Phantom Bride

by Cach, Lisa

  She wanted him to touch her again. Not only that, but she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to do to her what a gentle man would do with his wife on their first night of marriage.

  It was immoral, yes, but what use were morals to a woman who was all but dead? She had her doubts there was a hell waiting to bum her for eternity, for surely she would have gone straight there upon the death of her body, if there had been one. Who was watching her, who would punish her for her sins? No one.

  And yet she could not believe that Woding would want to teach her anything of the ways between a man and a woman, no matter his touch upon her face and his soft words. He would want someone living, who would not fade away at the end, leaving him alone in his bed. He would want someone with whom to build a life, someone to bear his children, never mind his obsession with stars and things not of this earth.

  It was pointless to stew on it. How could she decide what to do when she did not even know if he would be willing? And if he weren’t? It would be a far greater humiliation to have Woding reject her, than le Gayne. She had expected le Gayne’s hatred, and protected herself as well as she could from it. Le Gayne she had not cared for.

  Woding, in some way she could not recognize, she did care for. His opinion of her mattered. A galling thought, to be sure.

  What she wouldn’t give to have Thomas here to talk with! He might not have been wise or keen-witted, but he had been a man, and his perspective on this matter would have been welcome.

  She cast her mind back to the crude conversations the men at Clerenbold Keep had carried on around her, having grown used to her presence. Even her father had ceased shielding her from their words. Those men had spoken of women they would slake their lusts with and then discard. They spoke of women who wanted a man between their thighs, and how those women could not get enough of sex. The men said that if a woman offered herself free of charge or ties, then it would only be natural—nay, only courteous!—to take her, and give her the pleasure of their manhood in return.

  Perhaps it was true that all a woman had to do was offer, and a man would willingly join with her, but she did not want to be taken for one of those sorry wenches who would hike her skirts with no more than a wall at her back, not even caring if there were passersby.

  It was a dilemma. She wanted to behave like a loose woman, but she didn’t want to be one.

  Alex looked over the parapet of his tower, and saw the faint glow in the branches of the garden cherry tree that told him Serena was spending yet another night alone there, next to her dangling medallion.

  He had scared her, hurt her, upset her somehow with his words and his touch a week ago, and she had avoided him since. He had passed a restless week, getting little accomplished, his thoughts going to her, and to the dreams that haunted his sleep.

  They had been short, fragmented dreams of the sort easily forgotten if one did not hold tight to them upon waking. Always she was in them, often far off, a tall figure across a field or a formal garden, standing still as a deer, waiting for a sign that she should flee. And always, when in his dream he moved to approach her, she would vanish into the woods or behind a yew hedge, slipping from sight, not to appear again.

  He didn’t like having her avoid him like this! It was senseless. He was a grown man and should be able to keep his hands to himself. He simply needed to reassure her on that count. For all he knew, le Gayne had tried— albeit unsuccessfully—to rape her on their wedding night. The very touch of a man’s hand might be painfully repugnant to her.

  He left the tower and traced his way through the dark halls of the castle, and then out into the courtyard and garden. He did not bring a candle or lamp with him, as his eyes were fully adjusted to the dark. The garden gate was open, letting him slip silently inside. Serena had not moved from her spot, glowing like the moon behind the branches and leaves of the cherry tree.

  He came to the trunk of the tree and looked up, shifting around until he could see part of her face. She seemed to be staring, entranced, at the medallion, although he thought it likely her thoughts were a thousand miles away.

  “Serena!” he whispered loudly.

  She jerked, startled, and grabbed tight to a branch to keep from falling. “Woding?” she whispered back, peering through the leaves.

  “Yes. May I speak with you?”

  “What about?”

  “Serena, please. Come down from there. I cannot speak to you when you are hanging from the branches like a monkey.”

  “You have seen a monkey?” she asked, and he smiled at the note of interest in her voice. Here he was worried about unspoken currents between them, and it took only the mention of a monkey to bridge their distance.

  “Yes, several times, although never in the wild.”

  “I should like to see a monkey,” she said. “And a lion. I have never seen a lion, nor even a bear.”

  “I have seen all manner of strange creatures in menageries,” he said. “Come down, and I will tell you about them.”

  “Did you see a unicorn?”

  “Come down and I will tell you.”

  She moved silently through the branches, climbing down them as if she were solid and at risk of falling. He wondered at that—why she so often maintained the conceit of being alive. Was she solid now, or only pretending?

  “Where did you see the unicorn?” she asked, dropping down lightly to her feet, bending at the knees as if from an impact, and then straightening.

  “I never did see one,” he admitted. “I should have thought that if there were any, you yourself would have been more likely to see one, living when you did.”

  “Oh.”

  He led the way out from under the tree, into the star-bright garden. “I have, however, seen a tiger. Do you know about tigers?”

  “No,” she said, following him out of the shadows. “What manner of creature is it?”

  “An enormous cat, striped in black and orange, with a white belly. It lives in the jungles of the east, and in hot weather is said to cool itself in pools of water.”

  “A cat in water!”

