Nick turned her words over in his mind. “Your ghost, you say? And what does this ghost look like?”
“Did you not hear my sissy? He has a body made of butterfly shadows.”
Nick considered the sincerity behind her eyes. Either she was piggybacking on her sister’s description—craving attention—or she had seen the mysterious silhouette for herself. “Oh, right … right. The Raven. So, you’ve seen him often?”
“He comes to play every night.”
Nick frowned, discomfited by this turn of the tale. “Does he enter through your bedchamber door?”
Lia rolled her eyes. “He’s a ghost, ninny. He doesn’t need a door. He simply … swishes.”
“Swishes.”
“Yes, like the wind. Swishing all about, knocking things out of place. He’s rather clumsy.”
Nick’s jaw twitched as he crossed the line from cynicism to concern. “Has he ever knocked you over? Hurt you in any way?”
“Oh no. He is a proper guest. And he always leaves early enough so I might sleep.”
“Hmm.” Nick narrowed his gaze. “I don’t suppose you’ve introduced him to your aunt?”
“No, my ghost is too shy to even meet my nanny. He swishes away when she comes about. And Auntie doesn’t like such nonsense.”
Nick prodded at a knot forming in the back of his neck. “I see. Could you tell me where your auntie is at the moment?”
“She’s in the greenhouse. Watching the butterflies make babies. She’s to tuck us in later.”
Nick nodded. He needed to apprise Miss Felicity of this new wrinkle … that her niece might be receiving nighttime visits from someone or something she couldn’t identify. Selfishly, he welcomed the opportunity for reasons other than just the child’s safety: To be alone with the countess in her element would give him a chance to confirm the existence of the butterflies at last—to ascertain if they were the same species he’d come all this way to see … the mystical Heliconius who could bridge a spirit to the living world, or vice versa.
Tonight, he would get some answers.
“Thank you, Lady Lia.” He caught her eyeing her stick pony and grinned. “And thank you for sharing your chamber and your things.”
The child clasped his left palm as he started to stand, holding him down with a touch like a feather.
He glanced at their joined hands—hers so tiny and intricate, every little knuckle and every little line a map unwinding toward the future. Then his, so large, so rough … every callous and bulged vein stalled to an impassable past of tragedy and loss. He squeezed her fingers gently. He always wondered what it would have been like to hold his little boy’s hand …
The sprite released his grasp, slamming Nick back into his childless present.
“See that you take care of them,” she demanded.
“Them?” Nick asked, his son’s and wife’s faces crowding his mind’s eye and clawing through his chest.
“My things.”
Using the princess cane for leverage, Nick stood against the weight behind his sternum. “Ah. Understood.”
“Treat them as if they were your very own,” Lia scolded, then trounced over the threshold and into the playroom on a swirl of delicate fabric. As he watched her hover over her sister like a nurturing hummingbird, Nick fondled his earring.
“No, little sprite,” he whispered, amending her request. “I’ll treat them better than my own.”
Chapter Nine
Felicity leaned her shoulders against the cool glass of the caterpillar sanctuary and inhaled the humidity inundated with flowers, greenery, and dirt. The moon struggled to pierce the canopy outside, gracing the plants and butterflies with random sparkles of silvery light.
Her shoes had been shed. She wriggled her toes in the moist soil, just as she’d done as a young girl. The butterfly brooch pinned to her scarf felt cold beneath her fingers, but she gleaned comfort in its familiar weight.
She needed comfort this night, and a place to hide.
She’d spent more time with Nick over the past few days than her injured niece and felt weak for avoiding the playroom. But each time she looked upon Aislinn lying in that bed with a bandage around her crown … it stopped her heart to think of what could’ve happened.
How often had she told that girl not to climb so high? Not to be so inquisitive? Her curiosities always, always ended up hurting her. Felicity had nearly screamed when she saw Aislinn inert, bloody, and battered beneath that tree. She’d fallen to her knees, sobbing the most heartfelt prayer a heretic could manage. Thankfully, this once, God had listened.
