Hosts to Ghosts Box Set

by Lynne Connolly

  Nathaniel lifted his hands up to his head and fumbled with the fastenings, but a nurse quickly moved to stop him, putting warm hands over his. He growled. “No. I can’t go into that machine.”

  “We could sedate you—“ someone began.

  “No.” If they sedated him, he would waste even more time. He needed to be awake and alert, to do the job he’d been sent here for. “Give me some pills to take home with me.” He had no intention of taking them.

  “Nev― “ Sylvie’s voice trailed off.

  “Get me out of this thing. I won’t go in there and that’s final.” They moved the trolley towards the tunnel and he felt the sweat break out on his forehead. Sheer panic seized him, unreasoning and unreasonable.

  “Nev?” This time she sounded bewildered and lost.

  Nathaniel fought with the straps holding his head steady. It was no good, he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t do it unless he was stupid with drugs, and they would take too long to clear from his head.

  After a shocked silence, a male nurse came forward and began to rip off the straps, which weren’t buckled, as he’d thought, but pressed in some kind of velvet set-up. Once he realized it was easy, he ripped the straps from the rest of his body and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the trolley.

  “Get me out of here.”

  * * * * *

  After an hour of arguing and signing forms, he was out. Sylvie had brought him some clothes, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in some wonderfully soft, finely knitted material, and a denim jacket. The zip fascinated him. He’d seen it in use, of course, but never had a chance to use it himself. Later he would give himself the pleasure of examining it closer. Mechanical objects had always fascinated him.

  With the threat of the CT scan behind him, Nathaniel’s confidence grew, and every step he took away from the building added to his feeling. Just as they left the front door, a flash blinded him and something was shoved in his face. “How are you now, Nev?”

  Sylvie only just stopped him lashing out, grabbing his forearm as he moved. Still blinking, he stared at the small woman with the microphone. He was too dazzled to read the label attached to it. “Fine,” he growled, and moved on.

  “Only the local press,” Sylvie murmured, running to catch up with him. “But they can be worse than the nationals.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said, before realizing yes, he would know. Photojournalists knew all about the press. Damn!

  She took him to her car, a Japanese SUV. He climbed in the passenger seat, wondering if Nev Heath was macho, or stupid enough, to insist on driving, and deciding he didn’t care.

  They drove back to the Abbey in silence, until he saw the tip of the North Tower above the high hedge separating the estate from the road. It had been literally centuries since he’d had this view of his home, and nothing much had changed. The road was a better, smoother one, but the trees and the hedges looked the same. They’d passed some of the landmarks he remembered. The old Norman church was still in the village they passed through, the same sheep, or their descendants, grazed in the fields and the rickety farm still seemed as though it was on the verge of tumbling down.

  He became aware Sylvie was slowing down. She pulled the car in to the side of the road and cut the engine. “Now,” she said, turning in her seat to face him. “Perhaps you’ll tell me who you really are?

  Chapter Three

  Sylvie studied the man claiming to be her husband. He looked like Nev, but he used his body differently, in subtle ways she couldn’t have explained but she knew, as sure as she knew her own name this wasn’t the man she’d married.

  His clear, blue eyes widened, then his gaze settled on her. “Tell me how you knew.”

  It was true, then. She hadn’t believed it when she first suspected, but she had to challenge him, otherwise she would wonder for the rest of her life.

  She looked him straight in the eye. “Your eyes are blue. Nev’s are grey. No amount of bangs on the head are going to make your eyes change color. That’s why I asked you about contacts. If you were wearing them, you should have taken them out and if you weren’t—well, the possibility was unbelievable. I didn’t know if I was seeing things, but then your reactions were all wrong. Nev gets defensive and angry if I try to get too close. He does it with everyone. You didn’t do that.” She paused. “There are other things, too. The only things in the world Nev truly loves are his motor bikes and his cameras. You weren’t worried the bike was badly damaged, and you didn’t even ask about your cameras. They were destroyed in the accident, by the way.” She studied him, biting her lip in a gesture Nathaniel knew was instinctive to her. “You touched me. You touched my hand, and when you did, I felt something—this is going to sound stupid, but you felt different.”

