Phantom Bride

by Cach, Lisa

  His home growing up had been one where the male anatomy was neither seen nor spoken of. Even the lapdogs had all been female, so his sisters would not have to cast their eyes on the embarrassing evidence of male gender.

  Holidays with Rhys and his few years in boarding school had loosened him up, but he still did not have the easy comfort with nudity that many of his male friends did, who when among each other seemed not to have ever heard of the concept of modesty.

  His one place of freedom from his own bashfulness was his private quarters, and he was determined not to give that up to an imagined ghost. Or a real ghost, for that matter. His habit was to sleep nude, and sleep nude he would.

  He had to fight not to cover his privates as he walked to his bed, feeling every bounce and swing. He slid beneath the covers with a sigh of relief, and blew out the oil lamp, sinking deeper into concealing darkness and body-hiding sheets, lying on his side facing out, the bed curtains open.

  He closed his eyes and immediately felt the presence come to the side of the bed, standing for a moment near his head. It was as if he could see it in his mind’s eye, a darker shadow in the dark, pausing there, then going around the foot of the bed and thence to the other side. A tingle of awareness crept up his spine as the presence climbed onto the bed and lay down beside him, just behind him.

  He opened his eyes and rolled onto his back, trying to check from the corner of his eye whether there was indeed something darker on the pillow next to his. He could see nothing, but still, awareness tingled all down his right side.

  What did it—or she, assuming it was Serena—want from him? From any of them?

  Stop it, he told himself. There’s nothing there.

  But what if there was, and if, given the correct circumstances, it could speak? What might there be to learn from the dead? Men had been trying for thousands of years to answer the question of what happened when one died, and here he might have a firsthand witness lying by his side, begging for attention.

  No, he would not let curiosity prod him into speaking aloud again. His reasoning told him ghosts did not exist, and whatever his misguided senses might tell him, he needed to stay with the logic of the mind until he had proof to the contrary.

  He closed his eyes and imagined a heaven full of stars, and began to count those that fell. Within minutes he felt himself losing track of his self-made heaven as sleep overtook him. The presence was still there by his side, inactive, for all the world as if it, too, were weary and in need of rest. His last thought as he slipped into unconsciousness was that it might as well have been a house cat beside him, for all the harm it did.

  He was exploring the ruins of Maiden Castle again, as he had when he was ten years old. The long stick in his hand was his sword, and he used it to poke the ground and through patches of overgrowth, seeking the clang of buried metal armor, although his older mind knew he would find nothing.

  Alex, a soft female voice said, the sound speaking in his head. There was no intonation, no emotion, no direction from whence it came. Alex.

  He raised his eyes from the ground and saw a woman sitting on the ruins of the garden wall. She was dressed in a pink underdress, with tight sleeves. Over it she wore a long white and gold sleeveless tunic, a golden girdle around her hips. Her hair, long and pale, hung in tangled locks down to the top of the wall, pooling there and spilling off in snaking rivulets of hair.

  Alex, she said again, and this time he saw her lips move, although still the sound came from inside his head.

  He walked toward her. “Do I know you?” he asked, feeling a sense of familiarity. He knew her, but how?

  Alex, she repeated.

  He stopped a couple feet in front of her, still trying to place her. “What are you doing here, in these ruins?”

  She held out her closed hand, palm up, then slowly opened it, finger by finger. Pink blossoms spilled out, carried away by the breeze. She left her hand there, holding it out as if in invitation.

  He looked into her eyes. The irises were black, indistinguishable from her pupils, and he sensed a great longing in their depths. He had never seen such dark eyes, so filled with yearning. Her face was long and narrow, attractive in an unusual way, her features somehow working together to create an impression of otherworldly beauty. A straight scar ran from her forehead through her eyebrow, then picked up again across her cheekbone.

  He had the sudden sense that she’d been waiting here for him for all of eternity.

  Alex.