If Felicity would’ve lost that child …
Tears burned behind her eyelids and she pressed against her lashes, holding them back. Lord, she couldn’t even think it.
She loved her. Loved her as her own—every bit as much as Lianna. She only wished she could make Aislinn believe that. Felicity battled constant guilt for her and Lianna’s easy rapport. She knew it left Aislinn feeling slighted at times.
But the strain between her and her oldest niece couldn’t be helped or resolved. Aislinn would always hold a grudge against Felicity for the secrets shared between them. And she would always resent being forced to uphold silence … to keep those secrets from her little sister.
Felicity had made a promise to Jasper, and the cost of keeping it was her oldest niece’s love and respect. Sometimes Felicity hated what he’d asked of her, why they had to stay at this castle. Sometimes it seemed too steep a price.
Felicity eased into a faint strand of moonlight where it glazed a budding passion vine. The fragrant flowers had opened lush and purple just this morning, and already they were shriveling and setting to orange fruit.
It was a trait unique to this genus. Their blooms lasted one afternoon. One day of indescribable beauty before they surrendered themselves to function and practicality.
Perhaps this had earned them their name … this passion for propagation; a desire to give birth that was so all consuming, it burned like a flame from the inside out until nothing was left but the seeds—the genesis of new life.
Felicity rubbed her scar from atop her bodice, all too familiar with the sentiment.
Although she often fought the bitterness Jasper’s secret had left her with, he had left her blessings as well. She could never birth children of her own but she still had a family. And she was grateful for that. If only she didn’t feel as if she were damaging them with this isolation from the outside world.
Nick’s pointed accusation the other day had cut her to the core. And to use the word captive so blatantly, as if she were a wicked stepmother punishing her unwanted wards. For him to grasp her own misgivings and drag them to the surface … well, it spoke highly of his powers of intuition to say the least.
But this was not his battle. Nor was it his decision. For heaven’s sake. She wasn’t about to let a man infiltrate the barricades she’d spent years piling up—no matter how his body called out to hers. However, there was more to Nick than brawn and sensuality. He had wit and a discerning intellect. And any man who would wear an earring for a keepsake had an endless well of depth. She wondered who the earring reminded Nick of … a past love? A beloved family member he’d lost?
The last few afternoons, he’d listened to her prattle on about her concern for her ailing niece with a patient sort of empathy she hadn’t expected. In fact, every moment spent with him brought to light yet another layer she’d like to explore.
Felicity groaned. What was wrong with her? After so many years of solitary independence, why did she suddenly yearn to trust a thief of all things, to open up to him? All because of a drunken heroic deed seven years ago that he likely didn’t even remember.
The logical side of her was adamant about keeping her defenses intact. Although having Nick with her during the most recent Raven sighting exonerated him of being in league with Landrigan, she still couldn’t trust him. Especially after what Clooney had learned on his venture into Carnlough.
&nbs
p; She didn’t know what to make of the information, didn’t want to agree with Clooney’s summation of it all, and opted not to think of it for the moment.
She had other things to concentrate on. Like how to stretch her wrinkle lotion when the next set of passion flowers weren’t due to blossom for another month.
Because of the recent excitement, Felicity had forgotten about the flowers blooming today and missed her window of opportunity to make more of the special face cream. The butterflies’ saliva could only be harvested shortly after they fed off of the blooms.
Jasper had been the mastermind behind the concoction which gave Felicity the wrinkles. Before he’d come to stay, Felicity had used makeup and worn veils.
Her brother’s jeweled longwings—a family of Heliconius butterflies from the orient—were the unsuspecting donients of the potion. As Jasper bred and studied them, he discovered that the insects supplemented their nectar diet by feeding on pollen—a rare trait for any Lepidoptera.
