When he came, she felt the gush, then the tension of what seemed like every muscle in his body as he poured his essence into her. His cry was almost a scream, and she held him, her heart going out to him in his temporary helplessness. She held his head to her breasts and felt his hot breath against her skin.
Time slowed down, then stopped completely. They sat on the rumpled sheets, breathing heavily, neither wanting to move, ever again.
“Fuck!”
The curse drifted up from below, so loud they heard it through the double glazed windows. He chuckled, then lifted his head. “I’d forgotten everything except you. It must be the TV people.”
“They’ve given up on waiting for us. We were supposed to do a bit more to camera today.”
His chuckle was renewed. “Shall we do this to camera?”
She leaned back a little, gazed at his upturned face. “I’m almost tempted to say yes.”
His smile warmed her. “Anything you want, my love, I’m here for you.”
Another swear word curled its way into her consciousness, louder this time, and when she paid a little more attention she could hear the clang of metal on metal. It was hard to concentrate on anything with those amazing blue eyes gazing into hers. “What on earth are they doing?”
“Sounds like a swordfight.” She saw when the realization hit him. “They’re reconstructing the duel, aren’t they?”
She nodded. “They always planned to. Do you mind?”
He swallowed. “I don’t know.”
She pushed on his shoulders and lifted off him, feeling his body leave hers and regretting it.
Two more days.
She watched him cross the room to the window and peer out, not attempting to hide his nudity from anyone who might be watching outside. “There’s one good thing,” he commented. “Jo Goodson has just seen me. Even she couldn’t misconstrue this. She doesn’t look happy, but there are too many people out there for her to show what she’s really feeling.”
“Can you read her mind?”
“Only her emotions, love, only what she wants to show. If I could, I’d have no difficulty discovering who wants to kill me, would I?”
Her heart pulsed ice. Back to reality. “We still have to find out, don’t we?”
“I don’t know.” He still stared out over the terrace, a floor below them. “I’m thoroughly confused, not least at what I really want to do. I can manage another half century or more, while I wait for you. Perhaps I shouldn’t try to discover who wants to kill me, so I go back to wraith form. Perhaps you’re right, and this is my destiny, to make a child for the Heatherington line.” He smiled wryly. “I can’t think all this is just for an heir, though. What difference does it make in the great scheme of life?”
She slid of the bed and crossed the room to him, slipping her arms around his waist from behind. He put his hands over hers. “Shall we stay here? Shall we stay forever, in this room, making love, being together?”
“Can we?”
He turned into her arms, no longer watching the activity outside. His eyes had that bleak look again. “No.”
She swallowed. “No. But we have this. Nathaniel, you’ve given me more than I’ve ever known before. How I can say that, looking into the face of the man who betrayed me within weeks of our marriage, I’m not sure, but I know you, as I never knew him. I still wonder what drove him to do the things he did.”
“What drives any of us? He wasn’t a pleasant person, sweetheart, that’s all.”
Raucous shouts from outside drew his attention back to the window and he stifled a curse when he saw what was happening. “Someone is going to get killed,” he commented. “I think I have to go.”
“But we can come back later?”
“Oh yes.”
Chapter Seven
Half an hour later, although the shared shower had been a close call, they were downstairs once more. As they walked around the corner of the house and headed for the terrace, they heard people shouting and still the clang of metal on metal.
Hand in hand they approached the commotion. Angela Murdoch was the first to see them, which Nathaniel thought was typical of the woman. Her smile of welcome was decidedly frayed at the edges. “I don’t suppose you know anything about sword fighting?” she said wearily.
Nathaniel glanced towards the group on the terrace. Two were dressed in what must be supposed to be period dress, one in a rough imitation of Roundhead dress, the other in an approximation of the portrait of Vernon hanging in the Long Gallery. Neither looked very much like either Vernon or Nathaniel. The others were technicians, and a man in a form-fitting outfit looked as though he was in charge. At least, he was trying to be, though the actors were ignoring him, trying to get at each other.
He let go Sylvie’s hand, and ignoring the pang of loss he felt when he lost bodily contact with her, strode forward.
Nobody took any notice of him until he wrenched the sword out of the putative Cavalier’s hands. The weapon wasn’t one he would use by choice. The edges were nicked and the rope wound around the grip worn. Just like his own when he returned from the wars. A shock of realization went through him. It was his own. They had kept it. The other weapon wasn’t one he recognized.
Someone was watching him. He felt the heat of eyes on his back. Extending his senses, he tried to discover who it was before he turned around, but he felt a block. Somebody knew how to erect a psychic block. That narrowed it down a little.
He didn’t turn around, pretending he’d noticed nothing. Instead, he turned his attention to the people in front of him. “Where did you find this?” He indicated the sword, which he now held point down.
The fight director looked at him for the first time, deliberately eyeing him from head to foot. “Who are you?”
“I own this place.” He watched the man, and enjoyed his careless shrug.
“I see. Pleased to meet you. I’m Brock.” He didn’t sound pleased to meet anyone. “We found the weapons in the hall, and I picked these out as nearest to the period.”
