“On the fourth day, Gary told me that his friend had to move on and had already left town the night before. That night, after we’d gone to bed, I saw light outside the cabin. I went to look and saw Gary with the body of his friend, digging a grave in the woods near the boundary of my property.
“While I was returning home, I found metal tags in the dirt. They had numbers and the name of Gary’s friend on them, and I guessed they’d fallen off his body when Gary buried it in the woods. I saved the tags and hid them where Gary wouldn’t find them. They are under the painted rock by the stream. Jesse can tell you where to look.
“I know now I’ve been wrong about Gary since the day he came to us. I saw what I wanted to see. I was blind to how he mistreated Jesse. He is a murderer and he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me and Jesse to hide what he did.
“I don’t know what to do. Gary suspects I saw something. I am afraid to go to the police. Gary is very popular in town and I know that no one will believe me. I have to make him leave—” David hesitated.
“What is it?” Jesse asked, staring out the cracked window at the brightening sky.
“The writing is different here, as if she’d been interrupted and continued at another time.”
“The argument I remembered,” Jesse said. “She must have been writing this note just before Gary came in, and hid it. I didn’t hear the whole conversation, but she must have said something to scare him. He threatened her.” She leaned into David and sucked in a shaky breath. “Go on.”
David clenched his jaw and continued. The tone of the letter changed, became rambling and disjointed and frantic, and somehow David conveyed that in the way he read.
“I made a terrible mistake. Gary knows I know. He has made threats to hurt Jesse if I ever tell. Oh, forgive me, my darling.
“I’m trapped. I know I’m no good. I’ve failed as a mother. I let this happen and put my daughter in danger.
“I can’t take care of Jesse anymore. She’d be better off without me. She doesn’t know what happened. If I’m not here, Gary can’t use her against me. He’ll leave her alone. I can’t live with this any longer.
“I beg whoever reads this to take care of Jesse after I’m gone.”
David stopped reading and turned the paper over. “It just ends there,” he said, his mouth a grim line.
Jesse covered her face with her hands. David set down the letter and held her close. “Do you believe he killed your mother?” he asked softly.
She knew what he was asking. Jesse had heard the desperation in her mother’s letter. The hopelessness. The state of mind that convinced Joan Copeland that her absence might somehow save Jesse from the menace of Gary Emerson, even if it plunged her daughter into grief and loss and utter aloneness. She’d seen only one way out.
Gary’d had a perfect alibi. He hadn’t even needed to make the effort to silence her.
Jesse gripped David’s jacket convulsively, focusing on the physical sensation of cloth on skin. “If I’d found this earlier, I could have stopped her—”
“Shhhh.” He stroked her hair. “You were a child. You were powerless.”
“But Gary wasn’t. I know he would have killed her if she hadn’t … made it unnecessary. He’s guilty, David. He’s a murderer, and he has to pay.”
David was quiet so long that she pulled back to look up at his face. “The evidence is here,” she said. “I do know where those tags are buried. We can find the grave. It’s enough to start an investigation, and that alone will destroy Gary’s hopes for—”
“No, Jesse.”
“No?” She pulled free. “What—”
His hands caught her, gripping her arms above the elbows. “Don’t do this,” he said flatly. “Don’t … let this hatred poison you.”
“Poison me?” She laughed. “I’ve finally found what I’ve been looking for, and you tell me to let it go? Never. I intend to see that justice is served.”
But his expression remained closed, and he didn’t loosen his grip. “Do you think you’ll come out of this unscathed?” he demanded. “Do you believe Gary can’t defend himself? You said he was a murderer. He’s already threatened you. Do you think he’d hesitate to do it again?”
For a ghost he could be remarkably strong. She fought down her anger and stopped struggling. “All my life I’ve been waiting for this, even though I didn’t know it. It’s worth the risk—”
“Not if it means you’ll be hurt,” he said, almost shaking her. “I won’t let that happen. Not while I’m here to stop you.”
