, their nipples, peaked and puckered with cold, the same peach hue as her cupid’s bow mouth.

  God but his hands ached to touch her. To explore every creamy inch of her. To find the places that made her gasp and tremble.

  To discover where else she might be peach and perfect.

  As if she was loath to leave the warmth of the fire, she took up the soap and her underthings, and tiptoed to the edge of the bath.

  The crude basin only came up to about past her knees, so she barely had to lift her leg to test the water within. She dipped a toe, then engulfed the delightfully feminine arch of her foot before wading in to her shapely calf.

  John had never been jealous of an inanimate object in his life, but as she hissed and sputtered whilst lowering her chilled body into the hot water, he would have changed places with the liquid in an instant.

  It’s not as if he was exactly solid.

  Though, he was getting hard…

  He crouched when she did, his eyes unable to leave her as she drew her legs into her chest and settled into the heat with a sibilant sigh of surrender.

  He’d give what was left of his soul to coax a sound like that from her. Especially now that he knew what she looked like with naked pleasure parting her lips, and the dew of steam curling the tendrils of her hair that she had yet to take down from its braided knot.

  Abandoning her soap and undergarments to the side, she did little but enjoy the heat of the water for a moment, cupping it in her hand and pouring it over what parts of her chest, breasts, and shoulders, she couldn’t completely submerge.

  God, he remembered what that felt like, sinking into a hot bath on a chilly night.

  He’d give anything just to feel warmth.

  John made himself dizzy trying to follow every bead of water that caught the firelight along the tantalizing peaks and valleys of her body. Though she was a woman in a crude basin on a packed floor on the edge of the civilized world, she might as well have been a winter goddess bathing in a dark pool.

  Would that he could attend her. That he could follow the little bejeweled droplets with his tongue and find the intriguing places they would land.

  Would that he could make her wet.

  She eventually gathered up her undergarments, which were still rather clean all things considered, and scrubbed at them with the soap.

  He remembered that she’d mentioned she had no trunk with her, and would likely need to wear them again tomorrow until her things could be fetched.

  That finished, she wrung them out and set them aside before taking up the soap once more.

  John had been no saint as a young man. He’d frolicked and fornicated in the presence of his young and noble mates, sharing courtesans and the like. He’d enjoyed watching women. What they did to each other, to other men.

  To themselves.

  But he could truly never remember gleaning as much intimate enjoyment as he did watching her start at her foot, and lather a bit of coarse soap up her leg to her thigh and in between them before working her way back down the other side.

  Had he not been dead, he might have expired from the length of time he held his breath.

  Restless, aroused, John drifted in circles around the tub as she washed, humming an unfamiliar tune softly as the firelight danced across her skin.

  He found himself behind her as she ran a lathered hand over her shoulders and did her best to reach her back. She was about to get suds on a dark velvet curl that had escaped her coiffure and reflexively, John’s hand made to brush it aside.

  Knowing he couldn’t. Understanding that his hand would pass through her before it actually did.

  Even so, his body was helpless but to reach for her.

  Which was why her muffled shriek startled them both.

  Chapter Three

  As gracefully as a gazelle, the woman surged to her feet, snatched the towel, and leapt from the bath to retreat as far away from him as possible.

  John was almost too shocked to much lament the fact that she wrapped her torso in the towel and clutched it to her clavicles, protecting most of her lovely figure from view.

  He looked down at his hand, pleased to note that it had become visible, or at least the transparent shadow of it, a flesh-colored outline through which he could see the floor beneath, interrupted only by the cuff of his crimson regimental jacket.

  “Holy Moses,” she gasped, breathing as if she’d run apace. Enough of her skin was still visible to notice that she rippled with tiny goosebumps. “You’re a—shade. A man. A…”

  “A ghost?” he politely finished for her.

  She blanched unbelievably whiter, pressing a hand to her forehead as if to check for a fever. Apparently not finding one, she lowered her palm, unveiling a wrinkle of bemusement.

  “You’re not Carrie,” she accused, her diction slow and uncertain.

  “An astute observation,” he answered wryly.

  “Did you know her?”

  “Know her?” He found the question odd and out of place.

  “You’re in her bedroom. Did you haunt her?” Brows lifting impossibly higher, her gaze shifted to the cobalt coverlet on the bed, and the spider-web thin lace of the curtains, no doubt making certain scandalized assumptions.

  He opened his mouth to dispel them, but what came out was, “What year is it?”

  She blinked back at him in mute confusion. Her eyes all but crossed and uncrossed as she looked at him, and then through him, and then at him again. “You’re English,” she said rather distantly. “But here…haunting the Highlands. Why?”

  John drifted around the basin toward her. “Pay attention, woman, what bloody year is it?”

  She swallowed, retreating from the bed and inching around the basin to keep it between them. “It’s eighteen ninety-one.”

  He froze as his calculations astonished him. “I’ve been asleep for thirty-five years this time.”

  “My,” she breathed, bending down to retrieve her undergarments from the edge of the tub as she backed toward the fire. “You must have been awfully knackered.”

  He scowled at her, not understanding the word. “You’re quite calm for a woman being haunted. Why are you not running out of here, screaming for help at the top of your lungs?”

  She seemed to consider his question carefully, letting go of one side of the towel as she tapped her chin in a contemplative posture. The towel slipped down her chest a little, and John felt his composure slip right along with it.

&nbs
p; “For one, I’m not dressed. And for another, Bess warned me I’d spend the night with a ghost. I suppose it was my erroneous assumption that apparition would be female.”

  He allowed her to keep the basin between them, even though he could have passed right through it and not even disturbed the water.

  Not yet.

  “I do apologize if I frightened you, miss,” he felt compelled to say. “Let me assure you I am a mostly harmless ghost.”

  “That’s a relief to hear. Though I’ll admit I was more startled than frightened…almost.”

  His scowl suddenly felt more like a pout, which irked him in the extreme. “I’ll have you know, the mention of my very name has struck terror in the hearts of entire regiments. And you expect me to believe you are so bold as to be fearless? I am a bloody apparition after all. You’re not even having a mild crisis of nerves?”

  “I’m sure you were very terrifying, sir,” she obligingly rushed to soothe his ego, which helped not at all. “But I’ll admit I’m rather too elated to be scared.”

  “Elated?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was the woman mad?

  She nodded, her lips breaking into a broad smile, her slim shoulder lifting in an attractive and apologetic shrug. “I’ve always believed in ghosts, and I’ve never been lucky enough to meet one. I have so many questions. I could cheerfully murder myself for leaving my notebook back at the carriage.” She said this as a muttered afterthought before looking up at him with a winsome smile. “Do you mind, awfully, turning around so I can dress?”

  “I don’t see the point,” he challenged, crossing his arms over his chest and lifting a suggestive brow. “You act as though I haven’t been here the entire time…watching you.”

  “How dare you?” she gasped in outrage, her notice flying to the bathtub as if it’d just dawned on her that he could have been present without her knowledge. Her color heightened as a comely blush crept up her chest and neck from below the towel.