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

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Certainly, though it’s not far.” He motioned to the wardrobe, a piece of furniture almost as tall as he was. “The Pitagowans have merely covered the door with this.”

  She circled the thing, tapping on her chin as she was wont to do. Testing its heft with a little push. “I don’t know if I can move it.”

  John didn’t know if she could either, which meant he’d have to. “I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  Clearly heartened, she gifted him with a brilliant smile that sparked a little flicker of joy in his guts before she flattened her back against one side, bracing her feet on the ground to pit her entire weight against the thing. It scraped and budged, but only an inch or so.

  John joined her, levering over her and bracketing her head with his arms. If someone walked in at this moment, that person would do well to assume they were about to kiss.

  Or had just finished doing so.

  As if she’d read his thoughts, her eyes dropped to his mouth. Her tongue snaking out to moisten her own lips.

  John’s lids slammed closed as lust roared through him. “Goddammit, Vanessa. Push.”

  The wardrobe gave way beneath their combined efforts, and he all but leapt away from her and retreated to the opposite end of the room.

  It’d been a long time since he’d asserted himself onto the world of the living so often in one night. It tired him. Weakened him in so many ways.

  The chief among them his self-control. In one respect a heavenly thing, and in others, pure hell.

  He willed his inflamed libido to cool and ordered the heart that’d begun beating again to stop. He commanded his soul to stop yearning. To cease aching for what should not—what could never—be.

  “That took a lot from you, didn’t it?” she observed.

  He looked down at his own outline and noted it was thinner, more translucent, the features blurred.

  “I’ll be fine,” he sighed. “Though I’ll hope you forgive me for not opening the door.”

  Vanessa took one of the oil lamps from the sideboard and pushed open the doorway that was really no bigger than a cupboard. Even someone as petite as she had to duck to get inside.

  John merely went through the wall.

  He found himself watching her more than noting any of the treasures in the dusty old place. Pure, unadulterated awe slackened her jaw, parting her lips as she twirled in the center of the tiny antechamber as if trying to take in the entire glory of the Sistine Chapel.

  She all but floated to the haphazard shelves and rickety cases lining the long chamber.

  As one could never do in a museum, she reached out trembling, elegant fingers and tested the sharpness of a saber mounted on the wall or threaded them through the plume on a hat. It was as if she could see with her eyes, but never truly had a vision of anything until she’d experienced it through touch.

  John found himself wanting to trade places with inanimate objects as she caressed them with the reverence of a lover. Buckles. Buttons. A rifle, a medal of valor, irons for captives, chains and whips and other implements of violence and war.

  She didn’t belong in this place, this so-called Chamber of Sorrows. She was a creature of light and joy. One to whom melancholy and sorrow did not attach itself for long.

  What must it be like to move in the world in such a way?

  Vanessa Latimer had transfixed him like nothing or no one had done before.

  Everything she did, every gesture she made was attractive to him. From the way she blinked the fans of her eyelashes, to the swift, almost sparrow-like movements of her graceful neck as she tried to look at everything all at once. The sway of her skirts soothed him, drew him toward her as she ventured deeper into the long chamber, which was actually more a corridor that ran the length of the inn.

  She paused at a small table upon which letters and miniature portraits of women or children were stacked neatly. As if understanding they might disintegrate if she touched them, her hands hovered like butterfly wings above the loops of writing often stained with blood.

  He’d known her for such a short time, and yet he understood that she burned to stop and read every word, absorbing it into her memory.

  Eventually, she glanced back at him, her gaze brimming with so many things. “Have you read these?” she asked hopefully.

  Once again, he hated to disappoint her. “This is maybe the third time anyone has ever brought a light in here when I was awake. I’ve rarely been able to truly examine these things, and when I could I was searching for something that might belong to me. For letters my brother, James, wrote me. I carried them with me everywhere, even into battle. They were a testament to his bravery and strength he never even knew he possessed.”

  The sound she made conveyed both regret and admiration. “I wonder if they were sent home to him.”

  “I hope so,” he sighed, not wanting to dwell on a hope he couldn’t verify.

  “You need light to see?” The very idea seemed to surprise her.

  He felt his features soften, the sadness melting into an endlessly amused half-smile. “I’m a ghost, not a vampire.”

  She rolled her eyes at his teasing, swatting at him with no real heat. “How should I know the rules? I mean, you float above the floor and you can walk through walls.”

  “Sadly, I cannot see in the dark.” Or through things. Like her clothing.

  She made a noncommittal noise as she moved further along the chamber. Her ankle rolled beneath her skirts and she nearly lost her footing.

  Reflexively, he reached for her, but she righted herself before he could do anything.

  Clearing her embarrassment from her throat, she pointed beneath her and offered an abashed explanation. “The floor is uneven.”

  He nodded his head, his heart too much in his throat to reply.

  She returned to examining every single treasure. “Are you sure none of this is familiar? These sabers, a hat, perhaps? Even a button?” She sounded almost desperate now.

  He shook his head. “No, none of these are mine. Though I recognize a few of them as belonging to compatriots.”

  Ones he mourned for many years.

