Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Vanessa’s focus had been arrested. Nay, seized and held captive.
The air thickened between them and the storm seemed closer now. The wild chaos of it slipping into the night. Invading the space between them. Prompting her instincts to prickle and her hair to stand on end.
She was a kitten who’d stumbled into the den of a lion. Nothing more than a light snack. Something he could pick his teeth with.
So why did she have the very feline urge to arch and glide toward and against the lithe strength of his form?
To search for warmth. For protection.
His body, as iridescent as it still was, radiated as much heat as the firelight. His shoulders were wide and his arms long and thick beneath the fitted lines of his crimson jacket.
His features were distinguished, compelling, the product of centuries of such ancestors breeding his sort of perfection.
His eyes weren’t just blue, they held a startling lapis brilliance, as if backlit by something electric, like lightning.
His spun gold hair was caught behind him in a queue.
It shone lambent, as did his gauzy specter, barely able to catch the light that pierced through him rather than reflected off him.
The square chin above his high, white collar framed a wide, hard mouth that curled in such a way, she might have called it cruel.
His eyes were kind, but that mouth was most certainly anything but.
The word depraved came to mind.
A corner of his lip lifted as she stared at it rather rudely. Not quite a smile, but the whisper of one.
The ghost of one.
He cleared a gather from his throat and turned away, dispelling the tension as he drifted over to the camera.
“So, this device is what you use to capture these photographs? This…camera?”
She would never not smile at the way he said that word.
Shaking off whatever had held her mesmerized, she hopped to engage. “Yes. Would you like to see how it works?”
“Very much.”
Vanessa had to stop herself short of clapping her hands like a delighted child. Photography was one of her passions, and while many people were curious about it, she’d never had the chance to show it to someone quite so captivated.
Or, rather, captive. But who was she to split hairs?
His feet levitated some six inches off the ground, and his hands locked behind his back in a posture befitting an officer of his class. He looked down at her from over his aristocratic nose and she had the sense he mentally disassembled her for examination whilst she assembled her tripod.
“I eavesdropped on you and Bess before,” he admitted.
“Oh?” She wasn’t quite certain how she felt about that, so she remained silent on the topic.
“I’m given to understand you didn’t go to Paris with your family because you’d rather stand on the frigid shores of the deepest lake in the world and try to photograph a creature that only exists in folklore?”
She glanced up from where she screwed on the mounting bracket. “And?”
He gave a rather Gallic shrug. “It can’t be astonishing to you that someone might remark upon the decision. It seems…rather out of the ordinary.”
Vanessa tried not to let on that his assessment stung, as if she weren’t aware that her behavior was remarkable.
That she was doing what she could to make the most of her exile without advertising it.
She didn’t allow herself to look up at him as she pulled the accordion-style lens and box from her case with a huff.
“I’m a woman who is only interested in extraordinary. ”
“Evidently.”
She cast him a censuring look as she affixed the camera to the tripod. “So says the iridescent apparition levitating above me.”
“Touché.” He twisted his mouth into an appreciative sort of smile as he studied her. “So, you believe in ghosts and lake monsters. What else? Fairies? Vampires? Shapeshifters? Dragons?”
“And why not?” She crossed her arms, wishing he didn’t make her feel itchy and defensive.
“Did you know a woman, Mary Anning, found dinosaur bones the size and shape of the long-necked mythos of the Loch Ness Monster only decades ago? Which means creatures like Nessie have existed, and perhaps still do.”
She held her hand up against his reply. “And if you go to church, they’ll tell you about angels and demons.
Saints and spirits. Like you, for example.
I’ve done extensive readings on the supernatural, and the stories are eerily similar across all sorts of nations and civilizations.
If the native peoples of Australia and also the Scandinavians have similar myths of flying serpents and dragons, doesn’t it seem like their existence might be possible? Probable, even?”
His mouth pulled into a tight, grim hyphen, even as his eyes twinkled at her. “Historically, I’d have said no, but at the moment it does seem ridiculous to argue the point.”
“‘There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” she quoted, wagging a finger in the air like some mad scientist as she bustled around her camera, checking bits and bobs. “Truer words were never written.”