They would wait for the flowers to bloom, then collect pollen with their long proboscises. When the pollen came into contact with the butterfly’s saliva and the digestive enzymes were released, it initiated the degradation of cells in the passion flower, enabling it to age and wither within hours, speeding along its reproductive cycle.
Those enzymes worked much the same when applied to human skin, once combined with a few choice ingredients easily accessed in the forest. The wrinkles—no matter how genuine they appeared—were only temporary, lasting twelve hours at most. They couldn’t be washed off with water or even soap. Only time wore them away.
A mixture of the nectar-tinged butterfly saliva could be harvested without harming the insects by using tweezers, beads, and airtight vials; but it had to be gleaned from their proboscis within the first half hour after their contact with the flowers. Any later, and the air compromised the potency. Felicity’s shortage of face cream had resulted from her shortage of butterflies. Many of her caterpillars had been dying prematurely before they even reached the chrysalis stage and metamorphosed into adults, so they’d been unable to breed. She’d been finding less and less pupas hanging on the plants and had yet to see any improvement in the numbers.
She’d spent twenty minutes earlier scraping that foreign purple fungus off of the plants—the very fungus that had lured Aislinn into the rotting tree from whence she fell.
Felicity frowned. She knew Landrigan was behind it. He had infected her greenhouse. If she could only prove it before his determination to win this estate got out of hand. Or perhaps it already had. Through some trick of light or costume he’d startled Aislinn from the tree and she’d lost balance.
Felicity’s throat stung dry at the thought of him hurting her girls. Protective fury rose within like a storm cloud, dark and menacing. She glanced down at the ground next to her discarded shoes where a set of discarded pruning shears lay.
Her stepson would have to be dealt with.
Felicity’s breath caught when the glass-inlaid gate creaked open from the herbal side of the greenhouse. Squinting at the velvet darkness which swallowed the entryway, she could only make out the rustle of clothing and a man’s shape—too tall to be Clooney or a stable hand. The gate closed behind him.
“Landrigan,” she seethed the name and lifted the shears by their handles, snapping the blades. “You’re a dead man.”
“I prefer death by whip over a blade. Less messy for us both.”
Felicity nearly toppled backward at the sound of Nick’s voice.
“But you might wish to reconsider altogether,” he said. “We don’t need two ghosts running about to contend with, do we?”
Felicity suppressed her dancing heart. Its rapid pulse had jumped from hatred to contained excitement within one breath. A dizzying conversion. She set the pruning shears aside, picked up her shoes, and hedged out of the moonlight, all too aware her wrinkles were fading. She had hoped to sneak into the castle via the back way, say goodnight to the girls, then lock herself in her bedchamber without being seen. Now she’d have to rely upon patches of darkness to mask her youth.
“Ghosts are non-existent,” she said.
Nick’s earring caught a fleck of light and glistened in the moon’s glow. “I see. It’s a subject better left to fiction. Haunted romances, spectral love affairs. Tis all fodder for readers escaping reality.”
“Precisely.” Felicity stammered, frustrated by the obviousness of the comparison. Her constant avoidance of the novel Nick thought she wrote with his sister was getting exhausting. “Ludicrous and impossible.”
“I suppose you don’t believe in folklore, either.”
“Such as?”
Nick gestured around the sanctuary. “The Heliconius butterflies are said to be a link to the afterlife. A living man’s spirit can connect with them somehow, and ride into the afterlife to visit those who are dead. I doubt even your brother was familiar with that claim.”
“In fact, he was.” She heard an intake of breath. Obviously, Nick hadn’t been expecting that. “Jasper wasted many months trying to…” She cleared her throat before she said too much. “He believed butterflies were a metaphor for the soul. That their emergence from entombment within a cocoon was a parallel for human resurrection. For a scientist, he had some very irrational thoughts.”
“Some might call that faith, Miss Felicity.”
“Faith, bah. More like foolishness.”