  She ran her hands across a bayonet, testing its edge. “You said you sleep a great deal. Is that truly what it’s like to be…” She made an uncomfortable gesture at his general personage.

  “Dead?” he clipped.

  “Well I didn’t want to seem indelicate.”

  She was so delicate, she’d never seem anything but.

  “It’s just I have so many questions. And I am afraid to ask them, but when else will I get the chance? Is there a light anywhere like people have claimed, at the end of a tunnel perhaps? Have you met others like yourself? Or angels? Or—or anyone else out of the ordinary? Out of our limited mortal understanding, I mean.”

  He wished he could spin her a hypnotic yarn that would make death seem less depressing, but he was an honest ghost, and a boring one, evidently.

  “I’ve met no other apparitions and my torpor, it’s—not even like sleep, exactly. It’s nothingness.” He almost hated to admit it, because sometimes the void terrified him. “I want to say darkness, but it’s not even that tangible. I am gone, and then I surface. I am here, but I have no part of myself. I have nothing but a vague sense of who I am. And each time I go under…I stay for longer. There are days I fear I’ll become one with nothing, and every part of who I was will be lost.”

  What he didn’t say was that each time he went under, he was always disappointed to be brought back. He would rail and stomp and use what little power he had to throw things. To rattle the bedposts and windows and make the stones of his cage tremble. He’d frighten people just to do it. Because now that he’d found himself again, he’d have to dread the next time he was lost.

  She blinked watery eyes up at him, her sharp chin pitting and quivering with emotion. “How do you endure it?”

  “How can I do anything but?” he replied, his finger aching to smooth an unruly tendril of hair away from he
r furrowed brow.

  Her throat worked over a difficult swallow. “I wish I could save you, somehow.”

  A tenderness welled in him in that moment and threatened to spill over into emotion he had no idea what to do with. What a Countess she’d have made. So small and yet regal. So soft-spoken and yet brave. Independent. Unbiased. Kind. Honest.

  God. He’d have offered for her hand after one chaperoned meeting. He’d have claimed her and planted children inside of her, creating an undeniable legacy of which any man would be proud.

  It was almost worth one hundred and fifty years of loneliness to have met her.

  She’d brought him back to himself, somehow.

  Whatever she saw in his eyes caused her to step in toward him. And, once again, she stumbled.

  Catching herself this time, she lifted her skirt to examine the packed earth beneath her.

  Whatever she found caused her to gasp.

  “Hold on.” Rushing past him—nearly rushing through him had he not moved out of the way in time—she retrieved the lantern from the entry and plucked a bayonet from the wall.

  Returning, she shocked him by placing the lantern on the ground, kneeling down in a pool of her skirts, and using the bayonet to scratch and dig into the dirt.

  “What the devil are you about?” He hovered over her, worried that she’d finally reached the edge of her sanity.

  “This floor has a dip right here about the size of my shoe,” she said around the labor of her digging. “After I tripped this last time, I thought, if Carrie was a clever girl, she might bury her most prized possessions to make certain they weren’t discovered. Even if the Chamber of Sorrows was.”

  Something within him ignited. He wished he could grab something and rake at the earth next to her. That he could reach into it and pull whatever might be down there above ground. But the bland weight of weakness still tugged his limbs until they were heavy, and he began to admit to himself that the torpor was calling to him.

  Every moment he spent with her cost him, dearly.

  But the darkness would have to drag him away. He’d not go willingly. Not while he could bask in her presence for one more moment.

  She worked until she was winded, and the helplessness he felt made him want to throw things. To shake his fist at whichever angry god cursed him to such an existence.

  Until a hollow sound announced the bayonet had struck something.

  Their eyes met for a breathless moment.

  Then, she attacked the ground around it with renewed vigor, scraping out a small, square wooden box. She stood, and John could hear Vanessa’s heart beating hard enough for the both of them as she opened the simple container.

  Every jewel inside the box glittered gem-bright in the golden glow of the lantern.

  But it was the twin rubies he found that suffused him with a lightning bolt of sensation.

  “Vanessa. The ring.”

  With trembling fingers, she plucked it out and held it up so they could both gawk at its magnificence.

  He could feel it pulsing with a magnetism no inanimate object should possess. The lion stared at him from hot ruby eyes.

  Claiming him. Calling to him.

  He thrust his hand between them, splaying his fingers. “Put it on.”

  Her forehead crimped. “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “Vanessa.”

  She nodded, lowering her hand to slide it onto his finger.

  His boots hit the earth with a heavy thud. He had weight. He had mass. The air bit at his cheeks and filled his lungs with a cold incredible breath. His heart threw itself against wide ribs and his muscles corded with strength. Veins pulsed with blood.

  With need.

  His hand gripped hers. Slim, cold fingers trembled against his flesh. His skin.

  Her eyes were wide and watery as she stared at him without blinking.

  “John?” she whispered.

  He was almost sorry.

  Almost sorry that a strangled groan was all the warning she had before he crushed her to him and captured her already open mouth.

  Chapter Six

  His kiss was a sweet violence. Both a conquest and a claiming.