Her first reaction was to remind him that he had no right. But then she recognized what he meant, and remembered what she’d been so eager to tell him before the dream of her mother.
He was trying to protect her. His sincerity couldn’t be doubted; he’d scared Gary away, and now she knew that his actions hadn’t been either casual or random. His eyes burned with a passion different, but no less potent, than what he’d shown in her bed.
He was afraid for her. Desperately afraid.
He cared for her, far more than he’d ever admit.
“David,” she whispered. She let herself sink against him. His arms locked around her as if he’d never let her go.
“Don’t do it, Jesse,” he said. “Let the past lie. Sooner or later Gary will suffer the consequences of his actions—”
“Don’t you see?” She touched his cheek and his grim mouth, willing him to understand. “If I don’t act now, he could go on hurting people. He could gain more power and use it for evil. If I’m the only one who knows what he is, I’m the only one who can stop him.”
He turned his head. “Then revenge has nothing to do with it, Jesse?” he asked bitterly.
It was a question she couldn’t answer. Her heart was too full of contradictory emotions, and as the triumph and sorrow and anger ebbed she was left with only one certainty.
“Your support has meant so much,” she said. “More than I can ever explain. I can’t completely make sense of what’s happened to me in the last few days. I’ve fought it, denied it … but ignoring it just won’t work anymore. There are some risks worth taking.”
He looked down at her again, very still and pale.
“What I’m trying to say is … no matter how it turns out with Gary, or what I do from now on, there’s one thing I’m sure of. I don’t even care what you did in your past life that condemned you to limbo. It wouldn’t make any difference.
“Oh, hell.” She grimaced and laughed weakly. “What I mean is … I love you, David Ventris. I think I always have.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The ground dropped out from beneath David’s feet, and he felt himself lose his grip on the worldly plane. Jesse wavered in and out of his vision, but her touch kept him anchored.
She waited, gazing up at him with those candid hazel eyes, and he knew he’d won. The love that shone from her face was unmistakable, but he hadn’t let himself assume that such a victory was possible. Now there could be no doubt.
She loved him. For Jesse Copeland to admit such an emotion was a marvel, and she could no more feign it than he could make himself live again. She presented him with this gift when he’d done virtually nothing to earn it.
She loved him. He should have been crowing with triumph. Wasn’t it what he’d wanted—to influence her so well that she would willingly offer him whatever he asked? A few smooth words of love in return, and she’d be eating out of his hand. She was strong, his Jesse, but not invulnerable. And though she demanded nothing from him, he knew what she wanted to hear.
All he had to do was give it to her. He could take her to bed and then, when she was starry-eyed with passion, ask for the one further gift he required. Surely she wouldn’t refuse it.
She’d said so herself. She didn’t care what he’d done. She claimed she was not Sophie. What would a past life matter to her now?
For a few moments David saw only freedom. Freedom from limbo, from the chains of his wasted life, from guilt he couldn�
�t bear. Freedom to live again, even in a new body. He would welcome that forgetfulness.
Then slowly, gradually, he came back down to earth. He was aware of the anxious pressure of Jesse’s hold, though her eyes remained resolute and unwavering in their conviction. He remembered that he stood in Jesse’s old home. He remembered what she had said about Gary. He relived his own alarm for her when she insisted on continuing with this mad quest for vengeance.…
And he felt a twisting tension in his gut, a bitter comprehension that shattered his brief conceit of freedom. Jesse spoke to him of love, but her obsession with Gary was every bit as powerful. She didn’t begin to understand the forces at work behind her actions, but she’d convinced herself that it was some greater duty and not hatred that motivated her pursuit.
Just as she’d convinced herself that she loved David Ventris.
Didn’t they all play games of self-deception? Jesse, Gary, himself … not one of them was spared.