  “Indeed. In Africa there are birds that are as tall as you and I, and which cannot fly. They are called ostriches, and they lay eggs as big as your head.”

  “Where is Africa?”

  “South of the Mediterranean Sea. And the Americas! You know nothing of those lands! They are beyond the ocean to the west, an endless expanse of land only partially settled by the English, French, and Spanish. Wild tribes of half-naked savages still roam there, mounted bareback on their ponies and hunting buffalo with bow and arrow.”

  “The world seems to have grown very large since last I heard of it,” she said in some confusion.

  “Larger still than I’ve told you,” he said.

  “Tell me no more,” she said. “It aches to hear of such places, and to know that I will never see any of them, nor the creatures who live there.”

  “Ah, Serena, do not look at it that way. I will likely see none of those places, either.”

  “But you know it is possible. If you wished, you could leave this mountain tomorrow and board a ship for any of those lands. It is different when even the possibility is not there. It hurts.”

  “The hurt is in your mind, Serena. It need not be. Come, look up at the stars,” he said, putting out his hand for her to take. After a moment’s hesitation she did so, her fingers warm and firm against his palm. He pulled her to his side, close but not touching. “Look, up there, at Cassiopeia,” he said, pointing. “Are not the stars beautiful?”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  He ran his eyes over her pale profile, lovelier even than the stars. Her irises were as black as in his dreams, and he imagined for a moment that the heavens above were reflected therein, shimmers of far-off worlds dancing in her eyes.

  “I have no hope of ever visiting those stars, and no hope of going even so far as the moon. The lowly clouds themselves are beyond my limit, except when they sink below the castle. That does no
t stop me from wanting to learn of them, or finding wonder in their presence, though. My world is larger simply by knowing they are there. There is not time enough in a man’s life to explore all the universe, but there is space enough in his mind to hold it.”

  “My mind holds my own experiences, my own past and present, no larger world than that,” she said. “How can America or Africa become part of it, when I have never seen the ostriches or the savages?”

  “They already have become a part of your world. You have imagined how the bird looks; you have seen for an instant the wild men hunting. It’s part of your universe now. You do not need to be trapped by this mountain, Serena, no matter that you cannot leave.”

  “But who will tell me of the world beyond it?”

  For a moment he saw himself as her teacher, opening the modern world to her medieval eyes, and sharing the vastness of man’s learning. It was a heady thought, and quickly became an overwhelming one. There was so much to share, so much she did not know. She had a quick mind and a fierce determination, and deserved better than having him in his vanity think he could teach her all she could know.

  “Books.”

  She took her hand from him. “I cannot read. You know that.”

  “Children can learn how to read and write. So can you. You have intelligence that should not be squandered in illiteracy.”

  “But who will teach me?” she asked softly.

  There was only one answer to give. “I will.”

  She turned her eyes to him, and for a brief instant he thought he saw the blackness shift, turning a lighter color, a gray-blue, and then they were dark again. “Thank you,” she said on a whisper, and leaned forward to press her lips softly against his cheek.

  He was too startled to move, the warm pressure sending shafts of tingling warmth through his body and wrapping his heart in a tender embrace. When she pulled away, it took him several seconds to recall where he was and of what they had been speaking.

  “You may not be thanking me after your first lesson,” he said, trying for a wry tone, trying as well to shake off the feeling of closeness between them as they stood alone in the nighttime garden. “I may be an impatient taskmaster.”

  The smile she gave him was plainly disbelieving, giving him pause to wonder what manner of impressions she had formed of him.

  “When do we start?”

  He cast his eyes up at the clear night sky. He should take advantage of the weather. With the advent of autumn, he could expect fewer and fewer nights such as this one. “Late tomorrow afternoon, a few hours before dusk.”

  She gave a shiver.

  “Are you cold?” he asked. He had never considered that she might be capable of such a thing.

  “No. I am happy,” she said. “So very happy. Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Talk to you about?” he asked, lost, but then remembered what he had said when he first came out here. It would be awkward and, apparently, unnecessary to inform her of his intentions to keep his hands off her. He wanted to do nothing to bring dark thoughts to the light shining now from her face. “I had wondered at your absence, is all,” he said in a half-truth. “I’ve grown accustomed to your company.”

  She seemed as willing as he to avoid mention of the last time they had been together. “I will not leave you again,” she said.

  Her words sent a touch of worry through him, at the same time that he liked their sound. There was a part of him rational enough to wonder what the hell he was getting himself in for… and why he seemed to care nothing for the insanity of his actions.

  He was going to teach a ghost to read, and he knew already he would take every opportunity to lean over her shoulder and smell the hay-sweet scent of her hair, to brush against her, to lay his hand over hers and direct her use of a pen.

  He was mad.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Alex, it is three-thirty, the same time it was when last you looked,” Beth said, feeling a bit put out by his inattention to her and Sophie. It made one feel very much like an unwelcome burden. He was usually so attentive: she had even thought, in passing, that he might have something of a care for her. She loved Rhys, of course, and would never think of betraying him, but Alex’s fondness for her had been flattering, and gave her an easy confidence in his presence. “One would think you had a pressing engagement, the way you keep checking the clock every half minute.”