  He smiled and reached for her hand again, taking it gently and turning it palm up in his. Sylvie felt it again, that difference, that connection. Her very skin tingled at his touch. He spoke gently, staring at the lines on her palm. “No, it doesn’t sound stupid. You know me, Sylvie. You’ve been talking to me for the past six years.”

  A violent shock of recognition almost paralyzed her senses. She knew the voice. It was the same as Nev’s, but a little lower, and softer. “I’m going mad,” she murmured. She daren’t move, daren’t even move her hand in case something shattered. She felt like a piece of fragile eggshell, afraid to move, in case this all shattered away before her.

  “No, you’re not mad.” When he lifted his face and met her eyes again, she knew. She just knew.

  “You never gave me a name.”

  “Nathaniel Heatherington, fourth Earl of Rustead. Usually called ‘Rustead’ or ‘Captain Heatherington.’ By the time I inherited the title, I wasn’t an army captain any more.”

  She watched him, recognition sparking slowly in her mind. He waited for her. “The Roundhead earl!”

  “You know I’m telling the truth.”

  Reaction rushed in on her, like a freight train at high speed. Incredulity and belief warred within her. Every instinct assured her he was telling the truth, but her reason and logic told her it couldn’t possibly be true. He was talking. She must listen.

  With her hand still lying in his, she heard him tell her. Nev was dead, and wouldn’t return. This was a usurper—that was what he said, a usurper—come to take Nev’s place until Christmas Day. “I know I’m here to do something,” he continued. “The trouble is, I don’t know what it is.”

  Realization came in a rush. “I might know.” Before she could persuade herself she was mad, she carried on. “You—Nev—were murdered.”

  His dark brows lifted, but he said nothing, his expression encouraging her to continue.

  “I found a line strung across the road, as though someone had deliberately intended to cause the accident. The trouble is, I lost the line.” Tears of frustration burned in her eyes when she remembered her abortive interview with the police last night, but she blinked them away. “I shoved it in my pocket, and then I must have lost it somehow, because when I looked for it, it had gone. I didn’t want to leave it, because it was the only evidence there was. And the murderer would be bound to come back to retrieve it. I’m sorry, I should have left it. The police said they’d look at the tree and the bike, but they think I’m making it up, I know they are.” She gestured vaguely, a sure sign she was distressed. She always waved her hands about when she was upset. “They gave me the ‘There, there, dear, here’s a nice cup of tea’ approach. I wanted to hit them, but that wouldn’t have helped.”

  He covered her hand with his, stilling their restless movements. “I believe you.” He smiled, and she forced a shaky smile in return.

  “You do?”

  “Of course I do. I was sent here to right some wrong. It all makes sense. I have to find who tried to murder Nev Heath.”

  A tremble quivered through her, then another. Overwhelmed, she wanted to turn away, lock herself in her office until things made sense. She couldn’t stay here or she’d fall apar
t.

  Sylvie pulled herself together with a mental snap. She would cope, she always did. This wasn’t Nev, she knew it wasn’t, so what he was saying must be the truth. He was Nev right down to the eyes, and they were the eyes of a man in a portrait, a man she’d thought she’d studied because the painting was by a famous artist.

  Except it had been the sitter, not the artist, who had fascinated her. His eyes always drew her, his careless, elegant stance and the vulnerability the artist had drawn in every line. She’d always wondered why he’d seemed so damaged, so hurt. Now she could ask him, if she wanted to. Once, she’d touched the painting, something strictly forbidden by the conservators who worked on the paintings at the Abbey, and felt deliciously guilty for doing so. But all she’d felt was shiny, hard oil paint. Not the human flesh she’d half expected to touch. Yearned to touch.

