by Lauren Smith
He rose. “I suppose I’ll have to figure that out some other way.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You’re going back to London, Jane. You can take Richard’s diary with you. I trust you’ll mail it back when you’re finished?”
“What—” He couldn’t just tell her to leave…not after everything they’d been through. She wouldn’t let him push her away from Stormclyffe or from him.
“Go home, Jane. You have no place here. An American scholar and an English earl? We both knew this wouldn’t last, even though what we had was enjoyable.” The frown on his sensual mouth tugged at her heart. Was he pushing her away to keep her safe? The man would do something stupid and noble like that.
“No. I don’t believe you, Bastian. You don’t have to push me away.” She reached for him, but he shoved back his chair and stood, his body too far away.
“I’m not the marrying sort. I warned you that first day. But you never listen, do you? All you think about is yourself and your damned research. Well, I’ve given you everything. You can write your bloody thesis and go on your merry way. Leave me to deal with my family and my castle.” His tone frosted her heart, but when his words sank in, fire exploded within her.
“Your family? I’m part of that family you arrogant jerk! I’m a Braxton. I have just as much right to be here as you do.”
He arched one brow, the move subtle yet cynical. “All you have is a distant connection to the son of an innkeeper. Stormclyffe was never yours, will never be yours.” He paused. “This discussion is over. I’ll bring you back tonight, but Randolph will be taking you to the village first thing in the morning. You need to leave, Jane.”
All fury fled and despair smothered her as she sucked in air. “But w—why?”
For a brief moment, his richly colored eyes softened before they turned hard as stone again. “Because these are my family secrets. Whatever happens here is for my family to deal with, not you.”
A treacherous tear streaked down her cheek, and she brushed it away. He was killing her. Tim leaving her, calling her crazy, that betrayal hadn’t been soul deep. Not like this.
“You know I have a connection to Stormclyffe. To you. I can help you. We can do this together.”
He took a deep breath. Struck the fatal blow. “You’ve been a lovely dalliance, Jane, but I don’t love you. Your purpose here is done, and there’s no more reason for you to stay. Take your books and go home.”
She could have sworn that the sharp clatter in her ears was from the sound of her own heart lying shattered on the floor in a million glittering pieces as he walked past her and left the library. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand to stifle the sound of a sob. Choking, she swallowed it down but couldn’t stop the tears. She hated to cry, yet here she was, unable to control herself. Even after everything he’d done to her, she still loved him, and she hated herself for that.
…
Bastian lay on his back listening to the quiet night of the castle around him. A pang continually throbbed in his chest. He couldn’t forget the look on Jane’s face when he’d told her he didn’t love her. She hadn’t said a word to him all day after that. She’d retreated to her room to pack and had asked Randolph to send her dinner in her room. His butler had looked down his nose at Bastian as he’d explained that the young lady would be leaving at first light. But Randolph didn’t understand. Jane had to leave.
If all of this madness was real, then Jane was in danger. He’d sent her away for her own good. It wasn’t his fault that she’d believed all the lies he’d said to get her to leave. Because they were lies. He wanted her to stay here with him and never leave, but that wasn’t possible. It was up to him to fix this, and he couldn’t be worrying about Jane’s safety.
With a frustrated groan, he rolled onto his side, trying to ignore thoughts of Jane and how he’d hurt her. He ought to be focusing on the problem of the witch and this curse. Who had moved Cordelia’s body from the study?
With an irritated sigh, he slid out of bed. He needed to think.
There was one place he could go. He donned his pants he’d flung over the back of a chair in his haste to get free of them.
He reached the door, easing it open. His foot bumped into something on the floor. He bent down, hand searching in the dim light until it latched onto a book. When he straightened and examined it, an electric current shot through his hands again. This time it was almost painful.
Richard’s diary. The book forced itself open and the pages flapped wildly before it snapped shut again in his hands.
Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.
