Phantom Bride

by Cach, Lisa

  “Oh, dear me. Are either of them hurt?”

  “I am afraid that Mr. Underhill may be badly so,” Nancy said, and Beth was surprised to see the sheen of tears in the girl’s red eyes. “My aunt, Mrs. Hutchins, has gone to tend to him. Please, could you take me to Mr. Woding?”

  “Yes, certainly,” Beth said, hurrying over to the girl, and taking her hand gave it a brief squeeze. She looked in need of more comfort than that, but first things first.

  “What was the fight about?” Sophie asked, following behind them.

  Nancy’s answer was a gurgle of sound that neither of them could decipher. Beth patted her back and hurried her up the stairs. Poor child. Horses were surely much easier to deal with than men.

  “A, C, E, G, B, F, D,” Serena sang. “J, K, M, N, L, O, P.”

  “Close, but not quite,” Alex said, turning his eyes from the sky to her. She was sitting on the floor beside his reclined chair, facing him, the sheet of paper with the alphabet on the ground next to her. The red light of his small lamp cast a faint pink glow onto her luminous skin. “It’s A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Try again.”

  He saw her frown down at the paper, her lips moving in silent repetition of his example. The frown got deeper, and aloud she went through the first seven letters, slowly and carefully.

  “Perfect!” he said. “And now—”

  “No, no, let me stop there for now,” she said. “I am beginning to confuse myself. P, T, C, D, G, they all sound the same. I am making myself dizzy.”

  “You are doing remarkably well.”

  “I feel like an idiot.”

  “I imagine that even some idiots learn a little of how to read.”

  “How reassuring. Thank you ever so much, Woding.”

  He shrugged, hiding a smile, and looked back up at the stars, her glow visible at the edge of his vision. She was like a star fallen to earth, his Serena.

  “What is it you are looking for in the falling stars?” Serena asked after several minutes of silence had gone by. “Why do you chart their paths?”

  “Because they are not really falling stars,” he said.

  “They aren’t?” she asked, obviously surprised. “Then what are they?”

  “That is precisely what I am trying to find out. What do you think they are?” he asked.

  “I do not know. I had always assumed they were what they appeared to be.”

  He looked at her. “But do they really appear to be stars that fall from heaven? Where do they come from, if so, and where do they go? There are neither more nor less stars above no matter how many seem to fall.”

  She turned her face up to the sky, considering. “The stars have not changed at all since I was a child,” she agreed. “Maybe those that fall are stars from too far away to be seen, and they pass by to someplace equally distant, beyond our sight. Perhaps they travel so quickly we can see them for only an instant.”

  “That is not a bad theory,” he said, her ideas meshing with some that he himself had devised. “It sounds much better than some of those that other scientists have suggested, like that in certain weather plants release gases at night that react with the air.”

  “I should think that the plants themselves would be glowing, if such were the case. No, my idea is much better.”

  “Naturally,” he said. “You become an expert upon things with remarkable swiftness.”

  “Alex,” she said suddenly, with a touch of timidity that caught his attention. She almost never used his Christian name, and being timid was not one of her problems.

  “Yes, Serena?”

  “Would you teach me something else, if I asked?”

  His mind went racing. What lessons of the modern world could make his warrior ghost blush? Questions of procreation came immediately to mind. Please, no. He couldn’t draw her pictures of men and women and what they did in bed. “Certainly. What is it?”

  She was quiet. “Oh, never mind,” she said after a bit, and looked down at her knees.

  “All right.” Whatever it was, he was happy not to push.

  “Will you teach me how to kiss?”

  He jerked upright, staring down at her. “What?”

  “Never mind! Never mind!”

  “No, wait, you asked me to teach you to kiss. Why? Do you want me to kiss you?”

  “No!” Her hands were up, fluttering around her face, not knowing what to do with themselves. “Why would I want that? No, of course not. You think too highly of yourself, Woding.”

  “Why did you ask?”

