Beaudry's Ghost

by Carolan Ivey

  Taylor studied his face and must have completely misinterpreted his expression, for her eyes filled with tears and she looked away. He wanted to obey his first instinct to go to her, but her stance behind the chair reminded him to keep his distance.

  She had never said in so many words, but Jared saw clearly how Troy had everything to do with the “special occasion” she had mentioned before. Re-enacting as a soldier in her brother’s uniform, wearing his shoes, his hat, carrying his gun, his pipe. The frantic look in her eyes when she had asked Jared if he’d seen Troy’s image a second time.

  And now her utterance of Ethan’s name. Every piece of Miss Taylor’s puzzle fell neatly into place. She was reaching beyond the grave for Troy, but still afraid, like a moth hovering just outside the flame that would destroy it.

  “The first time was when I was eight,” she began, still holding onto the chair for support. “After my grandmother died. The day after the funeral my mother sat with me on Grandma’s bed and let me play with a few odds and ends from her old jewelry box. I remember picking up a necklace, one I had made for her, and suddenly my hands…”

  Taylor let go of the chair and rubbed her palms together. “My hands started to tingle and I felt a presence in the room. I looked up and I saw Grandma standing just a few feet away from me, reaching toward me and moving her mouth like she was trying to tell me something. I could even smell her, it was so real.”

  She laid a palm on her heart and gasped softly as if the scene were happening all over again. “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe, I was so scared. Mom asked me what was wrong, but I was afraid to say anything because I thought I was going crazy. I shut my eyes and willed the ghost to go away, and when I opened them,” Taylor’s eyes widened in memory, “She was gone.”

  Jared’s own palms burned in response.

  “My cousins and I used to love to sit out on the porch after dark and tell ghost stories, but after that I never again joined them. I wouldn’t touch anything old in Grandma’s house, and I never saw her again. I thought I was safe, and it didn’t happen again until years later. In college, where I studied history. Sometimes I’d pick up an artifact and it would happen again. I’d see a ghost…probably the object’s last owner or something. Until now, it has never happened when I touched people.”

  With an effort she looked up, straight into his eyes. “I know Ethan’s name because I heard it within you. When you were down with your leg, in pain, and I touched you. Your mind was crying it over and over.” She looked away as fresh pain stabbed his heart. She seemed to be waiting for something. For his anger? For him to recoil? To declare her insane and lock her in a closet?

  He could do none of those things. Neither could he do what he wanted—comfort her. Cradle her face in his hands and tell her everything was all right. She wouldn’t let him get that close, he was sure.

  Instead, he observed, “Working in a museum is a mighty big risk for someone like you.”

  She looked at him, surprised to find him still standing in this same spot, still in the same room with her.

  “Aren’t you… Don’t you think I’m crazy or something?”

  Tenderness for her flooded his chest. “Crazy? That’s a rather strong word. And after everything that has happened to me in the last hundred or so years? I’m hardly in a position to judge,” he said, and his chuckle felt good in his strained throat.

  Her mouth stayed in a grim line. “I’ve never told anyone about this, except my brother and one other person. I don’t understand or want this power I have. It scares me. It makes me afraid to touch anything or anybody. Do you know what that’s like? Most of the time I spend wishing it would just go away.”

  “Yes,” he said, advancing on her carefully. “I know what it’s like to want to touch and not be able to.”

  She stepped around the chair and abruptly settled in it, and the caned seat squeaked in protest. Jared took the last two steps to the table, and though his hands ached to reach for her, he used them to retrieve their coffee cups. He refilled them, managing to spill only a little of the liquid as he sat in the chair next to hers. Much as she desperately needed it, sleep would elude her for some time yet. He could see that. But that was all right. Rest was not at the top of his list, either. Too much needed to be said, learned, uncovered. Not nearly enough time was left to do any of it.

  “Over the years I’ve learned how to recognize the signs and shut myself off before a spirit manifests itself,” she continued. “I think that’s why I didn’t remember this letter until now. The day I opened that trunk and found your uniform coat, the letter was tucked inside and the bullet hole was still in the back.”

