The Shadows of Stormclyffe Hall

by Lauren Smith

  Randolph cleared his throat. “Will she be staying here, my lord? I can have a room prepared immediately.”

  Stay here? Surely he couldn’t let the woman stay in the castle. Bastian was about to declare as much when something out of the corner of his eye flickered. A shadow at the edge of his vision seemed to be creeping along the wall toward him. He turned and focused in the direction he’d glimpsed it, but all signs of the shadow were gone.

  I’m seeing things, too, blast it! These workmen are driving me to madness as well. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

  “My lord?” Randolph prompted, which made Bastian realize he must have been silent for several moments. The shadows had him on edge. Perhaps it would be nice to have a bit of company, if only she wasn’t a bloody American. Given the rumors of ghosts and other such childish stories, most of the staff at Stormclyffe refused to stay overnight. Only Randolph and a few of the loyal staff from London remained after dark.

  “I shall meet with her. She will not be staying here.”

  Jane Seyton was sure to be like every other historian he’d met and probably as stubborn as one of the Queen’s corgis with a bone. Given half the chance, she’d run off to the nearest garden and bury his secrets where only she could find them. He didn’t like anyone having that power over him.

  Well, he did have a way with women. If she proved too troublesome in getting her to leave, he’d simply seduce her. There wasn’t a woman born yet that would say no to an invitation to dinner if the Earl of Weymouth asked her. No doubt she was a lonely little bookworm, probably wearing spectacles and never been kissed. The idea was almost charming. He smirked as he headed toward the drawing room. If he wanted her gone by nightfall, she’d be gone and all it would cost him was dinner.

  When he reached the drawing room and laid a palm on the heavy oak door, it swung open revealing the rich red- and gold-papered walls and dust covered furniture. He hadn’t had the chance to visit every room in the castle in the last seven months, since he’d been here sparingly, and he had definitely not been into this one. Randolph had been overseeing the cleanup of the rooms upon Bastian’s instructions and given the number of rooms, many had yet to be opened.

  Personally, he had been avoiding this room because it was the only room in the castle where a portrait of Isabelle hung. His grandmother had said looking upon Isabelle’s face was bad luck, and since Stormclyffe had been abandoned for longer than he’d been alive, he’d never had the chance to find out himself if it was true. But now, seeing his ancestor for the first time…he was arrested at the sight.

  There on the wall was the infamous woman whose swan dive off the cliffs had tainted his family’s lives forever. Bastian studied the portrait for a moment. A fair-skinned woman with a hint of rose in her cheeks gazed out from the layers of oil with serious gray eyes. Her pale blue gown molded to her curves, and waves of rich ebony hair tumbled down her shoulders to tease the tops of her breasts. There was a curious expression on her face. She was happy, but wariness lurked in the depths of her eyes, as though she expected to lose her joy at any moment.

  Below the painting, a flesh-and-blood woman stood with her back to him. Windblown hair, dark as a raven’s wing, spiraled down her back in enticing waves. He had the sudden urge to thread his fingers through the silken strands and shape her full curves with his other hand. A curious burning settled deep in his bones, and a ringing filled his ears as visions of him pinning her to a bed filled his mind. Wild, erotic thoughts tumbled through him, stealing his breath before he regained control and focused on his visitor again.

  As though she’d heard his lustful thoughts, the woman turned to face him, cheeks flaming. She couldn’t have known what he was thinking. His hand dropped from the door handle, and his jaw slackened in shock.

  The dreamy gray eyes fixed on him were identical to the eyes of the woman painted above her. Noble, high cheekbones, curving brows, a sensual mouth made for kisses, and that nose, both delicate and impish, a perfect fit for the face of the woman before him. Her inky-black tresses and curves designed perfectly for a man’s hands made her a living memory of a woman centuries gone.

  Dear God… He repeated the words in his head over and over, mesmerized by the closeness of their shared features.

  “You must be Lord Weymouth. I’m Jane Seyton.”