  Vanessa welcomed the assault on her senses as this man, this solid, starving, sexual man clamped her entire body to his and devoured her mouth as if her kiss could restore his very life.

  The sensation of his lips—his skin—was more than a tingling suggestion now. He was tactile. Warm. Almost as if fed by lifeblood.

  Almost.

  She still detected that the feel of his flesh was imperfect. A vibration persisted where the smooth whorls of his fingerprints should be. It was at once more than an ordinary touch, and not enough.

  It didn’t matter. She’d take whatever she could get.

  He had a scent now, cedar and leather and the faintest trace of gunpowder.

  It tantalized her endlessly.

  Her hands clutched the lapels of his crimson wool coat, reveling in the coarse fibers abrading her fingertips because it meant he was real. Tangible. She suddenly wanted to explore everything. Everywhere. Every hot, smooth and strong inch of him.

  He kissed like a man denied a hundred and fifty years of pleasure. Of pain. Of desire and release. There was a savage wildness in it, an untamed urgency that sent little thrills of anxiety and anticipation pouring down her spine and spreading into the deep, empty recesses of her womb.

  With a strong, hot lick, his tongue parted the seam of her mouth and dipped inside to sample her flavor.

  He tasted like a wicked sin. Like every drink too masculine for her to sip and every dessert to decadent to be indulged.

  His arms felt like iron shackles around her, and she became his willing prisoner there in the Chamber of Sorrows. Surrendering to the inevitability of what he was about to do to her. Of what demands he would make of her body.

  The very thought made her legs puddle beneath her until she feared she couldn’t remain standing.

  When she went all but limp against him with a sibilant sigh into his mouth, his kiss unexpectedly gentled, his lips sweeping across hers in featherlight drags. The contrast was her undoing as she lifted onto her tiptoes to seek more.

  His large, rough hands drew up her arms and shoulders until he bracketed her jaw in his palms and tilted her face up, pulling back to look down at her with agonizing tenderness.

  “My God, you are so pure and perfect,” he marveled in a harsh, breathless tone.

  His words evoked a hot blush that spread up her chest and heated the cheeks he cradled so reverently in his hands.

  Vanessa’s lashes swept down over eyes pricked with tears, as a familiar shame swamped her, dousing the flames of her ardor a few degrees. “You know I am not so pure. Not in the sense of the word that seems to matter to most people. I’m no virgin. No ingenue. But neither am I a whore. Do you understand that?” She worried the knowledge he had made her seem more accessible to him, and another part of her fretted that he would think less of her.

  “Woman,” he growled, his breath coming in agonized pants, his azure eyes smoldering down at her like the core of a flame burning too hot to be contained. “I’m about to do things to you that would make a virgin faint. I’m going to worship you in ways that would offend a whore. So, I suppose we should both be grateful you are not either of those things.”

  She gaped up at him, astonished by his wicked candor. “What sort of thing—Oh!”

  He snatched her off the ground with unsettling strength and swept her out of the chamber in a few strides. This time, he had to duck to get through the doorway and deposit her on the bed.

  Vanessa was glad for the sturdy wood of the frame rather than creaking brass as he ripped his coat from his heavy shoulders and joined her there.

  She had a feeling they would have woken the entire inn with what they were about to do.

  He prowled up her prone body like a great cat until he settled fully upon her, his weight a delicious press as he took her mouth once agai
n.

  Ribbons of desire unspooled within her as she wound her hands around his neck, tugging the leather thong that caught his long hair into a queue. Releasing it, she twined her fingers into the silky mass at his nape, curling them into claws and nipping at his lip.

  His lips tore from her with a ragged sound. “Fucking Christ, Vanessa, if you do that, this won’t last long.”

  Vanessa tried to appear contrite, but she very much doubted she mastered the look if his urgent response was anything to go by.

  He broke away from the circle of her arms to unlace his shirt, reach back and pull it over his head and down his arms in one graceful move.

  Had she been less mesmerized by the magnificence of his figure, she might have been curious about the odd workings of his historical trappings as he divested himself of them.

  But he loomed like Apollo above her, his skin like gold and honey poured over solid sinew and steel. The cords and veins in his arms danced and flexed as he worked his belt and trousers free.

  Vanessa’s fingers lifted to the buttons at her throat, but he stopped her with a curt order as he bent to kick away his boots.

  “The thought of your bare ass beneath that skirt has teased and tantalized me all night,” he said in a low rumble. “Now you’ll let me be the one to decide when to undress you.”

  Dominance from any man had always caused a tight ball of frigid defiance to form in her chest, immediately freezing any warm feelings she might harbor toward him.

  But his command released a flood of hot, liquid desire from her loins as she veritably bloomed beneath the intensity of his regard.

  Vanessa let her hands fall demurely to her sides as she lay back on the coverlet. It was an excruciating exercise in a discipline she’d never actually possessed.

  Her eyes touched him everywhere she could not, drinking in the fantastic breadth of his shoulders and the vast mounds of muscle that comprised his torso. She counted the obdurate ripples of his ribs and the corrugated plane of his abdomen before boldly following the vee of his hips to where his arousal jutted from a corona of dark gold hair.