  “Truly, Alex, it is most rude,” Sophie said, setting her flowered teacup into its saucer with a tiny clink. “One would think you were not desirous of our company, although I cannot imagine whose company you do desire. You have not had a single visitor since I came here myself.”

  “I do apologize,” Alex said. “I am waiting for nightfall, is all. I hope to have a clear night for stargazing.”

  Sophie made a delicate snorting sound of dismissal. “I do not see how any person could find such interest in a bunch of dots in the sky, whether they streak prettily or no.”

  “Sophie, you must admit it is a romantic notion,” Beth said. “Lovers and poets become obsessed by the stars as well, so one can only conclude that astronomers must have something in common with them.”

  “I assure you, I shall not be writing poetry anytime soon,” Alex said.

  “Pish,” Beth said. “I’m certain you already have some stashed away under your star charts and tables.”

  Sophie daintily picked up a triangle of cucumber-and- salmon sandwich, and nibbled on the edge. “I think it is high time my brother stopped looking at stars and found himself a wife,” she said, sitting straight-backed and superior, aping the attitude of her eldest sister. “It will settle him down,” she said to Beth, as if Alex were not sitting right there.

  “He does not need settling,” Beth said.

  “Hear! hear!” Alex agreed, raising his teacup to her.

  “I will say, though, that he needs a female in his life,” she added.

  Beth caught the mock frown Alex gave her, and raised an eyebrow in reply, giving her curls a slight toss. She might miss his flattery, but she was not so shallow a friend that she did not want the best for him.

  “He won’t likely find one up here,” Sophie said. “Unless you want to count the ghost. I still do not forgive you for making me go to bed, Alex, while the rest of you sat around discussing it all that night. I do not see why I had to wait until morning, like a child. I am not a child. I am about to be a married woman.”

  “So you are,” Alex agreed. “Yet surely you agree that you are not one yet.”

  Sophie made a moue, her face turning a bit duck-like in the process. Beth hoped her friend would not engage in the practice too often, once married to Blandamour. When his infatuation faded, he might not think it so charming, and one must ever remain charming to one’s husband.

  “To return to the subject,” Beth said, interrupting the bickering, “Alex is settled and responsible enough as it is. His wild hairs only add to his appeal to the fairer sex, as he well knows.” She caught him rolling his eyes. “All that stargazing is of little use, however, if he does not have a female audience to appreciate his romanticism. Mooning about looking poetic is rather pointless if there is no one to see you and give a sigh.”

  The truth was, Beth was uneasy about Alex’s nights in the tower. Although it had started as a bit of a joke, he was getting a reputation as an eccentric in the county, and becoming the topic of much speculative gossip. A wife to share his bed and see to his well-being might keep him tethered closely enough to earth that neither ghosts nor stars could pull him away.

  She had no concerns that he was losing his mind. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that much went on here that he did not tell, and that the ghost Serena was a part of it. No friend would sit idly by while a man spent his nights in contact with the spirit of a dead woman, and she did consider herself a friend.

  Beth was intrigued by the idea of Serena, but uneasy about the spirit as well. What could one know of the mind of a ghost? Were her
intentions evil? Beth was finding that ghost stories were exciting and romantic only as long as they stayed stories, and on the outer edges of experience. She did not like to think that Serena might possibly be the cause of Alex’s glances at the clock.

  “I shouldn’t much like a sighing female hanging about,” Alex said. “They cost too much in smelling salts.”

  “Then what type would you prefer?” she asked, smiling, aware and a little embarrassed that she was hoping he would describe someone like her.

  “Well,” he said, setting his cup on the table and leaning forward. “First, she must be tall, with a strong body. Frances was as lovely as a porcelain doll, but I felt equally likely to break her.”

  Beth felt a remembered twinge of sadness. Frances had indeed proved too frail to overcome her fever. It made a certain sense then that Alex would want a woman healthy as a horse. “A woman can be of smaller stature without being fragile,” she reminded him, thinking of how Rhys was surprised in bed by the strength of her thighs, and her ability, when she wished, to overpower him. Admittedly, he let her do so, but still…

  “Ah, but with a tall woman one does not need to cramp one’s neck with bending down to kiss her. She can look you straight in the eye.”

  “That does not sound very feminine,” Sophie said, “a woman being as tall as a man.”

  “She would have strength of will, as well,” he went on, ignoring his sister’s comment. “She would say what she thought, and go after what she wanted. She would let nothing defeat her, and yet would retain a tender heart beneath the steel.”

  “It sounds as if you want one of those horrid Greek goddesses, who trounce upon mere mortals as they pursue their desires,” Beth said. “And you know what happens when a man displeases a goddess. He ends up turned into a tree or a rabbit.”

  “You must admit it would be glorious while it lasted,” he said with a smile.

  Sophie sniffed disapprovingly. “It’s not terribly realistic of you, though, Alex, to be casting your sights on ancient goddesses. They simply do not frequent the assembly rooms of Bath.”