“Yes, Justin?” she asked, and he loved the way his name rolled off her tongue. “My one and only love, whom I forgive for intruding when I asked for solitude. Because had you not come to me, I would have sent someone to you, begging you to come back.”
He laughed and readjusted Rose’s feathery light weight across his chest. Now that both of them were sated, she had returned to her ghostly form, which felt light across his chest. “I could never stay away from you. You know that, or at least I hope you do.”
“I know now,” she assured him, “just as I know that I want you beside me forever. I had this grand plan to give you up. I thought it would be for the best, but now I know that it won’t work. I want you too much. I’m also sorry I was so hard on you earlier. I didn’t mean to be. I was just confused. I still am, at least a little. It was a lot of information to take in so very quickly.”
He stroked her hair lovingly, knowing that soon the silky feel of it would disappear. “I understand. Something like that would be difficult for anyone, living or dead.” Then he spoke the words that any female, human or ghost dreaded. “We need to talk, though. About something else.”
“I think I know what you want to ask me,” she sighed into his chest as her own ability to feel faded. He couldn’t see her face so he had no idea that her eyes were closed in dreamy thoughts as she so often was when she thought of their shared past. “You want to know what you were like back then, don’t you. Really like and not just bits and pieces gathered from memory. You’re hoping I can tell you.”
He supposed he should be shocked but he really wasn’t. Even after only a few days, she knew him so well. “This morning I went to a local museum that had an exhibit on our lives and deaths. I told you that part. What I didn’t tell you was that while I was there, I passed out again. I had more visions. Bad visions, just as bad as some of the earlier ones.”
Rose, unperturbed, as if she’d known it was coming, simply nodded and continued on. “And now you want to know the truth about the man you were.” She gave a small, harsh laugh. “Until tonight, had you asked, I would not have been able to tell you the truth. You were right. My memories were tampered with.”
Now it was Justin’s turn to be concerned and told her so. Briefly, she reiterated a slightly stripped down version of her conversation with her grandfather. It was difficult to hear, but Justin knew it was for the best. He’d been right in his earlier belief when he’d said that James hadn’t been the saint Rose had made him out to be. Justin was relieved to know his visions hadn’t been misleading.
Finally, he found his voice, asking the question that had tugged at his brain since the museum. “So what was I like? Really? Was I really as bad as the man I’ve seen in my visions? Tell me what you remember.”
He could tell she had remembered much more since he’d left her that afternoon simply by the expression on her face.
“In some ways, you were much like you are now,” she admitted. “You worked on your father’s farm growing up. You stayed there until we married and you went to work at the mill, where you remained until we were prosperous enough for you to buy the mill from Farmer Ettinger. You were harder then, or perhaps stubborn is a better word. You were quick to anger and not as forgiving as the man you are now. Life with your father made you that way. I wanted to help you or maybe even heal you, though I know now that wouldn’t have been possible.”
“How bad was he, my father, I mean?” He ignored her comment about wanting to change him. He, too, knew it never would have succeeded. She’d meant well, but it just wouldn’t have been possible.
Rose sighed. “Very bad. I can’t recall how many times he hit you, though I know it was often. I remember seeing you once when we were both children. According to my grandfather, it was the first time I met you. My parents and I were leaving the general store. You were at the harness shop with your father. I don’t know what you did, but whatever it was, it angered him. He beat you there, in the street, in front of everyone.”
She paused to settle herself more snugly against him before continuing. “He called you horrible names, said you weren’t worthy to live and told you no one would ever tolerate you the way he did, much less love you.”
“A real gem of a father, then, wasn’t he?” Justin was actually glad he didn’t remember much of that. He had enough horrid memories in his head to last a lifetime now.
“I wanted to run to you, though I’m not sure what I would have done,” Rose confided. “But my parents stopped me. Still, I vowed that one day, I would save you, prove to you and your father that you were worthy of love and friendship.” She drew a small circle on Justin’s bare chest. “I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I sought you out when I returned from finishing school in New York.”
He snorted. “And you found me working in the fields like a slave.” Even now, that single memory, one Justin himself had never lived, was still burned into his mind.
“I didn’t care.” There was heat in Rose’s voice, but not anger, as if somehow she couldn’t summon the energy. “All I saw was you, the boy I had longed for while I was away. Everything about you appealed to me. I didn’t care that you were a manual laborer. All I cared about was how you made me feel.”
Justin pondered that for a moment. In this lifetime, he hadn’t done much manual labor. There hadn’t been any need. He wondered if she missed that rugged side of him and asked her as much.
“Not really.” She shifted so she could look at him. “Once you were free of your father’s brutal demands, you were still tired quite frequently, often to the point of exhaustion. It led to stress between us. That’s one of the reasons you saved to buy the mill – so you wouldn’t have to work so hard or be away from me so much.”
“I don’t think I’d want to be away from you in any lifetime,” he admitted honestly. “It must have been hell.”
Rose ran her fingers up and down Justin’s chest. Her touch was as light as a whisper and he longed to know what the real, true heat of her body on his would feel like. Ghost sex was fun, but in the end it wasn’t a substitute for the real thing.