  The hands went through another confused flight. “I’m curious. That’s all. I’ve never truly been kissed before, on the lips.”

  “Never?” he asked, some of his shock dying down. He remembered clearly enough listening to his sisters talk on and on about what it would be like to be kissed by a man. They had even gone so far as to try to practice on him. He had fled the house in horror. He had never quite understood how they could despise so much that was male, and yet seem to center their lives around finding a man for their very own.

  “Well, le Gayne did, if you want to count that. I don’t.”

  “If you want a kiss, I can give you that, to satisfy your curiosity,” he offered. “You don’t have to pretend to want to learn how to do it.”

  “I do want to learn,” she mumbled.

  “But why? You’re not going to—” He stopped himself. She did not need him to remind her that she was never going to have a lover or a husband.

  “Maybe… maybe it is part of why I am still here,” she said. “I did not care for le Gayne, but I wanted to be a wife and mother. I wanted to live, as fully as I could. Even while I was dying I wanted that. I wanted to experience everything I never had a chance to.”

  “So I kiss you, and poof, you’re gone to the afterlife?”

  She shrugged, her face half turned away. She looked human to him in that moment, completely a woman who had made herself vulnerable to a man by revealing some secret part of herself, and making a request that embarrassed her. Frances had made the same movement when they had talked about lovemaking.

  He swung his legs off the chair, and she scooted out of the way as his feet came down beside her. He reached for her, and for a moment his hands tingled with warmth as they went through her; then she solidified, and when he tried again he felt the give of supple flesh.

  He pulled her gently toward him, until she was sitting sideways on the ground between his legs, one of her long thighs covering his right foot in heavy warmth. Her eyes were open wide, watching him warily. She held perfectly still as he bent down toward her, his hands on her shoulders holding her in place if she should suddenly bolt.

  Her sweet, warm scent filled his head as he came close to her, his lips hovering less than an inch above hers. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling her, feeling the gentle touch of her breath on his skin, and then he set his lips lightly on hers.

  They were slightly parted, and smooth like the skins of cherries. He felt the quiver of her body in his hands, and in the irregular breath she let out. She felt real; completely, utterly, like a real woman trembling with desire. He moved his head, brushing his lips across hers with a light touch that set his own nerve endings shimmering. With the tip of his tongue, he lightly stroked her full lower lip, then took it between his own lips, pulling at it gently before letting it slide free.

  He moved one hand along her shoulder, and then up under her hair to the nape of her neck, the silky strands against the back of his hand warm from her heat. She was real, and oh God, how he wanted her. His dreams of her touch were now made flesh, and he hoped never to wake.

  He felt her hands settle on his knee and thigh, tentatively, almost as if she was afraid to touch him. He bore down firmly on her mouth, and supported her head with his hand as she bent back under the pressure. The hands on his leg squeezed. He eased off and nipped at her lips with his own, then forced her mouth open and thrust his tongue inside, rubbing it against the texture of hers, letting her tast
e him as he tasted her.

  She made a soft cry deep in her throat, and the sound went straight to his groin.

  Beth knocked on the door to the tower room. “Alex? It’s Beth.” She waited, then knocked again. Sophie and Nancy rustled behind her, huddling close, eager to escape the dark coolness of the tower stairs. “Alex?”

  She lifted the latch and pushed open the door a few inches, peering into the room. She doubted he would welcome three women invading his private study without invitation. “Hello?”

  She opened the door all the way, seeing that the room was empty. There were no lamps or candles lit, her own candle throwing the only light over the desk and gleaming orrery. They all three stepped into the room, and then Beth’s candle guttered in a draft.

  “He must be up top,” she said, going toward the steep stairs to the roof.

  “This is worse than visiting a sorcerer in a novel,” Sophie complained, following with Nancy. “Why couldn’t he have left a lamp burning?”

  A sound caught Beth’s ears. “Shh!” Beth hissed, hushing her friend. “Do you hear voices?”

  They all three held motionless at the foot of the steps, listening. “If you want just a kiss,” Alex was saying, “I can give you that.”

