“Love.” Burke nodded at the painful truth. He’d lost an opportunity to pursue that very dream, and the missed chance weighed on him. How much greater must the anguish be at the loss of known and realized and actual love?
Somewhere behind the sound of falling rain and the pounding of Jones’s irons, Burke heard a voice. A small, distant voice, but a distinct one just the same. He turned back toward the doorway, straining to hear it better.
The voice was calling his name. Only a moment after that realization, he saw a figure, in the rain, running toward him. Who in heaven’s name would be out in this weather?
Enid! He recognized her.
He snatched his outer jacket from the hook where it was drying and rushed out to her, holding the garment above both of their heads. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Coming all this way in this downpour? You’ll catch your death.”
“Dafydd— the ghost— said if I came after you, I would find you before you left. He brought the rain to slow you down.”
She’d come after him? Burke didn’t know whether to shake her or hug her. “If you’d wanted to say goodbye, you could have done so when I left your home.”
“I couldn’t bear it.” Her words shook with shivers as water ran in rivulets down her face.
“Come inside the smithy’s. It’s dry and warm.” He set his arm across her back, hurrying her toward shelter. He caught Jones’s eye as they stepped inside and received a nod of understanding.
“I had to come find you,” Enid said.
“We can hang your spencer nearer the forge. It’ll dry there.”
She worked at the buttons on the front of her jacket as he hung his on its previous hook.
Jones returned with a woolen blanket. “It smells of horse,” he warned.
Smell was the least of their concerns. Burke traded Enid the blanket for her jacket. She had wrapped herself up by the time he returned to her side.
“Now, what is it that was so urgent you had to come running after me in the rain?” His heart, he swore, sat paralyzed in his chest, waiting to hear words he feared she would not speak.
“We cannot take what is not ours.” Her words echoed those of the mysterious garden dweller. “You had to leave because you didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
She took a shaking breath, though whether from nervousness or the chill in the air, Burke couldn’t rightly say. “That you wouldn’t be taking something that didn’t belong to you. That it is yours for the claiming already.”
He didn’t dare trust his hopeful interpretation of her words. “That what was mine already?”
“You didn’t— couldn’t say anything because you thought that laying claim to my affections, to my heart, would be wrong because you did not believe it was yours, that you would be taking something that didn’t belong to you. It was the very reason I couldn’t ask you to stay, because your time and your attention and your affections aren’t mine, at least I don’t know that they are. He, the ghost, felt we needed to know that, that I ought to tell you.”
“Enid.” He sighed her name, relief like he hadn’t known before sweeping over him. She loved him. She might not have said so directly, but the meaning was clear.
“My heart is yours, Burke. If you want it.”
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, kissing her soundly, fervently. In a gesture so suited to her buoyant and enthusiastic personality, Enid threw her arms about his neck and held fast to him, eagerly returning his kiss.
“Oh, my darling,” he whispered, keeping her in his embrace. “How close we came to throwing all of this away. If I’d left, not knowing your feelings, not telling you mine, I would have always regretted it. Always.”
“But you haven’t told me yours,” she pointed out. “Not really.”
“I am not terribly good at speeches, but when this rain lets up and I return you home, I promise to do my utmost to convince you that my heart is rightly yours.”
She pulled back enough to smile up at him. “Then may I keep it? I have vowed, you realize, not to take what is not mine.”
A vow not to take a heart that did not belong to oneself. His mind began racing. That would be a regret indeed, if the one making the vow truly loved the person he’d promised not to pursue. Unrequited, or perhaps simply impossible love was, indeed, a tremendous weight on a heart and soul. A regret of enormous proportions.
“Enid, that is it. You have stumbled upon the answer.”
“The answer to what?” She watched him with expectation.
“The ghost. We—” He motioned to Jones, a few paces away— “have been speaking of the things that tie a soul to this earth after life: weighty and crushing regrets. What if your ghost is trapped here because he never could claim the heart of the woman he loved?”
Her eyes grew wide. “Yes. That would explain his insistence that I not make the same mistake.”
The pieces were falling quickly into place. “And who would feel that weight more than someone who loved a woman who was promised to another, especially if she loved him in return but could not escape the other match.”
Enid pulled in a sharp breath. “You mean Mairwen and her squire.”
Burke nodded. “Does anyone know what his name was?”
“If anyone does, Mr. Jones will.”
But when they posed the question, they received a disappointing response. “I’m afraid his name’s been lost to history. He’s known only as Mairwen’s squire.”
“Do you think it would be enough?” Burke asked.
“It has to be,” Enid insisted. “We may not know his name, but we know who he is. We know whom he loved. We know why he is trapped. Surely that is enough. Surely it must be.”
“If there is any mercy in this world, it will be.”
Enid rested her head against his chest. “I hope you are right.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her, relishing the feel of her in his arms. He certainly hoped he was right about a great many things.
