by Lisa Cach
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.
She went and sat on the edge of the tub. It was white and perfectly smooth, and she wished she could know what it felt like to step into such a bath. She knew there would be no danger of finding a splinter in one’s backside while one wallowed about in the steaming water.
She swung her feet over the edge and slid down into it. 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. It was likely he had some sense that she was in his tub.
Whatever internal debate Woding had been waging while he looked down into the tub, he 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 water. It ran right through her ankles.
Woding splashed his hand under the gurgling stream, testing the temperature, then took the rubber plug and bent down to stopper the drain. Serena spread her feet apart to avoid his touch. 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.
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 the water cock, 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 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 just to ignore it, and then once he had accepted his inability to do so, a battle to accept the sensation and to try to carry on regardless.
His home growing up had been one where the male anatomy was neither seen nor spoken of. Even the lapdogs had all been female, so his sisters would not have to cast their eyes on the embarrassing evidence of male gender.
Holidays with Rhys and his few years in boarding school had loosened him up, but he still did not have the easy comfort with nudity that many of his male friends did, who when among each other seemed not to have ever heard of the concept of modesty.
His one place of freedom from his own bashfulness was his private quarters, and he was determined not to give that up to an imagined ghost. Or a real ghost, for that matter. His habit was to sleep nude, and sleep nude he would.
He had to fight not to cover his privates as he walked to his bed, feeling every bounce and swing. He slid beneath the covers with a sigh of relief, and blew out the oil lamp, sinking deeper into concealing darkness and body-hiding sheets, lying on his side facing out, the bed curtains open.
He closed his eyes and immediately felt the presence come to the side of the bed, standing for a moment near his head. It was as if he could see it in his mind’s eye, a darker shadow in the dark, pausing there, then going around the foot of the bed and thence to the other side. A tingle of awareness crept up his spine as the presence climbed onto the bed and lay down beside him, just behind him.
He opened his eyes and rolled onto his back, trying to check from the corner of his eye whether there was indeed something darker on the pillow next to his. He could see nothing, but still, awareness tingled all down his right side.
What did it—or she, assuming it was Serena—want from him? From any of them?
Stop it, he told himself. There’s nothing there.
But what if there was, and if, given the correct circumstances, it could speak? What might there be to learn from the dead? Men had been trying for thousands of years to answer the question of what happened when one died, and here he might have a firsthand witness lying by his side, begging for attention.
No, he would not let curiosity prod him into speaking aloud again. His reasoning told him ghosts did not exist, and whatever his misguided senses might tell him, he needed to stay with the logic of the mind until he had proof to the contrary.
He closed his eyes and imagined a heaven full of stars, and began to count those that fell. Within minutes he felt himself losing track of his self-made heaven as sleep overtook him. The presence was still there by his side, inactive, for all the world as if it, too, were weary and in need of rest. His last thought as he slipped into unconsciousness was that it might as well have been a house cat beside him, for all the harm it did.
He was exploring the ruins of Maiden Castle again, as he had when he was ten years old. The long stick in his hand was his sword, and he used it to poke the ground and through patches of overgrowth, seeking the clang of buried metal armor, although his older mind knew he would find nothing.
Alex, a soft female voice said, the sound speaking in his head. There was no intonation, no emotion, no direction from whence it came. Alex.
He raised his eyes from the ground and saw a woman sitting on the ruins of the garden wall. She was dressed in a pink underdress, with tight sleeves. Over it she wore a long white and gold sleeveless tunic, a golden girdle around her hips. Her hair, long and pale, hung in tangled locks down to the top of the wall, pooling there and spilling off in snaking rivu
lets of hair.
Alex, she said again, and this time he saw her lips move, although still the sound came from inside his head.
He walked toward her. “Do I know you?” he asked.
Alex, she repeated.
He stopped a couple feet in front of her. “What are you doing here, in these ruins?”
She held out her closed hand, palm up, then slowly opened it, finger by finger. Pink blossoms spilled out, carried away by the breeze. She left her hand there, holding it out as if in invitation.
