Shades of Winter

by Linda Fallon

  “Oh.” She stopped on the walk, several feet away from O’Hara and the front door. He had almost said worried, hadn’t he? He’d been worried about her. A cold wind whipped her skirts and her second-best cloak. Her best cloak had been destroyed, along with the Honeycutt Hotel.

  “I see you’re just fine,” he said, sounding almost disappointed.

  “I’ve been to see Eve.”

  “How is she? And Lucien?” he asked, as if he really cared.

  “Fine. Lucien was sleeping, but Eve said he’s doing much better.” She twiddled her thumbs. When O’Hara took a step toward her, she unconsciously took a step back.

  That reaction made him go still in his tracks. Was he hurt by her response? Surely not. Surely he was accustomed to people who knew what he could do not wanting to be touched.

  “I would invite you in for tea,” she said anxiously. “But since you’re alone I can’t. It wouldn’t be proper.”

  “Of course not.”

  Daisy could ignore the fact that she and O’Hara had spent the night trapped in a hotel room, along with several ghosts, that she’d sat on his lap, that she’d taken his hand. She was home now, and everything had changed.

  “You seem to be … fine yourself,” she said, hoping to change the subject.

  “As do you,” he said softly.

  “I feel quite well, considering. How is Hugh?” she asked quickly.

  “Much better today.”

  “So he’ll be able to travel soon,” she said, her heart sinking slightly.

  “Yes.” O’Hara continued forward, and Daisy held her breath. Surely he wouldn’t reach out and touch her, not here, not now. He passed her without reaching out, and she spun about to watch him go.

  He kept walking, down the walkway to the street. When he turned toward town Daisy shouted. “Wait!”

  O’Hara stopped and turned to face her. “Yes?”

  “You didn’t say why you stopped by the house.”

  He paused a moment before answering. “I just wanted to say goodbye. I expect Lionel and Hugh and I will be on a train tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s good to see that you survived the ordeal so well.” He shook his head and gave her a half smile. “You look great.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Again he started walking toward town, and this time she had no excuse to stop him.

  Katherine swiped angrily at the tears on her face, as she finished fastening the tiny buttons of her high-necked black dress. She’d said she would not be Garrick Hunt’s whore, and what had she done? Fallen into bed with him much too easily when he’d come to her. Given in without a second thought.

  And when she’d awakened, early in the afternoon after a very long night, he’d been gone. Without a word, he’d simply slipped away. What had she expected? She’d known all along that once they returned home she and Garrick didn’t have a chance together.

  Her eyes dried. She didn’t cry, not anymore. She didn’t crumble just because things didn’t go her way. Garrick Hunt was just a man like every other, and all she had to do to weather this disaster without further pain was lay low until he left town. The way he’d been talking last night, it wouldn’t be long before he did just that.

  She had loved Jerome once, but she’d been a child who was smitten with his face and his charm and the future he promised. She hadn’t known the real Jerome Cassidy until after the wedding. The love had died quickly. Painfully, but fast.

  This … this was so much more. She had fallen for Garrick like a wide-eyed girl, but with her hardened woman’s heart. She had a feeling this love would take a long time to die.

  The knock on the door made her literally jump. She wiped at her face again, straightened her spine, and left the bedroom with her stride long and purposeful. No one could know what a fool she was.

  The knock came again, and this time it was accompanied by the call of her name. Garrick.

  Katherine went still while several feet from the door. She didn’t want to face him. Had he come to say goodbye? To seduce her again before he left town? No, she couldn’t let that happen.

  But she couldn’t just stand here, either. She had to face Garrick and send him on his way. One last time.

  By the time she opened the door, her face was impassive and her tears were dried. Garrick stood there with a grin on his face, hands behind his back. He’d bathed and shaved and changed into clean clothes, and his hair was neatly combed. And he was Garrick Hunt, charming rich man’s son, once again.

