“So hot, so sweet. I love you so much.”
“I love you, Shain,” she gasped in a barely audible voice. “Be with me this time—oh, God, be with me in the wonderful feeling you give me!”
He responded by burying his face in her neck and quickly carrying them both into a swirling sea of peaking desire. Both their bodies trembled and quaked, and Alaynia rode the wave of sensation even higher with the sense of Shain traveling with her into the ever more towering waves of pleasure. The shattering culmination lasted on and on, until her body reached a satiation so deep it exhausted her.
Vaguely aware of rumpled sheets and crushed pillows, silky, passion-slick skin contrasting with rough, masculine skin, Alaynia drifted toward sleep cuddled in Shain’s arms. His throaty growl of her name left her no doubt she had satisfied him with her womanhood.
And she realized she loved him even more intensely now. He was her soul mate—the one man for all time who was the other part of her.
Chapter 20
Alaynia woke druggishly, savoring the immediate realization of Shain still holding her close, his even breathing feathering against her hair. He had evidently pulled the sheet up over them, since she had fallen asleep against the warmth of only Shain. Now a cool breeze filtered through the silent, inky room, chilling her back. She glanced over Shain’s shoulder to the wall sconce, which she remembered had still been burning while they made love. It was dark, perhaps out of kerosene. A dim shaft of moonlight fell through the open window, but beneath the bed canopy, darkness surrounded them.
Cautiously, averse to disturbing Shain’s peaceful sleep, she edged out of his arms and sat up. The comforter lay heaped at the bottom of the bed, and she stretched toward it. Her movement dislodged it, and it slipped over the footboard to the floor.
Shivering, Alaynia inched away from Shain and crawled over the footboard. Picking up the comforter, she carried it around the bed and spread it over Shain. He mumbled something unintelligible and shifted to his side, reaching out and drawing her pillow into his embrace. Cradling it against his chest, he relaxed once again into deep sleep.
“Huh,” Alaynia whispered. “Let’s see if you can tell the difference between me and that pillow after I get back in place.”
She started toward the foot of the bed, so she could crawl over it again instead of Shain, and her foot caught in her robe. She picked it up, deciding to put it on to counteract the chill, since her shortie gown was anything but warm even if she could have found it. As she tied the robe sash, her gaze fell on the open window.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, Alaynia walked to the window, her bare feet padding soundlessly across the carpeted floor. Warily she glanced out. Her hand instinctively clutched her throat when she saw the ghostly light hovering over the towering tombstone in the graveyard. The beckoning sense flowed between her and the light, but this time she was more prepared. Resisting the pull, she took two steps backward, assuring herself that her body responded to her own mind, not whatever force waited beyond the window.
“I don’t know who you are,” she whispered more mentally than through her moving lips, “but I’m tired of being afraid of you. I’m tired of you leaving signs around, confusing me, and stirring up more questions than answers. If you can communicate with me, do it. I’ve got some questions of my own for you.”
The scene beyond the window remained unchanged, though Alaynia thought for just a second the ghostly light brightened briefly. Her temper flared just as fleetingly. Shoving aside the thought of returning to the safety of the bed and trying to analyze things in the morning, she determinedly headed for the bedroom door and left the room.
Alaynia had walked down the shadowy and dark hallway enough times to know just how long it was. Still, her heart thumped erratically as she gazed down the tunnel of blackness ahead of her. She was far too mature to be carrying a fear of the dark with her. She trailed her fingertips along the wall to guide herself. The hall floorboards groaned in one spot as she headed for the stairwell, and another protesting board creaked beneath her foot as she descended through the even deeper darkness of the steps toward the back veranda..
She shoved the door at the bottom of the stairwell open and stepped out. The roof overhead left the veranda, too, in almost total gloom, and she hurried down the steps and into the yard. There moonlight gave enough illumination to see a little better. She turned left toward the line of huge live oak trees separating the graveyard from view.