When she looked back up at him, he’d drifted close. Too close. Close enough that the fine hairs on her body were tuned to him, to the inevitability of his touch.
A touch that never came.
“People still quote Shakespeare?” he murmured.
She swayed forward, and had he been real—or rather, alive—she’d have bumped into him. Instead, her shoulder sort of just…passed through his and she was fascinated with that same odd sort of sensation she’d had in the bath.
Not contact but—but what? An impression?
She swallowed around a dry tongue. “Always. People will always quote Shakespeare.”
Ye gods, it had been a long time since she’d been alone with a handsome, virile man. One who looked at her like that. Who crowded her and invaded her space in a way she didn’t find the least bit irritating.
Overwhelming, yes. But in the best of terms.
She’d forgotten the heady experience of it. The places in her body that would come alive, and demand attention.
Once again, he retreated, floating backward to give her space to work. “What do you call yourself? A mystic investigator of some sort? You travel the world looking to make these realistic portraits, these…photographs of the unexplainable?”
“Not exactly. I travel the world searching for adventure. I just like to capture these adventures in effigy. Because it’s sort of like capturing a memory, isn’t it?
Sometimes that means a Grecian ruin or a Galapagos tortoise, and sometimes…
” She snatched the dark cover she had to put over her head in order to see through the lens.
“It means a ghost or a relic of something supposedly extinct.”
He made a deep, appreciative sound in his throat. It plucked a chord inside of her that vibrated deep. Deeper than church bells or bagpipes or the crescendo of the most tragic opera. Deeper into the recesses of her body and soul than she dared contemplate just now.
She retreated beneath the dark cloth, looking through the lens of the camera, turning the dial to focus it.
When she spied him, she let out a little sound of triumph. “Put your hand to your lapel,” she directed. “And levitate perhaps…three more inches toward the ground.”
He leveled an abashed look somewhere above the lens, then tried to peek around it as if looking for her. “You’re not—trying to photograph me, are you?” He seemed as if the idea had curdled his cream.
“I’ve heard any number of mediums have photographed ghosts. They say you can capture ectoplasm in photographs, and that’s supposed to be a gelatinous sort of goo left by spirits and ghosts. You’re ever so much more than goo.”
“Do try to contain your effusive admiration.” His voice could have dried the into the Sahara. “I’m endlessly flattered to be placed above ectoplasmic goo in your estimation.”
She giggled, a mischievous part of her wanting to trap the pinched and offended look on his savage features for posterity. “Come now, don’t be missish. You look so smart in your uniform. Handsome, I’d dare say.”
He straightened a bit, blinking this way and that as if looking for somewhere to place her compliment for safekeeping. “You think so?”
She looked him over, from his chagrined expression to his shiny boots. He was so tall and broad, almost offensively so. No one would call him elegant; he was too ferocious for that. But no one could call him wild; he was too regal for that.
So, what was he? Who was he?
So many questions almost choked her mute until one was allowed to spill out.
“How did you die?”
He stalled.
She poked her head up from beneath the camera.
“Oh, lands. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be uncouth.
I just… Well you don’t look at all injured.
I’d have assumed your coat would be riddled with bullets, or you’d have some ghostly axe sticking out of your head.
I suppose I read too many penny dreadfuls. ”
He didn’t move, except to tug at his collar before he returned his hand to rest on the lapel of his jacket. “It was a bayonet to the neck,” he informed her with almost no inflection at all.
“Oh…” Vanessa was sorry she asked. But his neck didn’t at all look—bayonetted. So that was lucky for them both, she supposed. He would have made for ghastly company. “Don’t move,” she directed before pointing the flash at him and shooting.
He flinched.
“I thought I said not to move,” she admonished him.
“You didn’t bloody warn me it would be as loud as a musket blast,” he muttered. “Can I move now?”
“You might as well,” she sighed.
She was going to have to get used to the silent way he sort of—floated around her. It just wasn’t seemly for a man of his stature.
“When do I get to see the photograph?” he asked, a boyish sort of anticipation making him appear years younger as he peeked over her shoulder.