don’t believe me. Do you?”
“I saw…something I can’t yet explain.” A single glance over his shoulder was all he spared her. “That has nothing to do with my father.”
“I swear to you that it has everything to do with him.” Win could no longer see the spirt of Septimus’s father, but the matter was far from resolved. Ghosts were tenacious. She understood that much about them, if nothing else.
Septimus shook his head, his shoulders hunched, hands braced on his hips. Finally, he turned to face her, but he held his ground. “Let’s go to the ball and leave all of this ghost nonsense behind. Please, Win.”
The please almost convinced her. Almost persuaded her that they could rush off to a fancy ball and leave specters and the past and all their problems behind. He was the most tempting, appealing man she’d ever met, and he’d somehow managed to chip away at the armor of pessimism that she used to protect herself.
But experience had taught her that problems couldn’t be outrun. Like restless spirits, they followed you. Haunted you. Until there were only two choices—solve your dilemma or make peace with the past.
“You needn’t do this alone,” she told him, her voice so quiet and tremulous she feared he might not have heard her. “For once, my…ability might be an advantage if I can use it to help you and your father.”
“No!” The shout emerged as loud as the first moment they’d met, when he’d bellowed down from his tower. “It’s Christmas Eve,” he said more softly. “The first we’ll ever spend together.” He took one step nearer, but he didn’t close the distance between them. Instead, he lifted a hand, beckoning her to join him. “The first of many, I hope. Let’s go find Cornelia and Miss Renshawe. They’ll be worried about you.”
“Yes.” Win suspected Aunt Elinor, at least, would be fretting.
She strode toward him and he let out a sigh of relief when she laced her fingers with his. Win felt it too. A surge of pleasure chased through her whenever they touched each other.
This time the sentiment was short lived.
She could dance with him at the Yule ball, relish his touch, get lost in every glance they exchanged, but any thought of a proper courtship and happily ever after for them was folly.
Nothing would ever be right between them until the specter found peace.
Septimus’s resistance was revealing too. Perhaps he needed to forgive as much as the specter longed for forgiveness.
10
Win was so lovely in her cobalt ballgown with a satin ribbon twined in her hair that it made Sep’s chest ache every time he looked at her. He didn’t care about the Banfield wedding or the bloody Yule ball. He only wanted her in his arms again.
The more he told himself to temper his feelings, to adhere to caution and reason, the more his emotions spiraled beyond his control.
Mention of his father frayed his nerves.
He’d tried seeking a logical explanation for the book in the library to levitate. A gust of wind. A trick of his eyes. But his theories became increasingly ludicrous. A change in gravitation? An alteration in the book’s weight and volume?
The answers he was left with after two days of rumination were both heartening and terrifying.
Win told him the truth.
Through some unique ability, apparently shared by her maternal aunt, she could perceive what others could not. Some physical manifestation of unquiet spirits. He believed her. And her honesty only deepened his feelings for her.
More disturbing was the prospect that his father was haunting him. Looming over him, seeking an absolution Sep could not give.
The pony cart bounced over a rut in the lane and Win’s body lurched toward his. Sep took the reins in one hand and wrapped his other around her shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“I am.” She grinned at him, and that strangely pleasurable ache throbbed in his chest again.
The lady had managed to animate his dilapidated heart.
“Are you?” she asked, her expression turning serious. “You’ve been quiet since we left Penwithyn.”
Sep fixed his gaze on the horizon, but all his other senses were focused on Win. She gave off an enticing energy, even while sitting still beside him. He owed her an explanation, but he wasn’t sure he could manage to put the pain into words.
“The anger I bear him isn’t only for me.”
She turned toward him as he spoke, but Sep couldn’t face her. He needed to get the story out, even if he mangled every word.
“He was a