  “If I discover the murderer, and bring him or her to justice, I can move on,” he told her quietly. Move on! He made it sound so prosaic when her heart sank a the thought. She had just found him, and she would have to pretend to be glad when he ‘moved on,’ for his sake. “I’ve been here for far too long. I repented my sins long ago, almost as soon as I made them. My brother passed on and now I’m alone, apart from Brother Anselm. Sylvie will you help me? Do you believe me? I will die on Christmas Day, no doubt from this head injury, and you will be a widow. That might be easier for you, but it would be so much better if I had at least one ally. Will you help me?” He bit his lip and just for a moment she saw something in his eyes that looked like regret. So he wasn’t so eager to leave as his speech made him sound. God knew she didn’t want him to go. Not until she’d had a chance to talk with him, touch him, really get to know him.

  “Were you really scared of the CT machine?” she demanded abruptly, her mind leaping from fact to fact, wildly trying to make sense of the whole.

  His smile was wholly adorable, totally not Nev. “Terrified. I couldn’t bear the thought of it, and I knew the reality would kill me. I never liked enclosed spaces.”

  She regarded him steadily. “Nev used to enjoy speleology.” She watched Nathaniel shudder at the reminder of the narrow passages every pot-holer and caver welcomed. She was right, she knew it. This man was not Nev, however much he might look like him. She responded to the way he stroked her palm with his thumb in a totally physical way. Her body yearned for him, needed his closeness, his caresses. She’d gotten over that a long time ago with Nev.

  This man was someone new, but someone she had known for a long time. She had to believe him. Either that or go mad.

  “You don’t have to persuade me any more about who you are,” she said. “I know. I knew almost from when I found you in the road, I think. I just didn’t want to believe it. What do you want me to do?”

  His smile spread across his face, warming her heart. “Do you know how much that means to me? No, don’t answer, I can see it in your face.” He lifted her hand and kissed her palm, lingering to touch it with his tongue, afterwards folding her fingers over the damp patch before carefully putting her hand on top of her thigh and immediately moving away. “Yes, I need help. If I find the killer, the sinner, and put whoever it is out of commission, I get to move on. It must be the deal. I don’t know what comes next, only that my natural progression was stopped by my sins, and I need to do something to atone for them.”

  She frowned. “It’s all very medieval, isn’t it?”

  He chuckled. “Yes, it is. The man who told me all this is a medieval monk, so it’s only to be expected. Perhaps if someone else had told me, it might have been expressed differently. Adjusting the balance, keeping the timeline straight, something like that.”

  She laughed with him. “Yes, I take your point. But if you catch this person, you die. It doesn’t seem like a reward to me.”

  His smile faded. “It would if you had existed beyond your natural term, if all you could do was watch, if your time had gone. It’s over for me.”

  “That’s so sad.” She blinked the tears away, feeling more for him than she had for her husband in years. This man wasn’t a stranger. He was her comfort and her solace. And he was about to leave her.

  His smile was far more intimate than she liked, nudging aside her defenses as though they didn’t exist. He was leaving. It would already hurt her when he—left, but if she allowed herself to care even more for him, she might never recover from the blow. She was afraid. She’d been hurt so much, and now she was ready to re-enter life on her own account, she couldn’t let herself be hurt again. “I can still read minds if I want to. I have some of my powers, if you can call them such.”

  “Can’t you stay longer?” She wanted to get to know this fascinating man, now she could see him, touch him. He even felt different to Nev, which was strange, because he was occupying the same body.

  “No. Every year I had the power to materialize on the day I died, which in my case was Christmas Eve. I haven’t bothered, not for years. It seemed—inappropriate while you were married.”

  “Why?” Her voice was throaty. She couldn’t think straight, because a blast of pure passion had invaded her mind, and she wasn’t sure if it was his—or hers.

  “I want to do things with you that aren’t appropriate to a married woman.” He gave a harsh laugh and turned his head to stare in front of him at the bright day beyond the car window. “They would hardly be appropriate now.”