  He put his hand in hers, feeling the cold pressure as her fingers closed around it. Who was she? Why couldn’t he remember? She was so strange, and so oddly beautiful… and they were meant to be together. He felt her strength as she drew him toward her; felt her size as he stood pressed against the side of her thigh. He guessed that standing next to him she would be nearly his own height. She smelled faintly of dry, sweet hay.

  “What do you want of me?” he asked.

  Touch me, she implored, and lay back, stretching herself atop the uneven wall. Her hair trailed down to the grass and the pull of fabric outlined the gentle thrust of hipbone and thighs.

  His eyes dropped to her full breasts, unhampered by stays, the nipples hard nubs beneath the layers of cloth, and knew that he wanted her. She was his to take, and had always been so; she’d waited eons for him.

  She took the hand of his she still held and brought it to her chest, laying it palm down between her breasts. Touch me, she said again, her voice in his head softly aching with desire and… again, that yearning. A yearning like a thousand years of loneliness. She released his hand, laying her own arms above her head on the wall and closing her eyes. Abandoning herself to him.

  He did not move for a long moment, lost in the wonder of her and the unutterable strangeness of the moment, even as it felt so right. He slid his hand over her breast, feeling the soft give of flesh and the hard cherrystone of a nipple. He rubbed his hand in light circles over it, feeling the path her nipple traced across his palm and fingers, and feeling the answering arousal in his own loins.

  He ran his hand over her collarbone and up alongside her neck, holding the side of her jaw as his thumb swept over her cheek, brushing the tail of the scar. He bent his face down close to hers, breathing deeply of her sweet scent, brushing his lips lightly against her own, just a feather’s touch, then pulling back.

  She opened her black, fathomless eyes. Touch me, she said yet again, and bent one knee, her skirts tenting around her leg, leaving no question to what she asked.

  He felt the jolt of that invitation in his loins. But he needed to know who she was; needed to have a name for this strange beauty lying on the garden wall, who had waited eternities for him to come. “Tell me your name.”

  She reached down and pulled at her skirts, sliding them up to her thighs. Alex, she said softly, arching her neck and raising her other knee. Take me. Now.

  His body moved, unable to resist the pull of her desire. He could feel her need, reaching out to him, begging for his touch, begging for him to come inside her and end her loneliness. He got up on the wall, kneeling between her curtained thighs, and unbuttoned his trousers, uncovering his arousal to the summer air. He pushed the hem of her skirts the rest of the way up, so that they pooled across her hips.

  Her nether hair was dark gold, the flesh between a crimson pink, parting like the petals of a rose as he gently pushed her thighs apart. He leaned over, holding himself above her, bracing on one hand on the wall along her side. Her own cold hands came up to reach inside his drawers and around to his buttocks, squeezing gently, urging him forward.

  “Tell me your name,” he said, needing to know it, even as he used his other hand to guide himself to her.

  Serena, she whispered, just as his manhood parted her and slid inside. Her hands on his buttocks pulled him hard into her, forcing him to plunge all the way home.

  The cold hit him.

  She was ice inside, his manhood gripped in a frozen glove. He tried to draw out, but s
he wrapped her legs around him, holding tight, lifting off the wall to wrap her arms around his body. She moved against him, undulating, rocking, creating against his will an answering pleasure that both repulsed and drew him.

  He struggled against her entangling limbs and they both fell off the wall, landing on the springy turf, and still she clung to him, drawing forth a response despite his protests, her hips fastened to his, stroking and massaging him until he found he could not help but give in to her rhythm.

  You are mine, she said, as he thrust within her, unable to stop, the cold climbing from his loins up toward his heart. You’ve always been mine, you’ll always be mine…

  He looked into her eyes, and there were no whites now. They were black from lid to lid, a shining midnight in which distant stars shone.

  He screamed, and made one last frantic struggle to escape, to pull himself from her body.

  He woke tangled in bedsheets, covered in sweat. After a moment to gain his bearings, he lay his hand over his manhood, absurdly certain he would find it ice-cold. It was warm with life, hard, and tingling with arousal.

  His breath left him in a long sigh, and when his heartbeat quieted in his ears he tried to relax again. The faint light from the windows and the birdsong told him it was near dawn. He had been asleep for only a few hours.