Spanish moss dangled in spiraling lengths from enormous, gnarled limbs, swaying silently in the night breeze and brushing the massive tree trunks in places. The scene, so peaceful and soothing in the daylight, took on a different, more unearthly beauty in the night. Pale white moonlight feathered mistily down through the tree leaves and branches, sheltering that area of the grounds in a protective haze. Somewhere on the veranda behind her, a cricket chirped, and the full-throated, deep voice of a bullfrog called out by the pond, the sounds an accompaniment to each other and a melodic backdrop for the mystery the night held.
Consciously willing herself to move, Alaynia strode resolutely across the dew-soaked grass. Counteracting emotions crowded her mind. One second, she felt a strong desire to confront whatever force had tampered with her life. The next she had to compel her leaden legs forward again, almost as though moving through the thigh-high resistance of water. One portion of her mind chastised her foolishness, telling her that she was not only unwise but absolutely stupid to be walking through the night at what must be after midnight to try to talk to a ghost. Another portion eagerly prodded her forward, tired of the upheaval of uncertainty.
Beyond the trees, a fence surrounded the small graveyard. Alaynia stubbornly headed for the gate, chin high with determination, and her gaze on the hovering light. As her hand touched the iron gate, the warring factions of her mind froze her into immobility once more. Her fingers clenched around the cold iron, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck and her cheeks lifted amid the goose bumps cascading down her body, across her arms and stomach. Her mind went blank, her body a stone statue. There was a presence here—something she could perceive as distinctly as she could feel her own heart pounding in her chest.
The light shifted shape, forming into the semblance of a man’s body. Unable to tear her gaze away, Alaynia watched features form on the face, the body become more visible, dressed in a gray coat and darker trousers. She could still see through the body, which drifted a few feet above the tombstone and hovered, watching her in return.
“Who are you?” Alaynia croaked.
A twig snapped behind her, and Alaynia whirled with a gasp. Shain stood a few feet away, and for a moment she thought the apparition had appeared there in full body. But Shain wore his night robe, and though his features were similar to those on the presence, she could discern the differences easily enough.
Quickly Alaynia turned her head back toward the graveyard. The presence was gone. Only spatters of moonlight shifted here and there through the tree leaves, bouncing around on the marble stones as the breeze set the branches trembling. She uttered a faint moan of distress, mixed with relief.
“Did you see him?” she asked Shain without turning to face him again. “Who was he?”
“Alaynia, what are you talking about? And what are you doing wandering around out here at this time of night? Come back to bed and we’ll talk there.”
“No.” Alaynia shook her head in denial and lifted the latch on the gate. It swung open with a rusty creak, and she avoided Shain’s grasp when he reached out to stop her. “I want to know who’s buried there. You can wait here, if you want, but I’m not going back inside until I figure out what’s going on in my life!”
“Damn it,” Shain said, following behind her. “My grandmother’s grave doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Stopping in front of the tombstone, Alaynia traced a fingertip over the lettering of Laureen St. Clair’s name. “Your grandmother?” she murmured. “No, it wasn’t her. He was a man.
”
“Who? Who the hell are you talking about?” Shain asked.
Alaynia recalled Shain’s testiness every time their conversation approached the topic of the rumors about Chenaie. He adamantly refused to discuss them, and denied any possibility that there could be a smidgen of truth in the stories. But now he would have to listen to her. She had seen the proof with her own eyes.
Alaynia swung around to face him and took a deep breath. “I just saw a ghost here. I’ve felt him before, up in the Camellia Room. And there’ve been strange things happening that can’t be explained. I need to talk to you about them.”
“Bullshit!” Shain spat. “I’ve told you before that Chenaie’s not haunted!”
“No, you never said that,” Alaynia replied patiently. “You changed the course of conversation whenever that subject came up. Look.” She laid a tentative hand on his tensed arm. “If you don’t want to discuss it with me, I’ll accept your decision. But, Shain, I’m going to follow up on this. Before a few minutes ago, all I had were feelings and confusion about how such a baffling thing as my traveling through time could have happened to me. But I saw him, Shain.”
