Phantom Bride

by Cach, Lisa

  She dropped her skirt and let her hand go substantial enough that she could stroke him lightly on the cheek. “I’m sorry for what I did,” she said softly to him, bending down, and he nodded his head once, quickly, in acceptance.

  “Do you want to see one more trick?” she asked the children, straightening to her full height.

  The answer was a chorused, “Yes!”

  She smiled at them, and then slowly faded into nothing. Insubstantial, she moved away from the bench and watched them feeling around in the air as if they could tell from touch where she had gone.

  “Serena, where are you?” Louisa asked. “Come back.”

  “I have to go now,” she said, her voice coming out of the air.

  The children responded with a collective groan of disappointment and complaint. She even thought she heard a whine. There seemed no better possible farewell than that.

  Woding would not look at her. The foul man saw her— he could not help doing so—but he would not look at her. She could make a fuss and force him to, but that would only push him further away. Dogging his heels as she once had would be another form of force, as well. She’d had enough of trying to force people to do as she wished.

  She left his office without a word, leaving him to the pile of business correspondence on his desk. She tried to tell herself that he was just being a man: it seemed an innate characteristic of the sex not to talk about anything that troubled them.

  She didn’t have much time, though, to sit around waiting for him to speak to her again. Her tree had reached a point where its decline had taken on a force of its own. It would die soon no matter how she conserved her strength, and she could not bear the thought of having that happen while there yet remained a rift between her and Woding.

  These were her last good-byes, she supposed. Her deathbed farewells. She could tell him that, and put a blanket of guilt on him, forcing him to talk to her that way.

  No. She wouldn’t do that, no more than she would stand in front of him and scream until he acknowledged her.

  Although she’d like to.

  He had to want to do it himself. She would make as many overtures as it took, but the olive branch would still fall to the ground if he was not willing to take it from her hand.

  It was a brave thought, braver in its way than her kidnapping of le Gayne, and doubtless a far wiser decision, but it left her sick with the fear that it might come to nothing. She felt as though all her shielding had been torn away by her confrontation with him, and, later, with the darkness that was in herself. She felt naked and exposed, vulnerable, and it was hard not to pick up her armor again, and bang her shield with her sword, crying out for battle.

  Sitting quietly in his office with him had not worked to get him to talk to her. She knew no other way to show she was penitent, and was asking for rather than demanding his attention.

  Even the years alone on this mountain had not been so lonely as sitting in his office, ignored by him. It was a personal rejection, more painful than any other because he knew her as no other person ever had.

  She reminded herself again that he was male, and this was the male way. She had seen it in her brothers, and in the silent men-at-arms when their love affairs, so proudly boasted of, had gone awry.

  She reminded herself, but it still hurt.

  She wandered down the hall, wanting to find a quiet place to sit and think.

  Then she saw Beth heading toward her—or, rather, toward the room she shared with her husband, the door to which was near where Serena stood. As she watched the woman approach, it occurred to her that here was someone who would know what she should do. Beth had known Alex for years, and would know how best to approach him. Also, she had never seemed completely opposed to Serena’s existence. Perhaps she could be persuaded that helping her would do Woding no harm?

  Serena followed her into her room.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  There was something strange going on. He could tell. His nieces and nephews were invading every nook and cranny of the castle as if they were termites, searching for Serena. They claimed she had sat and told a story to them out on the lower wall, and they wanted to hear another. They also wanted to see her do more wonderful ghost tricks.

  Dickie, Underhill reported, was the new king of the servants’ hall, repeatedly recounting a bizarre encounter with Serena in the dining room in which she had apparently begged his forgiveness for being such a rude ghost. No one entirely believed him, but the cocky change in his manner argued that he told the truth.

  Sophie and Blandamour had arrived, and Beth had immediately spirited the new bride away, ostensibly to chat about married life, but there seemed more going on than that, given that they spent almost all their time shut up in Beth’s room with Marcy, the maid, who when she did emerge looked as if she were a cat holding a live canary hidden in her mouth. Rhys complained that he was not allowed in his own room except at night.

  And where was Serena herself? For two days he had not caught so much as a glimpse of her. He had had time to cool off and collect himself since he had so harshly berated her in the garden, and now he wanted to talk. He wanted to apologize for ignoring her in his office, when she had so clearly wanted to try to make amends. At the time, he had feared he was incapable of being civil to her, and had gone on the assumption that saying nothing was kinder than saying something he would regret. Later consideration had made him realize how cruel a thing that was, to her especially.

  He was worried about her. Worried about that shadow she said was trying to harm her, worried about that dying tree to which she seemed somehow connected, worried that, however right he might or might not have been in their argument, he had hurt her and pushed her away. He had the uncomfortable sense that in his eagerness both to be right and to protect himself against an attachment to her, he might have come perilously close to losing something precious.

  He remembered the half-drunken conversation with his brothers-in-law after Sophie’s wedding, discussing the merits and problems of having a ghost for a lover. No one had thought to mention that she could disappear completely whenever she wished, and he would have no way to follow.