At the end of the hall, shadows lengthened, forming the shape of a man in breeches and a white shirt. A man with haunted eyes and a scarred soul who looked just like the man in the portrait in Jane’s room and the one he’d seen in the ballroom after Jane had fled from him during their dance.
Richard.
The blood roared in his ears as he faced his dead ancestor. This was actually happening. He couldn’t deny what his eyes were seeing.
The apparition raised a warning hand. “She comes. She comes for your beloved. When the last bell tolls beyond the fall of midnight, your love will die.”
Bastian’s throat went dry. His mouth worked frantically to find words, but none formed. Jane was going to die? The terror that filled him in that moment eclipsed anything he’d ever felt in his life.
“Beware the last bell.”
The earl’s ghost flickered, then winked out, leaving the hall empty.
“The last bell? Can’t you tell me more than that?” he demanded of the vanished apparition. There were no working bells at Stormclyffe. They’d all broken years ago. Without their clappers, they could swing in the wind for all eternity and never make a sound. Richard’s ghost was gone and didn’t answer his question. Maybe he should go to the tower and make sure. Yes, he would do that. The last thing he wanted was for one of the bells to start ringing. If he could stop it, he would.
He headed for the drawing room, praying he wouldn’t meet with another ghost. The truth kept smacking him in the face, and he’d been too reluctant to believe before he’d experienced that vision in the drawing and watched Richard die. But now he had to face it. Ghosts were real, and they were in his home, threatening his Jane. He would do anything to protect her. Anything.
He paused in the doorway of the drawing room and gazed at the painting of Isabelle. How like Jane she was, in face and form. But Jane wouldn’t die; she wouldn’t fall prey to the castle’s predatory history that had torn his own family apart, driven his grandparents from their home for the last fifty years. She’d be away from this place in the morning.
“This is my home now. Do you hear me? Mine!” he snarled.
Let the ghosts come. He would be ready. For what could spirits do to a living, breathing human?
Nothing. He wouldn’t let them. Leaving the main part of the house, he climbed the winding stairs in the tower at the far east of the castle where the three bells hung. The wooden door creaked open as he shoved his body against it. Wind whipped his shirt against his chest and he had to force himself to leave the shelter of the doorway to reach the bells. They were three tall, unmoving silhouettes against the moonlit night. As he approached them, he had to lean out over the structure that housed them. Beneath him was a forty-foot drop into an almost well-like pit. He ran his hand underneath each of the three bells, feeling for a clapper or anything that could strike the bell inside to make it ring. None of them had anything inside. They couldn’t ring. That part of Richard’s warning would never come to pass.
Sighing with relief, he turned away and headed for the half-open door to the tower that would lead him back down the circular stone stairway.
Dong!
The heavy ring of a bell tolled.
He spun on his heel and stared at the bells he’d just left. The bell closest to him swung slowly. Tendrils of pale light wove around its base as it r
ocked back and forth.
Dong!
Blood roared through him, drowning out all sounds except that one ominous clang, and the one that followed.
“Jane!” Without a second thought he ran, praying he wasn’t too late.
…
Jane woke to the sound of weeping. A quiet, ragged gasping that had her hastily dressing and looking about for the source of the sound.
“Hello?” She nearly smacked herself in the forehead.
Great. Smart, Jane. Way to try and talk to the creepy thing crying in the dark.
It would have been easy to stay in bed, wait for Randolph to fetch her in the morning and take her away from this place and the man who’d just shattered her heart. But she didn’t feel safe waiting around for whatever it was making that noise to come and get her. Sometimes being on the offensive was a safer move than being a victim—at least that was what she told herself.
She eased open the bedroom door and peeked out. The hallway was empty. Then she noticed the lights were moving, or rather the shadows were moving. Twisting, twining, coiling like phantom snakes, urging her to come toward them.
The muscles in her legs twitched, and she jerked forward, walking without control.