  The woman strode over to him, hand outstretched. Without thinking, he took it. Heat flared between them. He inhaled sharply.

  She dropped his hand and retreated a step, her eyes wide. Had she felt the same jolt he had?

  “I sent you a letter explaining that there couldn’t be visitors here until renovations were complete. I also told you that I wouldn’t let you see any of my family’s documents.” He grunted, but his gaze kept straying to the portrait behind her, comparing her features to Isabelle’s. There was no obvious difference, and that alone had him blinking.

  “I waited four months. I assumed the renovations were complete…” Her gaze darted around the room, and she seemed to hesitate as though mentally kicking herself for believing the work would be done so soon. “If you’d only let me see the documents, I could be out of here in a week at most, I swear. I just need enough to be able to write a publishable thesis.”

  For some reason, her reaction angered him. He didn’t want her here when the castle wasn’t looking as it should. It was a reflection of him and his family, and to have her intrude was strange, even unsettling. A rush of temper overcame him—one he didn’t know he could possess. The powerful emotion was almost foreign, as though not entirely his own.

  “Are all of you Americans like this? Barge into a man’s home, seeking evidence of scandals that ruined his family for two centuries? Have you no thought to how that destroys my family’s fragile reputation?” he growled low through clenched teeth.

  Her lips thinned, and the color in her cheeks faded. She looked pale, vulnerable, as though his outburst had upset her.

  Her lovely eyes disappeared from his view as her gaze dropped to the floor. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize it would be such an inconvenience.” She sounded genuinely apologetic.

  With a heavy sigh, he let his tense shoulders drop. “I apologize for my harsh reply, Miss Seyton. But really, you must leave. I am having trouble with the workmen, and we keep running into problems.”

  Her face brightened, gray eyes sparkling with energy again. “I need this, Lord Weymouth. If I can’t find primary sources to accompany my assertions on the effect of the tragedies of Stormclyffe on the Weymouth community, my committee chair won’t approve of my paper, and I’d have to start over on a totally new topic. I wouldn’t be in your way. I’ll stick to the libraries, the attics. That sort of thing. I could help you, if you like. I’m handy at quite a few things, not just research.”

  An odd stirring deep in Bastian turned his irritation at her into something different so quickly he barely had time to acknowledge it.

  Desire.

  Caught in slow-building currents of fascination and hunger for this complete and total stranger, he wanted to see if her handiness extended to activities between the sheets. She seemed to glow with a repressed sexuality, a woman unaware of her appeal. This was not the bookish woman he’d expected. Whatever he’d envisioned she would be like, perhaps wearing a tweed dress suit, spectacles perched on her nose, and a prim chignon, she was certainly not that.

  There was something natural about her that appealed to him. She wore no makeup, and she was lovelier for it. Her somewhat casual attire looked comfortable, yet sophisticated. Quite unlike any of the women he had dated in the past. She was a woman who wouldn’t wear a slinky dress and strappy high heels. Her sensuality was the sort that would flower before him when he had her naked on a bed.

  What an image that was!

  It took every ounce of his willpower to convince his body that a physical response was not a good idea. He closed the door and leaned back against it, examining her face, trying desperately to focus on it and not the r
est of her body.

  “Why do you care so much about the history of this place? I know from your letters you’ve never been here before. Why Stormclyffe? Why the obsession over people who are dead and gone? You can’t change the past.” In that brief instant, Bastian wondered who he was trying to convince: himself or her. He didn’t know.

  She turned away, moving about the room. She paused to pick up a framed photograph of his grandparents. Dust from the shelf, disturbed by her movement, wove through the streaks of sunlight coming in from the windows.

  “There’s something about Stormclyffe. It calls to me.” Another blush highlighted her face, accenting her lovely cheeks. “I want to learn everything about it and uncover its secrets. You have to let me stay. Please.”

  He snatched a photograph out of her hand, clutching it to his chest with one palm. “Ms. Seyton.”

  “Jane.”