  And still he felt the presence beside him.

  Chapter Ten

  “Are you enjoying the stables? Sleeping well?” Woding asked Underhill. Serena thought he sounded a bit testy, not quite his usual self. Perhaps it was the pile of paperwork he was trying to get through that soured his mood. He was sitting behind the desk in his little-used office, the one reserved, she had gathered, for his business affairs. Like most rooms in the castle, it had a beautiful view of the countryside.

  “Not as comfortably as I would in my own bed, truth be told, but I am content to stay where I am,” Underhill replied, setting down the post. “If I may say so, you do not look particularly well rested yourself.”

  “Bad dreams, is all,” Woding said, smothering a yawn. He leaned back in his desk chair, rubbing his eyes. “My body refuses to accept that I want it to sleep during the day, and revenges itself upon me with nightmares.”

  “No noises disturb your slumber?”

  “Not a one. It’s beginning to seem more and more as if we had a prankster in our midst. Either that or our ghost has found something better to do with her time.”

  Serena narrowed her eyes. That was not what she wanted to hear. For three days she had been Woding’s shadow, and he had not once looked directly at her, or in any other way revealed that he was aware of her presence.

  Perhaps he wasn’t.

  The only unease she saw in him was while he slept: every time he closed his eyes he was plagued by nightmares. Even that, though, she could not be certain was because of her presence. Certainly she was not doing anything to interfere with his dreams.

  At first she had thought he was deliberately trying to ignore her, but now she could not be certain. She slipped off the windowsill and came around to where she could see his face. Was he lying to Underhill? Or did he really think she had gone away, or never been here to begin with?

  She couldn’t tell. She reminded herself that he was a sly man. He could be taunting her, telling her that he was winning, and that he thought her beneath his notice.

  Or maybe he really could not sense her presence anymore.

  She sat on the desk, propping her foot on the arm of his chair.

  “Before I forget,” Underhill was saying, “Daisy Hutchins has asked to speak with you. Shall I send her up?”

  “Yes, do,” Woding said, pushing back from the desk, forcing Serena to drop her foot. “I’ve had enough of these papers.”

  Woding picked up the post and flipped through the letters, sorting them into piles, frowning at one in particular. A few minutes later the cook stood in the open doorway, giving the frame a rap to announce her presence.

  “Mrs. Hutchins, please come in,” Woding said. “There was something you wished to discuss with me?”

  “There is, Mr. Woding,” she said, stepping into the room and standing squarely in front of the desk, her solid frame looking as movable to Serena as a block of stone. She had dark brown hair drawn back in a bun, covered in a white cap. She wore a short brown loose gown over a quilted blue petticoat, the loose gown held shut by the apron tied around her waist. A large white kerchief was crossed over her ample breasts. Marcy, the housemaid, wore a similar outfit, albeit in brighter colors, and Serena guessed it was the usual attire for a country laborer nowadays.

  “Won’t you sit down?” Woding asked.

  “Thank you, sir.” Mrs. Hutchins sat, suddenly looking a trifle uncomfortable, seated across the desk from him as she was. It was obvious to Serena that the woman felt more at ease on her feet.

  “Have you been settling in all right?”

  “Yes, sir. I like my quarters very much, and am enjoying my work. I am proud to have charge of an entire kitchen, and the buying of goods. Such a position is not easy to come by for a woman of my age, and I thank you.”

  Serena guessed her to be in her late twenties, and imagined she was right to be honored to be given such responsibility, especially considering the man she had replaced.

  “What can I help you with?” Woding asked.

  The cook took a breath and began. “It’s like this, sir. I don’t want to be saying anything against anyone, but when I went with Mr. Sommer with the wagon down to buy supplies in Bradford-on-Avon, we came back with everything like I’d asked, except for those things what will be delivered later, but then Mr. Sommer refused to bring the wagon all the way up to the castle. He said he’d go no farther than the stables, and that the horses would not either. He had Dickie and Marcy load handcarts with the goods, and haul them up through the tunnel.