  “You found my coat?” His heart thumped.

  She leaned toward him. “Yes, your mother kept it. That’s why I believe she would have forgiven you. Did forgive you.”

  Jared couldn’t have uttered a sound at that moment if his life had depended on it. His mother had known of his dishonor. And still she had forgiven. Relief he hadn’t known he’d been guarding against swept through him, so strong he went temporarily lightheaded.

  “She’d even mended all the little tears in it, except for the bullet hole, like she expected you’d need it again someday.” Taylor leaned back and stared inward. “I remember now, I turned the coat over, touched the hole by accident, and I felt something, even through my gloves. I had to have someone else put the coat away.”

  His scalp prickled. “What did you feel, when you touched my coat?”

  “I felt your confusion, your anger, how desperately tired you were. How…lonely…”

  Jared looked hard into her face.

  “You knew? Even then?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t allow myself to know. After several weeks of concentration and waking up in a cold sweat every night, I finally managed to shut the feelings off. To shut you off. Oh, Jared, I’m so sorry.”

  He forgot her fears and took her hand, squeezing it between his own. As expected she pulled away, but gently this time. Not as if his touch burned her. “It doesn’t matter now. You came here, to this re-enactment, as you call it.”

  “I didn’t come because of you. I came for my brother.”

  He nodded. “To try to reach him. I understand that.”

  “It was the oddest thing. I was moving things around on a shelf at home, picked up Troy’s pipe, and I suddenly had this panicky feeling that I had to be here. It wasn’t a vision; I didn’t see anyone. I just suddenly had this idea that this was where I had to come. I assumed it was for Troy. But so far…” She shook her head and pressed her lips together.

  Damn you, Troy, can’t you see how your refusal to show yourself is killing her? Even the horror of seeing his terrible wounds would be small compared to the empty pain she endured now. Jared promised himself the next time he saw the man in black, he’d give him a black eye to go along with his clothes.

  Tucking that satisfying thought away, he invited gently, “Tell me about your brother.” There had to be more than one reason she had been brought here to help him. God knew it wasn’t because she had no fear of ghosts, because she had the look of a woman who had seen one and cared never to do so again.

  He wanted like the very devil to take this woman in his arms and make that look go away.

  She glanced up, searched his face for a long time, and nodded.

  “We were twins,” she said simply, as if that explained everything.

  It explained a lot, but he waited for more. More ammunition to use to make Troy change his mind and soothe this woman’s grief.

  “He joined the SEALs, though I tried to talk him into some safer job somewhere else in the Navy, if there is such a thing,” she laughed a little at the absurdity. “Oh, the SEALs are a branch of—”

  “Never mind that.” If she spent all her time explaining every statement, they’d never get anywhere. “Tell me more about Troy.”

  Taylor leaned back and retreated without moving from her chair. Slowly she rotated her
sore right shoulder and winced.

  Instantly he reached out and probed the area around the wound.

  “Let me check this wound and put more of your medicine on it,” he said, then quickly lifted his hands when she stiffened, leaving them hovering inches above her shoulder.

  “No, that’s not—” She froze as, somewhere out in the night, a siren wailed. With a soft, unladylike curse, Taylor jumped out of her seat and lunged for the light switch on the wall, slapped it off, then paced from window to window in the dark.

  “Where are the horses?”

  “Hobbled out on that little patch of grass in the back.” He got up as she brushed past on her way to another window. She parted the blinds with shaky fingers, paused and listened until the siren faded away into the distance. Only when silence returned did he see the outline of her shoulders sag.

  “What was that all about?”

  She turned toward him, outside lights illuminating one side of her face. “Could have been the police, a fire engine or an ambulance,” she said more softly than she needed to, as if afraid someone would overhear. “God knows they probably needed enough of them after what happened this morning. No, don’t turn the light on,” she said quickly as Jared moved to look for the light switch. “It’s probably better if no one knows we’re here.”