  It disturbed him. He couldn’t get a read on this woman, couldn’t decide why she was so interested in his home. It was obvious that her desire to stay wasn’t just out of a scholarly interest. There was something more there, but she wouldn’t tell him…yet.

  He set the photograph aside on a shelf above her reach.

  “What secrets do you think lurk in my home, Jane?” His voice caressed her name, hoping his silky tone would crumble her defenses a little. He had to regain command of the situation.

  She nibbled her bottom lip, and a wave of arousal slammed into him like a freight train. A thousand delicious thoughts flashed through his head of what he’d like to do to those lips. He practically had to shake his head to clear it of the growing lust. What was wrong with him? He’d never been so out of control before. No better than a young man with his first girl, he couldn’t keep his thoughts away from her and her body.

  “Well?” He had the sudden desire to corner her, catch her, claim her. It had been ages since the predatory urge to seduce a woman had overtaken him. Bastian fought off his rising desire to unravel the puzzle she presented. Who was Jane Seyton? Sexy, yet innocent graduate student, or was she Mata Hari determined to seduce his secrets out of him for her own gain?

  She pirouetted on her toe with all the grace of a ballerina and followed the line of bookshelves, one finger leaving a line in the dusty wood near the faded spines of the books.

  “Jane,” he growled and cornered her at the end of the left side of the drawing room.

  “Hmm?” She spun to face him, eyes widening at him as he glared down at her. She was short, and he towered over her by a good eight inches.

  His voice dropped from a growl to a husky whisper. “My family’s history is an unhappy one, and it is crucial I maintain what little dignity the dead have left. I need to know why you want to dig up the past. And don’t feed me any stories about your dissertation. I know there’s another reason you are here.”

  When she opened her mouth to protest, he placed his finger over her lips. They weren’t pouty or full like most women he considered beautiful, but rather were a pale pink and petal soft. Lust exploded through him, an inferno of heat and insanity a coiled whip, striking his body, screaming for release. Again that sense of being controlled, as though a foreign entity had taken him over. He continued to touch her mouth.

  He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip, imagining his tongue licking it before sliding inside. “I can’t have you underfoot, writing your ghost stories, unless you can give me a bloody good reason to let you. And I hate ghost stories.” He wanted to pin her against the wall and kiss her until she couldn’t remember her name. The thought was so out of place, so unexpected.

  How was it possible to know that if he were to kiss just beneath the delicate line of her jaw, she would purr like a kitten? Or if he were to rock his hips into hers that she would arch her back and demand a kiss so deep they both would be gasping for air? It should have worried him that he knew just what to do to please her, but he was too lost in this moment, this heady rush of need and fire for her.

  Her eyes, like the turbulent seas, flashed in ire.

  A pinprick of light just behind her head burst into view, glowing and pulsing like an icy heart. He tore his eyes from Jane’s face and stared in shock at the light as it grew. His lips parted, but it shot straight at him before he could make a sound. The light engulfed him and something rammed into him, rippled through his limbs, and took control.

  He became a visitor in his own body, forced to watch from a distance, only feeling and seeing what the thing inside him wished him to experience. Fighting for a long moment against his loss of control, he finally surrendered, and the thing within took over fully, drawing him in, merging his consciousness with some unknown being.

  “Isabelle!” A hoarse cry tore from his lips, yet the voice wasn’t his.

  There was no stopping it. A harsh passion seized him, and he pulled her body tight to his, pinning her wrists at her sides as he took her mouth. He trapped her between himself and the bookcase, reveling in her squeak of surprise.

  In a frenzy, he explored her plush curves, his hands shaping and stroking every bit of her he could touch. It had been years, so many years since he’d touched her, his sweet Isabelle. She nipped his chin, her hands curling around his shoulders, digging in to drag him closer as she yielded to his dominance.

  A roaring wind filled his ears, drowned out the thundering of his blood and the drumbeat of his heart. Glimpses between kisses revealed sharp electric-blue spheres flaming like distant stars in the small black pupils of her eyes. She was there, beyond his reach, yet in his arms. How was this possible? He’d been trapped in the walls for nearly two centuries, unable to find her or hold her.