Nathaniel shifted his grip. “Yes, they are.”
“I didn’t think you took much interest in your history.” The man called Brock paused before he added, “My lord.” The words were almost a sneer. Nev would have deserved it. Nathaniel did not.
“You’d be surprised.”
His entrance had done the trick, and the two protagonists paused in their argument, their voices dying down to mere conversational tones. Nathaniel flicked a disdainful glance at them. “Are these your idea of an earl and his brother? Don’t you think they’d be better—built than these two?”
Brock shrugged again, his massive shoulders moving only slightly, but it was enough to express his scorn. “I didn’t provide them. I was delayed coming down here. I’m working on the new Bond picture, and that has to take precedence. So I left it to the company to find them.” He made an explosive sound, eloquently expressing his scorn. “They don’t know one end of a sword from the other.”
One of the men took umbrage. “Hey, I’ve done plenty of sword fights before!”
“I wanted this one to be accurate,” Brock said. “Seems a shame, when we’re using authentic weapons.” He turned to Nathaniel, interest sparking in his eyes. “What say you and me have a bout? Can you fight?”
Nathaniel’s expression of scorn rivaled Brock’s of a moment earlier. “Some. My fencing was only ever average, but I can fight.”
Brock frowned. “This was a duel. So it’s likely it was a fencing match.”
“It was a fight to the death.” The bleakness in Nathaniel’s tone startled everyone nearby, and he cursed his lack of attention to detail. Nev wouldn’t have cared about family history. Well, this one did, and it was just too bad if anyone noticed. Holding the sword again had invigorated him somehow. All the sense of justice, the panic when he realized his brother really meant to kill him, knowing what that would mean to the family, and then the sickening moment when he realized the blow he’d meant to d
isarm was actually fatal. Just before he passed out from blood loss.
He always envied Vernon his quick death. Lingering on and eventually dying of gangrene wasn’t something any sane person would choose as a preference.
A flash distracted him and he turned to see Brock coming at him, sword upraised. Without even thinking, he parried the blow, feeling the strength jar all the way up his arm, and the fight was on.
With memories of the last time he’d fought here strongly in the forefront of his mind, Nathaniel had to combat the red mist of battle descending on him, the way it had before. Brock attacked, he parried but in such a way he delivered his own blow. The cries of alarm around them faded, their only reality each other and this killing field.
It helped that Brock looked nothing like Vernon. He was shorter, stocker, and he moved differently, his stance deliberate instead of instinctive, his face not contorted into hatred but with concentration. Nathaniel had just parried another blow when he said, through gritted teeth, “Fight, damn you!”
Everything he’d been trying desperately to stave off came to the fore. The disappointment of fighting for an ideal that turned out to be a nightmare, the loss of the woman he loved, the vicious and unreasoned attack his brother had made, all built up inside him into a fiery ball, and he fought. When he lashed out, Brock was ready, taking the strike on the flat of his blade and sliding it up, but when Nathaniel brought his knee up to his groin, he was taken completely off guard. He lost his balance, and fell forward. If Nathaniel hadn’t whipped his sword away, his opponent would have fallen on to the blade.
The mist cleared. He had his foot on Brock’s chest, the point of his sword at the man’s throat, and Brock was grinning. “Now that was a fight! Let me up!”
“I could drive this right through your throat.” He felt better now. This time he’d done what he should have done the first time. He stopped.
“You could. You won, pal. Now let me up.”
Nathaniel forced a grin and let him up, and only then heard the applause. When he turned to look at Sylvie, she wasn’t clapping, but she understood. He’d stopped. This time.
Still grasping the sword he crossed the terrace to her, and it wasn’t until Brock called out, “Hey, leave that, will you? I’ll choreograph something simple, on the lines of what we just did. Okay guys?”
There was a general murmur of approval.
Nathaniel didn’t feel safe until he’d wrapped his larger hand around Sylvie’s; she was his anchor in this strange world.
Angela Murdoch beamed at him from her position the other side of Sylvie. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to be Vernon in our little reconstruction? It would do wonders for the ratings!”
He shook his head. “Definitely not. I’ll do a little speech to camera, but that’s about it. I came here for some quiet, and I’m hoping you’ll be out of here soon. No offence.”
“None taken, especially at this time of year. We have our scoop, anyway. I sent your little piece to the newsroom, and they featured it at the end, in the human interest slot. It’s all over the papers today. A happy ending Christmas story, just the kind of thing they like. So I hope you meant it when you said you wanted to reconcile with Sylvie here.”
“What does it look like?” he demanded, lifting their joined hands. “It’s time. Everybody has to grow up sometime.”
“So they do.” Angela’s stern expression reminded him of a schoolteacher. He’d seen plenty of those when a school had been billeted on the Abbey in World War Two. After that it had become a temporary field hospital and girlish laughter had been replaced by the groans of dying men. But he’d never forgotten the utterly terrifying schoolmistresses. He always imagined Queen Elizabeth must have been something like that, from the stories his grandfather told him. It helped to explain how she’d kept so many powerful men in line.