He looked into her eyes. The irises were black, indistinguishable from her pupils, telling him nothing. He had never seen such dark eyes. Her face was long and narrow, attractive in an unusual way, her features somehow working together to create an impression of otherworldly beauty. A straight scar ran from her forehead through her eyebrow, then picked up again across her cheekbone, adding to the unusual quality of her face.
Alex.
He put his hand in hers, feeling the cold pressure as her fingers closed around it. He felt her strength as she drew him toward her; felt her size as he stood pressed against the side of her thigh. Sitting on the wall she was higher than him, and he knew that standing next to him she would be nearly his own height. She smelled faintly of dry, sweet hay.
“What do you want of me?” he asked.
Touch me, she said, and lay back, stretching herself atop the uneven wall. Her hair trailed down to the grass and he noted the pull of fabric outlining the gentle thrust of hipbone and thighs.
His eyes dropped to her full breasts, obviously loose of any stays, the nipples hard nubs beneath the layers of cloth. She took the hand of his she still held and brought it to her chest, laying it palm down between her breasts.
Touch me, she said again, her voice in his head soft and placid. She released his hand, laying her own arms at her side and closing her eyes.
He did not move for a long moment, then carefully slid his hand over her breast, feeling the soft give of flesh and the hard cherrystone of a nipple. He rubbed his hand in light circles over it, feeling the path her nipple traced across his palm and fingers, and feeling the answering arousal in his own loins.
He ran his hand over her collarbone and up alongside her neck, holding the side of her jaw as his thumb swept over her cheek, brushing the tail of the scar. He bent his face down close to hers, breathing deeply of her sweet scent, brushing his lips lightly against her own, just a feather’s touch, then pulling back.
She opened her black, fathomless eyes. Touch me, she said yet again, and bent one knee, her skirts tenting around her leg, leaving no question to what she asked.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She pulled at her skirts, sliding them up to her thighs. Alex, she said softly, arching her neck and raising her other knee. Take me.
He got up on the wall, kneeling between her curtained thighs, and unbuttoned his clothes, uncovering his aroused flesh to the summer air. He pushed the hem of her skirts the rest of the way up, so that they pooled across her hips.
Her nether hair was dark gold, the flesh between a crimson pink, parting like the petals of a rose as he gently pushed her thighs apart. He leaned over, holding himself above her, bracing on one hand on the wall along her side. Her own cold hands came up to reach inside his drawers and around to his buttocks, squeezing gently, urging him forward.
“Tell me your name,” he said, needing to know it, even as he used his other hand to guide himself to her.
Serena, she whispered, just as his manhood parted her and slid inside. Her hands on his buttocks pulled him hard into her, forcing him to plunge all the way home.
It was then that the cold hit him.
She was ice inside, his manhood gripped in a frozen glove. He tried to draw out, but she wrapped her legs around him, holding tight, lifting off the wall to wrap her arms around his body. She moved against him, undulating, rocking, creating against his will an answering, perverted pleasure that both repulsed and drew him.
“Let go of me!” he cried, struggling against her entangling limbs. They both fell off the wall, landing on the springy turf, and still she clung to him, drawing forth a response despite his protests, her hips fastened to his, stroking and massaging him until he found he could not help but give in to her rhythm.
You are mine, she said, as he thrust within her, unable to stop, the cold climbing from his loins up toward his heart.
He looked at her eyes, and there were no whites now. They were black from lid to lid, a shining midnight in which distant stars shone.
He screamed, and made one last frantic struggle to escape, to pull himself from her body. He woke tangled in bedsheets, covered in sweat. After a moment to gain his bearings, he lay his hand over himself, absurdly certain he would find it icecold. It was warm with life, hard, and tingling with arousal.
His breath left him in a long sigh, and when his heartbeat quieted in his ears he tried to relax again. The faint light from the windows and the birdsong told him it was near dawn. He had been asleep for only a few hours.
And still he felt the presence beside him.
Chapter Ten
“Are you enjoying the stables? Sleeping well?” Woding asked Underhill. Serena thought he sounded a bit testy, not quite his usual self. Perhaps it was the pile of paperwork he was trying to get through that soured his mood. He was sitting behind the desk in his little-used office, the one reserved, she had gathered, for his business affairs. Like most rooms in the castle, it had a beautiful view of the countryside.