  They turned wide eyes on each other. A female voice answered, and in a hope against hope, even as the hairs on the back of her neck began to rise, Beth asked Nancy, “Is that Marcy?”

  Nancy shook her head no. “I don’t know that voice,” she said.

  “Then who is it?” Sophie whispered.

  “Shhh,” Beth commanded, and they all continued to listen.

  “Even while I was dying I wanted that,” the woman was saying. “I wanted to experience everything I’d never had a chance to.”

  “So I kiss you, and poof, you’re gone to the afterlife?” Alex replied, and then there was silence, followed by a shuffling of movement and the peculiar, heavy-breathing quiet that comes when two people kiss.

  Beth handed the candlestick to Sophie, grabbed her skirts in one hand, and climbed quickly up the steps, her heart thudding in sick terror. Her head came out the hatch, and she saw Alex in the red light of his lamp, leaning forward from his chair with his arms entwined with a shining white light, formless and inhuman. “Alex!” she cried.

  Immediately he jerked back from the light, which vanished the moment he released it.

  Beth scampered up the last few steps and dashed over to him, reaching out as if to take his hand, and then at the last moment refraining, some instinctual part of her not wanting to touch him. He looked stunned. “Alex? Are you all right? Alex?”

  He seemed to gather himself together, then scowled up at her. “Yes, what is it?” His eyes slipped away from her face, going to a corner to Beth’s right before coming back to her again.

  She straightened, every hair on her body standing stiff, the skin of her face fairly crawling with the sense of being watched by the unseen.

  “Alex, come down from here,” she said with false calm. “Underhill needs your help. He’s been badly beaten by Sommer.”

  “What?” Alex all but shouted, coming quickly to his feet. “Where is he?”

  “Nancy is below. She’ll explain everything. Mrs. Hutchins is with him now.” She gestured for him to precede her down the stairs, and he quickly obliged, his concern for his manservant evident.

  She stood for a moment longer than necessary on the rooftop, her eyes scanning the empty darkness that was alive with awareness. She shivered, and then followed Alex below.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Otto, here, boy, come on,” Serena said softly, crouching down and holding out her hand to the hound. “Come on, I won’t hurt you.” The dog, head and tail down, ears back, gave her a wide-eyed, distrusting stare and slunk off down the hall.

  Serena sighed, straightened, and followed. She had been at it for over an hour, and was coming to the conclusion that Otto was a cowardly, dim-witted creature only barely worth his feed. Her attempts to befriend the beast were getting tiresome, but she had decided it was in her best interest to do so, and she would not give up, however difficult the loathsome canine was being.

  Surely there must be some intelligence in the animal, some redeeming feature. Woding doted on the thing, after all, and that in itself was her primary motivation.

  She tracked Otto into the library, through the entry hall, and then up the stairs. He didn’t run so much as keep up a slow trot, pausing occasionally to see if she still pursued. He was probably getting as weary of the game as she was. Stupid dog. If he’d just sit still and let her pet him, they could both be done with this.

  The door to Woding’s bedroom was ajar, and Otto pushed his way inside. Serena followed, closing the door behind her, trapping him inside with her.

  “Ot-tooooe,” she crooned. “Ot-tooooe.”

  The dog went from door to door, pawing at the wood, looking for an escape as she came closer and closer. “Woo woooo!” he cried.

  “Ot-tooooe, nice doggie, come make friends. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Woo wooo!”

  The whites of his eyes were showing, and she could see his flesh quivering. Maybe if she pounced on him and held him tight, he would eventually give in through sheer exhaustion.

  She was about to act on the thought when he made a dive for the bed, scrambling beneath it, making the mattress buck and bounce as his back hit against the underside. “Wooo oo ooo,” he cried from his cave.

  She rolled her eyes. Beezely would never be such a coward. She went and sat on the bed, looking about the empty room, wishing Woding were there even as she was glad he had been gone for two days. She had a certain nervousness about seeing him again, after such an intimate encounter. She worried that he might regret it, or might have found her kisses unskilled and repulsive. He might never want to repeat the experience.