“No!” She struggled to regain control, but she couldn’t, something was moving her forward. Not again…please not again. Just like when she’d walked to the top of the north tower. This time though, she knew with an icy certainty that she was going to die. Bastian wouldn’t be able to save her, not this time.
Around her the world went mad. The tapestries she passed began to tear in long strips, as though a giant creature dragged its claws through the woven cloth. They fell in pieces to the ground. Invisible claws raked against the stones, leaving stark-white gouges in the rock.
If only she could scream, cry out for help. Bastian would have been able to hear. But there was no breath in her lungs, no ability to even gasp.
“He can’t save you!” The screeching reply cut through her eardrums until she thought they might burst.
Darkness swallowed her whole, stealing all control, all consciousness.
Chapter Seventeen
Jane slowly regained consciousness. Her gaze took in the gray waves smashing against the stones below. Her chest was smeared with blood. But she wasn’t hurt. It wasn’t her blood. She whipped her head about frantically and realized in horror that she wasn’t alone.
The figure of her nightmares, the creature that haunted and hunted her, stood a few feet away, holding a white dove in her hand, blood upon her palms. The putrid smell of death and decay invaded Jane’s nostrils, making her eyes burn. Bits of flesh peeled away from the stark-white cheekbones of the monster’s face. Its lidless eyes were ruby red and glowing. Jane bit her tongue, tasting blood as she sucked back a scream.
“You’re Cordelia, aren’t you? How are you even here? We removed your bones.” Fighting to breathe each word, she sagged back against the massive rock she clung to on the cliff’s edge.
“Clever girl, too clever. Bones were only part of what kept me here. The curse I cast upon Weymouth and his family is still unbroken. I will exist so long as it does.” The terrifying creature laughed, and its horrible visage vanished, leaving only a lovely, golden-haired woman in a red cloak. It was as though the monster of her nightmares had never been.
“Why did you kill Isabelle and Richard? Why couldn’t you just let them be?” They had been so happy, so in love, and this evil woman with her spells had destroyed them and every descendant afterward.
“Why did I kill them?” Cordelia only smiled, her eyes diamond sharp and just as cold. “I was the one he should have married. I was the proper choice. Not some ill-bred spawn of an innkeeper. She was no better than a servant compared to me. I couldn’t let her live, not if I was to have Richard for my own.” She walked around the rock, carving a line into the stone with a sharpened fingernail. “The fool was too stubborn to see I was better, that I deserved the title of Countess of Weymouth. I’d trained for it all my life, was supposed to marry him. My father had given him permission to court me, but he threw it away on some harlot who spread her legs for him.”
As Cordelia talked, tiny red sparks danced around her, like angry hornets.
“So you succeeded, you killed them. Did you kill the maid, too?”
The ghost turned wicked eyes on her, devilry lighting them up. “Oh yes. Little Nessy, she was too friendly with the young heir to Stormclyffe. I saw the way he looked at her, hungry eyes, hands aching to touch her. A servant! I took care of her. Made her hang herself.” Cordelia shut her eyes, a sinister smile curving her lips. “Such a lovely sound, when a neck breaks. Pop! Like snapping a twig. The only drawback is that death is instant. I would have loved for her to suffer.”
Nausea rioted through Jane’s stomach at the thought of the poor housemaid. Randolph had been right, and Nessy was one more victim.
“Now the last heir has come home.”
“The last heir?” Jane was determined to keep that woman talking. Surely it could give her time to come up with a plan to escape. Or for Bastian to realize she was missing and find her.
“Yes.” Cordelia’s smile was full of rotted teeth. “All I need is to claim one male heir for my curse to be complete. The others escaped me. None of them would surrender to my will, not even when I stole everything they loved from them. I killed countless children, lovers, wives, pets. Anything that held value to a Stormclyffe heir, I stole it away. But none of the men would give themselves over to me. Bastian is the last one. And he will be mine.”
“Did you kill his father?” Jane asked. Part of her had wondered and needed to know.