Chapter Eight
The rain hadn’t entirely stopped, and the ground was a muddy quagmire when Burke and Enid arrived back at the Pryce estate and rushed headlong into the garden. She held tightly to his hand, unwilling to release him for even a moment. What a risk she’d taken, hying after him in the storm, laying bare her heart. But having the reassurance that his regard was hers to claim made every moment of uncertainty worth it.
“Where could he be?” Burke asked, glancing around at the empty garden. “Surely he must be anxious to move on.”
“We have to steal something.” She was certain that much was necessary this time. “And we must choose something he cannot ignore.”
“Enid. Look just over there.” He pointed with his free hand toward a shaded corner of the garden.
“Good heavens. A daffodil.” She had never in all her life seen one this late in the season. Not ever.
“That is what we must take,” he said. “I know it is.”
They carefully made their way over the soggy earth to the bright yellow bloom. They each wrapped a hand around its green stem and pulled, uprooting it, mud clinging to its roots.
A sudden, cold wind picked up, and there he was, their ghost. He didn’t speak this time. He simply watched them, hope in his eyes.
“We know who you are,” Enid said. “We do not know your name, but we know that you loved Mairwen. We know she loved you but was promised to another, that you could not take what was not yours. We know who you are, and we know that you have suffered long enough.”
She heard the sigh he emitted, watched as it shuddered through him. Sunlight burst through the clouds, illuminating him. He looked up toward the source. A smile slowly spread across his face.
Inch by tiny inch, another form appeared. A woman with flowing black hair. She stood directly in front of the long-trapped squire, reaching a hand out in invitation. He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips.
For the first time, likely
in his entire sojourn as a lost and wandering soul, the nameless squire spoke a new phrase. “My love,” he said. “My Mairwen.”
Burke’s arms wrapped around Enid as they watched the scene play out. She leaned her head against him.
“Come, my dear,” Mairwen told the squire. “We have been apart too long.”
But he hesitated. “I must not take what is not mine.”
She raised her free hand and gently touched his face. “My love, I have always been yours.”
As quickly as it had come, the ray of light disappeared and, with it, the reunited couple. The garden ghost was free at last.
“We’ve done it, Enid,” Burke said. “We’ve done it.”
“We should tell my parents.”
He kissed the top of her head. “That is likely not all we should tell them.”
She did not fight her smile. “May I ask one thing of you before we tell my parents?”
He turned to face her directly. “Of course, dearest. You may ask me anything.”
“My parents will insist on a very staid and proper and terribly boring courtship, which means this is my last opportunity.”
He looked intrigued.
“I’d very much like you to kiss me again.”
That was, it seemed, invitation enough. There, in the no-longer-haunted garden, as the rain began to fall once more, Burke held her tenderly and kissed her deeply, pausing only long enough to whisper against her lips the most beautiful words she could imagine in that moment. “Take my heart. It is yours. Forever.”
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Sarah M. Eden is the author of multiple historical romances, including the 2-time Whitney Award Winner Longing for Home and Whitney Award finalists Seeking Persephone and Courting Miss Lancaster. Combining her obsession with history and affinity for tender love stories, Sarah loves crafting witty characters and heartfelt romances. She has twice served as the Master of Ceremonies for the LDStorymakers Writers Conference and acted as the Writer in Residence at the Northwest Writers Retreat. Sarah is represented by Pam van Hylckama Vlieg at D4EO Literary Agency.
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Chapter One
October 31, 1924— American Fork, Utah
Anna Brierley certainly didn’t expect a party to be thrown in celebration of her arrival, but she also didn’t expect a funeral to mark the occasion. She’d spent only one night at the home of Aunt Wilma and Uncle Milton Ingersoll before donning her dreary black dress again, though for someone she’d never met. Her uncle had assured her that the city didn’t typically plan funerals for the last day of October, but the deceased’s extended family couldn’t attend on any other day.
“And besides,” Aunt Wilma had added, “it’s the twentieth century. No one puts stock in superstitions about spirits walking the earth for All Hallows’ Eve.” Her words had been followed by a disdainful snort.
Anna found herself at the funeral services, sitting in the grand Alpine Tabernacle, which must have held two thousand in its pews. They were all filled in honor of the passing of one David Rushton.
While she was grateful that modern fashions didn’t insist on corsets as they had for her grandmother’s generation, her black dress still felt uncomfortable and stifling. Its presence was enough to fill her with sadness as dark as the black sateen itself. She sat through the service, surrounded by hundreds of people she did not know, and felt entirely alone in the world.
An orphan.
At the thought, she had to dab her eyes with the corner of her kerchief. Aunt Wilma noted the action and gave Anna a slight nod of approval.
As if I’m crying over this Rushton man, she thought.
Not at all. She’d technically been an orphan since she was only a year old, when her parents caught scarlet fever and never recovered. But Anna’s grandparents had taken her in and raised her, giving her a loving home. Five years ago, her grandfather passed away after a bout of tuberculosis. And two weeks ago, Grandmother’s heart gave out.