  “I did it,” he said with a widening grin. “I told my father I was leaving town.”

  “When are you leaving?” she asked coolly.

  His smile died slowly. “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Good luck to you,” Katherine said as she began to close the door.

  “Wait.” Garrick’s foot shot out and he stopped the swinging of the door. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She took a deep breath, for strength. “I’m home and everything’s back to normal. It was very sweet of you to entertain me while we were trapped in that awful hotel, but it’s really not necessary for you to continue …”

  “Entertain you?” he interrupted.

  It was best to make the break now, clean and harsh. Maybe if it ended now, before she was in so deep there was no way out, the termination of this senseless affair wouldn’t hurt too badly. She knew that was a lie. It already hurt!

  “Surely you didn’t think this affair of ours was serious,” she said coolly. “We have nothing in common.”

  “I think we have a lot in common,” he argued.

  “We’re not well-suited and we never were.”

  Garrick stared at her as if he didn’t know her at all. He didn’t. “I’m not leaving with nothing, Katherine,” he said softly. “I do have money of my own.”

  Oh, he thought she would send him away because he didn’t have enough money? If he believed that, he surely couldn’t love her the way he said he did. “How fortunate for you,” she said distantly.

  Katherine convinced herself, without a doubt, that what Garrick had proposed simply would not work. What they had found was beautiful but fleeting. It was lust, not love. It was physical, not of the heart. And he had never asked her to marry him, had he? He had only suggested that they leave town together. One day he would look at her and be sorry. Or else one day he’d pick up his flask, get drunk, and hit her when she said or did the wrong thing. And the nightmare would begin all over again.

  Best to end it here and now, while she still had a few good memories to hang on to.

  “I thought you were coming with me,” Garrick said as he leaned toward the door. “When I told my father I was leaving town, I knew in my heart that you would be with me every step of the way.”

  “I can’t,” Katherine said sensibly. “I have my home here and I have a little money set aside. I don’t need a man to take care of me.”

  “I never suggested that you did.”

  “Goodbye Garrick,” Katherine whispered as she tried to close the door again. “Please don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

  “Heaven forbid that I make it difficult for you.” He whipped one hand out from behind his back. Yellow silk was bright on a wintry afternoon, the color startling and out of place on her dreary front porch. “Here,” he snapped. “You might as well take this. It’s not my size or my color.” When she did not reach out for the garment, he tossed it over the porch railing.

  “I don’t want that,” Katherine called as Garrick turned.

  “Neither do I,” he answered as he walked away.

  With the door opened no more than an inch, she watched him leave. He reached into an inside pocket of his jacket, withdrew his ever present flask, and uncapped it.

  But he didn’t take a drink. He stared at the flask for a moment, emptied the contents onto the ground, and tossed the silver flask away with all his might. It flew across the street and landed in a mass of tangl
ed weeds.

  *

  It had not been dark long, but Eve was exhausted. So was Lucien. They climbed the stairs together, the single candle Eve carried lighting the way.

  “I’m sorry things didn’t go well with your aunt and uncle,” he said.

  Eve seemed unconcerned. “They do tend to be irritable. When they’ve had time to cool off, I’ll write them a nice long letter. I can smooth things over, when they’re feeling more agreeable. Maybe … next Christmas. Or the next.”

  Constance and Harold Phillips had collected their things that afternoon and stormed away from Eve’s cottage and Plummerville, red-faced and angry. “I didn’t help matters any,” Lucien said. “I’m sorry. I should have found a way to make things better before they left. They’re your family, after all.”

  Eve smiled as they walked into the bedroom. “You’re the only family that matters to me, Lucien Thorpe.”

  God, she was making this so difficult! He knew he could not marry her. He could never marry anyone. Scrydan still slept inside him, in a way no one would ever understand. Some of the memories had faded, but not many. There was now an evil inside him that would never be completely washed away. And if this could happen once, it could happen again. There were other spirits like Scrydan’s out there, just waiting to discover a willing host like Lucien. He couldn’t subject Eve to that danger again.