Chuckling, Nick lifted his good leg and tried to weave around the invasive plants that stood as a barrier between them. Passion vines had a tendency to take over their surroundings. These had formed a labyrinth of curling leaves and stems on this side of the caterpillar sanctuary. Felicity knew the way through the maze by heart, but Nick had to feel it out—no easy task in the dark with a cane.
She offered no assistance, needing time to regroup her thoughts. Taking a seat on an overturned bucket, she scooted it against the glass wall away from the moonlight. After getting her shoes back in place, her gloves followed suit. Then her fingers clenched her knees over her skirt.
Nick had managed to find his way to her side while taking care not to disturb the vines’ leaves and their fluttering occupants. He was preoccupied with the butterflies now, glancing across his shoulder at them as he loomed over her. When he turned back, only his full lips and whiskered chin were illumined by a swatch of light.
He pulled up a crate in front of her and took a seat. Its height matched the bucket’s so he still remained taller—an imposing presence. “So, you have no use for religion and no use for superstition. What do you believe in, Miss Felicity?”
“My own strength and hard-earned wisdom, Master Nicolas. That and nothing more.” The lie tasted bitter. She wouldn’t dare admit how many superstitions once flourished within her soul, before life experience had plowed them all to chafe and waste.
“And you’re convinced Donal is your ghost.”
“I am.”
“You won’t even entertain the notion that it’s an actual spirit.” He raised his hand before she could answer. “Allow me to play Devil’s advocate. Just for a moment.”
She forced a huff, having already given up on such hopes. That Jasper had indeed possessed her at one point. That he walked among them even now. No. For there were barriers he couldn’t possibly cross. “All right. Who would it be?”
“Your husband.”
The mere thought of her husband returning in any form caused a prickling frost to creep up her spine. Felicity shivered. As if sensing her unease, Nick reached out and clasped her hand.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to introduce such disturbing imagery.” A dragging sensation raked across her features as she sensed him straining to see her. “You’re afraid of the afterlife.”
“No, not exactly,” she offered the half-truth.
“No? Then why are you trembling?” His hand stroked hers.
The friction of his skin against her glove prompted a rasping rhythm in the hushed surroundings. She warmed wit
h a familiar fuzzy comfort. He’d been her support these past few days—a rock. So attentive. Always ready to touch her hand … to listen. Sitting patiently as she yammered on and on about her beloved family.
Lia had fully captivated the man. He obviously adored children. And why wouldn’t he? He was kind, with a generous soul.
Felicity, stop baiting yourself. He’s a red-blooded male. A thief. He wants to steal his way into your bed then cast you off for the next conquest.
Nick’s flirtations with the maid validated the harsh surge of logic. Felicity knew better than to be duped. To court any nobler motive would only slice her scar open again, start the bleeding anew.
She jerked her hand from beneath his, her elbow thumping the glass wall behind. Waves of hot and cold tingles spanned from her funny bone to her wrist.
She rubbed her arm and the tension stretched between them as taut as a violin’s string. Nick sat unmoving—his expression unreadable in the darkness. Only the sounds of their breaths could be heard. It became so quiet that she forced herself to speak.
“My husband didn’t die here. Why would he haunt this place?”
“Then your brother.”
“You said that once before. You seem determined to make it a real ghost.”
Nick’s clothes rustled as he pulled out something from his pocket. Hearing pages flip, Felicity guessed it was the small almanac he always carried.
“In the Romani culture”—Nick placed the book face-down upon his lap— “it’s believed that after death, any soul with unfinished business can freely retrace its steps to make things right. During this time, the soul maintains the body’s physical shape; therefore, the body must remain intact. If something happens to disrupt this ritual, if the body is dismembered or otherwise destroyed within that year, the spirit must find another form and in turn becomes chained to this world. For we must all leave in the same vessel we arrive in. Often, the spirit stays close to the place of its demise, seeking its body. My father and mother had a personal experience with this phenomenon.”
Felicity clicked her tongue in feigned derision.
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