“It was unpleasant for both of us,” she confessed. “We were trying to have a baby and…”
“I remember,” he consoled her, feeling a sharp stab of pain around his heart.
She nodded, and rested her chin on her hands so she could see him better. “As well as his association with Margaret and someone trying to break up our marriage. Don’t forget that, either.” She smiled and it was enough to break his heart. Together, they had experienced more pain than pleasure, it seemed.
Justin ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t tell you all of it. I sort of left out the reason why Tim, as Jonah, was there in the first place.”
“Go on.” Rose was carefully avoiding looking at him and he could tell that this was something her grandfather hadn’t shared with her.
“Tim was there to examine you, see if there was a reason you couldn’t conceive.” He swallowed hard, the idea of being a father still a bit foreign to him.
Rose nodded. “There were difficulties, true, but I don’t remember anyone attempting to use the lack of a child as a reason for us to separate. Since you left this afternoon, I’ve remembered much that I’d forgotten, and none of my memories include that. In any event, had we lived, I would have started showing soon enough.”
Justin sighed and toyed with the ends of her hair. “Would it really have been that big of deal after we’d only been married six months? I know it was, but I just don’t understand why. I don’t understand why it mattered so much – to everyone apparently.”
Rising up on her elbows, Rose caressed his face with her fingertips. “It mattered, Justin. For us in particular, very much so. Remember, back then, life was much different than it is today. I was in my late twenties when I died and you were in your early thirties. We were bordering on what was then considered old age, especially for me to be able to bear a child. We’d been separated for so long and had lost so many years. We needed an
heir, you for the mill and me for Rosewood House. More importantly, we wanted a child for several reasons, including providing proof of our union.
“At best and with everything else aside, we were a miss-matched pair, our wedding a scandal in town. I was the daughter of a banker, gently reared and bred for a life of comfort and pampering. You were a laborer, born to the lowest class of family with anger issues that others could see, even if I couldn’t.” She hesitated momentarily, not sure how to speak the words she knew had to be said. “You weren’t wrong about the parlor either. We were married quickly, after the barn incident. Some townspeople even believed there were evil forces at work.”
Justin shook his head in disbelief but Rose captured his chin and forced him to look at her. “I was already a spinster when you married me. I had already refused at least one other man because he wasn’t the man I loved. We couldn’t afford to wait any longer and the moment I returned to town, I didn’t.”
“You came to the mill, seduced me.” Even though Rose hadn’t said the words, Justin knew it was true.
She shrugged, as if the reasons no longer mattered and they probably didn’t. “I knew what I wanted and knew my family would never agree if I simply asked them. We’d been through all of it before. I wanted you and I knew that was the only way to have you.” She shook her head. “The worst part was having Jonah, I mean Tim, examine me afterwards and confirm for my family that I was no longer a virgin.”
“Still hard to believe Tim was a doctor.” Justin laughed, deliberately changing the subject. He was still having trouble wrapping his head around the concept, but instead of worrying about it he relaxed back onto the bed and pulled Rose with him.
“He was an excellent physician,” Rose reminded him, grateful to turn to another subject as well. “Many considered him the moral compass of the town, a title he hated and often felt dictated how he lived his life.”
Justin considered that for a moment. “I guess in a way he still is. You’d never want to meet a more straight-laced guy.”
“I’ll take that to mean that he doesn’t indulge in many vices.” When Justin merely looked at her, Rose waved a hand. “He was no different back then, I can assure you. In fact, many believe that his only true vice was Margaret.”
“What do you know about Margaret? You and Ben both mentioned her before. I think you know more about her than you’re letting on. Even after only a few days, I know you almost as well as I know myself. I know you remembered something.”
Instead of answering, Rose began dancing her fingers along Justin’s forearm in an attempt to distract him. However, he wasn’t about to be put off. Something told him that Margaret was an even more important part of unraveling the mystery surrounding Rose than he’d realized.
“I mean it, Rose.” He stilled her clever fingers in a tight grip. “I need to know more about who Margaret is. Or rather was. Now. I know you remember something.”
Rose finally gave up her attempts to distract him. “Margaret Covington was a woman who lived on the outskirts of Blue Spring. Up in the mountains actually. No one, other than maybe my grandfather and a few others, knew where she came from or how old she was, though she looked to be about my age or perhaps a bit older.”
Justin said nothing, indicating that Rose should continue. She cleared her throat, and he got the impression that the subject was an uncomfortable one.
“Margaret was… Well, you know she was rumored to be a witch, but there was more too it. Some called her odd, evil even, but I suppose you could say that she was distrustful more than anything. From what I understand, life had been hard for her, the Fates cruel. She kept to herself mostly. I didn’t have too many dealings with her, but when I did, she was pleasant enough, perhaps a little sad, if anything. I actually enjoyed her company, though most of the women in town didn’t like her.”
“Why not?” Justin prodded, so far not learning anything particularly useful. “Wasn’t she just a normal woman?”
Rose shook her head and laughed in remembrance. “She was beautiful, far more beautiful than any of the women in town, with thick, raven black hair and flashing green eyes. A bit short, I guess, but she always wore boots to compensate. There was a timeless magic about her, as if she had lived a thousand years in her short lifetime.