  Hugh and the others were leaving in the morning. Lucien would ride out of town tonight. Alone.

  Eve placed the candle on a bedside table, then leaned over as if to blow it out. The remnants of a fire glowed in the fireplace, so they didn’t need the candle.

  But Lucien wrapped his arms around Eve and gently pulled her spine to his chest. “Leave it,” he whispered. “I want to see you tonight.”

  She relaxed against him, as he reached up and began to unfasten the buttons that ran from her neck to her waist. “If you wish.”

  Lucien wished for their last time together to be here, not in that damned hotel. He wished to be the one to push inside her. Him and only him.

  He undressed her slowly, kissing her neck and her shoulder when the urge to do so moved him. The taste of her skin was unique, her scent was all Eve, and he smelled her even when she wasn’t with him. He would smell her forever, he suspected.

  He marveled in the fact that she was so soft, so gently rounded and pale and beautiful. She was everything he was not, and he would love her until the day he died.

  Eve was almost completely undressed when she turned to kiss him on the mouth. She gave him soft, sweet, brief kisses, as if she couldn’t ever get enough. “I’m so glad you shaved,” she said between kisses. Her fingers traced his smooth jaw. “It makes the kissing much nicer.”

  “I want everything to be nice tonight.”

  He finished undressing her, and then he let her hair down. Since the moment he had met her, he had loved her hair. Most especially, he loved it down. When they made love it wound around their bodies like dark spun honey, waving and silky. Sometimes she tried to be so sensible, so practical, so staid … but when he let her hair down she put those attributes aside and became his woman. Nothing more, nothing less.

  While he kissed her neck and threaded his fingers through her hair, she reached out to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. He felt the tremble in her lips and her fingers, the quiver in her delicate throat. Tonight it wasn’t fear that made her quiver.

  Lucien wished with all his heart that Eve would never have to be afraid again, that the Scrydans of the world were oblivious to her existence, that she lived safe, always. He was going to do his part to make that wish come true.

  He laid her on the bed, finishing the job of undressing himself quickly. The entire time his eyes were on her candlelit body, as if he could drink her in that way. Eve wasn’t shy, not with him. She smiled up at him, lying bare and beautiful atop the quilt.

  “I love you,” she said as he lowered himself to lie beside her. “I thought you were gone, Lucien.” She rolled onto her side to face him. “I can’t lose you.”

  “We’re not going to talk about that,” he whispered. He couldn’t bear it. “We’re not going to talk about anything tonight.”

  Lucien knew where to touch Eve, where and how to stroke and kiss to make her forget everything else. Her neck, just below the ear. Her wrist. That spot on her inner thigh. He stroked and kissed them all, moving slowly even though something in him wanted to rush, occasionally stopping to watch the fascinating sight of his rough hands on her soft, pale body. He wanted tonight to be special. He wanted everything to be perfect for Eve, and for him. The memory of this night would have to last a lifetime.

  Lucien tried to forget, as he touched Eve, that every caress of this place or that one was the last, that every sigh and undulation and catch of her breath was one of the last. He tried to forget, but he couldn’t. So he savored each sound, each breath, each reaction to his touch. He tried to make time move slowly. He tried his very best to make time stop.

  He circled the tip of his tongue around one hard nipple, then sucked it deep into his mouth. Eve arched up and into him, moaning deep and soft. His hand traveled slowly along her inner thigh from knee to apex, where he brushed his thumb against the nub at her entrance. He stroked her there, while he turned his attention to her other breast.

  Her body moved gently against and into his, silently asking for more, gently urging him on. She sighed and he moved his mouth to hers to taste her passion. He pressed his hand over her heart to feel and remember the quick, steady beat.