  She felt her way back to the chair. “After what… After we shot those men today, the police are probably rounding up the whole lot of us right now. There were witnesses. Don’t to that!”

  He ignored her and moved to the sliding glass door, opened it and stuck his head out. “There’s enough fog out here to keep them looking until Kingdom Come,” he said dryly, shutting the door. He turned the light back on and found her sitting with her head in her hands, rocking slightly back and forth. He stepped closer and went to his knees beside her, his jaw going tight as he found her trembling hard.

  “You did what you had to do,” he said tightly, so close to her yet not free to touch her. She jerked her head up, and her angry glare nearly knocked him backward.

  “So what was it, then? ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Officer, I didn’t mean to kill those men. I was just following orders’? ‘The devil made me do it’?” In her eyes he saw a wave crest, then crash. She balled her fists and dug them hard into her thighs as words, pent up for too long, spilled out in a torrent.

  “Troy and I argued just before he left on assignment the last time. He had just re-enlisted, and I thought it was unfair to the family, putting himself in such danger, going out on these secret missions. SEALs is a job for men with no ties, not someone like him. I told him…” her breath caught on a sob, “I told him if he went and got himself shot or blown up into little pieces, he would deserve it. Oh, God, the names we called each other…”

  Jared could stand it no longer. He laid his hands on her knees, curving his fingers to apply gentle pressure. The muscles in her legs clenched against him, but she calmed a little.

  “When he left the last time, we were barely speaking. The next thing I knew, they told us he was dead.” Blindly she groped for and found the old pipe, still lying on the table. The fingers of her weakened right hand curled around it. “When we were growing up, when he got hurt, I’d feel his pain. Same with him. And when he died, I knew. It was exactly as I said it would be, as if I’d willed it on him. They couldn’t tell us even where he had died, or when. We couldn’t have his body back. He was just…gone.

  “So for once in my life, I tried to get this power of mine to work for me. I covered myself with Troy’s clothes, held his musket and his knapsack in my hands, and slept in his bedroll. Even ended up in a battle. I did everything I’d tried not to do all these years, just to see him again and tell him I was sorry, but it wouldn’t… I couldn’t…”

  She crumbled. Through his hands, he sensed the instant her despair gave way to anger. With an animal sound, she raised her right arm to fling to hapless pipe across the room. Pure instinct guided his reflexes as his hand shot out to stop her from re-injuring her shoulder. They both gasped as her forearm impacted his palm.

  With a cry of pain, Taylor rolled forward off the chair and collapsed into his arms.

  Troy crouched, staring out to sea with gritted teeth. His left hand gripped his right arm as pain shot from his shoulder, down and out through his hand. He bowed his head and groaned softly as the pain intensified, then subsided. Releasing his breath, he tilted his head back to look up at the moon, and found instead the Yankee-uniformed, throat-cut figure of a man leaning over him, one gauntleted hand reaching for his shoulder.

  “Shit!” Troy rolled away and sprang to his feet. Even as he moved, he remembered who this man was.

  John held up his hands and backed up a step.

  “Sorry,” said Troy, making a show of brushing himself off, chuckling as he realized what he’d just done. He, a ghost himself, had been scared spitless by one of his own. “Guess I know how Beaudry feels when I pop in on him unannounced.” He peered at the horseman, now standing on two solid legs and holding the stallion’s reins in his restored left hand. “I supposed if I asked how you’re doing, you’d punch me in the face.”

  “A day ago, I might have. But it looks like this hare-brained scheme of yours is working.” The horseman flexed his left hand and kicked at the sand with his right foot. “We’re almost home free.”

  Troy glanced at his toes. “Uh, well, it might not be so easy.”

  The man shifted his stance, planted one fist on his hip and gestured with the other hand. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  “It could be a bit tricky getting you guys switched back to the right places when the time comes.”

  The horseman smacked himself on the forehead.