Sylvie could do it just by loving him. If he hadn’t been so foolish, keeping his emotions to himself, perhaps matters would have turned out differently. He should have confessed his love for his brother’s wife, then they could have cleared the air. She might even have married him instead of Vernon.
But now he had Sylvie. In one way it was for a few days only, but in every way that mattered, she was his for eternity. And he was hers.
She spoke in his head. What happened? You seemed to go mad! You must have been fighting for a good twenty minutes.
What? It had been nothing like that time. Five minutes, ten at most. What had happened? He thought back over the fight, recalling each blow. Until the mist had descended. The mist. He’d been wrong. It wasn’t like battle-fury, not at all.
It had come from outside.
Someone had attacked him again, only this time, with psychic power, forcing out his reason, making him re-stage the fatal moment in his career. Only when he’d thought of Sylvie had he gained the power to stop.
He could have killed Brock.
She felt it all with him, understood at the same time he did, and her hand tightened on his. She communicated with him again. It was one of the two mediums. I’m sure of it.
So am I. He cast a glance to where Jo Goodson stood with Doris Albright. The two ladies were watching the choreography, as Brock arranged the moves for the actors, but the force, all the power, emanated from where they stood. It pulsed around them in vivid waves of color. Now we have to find out which one is responsible.
* * * * *
“This is getting dangerous.”
Sitting together on the sofa in Sylvie’s private living room, Nathaniel at last gave in to the urge to hold her, an urge as primitive as anything he’d ever known. Nestled close to his heart, he finally felt safe. “It’s all beyond me,” she confessed. “I knew there were ghosts, but it was hard enough for me to believe in you. You mean all this medium stuff is real?”
“As is the presence of evil.” His mouth thinned into a grim line. “It suits people in this century and the last to ignore the reality of pure, elemental evil. Despite their denials, it does exist, and it can be trapped. One of those two women is calling to it. It could mean disaster, for you and for the house.”
“But not for you.”
“I’m not leaving you until I’m sure you’re safe.” He didn’t know how he would do it, just that he would.
“How am I in danger? They want you, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do. But they’ll kill you to get to me, if they have to. I don’t know which one.”
She shifted against his chest. “You know they’re mother and daughter, don’t you?”
“What?” gripping her shoulders he pulled her away, just enough to look down into her face. “You’re sure?”
She stared back at him, bewilderment clouding her gaze. “I thought everybody knew. You said you watched a lot of TV. Don’t you watch Hosts to Ghosts?”
He grimaced. “No. I know too much about them. I watched the documentaries, the hospital dramas. Anything where I could learn. I shouldn’t have been so damned arrogant.” A thought struck him. “Why do they use different names?”
“The mother, Doris, has remarried. The whole show is based around them and their so-called close relationship.”
He swore, and leaned back against the sofa, closing his eyes. A nightmare. Families could work together. He wouldn’t put money on these two not conspiring and working together. If only he’d watched at least one of the programs, then he would have realized why the power was so strong. “Sweetheart, I know very little about the occult, but I can sense things. All ghosts can. They are a powerful pair, those two. I don’t even know what they want, but I have to find out. Why would they want to kill me? I thought Jo wanted to be the next Countess. She can hardly do that if I’m dead, can she?”
Sylvie wriggled a little in his grip, and he forced himself to relax his hold on her. She stood up and crossed the room, towards the small kitchen that was a part of her private suite and he heard the sound of her filling the kettle. She called through to him. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s her mo
ther, or perhaps Jo is only pretending to want you.”
He thought back to the episode this morning, and remembered the passion that seethed around the younger medium. She had certainly seemed to want him. Reluctantly, he had to admit she might have fooled him. “I’ll hunt around tonight, see if I can find anything.” He would also try to find Brother Anselm. He needed help, if he was to keep Sylvie safe. If he were to be wrenched away from her, he had to be sure someone was there. It hurt him even to think about leaving her, but he had to admit the possibility.
Sylvie returned, carrying two steaming mugs of tea. He didn’t like to tell her he’d rather have small beer or wine. These days they were special drinks, not everyday, any time of the day beverages, but in his day that was what they drank. He supposed tea was an acquired taste, like the coffee he’d tried at breakfast. That he positively couldn’t stomach, but given the opportunity, he would certainly try. Sylvie adored coffee, but she must have noticed his aversion to the stuff, because she brought tea to him now. He smiled, and curled his hands around the hot mug. It was comforting to feel the heat, something he hadn’t felt for many years. Even more comforting to feel Sylvie’s body against his own.
“What are you thinking?”
He took a sip of his drink, carefully schooling his face to prevent his instinctive aversion to tea. “That I don’t know which is better with you. Lovemaking, or the aftermath, when I can hold you and talk to you. I’ve never told anyone half as much as I’ve told you in these few days. You know me better than anyone, alive or dead.”
She laughed. “You’ve been talking to me like that for years. You always shared your thoughts with me. I guess I thought it was natural to you.”
“Only with you, love. Only with you.”
She glanced away and sipped her tea. “What shall we do?”
Hosts to Ghosts Box Set Page 18