  Eve was on the edge of completion when he rolled atop her and entered fast and hard, burying himself inside her completely. Her arms went around him, her legs wrapped around his hips, and she rose to meet his thrusts. The way they came together was as much magic as any supernatural ability. They moved as one, they were coupled in every way. He could feel her heartbeat, taste her soul.

  Lucien did forget, as he loved her, that this was their last time. He got lost in sensation and the energy their bodies created, in the impulse that drew him to her, until there was nothing but Eve. She took him into her body, she comforted and demanded and loved, and nothing mattered but the way they came together.

  She came with a throaty cry while he was deep inside her, and as she throbbed around him, he joined her. The candle on the bedside table flickered, the low flame in the fireplace flared up and then eased.

  Lucien laid his head beside Eve’s, as they found their breath. “I love you, Evie,” he whispered in her ear. “So much. Never forget that. No matter what …”

  “Shhh.” She stroked his hair. “No more talk about what happened. It’s over, Lucien. We’re fine and we’re together and nothing else matters. Nothing.”

  He had never been good with people. Talking to ghosts was easier. He loved Evie. He needed her. And he could not come up with a proper way to tell her that he was leaving.

  Eighteen

  Lucien rode his horse down the main street of Plummerville, moving slow since he wasn’t ready to leave. The blacksmith hadn’t objected to Lucien’s purchase of the horse he often rented, and he hadn’t questioned it, either.

  He really should have collected his specter-o-meter and ectoplasm harvester from the spare room in Eve’s house where they were stored. But he’d been afraid he’d awaken her, moving those heavy pieces of equipment about. Besides, they were likely too heavy for the horse to carry for a long period of time, and since he had no idea where he was going … it was best this way. He could have Eve ship them to him later.

  Even better, he could simply build new contraptions. Both could be improved upon. Yes, it would be better if he started over.

  It was late, dark and cold, and all was quiet in Plummerville. So he was surprised to see a light in the church where he and Eve had planned to have their disastrous wedding. The second disastrous wedding. The light was soft, small. A candle, perhaps two.

  He’d planned to ride past, but Lucien found himself stopping in front of the church. All
his life, he’d hated churches and the people inside them. How many preachers had tried to beat his curse out of him? How many times had his mother begged a frightened preacher to repair her damaged son? More times than he cared to remember.

  Logically he knew it wasn’t the churches he feared. It was the people inside them that still gave him chills, on occasion.

  It was surely the Reverend Watts who worked so late. Lucien dismounted and threw the reins of his newly purchased horse over the hitching post. The Reverend Watts was not the worst of the preachers Lucien had dealt with. In fact, he’d seemed quite practical and friendly, on the few occasions Lucien had met with him. He’d gladly left the majority of the wedding planning to Eve, so his interaction with the preacher had been limited.

  Perhaps this was one more thing he could do for Eve, before he left. He would explain that the wedding was off, and that Eve would need a shoulder to lean on until she recovered. And she would recover. She was strong, his Evie.

  The Reverend Watts was vigorously wiping down the back of a pew, when Lucien opened the door. He stepped through the entryway and into the church, and the preacher stopped his chore to smile.

  “It’s a little late to be cleaning, isn’t it?” Lucien asked.

  The Reverend Watts smiled. “I’m not just cleaning. I’m pondering Sunday’s sermon.”

  Lucien nodded. The words he had come here to say were on his tongue. I’m leaving town. There will be no wedding. Watch over Eve, for me. Instead he asked, “Reverend, do you believe in evil?”

  The preacher was taken aback for a moment, but he answered firmly. “Yes, I do.”

  “Real, pure evil,” Lucien clarified.

  “I’ve never seen it.” The Reverend Watts draped his cleaning cloth over the back of a pew. “But I believe it exists.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Lucien said as he walked down the aisle, just as Eve should have done days ago in her fine wedding dress with her family and friends looking on. “I’ve touched it. It’s touched me.”

  The preacher was not afraid, at least not visibly. “I’m sorry to hear that.”