“You saw moonlight shining on the fog—or swamp gas. A person’s eyes play tricks on him at night.”
“Did you see anything like that?”
“No, but I was watching you. I wasn’t paying attention to anything, except trying to catch up with you. I thought you might be sleepwalking.”
“I’d never been more awake in my life. Every sense I have was alive when I came out here. I know what I saw—just not who it was. And I know what’s been happening to me is real. There’s no other explanation, Shain. And I have to get to the bottom of it.”
Shain stared down at her, his lips grim and his eyes pooled into bourbon-colored, unforgiving depths. He evidently didn’t believe a word she’d said. She sighed in defeat and turned back to the tombstone, knowing in her heart that puzzling out the riddle would begin here, in this peaceful place, amid Chenaie’s previous inhabitants. She had traveled to another dimension—a dimension where, as impossible as it seemed, people long-dead still existed ...
She touched the smooth marble, running her hand across the surface. It felt warm beneath her palm, as though the sun rather than the moon shone on it. Glancing down, she saw a vase of dew-kissed, fresh flowers sitting on the stone ledge. Their scent drifted up to her, similar to the aroma lingering in her room from time to time.
She asked Shain, “Who leaves the flowers for her?”
When he didn’t answer, she peered over her shoulder, expecting to find him gone, although she hadn’t heard him leave. He stood in the same spot, glowering at a smaller headstone in the next row of the graveyard. In the dimness, Alaynia couldn’t make out the name on it.
“Shain?” she asked softly. She stepped back from the tombstone and took one of his clenched hands in her own, prying at his fingers until she could slip hers between them. “Shain, talk to me. Don’t shut me out.”
After a moment, Shain muttered, “I sure as hell wouldn’t like to believe that he was still around here. He hated Chenaie. When he left with his regiment, we never had even one letter from him. Zeke told me after I came home that the first word Mother heard was when a soldier brought word he’d been killed at the Battle of Missionary Ridge up in Tennessee. He’s not even buried there. Zeke said Mother insisted on a headstone, though.”
“Your father?” Alaynia asked.
“He planted the seed I grew from,” Shain said with a shrug of dismissal. “And the ones for the other babies Mother lost just about every year, until she managed to carry Jeannie to term. But I knew from the time I was old enough to begin rationalizing things out that he intended to leave Chenaie just as soon as he felt I could take over and manage it. I spent most of my childhood learning how to be what my father felt a gentleman planter should be. And that was fine with me. Chenaie’s all I ever wanted.”
He looked down at Alaynia, a deep yearning in his velvety eyes. “Until I met you. Fell in love. Alaynia, why can’t you let it be? You’re here now, and Chenaie’s complete with you here. I didn’t even realize there was something missing until you came. Mother was mistress of Chenaie, but she was really just a figurehead. She managed to put in an appearance at the balls and other gatherings my father insisted on giving, if she wasn’t recovering from a confinement. You’ve made Chenaie come alive—made the manor house a place I want to come home to in the evenings, instead of just somewhere to do the bookwork and sleep at night.”
“Jeannie ...” Alaynia began.
“Jeannie’s been begging me for over a year to let her go up to Boston to school when she’s sixteen,” Shain interrupted. “She’s restless, like our father was. Oh, she loves Chenaie, but in a different way than I do. I’ll let her go when it’s time. She’s got a fine mind, and I don’t want her to grow to resent Chenaie.”
“Like your father did,” Alaynia said.
“Yes.”
Reluctant to antagonize Shain, since the times he opened up to her were infrequent, Alaynia nevertheless felt her eyes drawn back to Laureen’s tombstone. Shain’s fingers clenched around hers when he caught the direction of her gaze, and he sighed in resignation. “You’re not going to let it alone, are you?”
“I can’t,” Alaynia admitted. “Because it’s not letting me alone. Or he’s not.”