He most of all. He was afraid for Jesse’s safety, but he could no longer believe his concern was only for his success. He had lost that cold, cynical detachment. His shield had been taken from him, and he was as naked as a turtle laid on its back in the burning sun.
He’d thought he could affect Jesse without being affected, keep his emotions securely locked inside. The early warning signs had been twinges he’d done his best to ignore.
Ignorance was no longer an option. He looked into Jesse’s eyes and wanted more than forgiveness. He wanted her love to be real, and it was illusion.
“David?” Her voice was hesitant, tinged with unease. “Talk to me.”
Love me, she meant. He wanted to shout at her, mock her for her foolish, deadly vulnerability. He tried to summon up the indifference that would provide just the right answer to keep her at a distance but not drive her away.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said, choking on the truth. “Jesse … I’m not what you think—”
“I know you’re not like other men,” she said. Her fingers grazed his cheek. “I know your limitations. I’m willing to take whatever we can find, David. Whatever we can make for ourselves as long as we can.”
His own philosophy: live for the moment. Never think ahead. Never consider the consequences. He’d taught Jesse that.
His mind was as useless as wet powder in a jammed musket. His heart was frozen. When he spoke, his voice was that of a battle-hardened officer and not a lover.
“What would you do to keep me with you, Jesse?” he asked. “Would you give up on Gary if it meant I could stay?”
The softness left her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“Can you forgive for the sake of your love?”
“Forgive … Gary?” Her hands dropped to her sides, and her fingers clenched. “I don’t understand. What does he have to do with us?”
His mouth flooded with the acrid taste of more lies. More evasions to avoid what must be. He could keep on manipulating her, but it merely delayed the inevitable reckoning.
There was only one way out.
Tell her, he thought. Tell her now.
But his body was as ineffectual as his tongue and his brain. He lost control of it, and without the act of will that kept him substantial on the earthly plane, he began to fade. Jesse’s lips moved, but he couldn’t hear her. She reached for him, but she couldn’t hold him.
He spun away, the room and the resort and the woods and the mountains dissolving into a colorless mist. It always seemed as if time and space ceased to exist when he made the transition. The place to which he returned was No Place.
It surrounded him again, familiar and hated. His own personal slice of hell without even the diversion of everlasting flames.
The body he possessed in limbo was identical to the one Jesse knew, but in limbo there was nothing to smell, to taste, to see, to feel. The form itself came only from his mind. Sometimes he could create a temporary solidity around him, built from memory—a misty battlefield, dirt under his feet, the cries of the wounded, the scent of gunpowder and sweat.
He’d never been able to re-create the hills and blue water of the Lakes, or any kind of beauty. Mostly he walked … another illusion … through an emptiness lacking shape or hue, endless and borderless.
Limbo had never seemed as empty as it did now. The mist—he hadn’t found a better word to describe it—pressed in on him, and yet he was almost grateful for the blankness that entered his soul. No time, no connections, no emotions at all if he chose to forget them. Here that was possible.
Inevitable. Eternal.
He sat on a hummock of vapor and put his head in his hands. Coward, the silence whispered. He accepted the brand as his due. Jesse was his mirror, and he saw reflected, with perfect clarity, the irredeemably flawed man he’d refused to acknowledge.
Irredeemable. Damned.
“Self-pity is a prodigiously comforting thing, is it not?”
David jerked up his head. First he saw the polished boots, and then the snug breeches and the sword and neat coat. He observed the very large nose that graced the man’s face below the equally beaky brim of his dark bicorne hat. David jumped to his feet.
“Your Grace,” he said, and caught himself. The man who’d come to him here was not who he appeared to be. That was quite impossible. The chance that Wellington would turn up in David’s limbo, so long after the commander and victor of the war against Napoleon had met his own death, was virtually nil.
Ancient habits were very difficult to break. David relaxed at Wellington’s nod, but he knew this was illusion. The being who confronted him was not necessarily human. There was a certain radiance from the tanned and distinctive face, and David, who’d met the real Iron Duke but a few times in his career, couldn’t quite swallow a reluctant awe.