  “Marcy didn’t complain—she’s a good, strong girl, a good worker—but I confess I do not see the purpose to it. Dickie at least was quick about it, but was useless for hours after, blathering on about the evil atmosphere of the tunnel. I’ve been through that tunnel a dozen times myself, sir, and have never had a moment’s fright.”

  “Are you asking me to have Mr. Sommer drive the wagon up to the castle in the future?” Woding asked.

  “No, sir,” Mrs. Hutchins said.

  “Ah,” Woding said, and wisely closed his mouth.

  Serena had known an old man at Clerenbold Keep much like this Daisy Hutchins. He often had a point to make, but there was no way on God’s good earth that he could be rushed to it. His mind had not functioned without sidetracks, and one could only sit and wait and try to look patient while he rambled toward his conclusion.

  “My eldest sister married a man who owns a livery stable, and who does farrier work as well. They have seven children, the oldest of whom is Nancy. She’s just turned eighteen. They’ve tried to raise her good and proper, but Nancy was never one to be kept away from what she wanted.”

  “Oh?” Woding said.

  “It’s the horses, sir. Nancy loves the horses. They gave up trying to turn her away from them long ago, and so she’s worked side by side with her father since she was old enough to stand.”

  Serena rested her jaw in her hand, watching Mrs. Hutchins talk. She was guessing that some of the woman’s volubility was because she didn’t expect Woding to like her point, once she got to it. Woding seemed to be getting the same idea: Serena thought she saw his eyes widening.

  The cook abruptly stood. “Nancy!” she called toward the open door. “Come in here, girl.”

  Nancy did as bidden. She bore a strong resemblance to her aunt, with the same wide-spaced, downturning eyes and dark brown locks. Her hair, however, was pulled back in a long braid, and the dress she wore was several inches too short, revealing heavy boots on her feet. She wore a thick cotton smock over the dress, like a workman. She was of average height, but broad-shouldered, and Serena guessed her hands would be rough.

  “My i
dea, Mr. Woding, is that Nancy might be allowed to work in the stables with Mr. Sommer. She has a way with horses, and could take them through the tunnel when the carriage needed to be brought round, or the wagon. The horses would not spook with her, sir.” Serena thought the cook might be right. Nancy exuded the solid calm of warm porridge. Even looking at her was somehow comforting. Serena doubted the girl had ever made a sudden move or a shrill sound in her life, and it was quite possible she might be able to keep the horses in line even if Serena was there trying to spook them. Not that she would. Not when Nancy was at the reins.

  “You want your niece to be a stableboy?” Woding asked, his incredulity barely concealed.

  “I intend one day to be a coachman, sir,” Nancy said on her own behalf. Her voice was low and calm, and she apparently saw nothing strange in her statement.

  Serena gaped. Was the girl a half-wit? She would never be allowed to become a coachman; indeed, Serena wouldn’t be surprised if she were beaten for suggesting such a thing to her master.

  “Hush, child,” her aunt admonished. “Don’t be putting the carriage before the horse.”

  “I’d never,” Nancy said, appalled.

  “She wouldn’t need much,” Mrs. Hutchins said to Woding. “Room, board. She’s a good worker, sir. You would not regret taking her on.”

  Woding held up his hand, stopping her. His eyes went from her to Nancy, studying the girl. Serena felt her heartbeat quicken. Was he actually considering it? Impossible. He was a man. The men of her family would never have allowed such a thing––they could not have conceived that a woman could do a man’s work. Her brothers had only taught her to use weapons because it amused them to humiliate her. In a man’s eyes, a woman had no brains, and was good for only limited uses.

  “The stables have always been the domain of men,” Woding said. “I have never heard of a female coachman, footman, postilion, stableboy, or groom.” He paused, still looking at Nancy, who for her part was doing an admirable job of displaying calm composure in the face of inevitable disappointment. Serena thought Woding––who had surprised her several times already by his gentle handling of women––paused out of a reluctance to deliver the rejection.