“Not as comfortably as I would in my own bed, truth be told, but I am content to stay where I am,” Underhill replied, setting down the post. “If I may say so, you do not look particularly well rested yourself.”
“Bad dreams, is all,” Woding said, smothering a yawn. He leaned back in his desk chair, rubbing his eyes. “My body refuses to accept that I want it to sleep during the day, and revenges itself upon me with nightmares.”
“No noises disturb your slumber?”
“Not a one. It’s beginning to seem more and more as if we had a prankster in our midst. Either that or our ghost has found something better to do with her time.”
Serena narrowed her eyes. That was not what she wanted to hear. For three days she had been Woding’s shadow, and he had not once looked directly at her, or in any other way revealed that he was aware of her presence.
Perhaps he wasn’t.
The only unease she saw in him was while he slept: every time he closed his eyes he was plagued by nightmares. Even that, though, she could not be certain was because of her presence. Certainly she was not doing anything to interfere with his dreams.
At first she had thought he was deliberately trying to ignore her, but now she could not be certain. She slipped off the windowsill and came around to where she could see his face. Was he lying to Underhill? Or did he really think she had gone away, or never been here to begin with?
She couldn’t tell. She reminded herself that he was a sly man. He could be taunting her, telling her that he was winning, and that he thought her beneath his notice.
Or maybe he really could not sense her presence anymore.
She sat on the desk, propping her foot on the arm of his chair.
“Before I forget,” Underhill was saying, “Daisy Hutchins has asked to speak with you. Shall I send her up?”
“Yes, do,” Woding said, pushing back from the desk, forcing Serena to drop her foot. “I’ve had enough of these papers.”
“I’ll send her right up.”
Woding didn’t reply, instead picking up the post and flipping through the letters, sorting them into piles, frowning at one in particular. Underhill left, and a few minutes later the cook stood in the open doorway, giving the frame a rap to announce her presence.
“Mrs. Hutchins, please come in,” Woding said. “There was something you wished to discuss with me?”
“There is, Mr. Woding,” she said, stepping into the room and standing squarely in front of the des
k, her solid frame looking as movable to Serena as a block of stone. She had dark brown hair drawn back in a bun, covered in a white cap. She wore a short brown loose gown over a quilted blue petticoat, the loose gown held shut by the apron tied around her waist. A large white kerchief was crossed over her ample breasts. Marcy, the housemaid, wore a similar outfit, albeit in brighter colors, and Serena guessed it was the usual attire for a country laborer nowadays.
“Won’t you sit down?” Woding asked.
“Thank you, sir.” Mrs. Hutchins sat, suddenly looking a trifle uncomfortable, seated across the desk from him as she was. It was obvious to Serena that the woman felt more at ease on her feet.
“Have you been settling in all right?”
“Yes, sir. I like my quarters very much, and am enjoying my work. I am proud to have charge of an entire kitchen, and the buying of goods. Such a position is not easy to come by for a woman of my age, and I thank you.”
Serena guessed her to be in her late twenties, and imagined she was right to be honored to be given such responsibility, especially considering the man she had replaced.
“What can I help you with?” Woding asked.
The cook took a breath and began. “It’s like this, sir. I don’t want to be saying anything against anyone, but when I went with Mr. Sommer with the wagon down to buy supplies in Bradford-on-Avon, we came back with everything like I’d asked, except for those things what will be delivered later, but then Mr. Sommer refused to bring the wagon all the way up to the castle. He said he’d go no farther than the stables, and that the horses would not either. He had Dickie and Marcy load handcarts with the goods, and haul them up through the tunnel.
“Marcy didn’t complain—she’s a good, strong girl, a good worker—but I confess I do not see the purpose to it. Dickie at least was quick about it, but was useless for hours after, blathering on about the evil atmosphere of the tunnel. I’ve been through that tunnel a dozen times myself, sir, and have never had a moment’s fright.”