  There had been a great deal of activity in the house since Beth interrupted their kiss. The doctor had been sent for, and had declared Underhill to have a few cracked ribs and bruised internal organs, but to otherwise be in working order. He would, of course, require a great deal of rest and care, but still he refused to stay anywhere but in the stables.

  Sommer had driven the carriage at a reportedly hellbent pace to an inn on the far side of Bradford-on-Avon, and there proceeded to drink himself into a near stupor. Unfortunately, he had been conscious enough to climb back into the coachman’s seat. No one knew quite where he had been headed, but he took a corner on one of the country lanes much too fast, and was thrown from his seat, landing in a watery ditch, where he promptly passed out.

  The horses had had the wit to stop, and when the next passerby came some hours later, the abandoned carriage prompted him to check for injured persons. He found Sommer half-dead from the chill of the water, and back in Bradford-on-Avon a doctor was again summoned.

  Woding had had no choice but to release Sommer from his employ, both for the attack on Underhill and for his recklessness with the horses and carriage. Much to Nancy’s delight and Woding’s surprise, Nancy out of necessity became coachman, and Woding had accompanied her on her first outing, returning Beth and Sophie to their respective homes.

  Serena had stayed away from the turmoil except for moments of spying to check in on events and Woding’s whereabouts, and spent most of her time in the garden. She needed the time alone to sit in solitude and obsess over those moments in Woding’s arms, and on what might or might not happen between them in the future.

  Her first true kiss. She forgot about Otto under the bed as the scene replayed itself again in her mind. She found that she could re-create some of the sensations just by thinking about it, feeling the same paralyzing sense of being the helpless recipient of his touch. It was as if all thought, all ability to control her own actions had left her, leaving her mind consumed by the sensations of her body. She could have sat there all night, between his knees, letting him kiss her as he wished.

  She was a shameful, wanton creature, and what was
worse, she did not care. After many hours of careful consideration, she had decided that her possible eternal damnation did not matter so much as the chance to feel Woding’s naked body against her skin. If his kisses were so wonderful, then surely sharing his bed would be paradise on earth. She had no reason to preserve her virginity any longer, so why not? And perhaps it would be only as real as sex in a dream, where one woke with the lingering sensations and a sense of guilt, but nothing had truly changed.

  The room was dimming as the sun began to go down behind the heavy blanket of clouds that had concealed the sky all day. The shadows in the corners began to grow and darken. Otto’s whining settled into an exhausted quiet.

  Why shouldn’t she experiment with sex? It would hurt no one, least of all Woding.

  A shadow moved. She saw it from the corner of her eye, and jerked her head, staring wide-eyed. Nothing. Then, as if with a pulse that pumped it larger, a shadow swelled.

  Serena crawled backward to the head of the bed, her skin going cold and sweaty at the same time, her breath seizing in terror. The shadow, expanding to fill half the room, floated toward the bed, stopping at the foot and then pouring itself between the posts toward her.

  She screamed, her cry changing from one in the silent ghost realm to one that the living could hear, a scream of utter terror. Otto came bumping out from beneath the bed, his claws scrabbling on the wood floor, and once on his feet began to howl. “Aaa rooo roo roo!” he bellowed, adding his voice to Serena’s.

  The roiling shadow paused as if distracted, giving Serena a moment’s sanity within her terror. In that moment she remembered the prayer that had worked before, and shut her eyes, clasping her hands before her and bowing her head. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” she recited, going through the rosary with a desperate hope that it would again drive away the shadow. Her sinful thoughts of moments earlier weighed on her mind, creating a crevasse of doubt in her worthiness.

  She felt a cold, damp touch over all her skin at once, as if the shadow were enveloping her. She felt it begin to seep into her skin, pressing inward. “Nooo!” she cried, breaking her prayer and opening her eyes. Blackness was all around her, and it filled her mouth as she screamed.