  If he was staying, they would be. She wanted him to stay with all her heart. She wanted to get to know him, to allow herself to let their friendship blossom, to give physical expression to the incredible sensations he gave her when they touched. She wanted to make love with him.

  Sylvie studied Nathaniel’s face, determined and sure, his lips firmed tightly, and she remembered what and who he had been. A Roundhead, a man bound by duty, someone who had rejected the life of privilege he’d been born into to follow his principles and support the side that could have destroyed his class, his way of life. Because he believed in democracy, and the right of every man to make his own decisions. She’d spent hours poring over the letters he’d sent home. Precious few of them, but she knew them all.

  Sylvie started up the car and took him home.

  Chapter Four

  Sylvie was mildly surprised to see Nathaniel eat breakfast. The larger family dining room echoed with the cacophony of the TV people but when she first entered, Sylvie’s gaze went to her ‘husband.’ And his attention went straight from the woman at his side to her. They exchanged a wordless but intimate greeting, and he turned back to the woman, one of the two mediums who appeared regularly on ‘Hosts to Ghosts.’ It seemed inevitable that once she had collected a coffee from the side buffet, she would join him. The chair next to him wasn’t vacant, but she could sit opposite him. Nev would have ignored her, or turned to sneer. Nathaniel smiled, a small movement showed he was going to stand up, but she frowned and he stayed in his seat.

  She tried an innocuous conversational gambit. “I hope you slept well.”

  He turned it into something far from innocuous. “I would have slept better with you.”

  Conversation stilled. Everyone knew Sylvie and Nev were estranged, but nobody would have known it from the blushing smile she gave him, and his warm one in response. She couldn’t even pretend to hate him. He wouldn’t give her a chance. “You needed a good night’s rest. I—couldn’t.”

  He seemed to remember his role. “Perhaps not.” His smile turned smooth and cold, but at the same time, she heard in her head, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, but it slipped out. I wanted to continue the charade, but I looked at you and I was lost.

  You shouldn’t.

  I won’t.

  She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but he left her in peace when he turned back to the medium. Jo Goodson was young, pretty, and very aware of her new status as TV medium. Even now, at breakfast, she was dressed and groomed perfectly. Of course, that could be merely self respect, but Sylvie doubted it. She had been watching Jo
for a couple of days now, and she never did anything without a purpose. It was obvious she wanted Nathaniel—or Nev. She’d probably already snared him, or thought she had.

  The surge of jealousy pulsing through her at the thought surprised Sylvie. After the first agony of losing him, she had deliberately set herself to ignore Nev’s frequent and public infidelities. It was easier to pretend to the “open marriage” he claimed theirs was to anyone who asked. Easier to refuse the offers she received, not wanting to descend to his level, to make his lie a reality.

  Almost immediately she felt him in her mind, his presence a soothing, wordless peace. She was used to the voice in her mind, but far from used to seeing him, calmly eating a plateful of bacon and eggs, and listening to the young woman at his side.

  She finished her toast and coffee, and watched the flirting. I need to know who is trying to kill your husband. The voice, clearer than it had ever been. I must be very public, very obvious. But I promise you, Sylvie, I won’t make you ashamed.

  She began to deny the feeling when she realized. This man—this man—had been privy to all her inner thoughts and feelings. He knew the devastation she’d felt when she realized Nev wasn’t going to give up his little pleasures, he had comforted her then, and applauded her determination to get on with her life on her terms.

  Instead, she left the table when she saw the program’s producer beckon to her. It was her time on screen this morning.

  An hour later, primped, every hair in place in the smoothly coiled French pleat, dressed in one of her designer suits, Sylvie stepped out in front of the camera and began to read the autocue. She knew without searching for him that Nathaniel was there. Her gaze went to him as though he were a magnet and she was an iron filing. He stood by one of the long windows, opposite the portrait of his brother, watching her gravely. She began the speech.