“Damn it, Alaynia! There’s no such thing as ghosts!”
Tilting her chin up defiantly, Alaynia faced his anger. “Then what the hell was it I saw here a few minutes ago? Or more on the point, who the hell was he? And who put the packet of letters belonging to your grandmother and grandfather in my room? Who’s been leaving the Bible open on the fireplace mantle?”
“The servants ...”
“Netta keeps that room spotless,” Alaynia insisted, “and there was dust all over both the letters and Bible, as though no one had touched them in years.” Shain’s lips parted again to speak, but she rushed on, wanting him to understand everything, now that she had his attention. “How did I get from 2005 to 1875? How? All right, I know I drove through a time warp, but what happened to it afterwards? It wasn’t there when I looked for it. It was enormous, Shain—massive enough to swallow the entire car. It couldn’t have just disappeared.” Suddenly she gasped. “Unless ... unless something with the power to do so kept me from seeing it again.”
Shain snorted in derision. “Maybe you ought to talk to Tana about that. She’s the one who’s supposed to be in touch with the spirits!”
“I intend to.” Shain’s frown deepened at her words, but Alaynia continued, “I have to know, Shain. You can’t imagine how I feel. Put yourself in my place. How would you handle it, if you were galloping along on that black horse of yours one day and all of a sudden you rode through a time warp before you could stop? You found yourself at Chenaie in the future—with everyone you knew caught somewhere in the past, where you’d never see them again?”
“If you were there with me, I’d manage.”
“What if I wasn’t? Or what if whatever ... whoever led me into that time warp decides I’ve served my purpose—whatever that is—back here? I was caught off-guard that first time. Will I have to be vigilant for the rest of my life—at the whim of some spiritual being playing with my life again? How can we build a lasting relationship together, if we don’t know how much time we’ll have with each other?”
Shain pulled her roughly into his arms and bent his head close to hers. “Then you admit you want us to be together always.”
“Oh, yes,” Alaynia breathed. “I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I love you.”
“Then marry me, Alaynia. Be my wife, now and forever.”
The stab of exhilaration spread through Alaynia rapidly, washing through her senses and crowding out thoughts of anything else but Shain’s proposal. Her lips parted in anticipation, and she returned his kiss, curling her arms around his neck and burying her fingers in his hair. Being in S
hain’s arms felt so right, so exactly right. Flashes of past loneliness briefly intruded. A vision of evenings in an apartment she had once thought cozy now centered on her in the extra bedroom which served as her at-home office, a half-eaten sandwich on her desk. The phone rang only when she had a call about her business—never with an invitation for a few hours of only fun. The men who called were interested in a pretty ornament on their arm for a social occasion to advance their own careers, and then a tug of war at her apartment door. None of them were as sensitive as the man who held her so tenderly now, kissing her with an aching need that told her how much he loved her.
Never had she felt more fulfilled—even at the peak of their culmination earlier that night. Never had she wanted anything more than to tear her mouth free and shout to the world that yes, she wanted to be Shain’s wife.
And when he lifted his head, gazing down at her with a quirked eyebrow of inquiry, she threw all caution to the night wind and joyfully smiled up at him. “Yes,” she said adamantly. “Yes, yes, yes, I’ll marry you. When can we do it?”
Shain laughed eagerly and lifted her into his arms, swinging her around once before he set her down. “How about right now? We can ride into St. Francisville and wake up the minister.”
Alaynia giggled and ducked her head shyly. “Don’t you think we should at least get dressed first?”
“Do you mean you’d really do it?” Shain asked in awe. “Do you care that much for me?”
Alaynia looked up into his face and caressed his cheek. “How can you doubt how I feel?” she teased. “I’ve accepted your proposal in a graveyard, of all places.” Shain gave a start and glanced around them, but Alaynia pulled his head back to hers. “And I can’t think of a more appropriate place for us to pledge ourselves to each other, Shain. There’s just one thing, though.”
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