  He heard the pounding footsteps of children in the hall, running past the library door. He wanted to talk to Serena, but he also wanted to know what the hell was going on in his home.

  The answer came after dinner that evening. He and the other men had rejoined the women in the blue drawing room, to spend yet another evening in games and talk. At least there would be no dancing tonight, as the piano was safely in another room.

  He noticed both Beth and Sophie leave the room together, and several minutes later Sophie returned alone, her eyes shining, her body fairly quivering with excitement.

  “Excuse me,” she said, loudly enough to carry over the murmur of voices. “Excuse me! May I have your attention, please?”

  Conversation stopped and all eyes turned to her.

  “Beth and I have a special friend whom we would like to introduce to all of you. You’ve all heard a great deal about her already, but I’m afraid that much of it has been untrue, and you may have formed a mistaken impression of her.”

  Alex found himself rising from his seat, his eyes going wide. They couldn’t mean— No, they couldn’t be about to— Surely she herself wouldn’t—

  Sophie turned slightly and nodded to someone beyond their line of sight, and a moment later Beth walked in, her hand holding that of Serena.

  Serena as he had never seen her before.

  Gone was the long, wild hair, replaced by an elaborate coiffure of ringlets, braids, and a chignon, pinned atop her head and decorated with pale silk flowers. The arrangement emphasized the long, graceful stretch of her neck, and the elegantly sculpted form of her cheeks and chin. The scar was still present on her face, but even less noticeable than usual. His eyes were drawn back and forth between her dark eyes and her pink lips, both emphasized, he was sure, by a touch of subtle makeup.

  Gone, too, wa
s her medieval gown of pink, white, and gold, replaced instead with a modern dress that was cut low on her shoulders, with tiny puffs of sleeve that left her arms bare. The fabric was of pale blue and white stripes with pink flowers worked between, the delicate shades complementing her complexion. The bodice fit tightly, the slightly high waist belted in the same fabric, the square buckle made of paste diamonds. The skirt belled gently over petticoats, not nearly as full as those worn by his sisters, but it reached only to her ankle, as the current fashion dictated. On her white-stockinged feet she wore black silk slippers, laced in crisscrosses over her feet and around her ankles.

  He thought he recognized the gown as one of Sophie’s favorites, one that had previously had enormous, full sleeves and an equally full skirt. They must have completely undone and reworked it, he thought, and made the shoes themselves. They had transformed his ghost. Her height would still make her stand out in any group, but other than that, the only thing unusual anyone would find in her appearance was her astonishing beauty.

  It was more than a matter of features. A critic would say that her face was too narrow, her nose too long, the bridge too low. Together, though, her features fit, and add to that the elegance of her carriage and her pose of complete confidence, and she could silence a room. As she was doing now.

  Philippa was the first to speak. “Sophie, dear, I’m afraid you will have to tell us a little more. Kindly do give us a proper introduction.”

  Sophie’s eyes danced with mischievousness. “Certainly. Philippa, I would like you to meet Serena Clerenbold. Serena, my sister, Mrs. George Stearne.”

  “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs. Stearne,” Serena said into the utter silence of the room, her accent only faintly audible. She must have practiced those words.

  “I say,” Harold Tubble declared, his brow puckered. “You can’t be that Serena.”

  “If you mean the one who has been haunting the castle, I’m afraid so,” Serena said. “I am the ghost.”

  Felicia gave a little shriek, and covered her face with a handkerchief.

  Alex’s frozen brain began to work again, a thousand thoughts jumping in at once: He had to stop this before chaos ensued. He wanted to see what would happen. He didn’t know what Serena meant by this. He had to talk to her. He wanted his family to talk to her. A thousand thoughts jumbled in his brain, and among them a theme became apparent.

  He cared about her, in a way he hadn’t cared about anyone. Ever. His throat tightened with an emotion he barely understood, and his vision swam. His brave ghost, Serena, who had enlisted the aid of living women in a crazy plan he was not sure he wanted to see brought to fruition. What did the three of them think they were doing, bringing her into the drawing room like this?

  He began to move toward her, wanting her out of this crowd, wanting to be alone with her, to talk with her, to take those silly flowers from her hair and have her be with him as she used to be, unbound by pins and corsets and black laces around her ankles. She didn’t look right to him dressed like this, however lovely she was. He wanted to have her all to himself, to lie with her in the curtained intimacy of his bed through the night. She was his Serena, his nighttime passion, his secret under the stars.

  He should not have pushed her about her past, about what she may or may not have done, or what she could not yet tell him. When she was ready, she would. He had his whole lifetime to work on gaining her trust, and maybe even longer. She was making herself vulnerable by appearing this way to him, and to his family, and she could only be doing it for him.

  There was a shifting movement of confusion among his relatives. “Ghost” plainly was not a fitting description of the young woman standing before them. Alex came out of his tunnel vision of Serena as Percy spoke.

  “Is this some manner of joke?” his brother-in-law asked.

  “That’s a damned solid piece of female, for the dearly departed,” Harold said a trifle more loudly than he should have, considering his wife was sitting next to him. Felicia was now peering over the top edge of her hankie, her eyes round and bovine.