  My beloved. Isabelle.

  He groaned and released her wrists to cup her lush, rounded bottom, lifting her against him, clenching hard as he rocked his aching cock against her heated center.

  He rammed hard, driving himself against her, no matter that clothes separated him from his desire. She cried out against his ear, the sound a symphony of pleasure that snapped and cracked between them like flames devouring wood.

  It was madness to want her, madness to need a stranger. He knew the body wasn’t truly his Isabelle’s but he could feel her inside it, trying to reach out to him.

  But he did know her; something deep within him roared in defiance, as though his soul knew hers, even if his mind did not.

  Must punish her. Must prove she cannot live without me.

  “Why did you leave me? Why did you jump?” he demanded.

  She shook her head, eyes wild and suddenly bright with fear.

  He snarled against her lips and kissed her harder, one hand unbuttoning her trousers to loosen them, before sliding his hand beneath the waist of her pants to cup her arse. His fingers dipped between her thighs, finding wet heat. She moaned something unintelligible and shifted closer to him, urging him on with her body when words failed her. Her mouth met his with an equal fire and heady lust, just as she writhed against him, trying to satisfy her needs.

  Surrender to me, love. Ease this ache of mine, my broken heart.

  He tore his lips from hers and nibbled a path down her neck, savoring the faintly salty-sweet taste of her skin beneath his tongue.

  His fingers stroked her entrance again and again until she shuddered and convulsed. He sank his teeth into her neck, hoping the love bite was hard enough to leave a mark so others would know she was his. For however long he possessed this body, for however long Isabelle was in his arms, he had to lay his claim to her. He pulled his hand out from between her thighs and wrapped his arms around her back, clutching her to him. How long would he have to hold her before he lost her again? He could feel his control of the body slipping…slipping away. Despair snuffed out his lust, and a chill surged through him. With a cry of rage and agony, he was torn from the body and forced back into the stones of Stormclyffe.

  Freezing pain tore through Bastian, and his knees buckled. The foreign presence, that sense of someone else within him was gone. He went down like a stone, hit
ting the carpet. His eyelids fell shut. His breaths coming in soft pants were the only steady thing in him. The rest of him vibrated with energy, tiny electric shocks pulsing through his body.

  After an eternity, the fog in his head seemed to clear. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest as he sat up. A body lay next to him, facedown on the floor. A woman…the American. It all came rushing back. The passion, the fire, and the fact that he hadn’t been in control of himself. He’d done things to her, possibly without her permission. And the name Isabelle still hung on his lips as though he had screamed it until he lost his voice.

  What in God’s name had happened? There was no rational explanation for what had just occurred. Knowing this made him shudder so harshly that his bones seemed to crack.

  “Ms. Seyton—Jane…” He shook her awake.

  She murmured groggily and rolled over onto her back.

  “What the hell happened?” Her muttered curse was oddly reassuring. “Were we kissing?” She touched her kiss-swollen lips and then her eyes flicked to his. “Oh my God. I swear I don’t do this.”

  “I don’t either…” He frowned and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to dispel the guilt at not being able to explain his actions. He’d kissed plenty of women, but never in such circumstances as these. It was as if he’d been…possessed. If such a thing could actually occur. Which it couldn’t. “I’m sorry for whatever I might have…er…done to you without your consent.”

  He glanced down at his groin, worried at the sight of his erection. Why was his body not responding to his mind’s wishes? There shouldn’t be arousal, fire, passion. Yet all three of these were rioting through him making it perfectly clear his body still wanted to bed the woman sitting next to him. His gaze raked her, taking in the sight of her flushed cheeks, swollen lips…and teeth marks between her neck and shoulder.

  “I remember going along with it and liking it, but I sort of felt like there was no control.” She dragged her fingers through the tangle of black locks, and her gaze slid away, her cheeks pink as her fingers fumbled with the loose buttons of her jeans, securing them back in place.