“Cat got your tongue?” Wellington inquired, lifting a brow.
“No, Your Grace. But I wondered to what I owe the honor of this visit.”
Wellington smiled and a chair materialized behind him. He sat down. “No need to stand on formality, Captain. I hear you’ve dug yourself a hole and are having a bit of trouble climbing out of it.”
David stood rigidly in place. “I confess to being surprised that you would take an interest in my affairs, Your Grace.”
“It seems someone must, since you persist in making things difficult for yourself.” He sighed. “I know damned well you’re no coward, Captain Lord Ashthorpe. Yet you cling to these addled beliefs.”
David laughed with a marked lack of respect for a superior officer. “May I assume you know everything about me? Did my gaolers send you?”
Wellington shook his head. “Do you really suppose that someone is punishing you, Ventris? I would have thought you’d have reached the more obvious conclusion by now. You’re not a stupid man, however much you wasted your intelligence when you were alive.”
“If it’s for my sake that you lecture me on my numerous flaws, you’re wasting your time. Your Grace.” David sat on the hummock again. “They are old friends.”
Wellington leaned back and crossed his legs. “Indeed? Do you tell me that you’ve actually faced yourself at last?”
He couldn’t meet his commander’s gaze. “I can take no credit for that.”
“Ah. You refer to the lovely Jesse.” Wellington glanced over the arm of his chair, as if he were looking at some distant view. “I see she’s waiting for you. Wondering why you vanished after her declaration of love.” He tsked softly. “A damned discourteous thing for an officer and a gentleman to do, Captain.”
Discourteous. David knew himself for the worst villain alive or dead. “Yes,” he said. “How wonderful that I have made her love a man who doesn’t exist.”
“I believe her exact words were: ‘I know your limitations. I’m willing to take whatever we can find. Whatever we can make for ourselves as long as we can.’ ”
David shot to his feet and paced out a savage measure, six steps one way and six the other. “But she doesn’t know what I am,”
he said with glacial self-loathing. “I haven’t had the courage to tell her. And now—”
“You’re afraid of what she’ll do when she learns the truth. That you’re not entirely the heroic, sympathetic figure she’s imagined. How you’ve failed again and again to give your life meaning. That your courage in battle was the only escape from the dark, untended corners of your own soul. That you betrayed her.”
David ground to a stop and met Wellington’s gaze. “Yes.”
“Surely no love can stand in the face of so much imperfection.” Wellington straightened in his chair, and the glint in his eye grew stern. “She will judge you as you deserve, send you back here forever.”
David closed his eyes. “Isn’t it what I deserve? Why should I be able to save myself when I can’t anyone else? Jesse, Megan—”
“Don’t you have it the wrong way ’round, Captain? How can you save anyone else until you’ve saved yourself?”
It was a question David could not answer. “I seem to lack the facility for it, Your Grace,” he said bitterly.
“So you call yourself a coward,” Wellington said. He slapped his hand on the arm of his chair, and the sound echoed like thunder. “You’re afraid, Ashthorpe. The one part of your life where you couldn’t take risks was with your heart. Not when it might be deeply touched, or threatened by loss. Better to stop it before it began, or run away. But that isn’t possible now, is it? Because Jesse is already in you, and you’ll never be free of her.”
“But she can be free of me.” David strode close to the chair, stared down at his supreme commander without flinching. “What favor have I done her? She has a full life ahead of her. She’d be willing to waste it on a man who can’t be real for more than a few hours at a time. The longer I’m with her, the worse it will be for her when I must leave. It could … destroy her.”
“How little faith you have in love, Captain. Even your own.”
“Mine? I’m not capable of it.”
“Of course not. Forgive my presumption.” He looked up at David steadily. “After having prepared and schemed to win her forgiveness, and received her love instead, you want her to go on with her mortal life and forget you.”
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