A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,49
never seem anything but.
“It’s just I have so many questions. And I am afraid to ask them, but when else will I get the chance? Is there a light anywhere like people have claimed, at the end of a tunnel perhaps? Have you met others like yourself? Or angels? Or—or anyone else out of the ordinary? Out of our limited mortal understanding, I mean.”
He wished he could spin her a hypnotic yarn that would make death seem less depressing, but he was an honest ghost, and a boring one, evidently.
“I’ve met no other apparitions and my torpor, it’s—not even like sleep, exactly. It’s nothingness.” He almost hated to admit it, because sometimes the void terrified him. “I want to say darkness, but it’s not even that tangible. I am gone, and then I surface. I am here, but I have no part of myself. I have nothing but a vague sense of who I am. And each time I go under…I stay for longer. There are days I fear I’ll become one with nothing, and every part of who I was will be lost.”
What he didn’t say was that each time he went under, he was always disappointed to be brought back. He would rail and stomp and use what little power he had to throw things. To rattle the bedposts and windows and make the stones of his cage tremble. He’d frighten people just to do it. Because now that he’d found himself again, he’d have to dread the next time he was lost.
She blinked watery eyes up at him, her sharp chin pitting and quivering with emotion. “How do you endure it?”
“How can I do anything but?” he replied, his finger aching to smooth an unruly tendril of hair away from her furrowed brow.
Her throat worked over a difficult swallow. “I wish I could save you, somehow.”
A tenderness welled in him in that moment and threatened to spill over into emotion he had no idea what to do with. What a Countess she’d have made. So small and yet regal. So soft-spoken and yet brave. Independent. Unbiased. Kind. Honest.
God. He’d have offered for her hand after one chaperoned meeting. He’d have claimed her and planted children inside of her, creating an undeniable legacy of which any man would be proud.
It was almost worth one hundred and fifty years of loneliness to have met her.
She’d brought him back to himself, somehow.
Whatever she saw in his eyes caused her to step in toward him. And, once again, she stumbled.
Catching herself this time, she lifted her skirt to examine the packed earth beneath her.
Whatever she found caused her to gasp.
“Hold on.” Rushing past him—nearly rushing through him had he not moved out of the way in time—she retrieved the lantern from the entry and plucked a bayonet from the wall.
Returning, she shocked him by placing the lantern on the ground, kneeling down in a pool of her skirts, and using the bayonet to scratch and dig into the dirt.
“What the devil are you about?” He hovered over her, worried that she’d finally reached the edge of her sanity.
“This floor has a dip right here about the size of my shoe,” she said around the labor of her digging. “After I tripped this last time, I thought, if Carrie was a clever girl, she might bury her most prized possessions to make certain they weren’t discovered. Even if the Chamber of Sorrows was.”
Something within him ignited. He wished he could grab something and rake at the earth next to her. That he could reach into it and pull whatever might be down there above ground. But the bland weight of weakness still tugged his limbs until they were heavy, and he began to admit to himself that the torpor was calling to him.
Every moment he spent with her cost him, dearly.
But the darkness would have to drag him away. He’d not go willingly. Not while he could bask in her presence for one more moment.
She worked until she was winded, and the helplessness he felt made him want to throw things. To shake his fist at whichever angry god cursed him to such an existence.
Until a hollow sound announced the bayonet had struck something.
Their eyes met for a breathless moment.
Then, she attacked the ground around it with renewed vigor, scraping out a small, square wooden box. She stood, and John could hear Vanessa’s heart beating hard enough for the both of them as she opened the simple container.