Even though Anna had been an orphan for nineteen of her twenty years, she only now felt like one. She had no memory of her parents, so their deaths held no sting. But now she really was alone. The spud farm she’d grown up on had been sold, and seeing as she had no money and no employment, she’d been sent down south to live with relatives. She hoped to find work here; American Fork was many times larger than Shelley, Idaho. Perhaps she still might. She wouldn’t know until she could start looking for a position.
The service ended, and a procession comprised of a few mourners— mostly family and close friends— headed north, toward the city cemetery, with the casket leading the way on a wagon bed. Anna’s aunt and uncle fell into the line and walked with the mourners, Uncle Milton walking beside his wife, who held a black umbrella over their heads. Anna took her place behind them and walked toward a hill. The day was drizzly and gray, with clouds wrapping about the nearby mountains like wispy scarves. The mourners passed trees that had shed their colorful leaves, which nearly covered the ground like golden wallpaper with deep orange accents.
Free from the confines of the pew and the stuffy air of the tabernacle, Anna breathed in deeply, enjoying the smells of autumn in spite of the sprinkling rain. She loved the woodsy odor of wet trees and shrubs, loved walking over leaves, knowing that each step released a bit of the fragrance of fall. She passed several houses with twisting plumes of white smoke, another sign of the season; people were lighting their wood-burning stoves again. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed seeing wood smoke until she saw it. Many houses in the area— especially on Main Street, as the Ingersolls’ was— boasted radiant heating throughout, as well as luxuries like electric lights and indoor plumbing. While she would be happy to never again use a chamber pot or an outhouse, she knew that the smell of wood burning for warmth would always be something she craved because it smelled of home.
They climbed the hill, higher and higher, until the ground leveled out a bit. That was where the cemetery had been built. A stone wall clearly bordered at least part of the area; the group came from the southeast corner, and the wall went both north and west from there. But the cemetery grounds themselves seemed to go on and on. Anna could make out headstones that looked no bigger than raisins at this distance, and many were spread far apart. Could such an immense space ever fill up? The wagon led the way to the plot where David Rushton would be laid to rest, and the crowd, much smaller than had been at the tabernacle, gathered about for the graveside service.
Even though this moment was for Mr. Rushton, respected citizen and beloved father, Anna felt curious eyes looking her way and taking her in. She took a half step closer to Aunt Wilma, hoping that people would know she belonged with them. The prying looks didn’t feel judgmental, just curious. Perhaps a face or two in the group would one day be someone she could call a friend.
With that thought, she lifted her chin and let her gaze pan across the throng as the bishop made his remarks. After he finished, the pallbearers carried the casket from the wagon and lowered it into the open plot, which had a pile of fresh dirt beside it. The process was slow, the men using long ropes to lower the casket. Anna found her attention turning restless, shifting from the casket to her aunt to the wisps of cloud on the mountain, to the mourners, to her rumbling stomach, to—
Her eyes stopped at the sight of a woman at the back of the crowd. She seemed taller than everyone else, which was odd, but that wasn’t what first caught Anna’s attention. Rather, it was the fact that the woman wore white. Anna then realized with a start that she could see the woman from the shoulders up, yet unless she was seven feet tall, that was impossible.
She must be standing on something to see better, Anna reasoned. Maybe on the cemetery wall.
Except that the grave lay more than two hundred feet from the wall. Anna studied the woman, who seemed to be watch
ing the proceedings with the rest of the group. But then, as if she heard something— or felt Anna’s gaze— the woman slowly turned her head and looked directly at Anna. Their eyes met; Anna sucked in a breath and wanted to turn away, but she couldn’t move. Instead of looking offended, the woman broke into a wide smile. She looked surprised and— happy.
She pointed at Anna, then mouthed the words, “It’s you!”
Despite any misgivings, Anna questioningly indicated herself then peered about to see if the woman was speaking to someone else. There was no reason for her to know or note Anna. But no one seemed to notice the woman or react to her strange behavior. Anna looked at her again; the woman still grinned with pure happiness, a sight so paradoxical at a burial that it sent a chill down Anna’s spine.
How was she so tall? And why did she know Anna— or think she did?
With great effort, Anna pulled her eyes away from the woman and stared at the ground. How much longer would the service last? How much longer could Anna stand there, silent, waiting to hurry away from the odd specter and ask Aunt Wilma who the woman was?
Her aunt must have noticed something amiss, as she leaned in and whispered, “Are you unwell? You look peaked.”
“I—” Anna tried, keeping her voice low. No, she wasn’t well. But she couldn’t put her feelings into words. Instead, in a matching whisper, she asked, “Who is the woman over there with the long, red braid hanging over her shoulder? The one in white?” She nodded ever so slightly in the direction of the woman while keeping her eyes trained downward, on the hem of her aunt’s black skirt.
Only after describing the woman did Anna realize how odd it was for a grown woman to wear a braid in public. Older woman usually wore their hair up. Younger ones often had shorter hairstyles nowadays. One long braid was what an older woman wore to bed.
Aunt Wilma searched the area, her gaze sweeping back and forth, before she leaned back in. “Which woman? There are so many, and I don’t see one with a braid.”
All Hallows' Eve Collection Page 5