The witch smiled. “Oh yes. He thought he was so clever coming back here to mend the castle. But that’s not what needed mending. I appeared before him on the road, intending to stop him. He swerved away from me and rolled that metal beast into a ditch. His life was gone before I could steal his soul away.”
Tears stung Jane’s eyes. Poor Bastian. It was a good thing he would never know the truth of his father’s death. Better that he think it an accident than part of the true curse on this place.
“Why do you need Bastian? Why not leave him be?”
“I must have him, you fool. He is the last chance for what I want: to lay claim to Stormclyffe as mine. If I own him, I own this castle. He’s more handsome than I’d hoped. Even more so than Richard.” Cordelia’s matter-of-fact announcement made Jane break out in a cold sweat. Cordelia was going to kill her. She was a threat to the ghost’s claim on Bastian.
“What? No demand that he’s yours? That you have the right to live? How pathetic. I’m going to kill you, just like Isabelle. But I’ll push you far out, let you hit the water, break every bone in your body. You won’t die right away, oh no, you’ll drown while in intense agony. You will suck in the cold, salty water and perish. Then Bastian will be all mine.”
“Like hell, you bitch! He won’t agree to be yours.” Where the rage came from, Jane didn’t know. But for a brief second, the ghost’s control over her weakened.
“Silence! He will agree to give himself to me if he thinks it will save your life.” Cordelia snarled and cast the dove’s body over the edge of the cliff, speaking in language Jane recognized as Latin. What little power Jane had recovered was torn from her again.
Her arms and legs belonged to Cordelia and her desires. The harsh pounding of the waves below was a siren’s song to Jane, demanding she spread her arms wide and leap.
She clamped her fingers tighter around the boulder she leaned against. Her eyes closed instinctively, still resistant to the foreign power holding her in its grasp.
In the safe darkness of her closed eyelids, twin flames burst before her, growing larger. A vision of horror filling her mind, enveloping her. The flames morphed into bloodred eyes with slitted pupils.
“You will die…” The hiss slithered into her head and heart, its venom burning her from the inside out. “You will pay for coming here. He is
mine…forever mine!”
Jane screamed as invisible talons slashed her chest and face. She let go of the rock to clutch her cheeks. The world pitched around her, and the pebbles beneath her shoes slid. The wind tore the shout of terror from her lips.
She dug her nails into the rocks and grass at the cliff’s edge but couldn’t catch a hold of anything. Her vision tunneled as the overcast skies winked out.
“Today you die!” The earsplitting laugh was as sharp as a thousand nails dragged over metal. It was a sound of pain or death. A sound of pure evil.
“No!” She gasped, her hands slipped free down a few more inches on the edge.
This is what it feels like to die.
The racing heart, the blood roaring in her ears. No last moments of regret, no thought of loved ones or better days. There was only panic, terror, and then acceptance. Like climbing the stairs in the dark and reaching the top, expecting one more step. Only to have that moment of confusion and fear as you expected to fall before your foot struck the wood.
Bastian. His face filled her mind, the crooked grin he flashed her so often that made her knees buckle. The way he feathered kisses at her temples when he wanted an excuse to be close to her and knowing she adored it… She would never know such love again, and he would be alone. Her last sight would be the shrinking view of a cliff’s edge far above her.
An explosion of light, followed by a shrill scream as piercing as a train whistle, cut through Jane as the lady in white appeared above her. Cold fury in her gaze, Isabelle looked at Cordelia and then leaped straight at Jane.
Jane sucked in a breath. Something soft, like mist, settled over her skin, sinking in with a tingling warmth.
“Let go, Jane. Let go,” Isabelle’s words were soothing, as though coaxing a babe back to sleep.
“She’ll kill me, I can’t!” Jane gasped, her voice breaking.
“Yes, you can. Trust me, Jane. Have faith. We must mend what once was broken. This is the only way. I’ve waited for you, centuries of waiting. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, to have the strength to return and save us.”