Rose frowned and bit her lip, as if trying to put scattered thoughts into words. “Margaret seemed, well, not of this world, if that makes any sense. As I said, most people believed she was a witch or at least had some kind of magical powers. Many of the women here in town feared that Margaret would bewitch their husbands and then use her beauty to lure them away.”
Justin’s mouth twitched and he tried not to laugh. This story sounded so clichéd, but he suspected there was a little more to it. “So did she? Steal any husbands, I mean?”
“No,” Rose said flatly, clearly defending the other woman “She never did. However, that didn’t stop people from speculating – everything from stories that she could summon spirits to even her being in league with the Devil himself. As I said, most feared her, even the men clearly smitten with her, but they all generally left her alone. All except Jonah. I mean Tim.”
“But Tim, when he was Jonah, wasn’t married, was he?” Justin questioned, Rose’s description of Margaret suddenly becoming more clear in his mind. “I know it mattered, because I heard myself say those words to him in that second vision. But why did it matter so much?” He paused. “And it’s okay to call him Jonah. That’s who he was back then.”
Rose had managed to wiggle her fingers free of Justin’s grip and had started to drum her fingers on his arm. “You need to understand life back then. Doctors were seen as paragons of virtue; people looked to them for guidance, much as they did the local clergy. In Blue Spring, the person the townspeople looked to was Jonah.”
“Until Margaret.” Justin could easily imagine his uptight friend acting as a paragon of virtue and finding it a bit restricting every now and then.
Rose frowned as if trying to find the right words to explain the situation. Even after all these years, she didn’t know how to fully explain the convoluted, complex relationship the two had shared. “At first, it was as if Jonah wasn’t even aware of Margaret. She had lived in the area for several years and he seemed to just ignore her, though I’m sure he knew of her existence. We all did.”
The hairs along the back of Justin’s neck tickled, the same way they had when he had first walked into this house and found Rose. “Still, I know he was infatuated with her, probably to the point of distraction. What happened?”
“Influenza,” Rose said simply. “There was a terrible outbreak and many people died. That was the first time I can remember Margaret coming into town and staying for more than an hour or two. She said that she had some nurse’s training and wanted to help. She must have had some skills because Jonah allowed her to work with him for days at a time.”
“That was the start of their relationship, I’m guessing.” He could easily picture the mysterious woman and his stoic best friend being attracted to each other. It wasn’t as much of a stretch as it should have been, he decided.
She nodded and smiled slightly. “No one knows for sure what happened, but after that, Jonah did seem infatuated with Margaret, to use your words. You used the same words back then to describe them.
“After the outbreak had passed, they were occasionally glimpsed together, usually in the fields surrounding her cabin. Personally, I think he was in love with her, not merely infatuated or bewitched, as many claimed. She may have been in love with him as well. As I said, I didn’t know her well enough to be privy to that kind of information.”
This concept of Tim, even a past life version of his best friend, being in love with someone fascinated Justin. He also suspected that, if both he and Tim had been reincarnated in this time, then so had the mysterious Margaret. He also suspected he knew who she was in this lifetime.
Still, Justin kept his thoughts to himself for the moment. He wanted to be s
ure before he said anything to Rose. It might give her false hope. “What happened? I get the impression this story doesn’t end well.”
Rose shrugged. “I don’t know. The night before we died, a rumor swept through town that the doctor had been intimate with The Mountain Witch. That was the nickname most people gave her. There were also rumors that she was the one who had bewitched me on your behalf. It was the beginning of a scandal, but, of course, since at least Jonah died the same day we did, I never knew how it played out.”
“Your grandfather never told you?” Justin couldn’t believe that. The old man was as nosey as any living person Justin had ever met and, for the most part, knew just about everything. “He has to know. Surely he knows what happened to Margaret, at least.”
“I asked him once.” Rose apparently had decided that she’d had enough of this conversation and had gone back to caressing Justin’s arm. “He swears he doesn’t know. He can’t see anything of Margaret beyond that night, but he can’t confirm that she died, either. Given how my memories were tampered with, it’s possible his were as well.”
She cleared her throat. “Enough about the past. Isn’t there something you’d rather be doing?”
“I can think of a few things,” Justin teased as he flipped Rose over onto her back. “Just tell me where you’d like me to begin.”
At the moment, he was willing to put the issue of Jonah/Tim and this Margaret aside. However, he had a feeling that there was more to the story than even Rose knew. As he leaned down to kiss Rose, he also made a mental note to talk to Ben the next time the old ghost showed up. He was certain that Rose’s grandfather knew more than he was telling.
Chapter Twenty-One
“So now what? Are we at a dead end?” Tim looked up from the pile of notes that he’d been perusing. “If Ben can’t help us, where do we start looking for a tie-in to a specific Red File?”
The night before, long after Justin and Rose had made love again, Ben had appeared in the attic of Rosewood House with some not so good news. The Powers that ruled the spectral side of the world were unable to offer any additional help, despite their promises to Ben earlier.
Ghosts Of Lovers Past Page 17