  “I know, I know. If Harris shoots your body for real, we have to hope it doesn’t die. Even if we get lucky and Beaudry manages to avoid the bullet and the sword that cuts his throat, we still have to get you guys switched back.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or…we could lose you, and Beaudry would be stuck in your body for the rest of its natural life. I don’t know for sure. Maybe we’d lose both of you. See, I’ve, ah, never done this kind of thing before.”

  “I’m willing to bet this is a first for any of you people.” The horseman gestured toward Troy’s arm. “Are you all right?”

  Troy frowned at the beach house, just visible over the dunes. “She’s hurt bad, worse than I think she even realizes. I don’t think she can make it through the next couple days.”

  “Then we have to convince her to pull out of it.”

  Troy grinned at his companion. “We?”

  The man shrugged. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “What about you? Are you in pain?” Troy, who had seen his share of grisly battle wounds, could barely stand to look at the gaping wound at the horseman’s throat.

  “Nothing I can’t handle.” The man held out his leather-covered hand. “Come on. We have work to do.”

  Chapter Ten

  Blinding pain shot up her the side of her neck, down her arm and out through her fingertips. The world tilted and swayed, and when the cloud of spots before her eyes cleared, Taylor found the world wasn’t swaying; she was simply cradled in Jared’s arms as he carried her swiftly down the hall. In a matter of seconds he deposited her back on the bed she’d napped in just a short time before. Her body shook like a branch of aspen leaves in a high wind.

  He knelt before her, took her face in his hands and looked hard into her eyes, his expression grim. She watched a small war rage behind his sea-blue irises. His thumbs caressed her cheekbones. Her deeply ingrained first reflex, to detach herself as quickly as possible, stalled.

  A fine tension throbbed from his palms to her face, and the swirling energy threatened to surround and blind her. Just like when he had held her face back on the beach just—God, had it been only 24 hours ago? She felt a lifetime older. And weaker, as she again felt the boundaries between them begin to blur. Her heartbeat thumped in her throat as Jared lea
ned closer, hesitated, then closed the rest of the distance between them, his eyes never leaving hers.

  This time, she was sure the warm, firm lips on hers were real, and hot as the sea wind in summer. She ran her fingers along his jaw, then skimmed them into his hair where they closed on a thick handful and pulled him deeper into the kiss. She heard his breath catch, then he closed his eyes as his arms closed around her. As her legs parted willingly to accommodate him, some portion of her rapidly fogging brain tried to remind her the man she held was spirit, not flesh. But her thighs felt heat. Her tongue, tangling with his, promised her that whatever he was, he was perfectly made for her.

  She gasped and tore her mouth from his, struggling for breath. Their foreheads rested against each other, as if afraid that all balance would be lost if they broke contact. His ragged breath warmed her face as he let his fingertips trace her jawline. Desperate for another taste of him, she angled her head and swayed toward him.

  “Stay here,” he commanded hoarsely, the emotions of the last hour combining with passion to roughen his voice. “You’ve torn yourself open again.” And with that, he peeled himself away and almost ran from the room.

  Still panting, a fine sheen of sweat cooling on her forehead, she groaned and collapsed backward onto the bed. “Oh, God, what am I doing?” Where were the strange sensations she had felt the first time she had touched him? The sense of duality, of something or someone under siege? Now all she felt was this amazing charge of energy, of desire, the likes of which she’d never felt in her entire life.

  It figured, the only time in her life she found true passion was with a ghost on his way to the afterlife. Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat, turning into a sob as Troy’s image came to her mind. What would her overprotective brother have said about this?

  Oh, God. Troy. What would he say if he saw her now?

  He would have said to let him go, to go on with her life. Just as he’d said when he’d left for his last assignment. Then, the words hadn’t penetrated through the haze of anger and pain. But now a flood of release washed through her body, icy at first, then cool and light as she went completely limp on the bed. Her quiet sobs blended with a steady flood of tears that drained from the corners of her eyes and into her hair.