  Beth spoke to them all. “Serena wanted to dispel some of the worry you have had about Alex. That’s why she is here tonight.”

  “I wanted to be able to tell you in person that I want only the best for him, and shall do nothing to harm him,” Serena said. “I also wanted to apologize for the unfortunate incident with the children the other day. I know you were all frightened by that, and I am sorry.”

  “You, my dear,” Philippa said to Serena in her haughtiest voice, “are no ghost. I should think I would know a ghost when I saw one. I am not at all certain of what you three are up to, but I think this is a very rude sort of prank you girls are trying to play on us.”

  “It is no prank,” Alex said, turning to look at Philippa. “This is Serena Clerenbold, who died in 1350.”

  “Alex, you are not funny,” Philippa said.

  Alex felt the grin on his own face. This was too much. They wanted to protect him from his obsession with a ghost, and when introduced to her face-to-face, refused to believe she was real.

  “Beth?” Rhys asked his wife, his tone speaking the entire question for him. Alex saw her give him quick, shallow nods in the affirmative, her eyebrows raised, her eyes as bright as Sophie’s. The two women were enjoying this.

  “Alex?” Rhys asked him, his hand on his arm, stopping his movement forward. His face was a mask of shocked surprise.

  “It truly is Serena,” Alex said. He lifted Rhys’s hand off of his arm, but kept hold of it, gently pulling him forward. “Let me introduce you. It is only fitting, since you are, in a sense, the one who first introduced her to me.”

  Serena’s lips curled in a small, shaky smile as they approached, and he saw that beneath her confident exterior she was nervous, anxious about the reception she was receiving. It occurred to him that up until the last couple of days, she had avoided showing herself to anyone for centuries. He recalled how disturbed she had been when she realized he could see her, and her sensitivity over the scar that painted its faint trail across her face. Mending the rift between them must mean a great deal to her.

  He realized then that her caring for him, and her trust, went far deeper than he had suspected, even that first time he had brought her pleasure and been discomfited by her tenderness. This time, though, the realization brought with it a warming sense of wholeness, as if an answer he had been asking the universe had finally been answered.

  He made the introduction, and Serena held out her hand to Rhys in the way that Beth and Sophie must have taught her. Rhys hesitated, then gingerly took her fingers and bowed, kissing the air just above the back of her hand.

  “I just don’t understand,” Alex heard his sister Amelia complaining behind them. “So all along this Serena has been a real person? Why was everyone saying she was a ghost? That’s not a new euphemism for a mistress, is it?”

  “Amelia! Really!” Philippa huffed.

  Alex couldn’t fail to notice that Rhys was staring agog at Serena, for once left with nothing to say. Beth released Serena’s other hand and took her husband’s arm. “It’s all right, darling,” she said to him. “I assure you, she will not throw you off a wall.”

  “I remember you as a little boy,” Serena said to him, smiling. “I can still see some of the imp that you were in your face.”

  Rhys at last found his voice. “That is a most startling thing to hear from a woman who looks to be at least ten years my junior.”

  “I am fortunate that I do not show my age.”

  Rhys gave a startled laugh. “Indeed.”

  “If you will excuse us,” Alex said, “I would like to speak with Serena alone.”

  “Of course,” Rhys said.

  Sophie and Beth both gave Serena encouraging smiles, and then he took her arm and led her out of there, away from them all. A threesome of children saw them, and stopped in their tracks.

  “Serena! We’ve been looking all over for you,” Louisa said ea
rnestly. “Where have you been? And why are you dressed that way?”

  “I’ve been here, there, everywhere,” she said, gesturing about in the air. “Your aunt Sophie and cousin Beth dressed me like this, so I could meet your mama and papa without scaring them.”

  “I should have liked to have seen their faces if you came in with a sword!” a boy said. “That would have been grand.”

  “Perhaps another time,” Alex said, pulling her away.

  “Will you come back and tell us another story?” Louisa asked.

  “If I can,” Serena said over her shoulder.

  He led her up toward his room, but she resisted, saying, “Could we go up to your tower? I should very much like to see the stars tonight.”

  He nodded his assent, and they went together up to his study, and then up onto the roof. He grabbed a blanket from the study on the way, knowing the air would be crisp.

  “I am not used to my arms being bare,” Serena said, rubbing them with her hands after they had both come out above. He shook out the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, then pulled her to him, holding her against him. After a moment she put her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. “You’re not still angry with me?” she asked.

  “Shhh,” he said. “It is forgotten, except that I am sorry to have treated you so poorly. You deserved better from me.”

  He felt her squeeze him once, a silent acceptance of his apology. “I don’t want to waste time talking about it,” she said, and Alex thought that that must be the first time he had heard such words from a woman. “There are other things I want to tell you about my past. The things I was unwilling to before.”

  He leaned back and tilted her head up so he could look at her. Even solid as she was now, she still had that luminescence that spoke of unworldly origins. “Don’t feel that you must.”

  “No, I want to,” Serena said. “It is important: I want you to know all about me. How can I ever know that you cared for me if you never knew who I really was?”