This Haunted Heart

Chapter 1

Lochlan Finley

Salt Rock, Pennsylvania 1893

A heart shouldn’t be able to shatter more than once. Certainly not over the same woman. If only the organ could be reasoned with, I could have spared myself the anguish. No ghost would ever haunt me as much as Rynn’s betrayal did.

After years apart I’d finally found her.

Rubbing at my chest where the phantom ache still smarted something dreadful, I waited outside on the front porch of the brothel house for the doors to open to me. The plaque by the entrance labeled it as The Night Lark. A local man in line behind me called it the “Soiled Songbird” then laughed at his own quip.

No one else tried to make conversation with me, which I appreciated. I didn’t like a crowd. The queue inside moved efficiently. I removed my felt hat out of habit before crossing the threshold. My common clothing didn’t fit my status and was selected to help me blend in here.

A madam wearing a silver evening gown, pearls in her pinned up autumn hair, had me sign my name inside a book—a big book that she had to heft to open. The pages smelled like coffee grounds. I wrote Mr. Dante Malacoda , a pseudonym, onto the thick paper and paid the entry fee rather than detailing what items I planned to offer in trade. I slipped through a hall adorned in fresco paintings and into an expansive parlor, blending in with the newest group of anxious patrons eager to blow off the week’s steam.

I’d never visited a cathouse before. Never had reason to until now. The orderliness and the clean, elegant furnishings took me by surprise, but perhaps that was my fault for gaining my knowledge on city life exclusively from the dramatic fiction penned in The Visionary Collective .

I was unaccustomed to buildings being so tall or so close together, unfamiliar with the press of too many bodies squeezed into one room. I felt swallowed up by it all. The ghosts were plenty here, but they were not spirits tethered to me in any fashion and they paid me no notice. A prickle trailed down my neck as they passed around the room, flitting between the heavy brocade drapery and polished wood furniture.

The evening carried on and the “Soiled Songbird” grew busier. I nursed the same beer, waiting impatiently for the nightingale who had crushed my heart twice to show herself.

I wasn’t worried that she’d recognize me. We were only eighteen the last time we’d laid eyes on each other. That was twenty years ago, and I was no longer a gawky youth. A shadow of a beard hid most of my face. I had the thick build of a man who spent a great many hours outdoors. The fair complexion of a boy who loved to hide and read had burned away to a ruddy gold, and time had darkened my hair to a shade of walnut she wouldn’t know.

A pianist played a cheerful spring tune to fit the season. The scent of barley, tobacco, and lacquer competed in my nose, not unpleasantly. Patrons paired off with companions. Some lingered. Others went upstairs. A few didn’t come back down, but most returned within the hour. After which the courtesan would find a different lap to sit upon.

It wasn’t looking like my target for the night would show herself at all. Twenty years later, Rynn was still letting me down.

I’d invested a great deal in finding her, and I wouldn’t be thwarted easily. I waved over the barkeep. The barrel-chested man with salt and pepper hair scowled at me, irritated that I drank little and occupied one of his stools so long. With some reluctance he came over.

“I’m looking for a beautiful woman who goes by Vieve,” I said. It was not her true name, of course, but that was fine. She could keep her fiction.

He sniffed at me. His gaze jumped to the thin scars that cut down my brow and webbed across my left cheek before taking in the rest of my face. Scars “Vieve” had caused but hadn’t waited around long enough to witness the making of. They disguised me further.

I unrolled a leather wallet, removing a cigarette and a single bill. The cigarette I tucked behind my ear. The banknote I pinned to the bar under my finger.

“Vieve?” I asked again, tapping on the note until it crinkled.

His grizzled brows lifted.

Money talked. The Visionary Collective got that part right about dens of iniquity. Granted, money talked everywhere, and I had plenty to burn.

He kept his shoulder to me, but his gaze remained locked on the note like he feared it might vanish. His voice dropped to a more conspiratorial volume. “What’s it you want with Vieve?”

Vengeance, I thought, but was smart enough not to say. Devotion. Retribution. Heartfelt apologies made on her knees that would do her no good at all.

An obsession to match my own.

Rather than answer him, I fished a larger note out of my wallet, bringing the total closer to a week’s wages for someone like him.

His bulky hand came down over mine greedily, but I kept both banknotes trapped there under my finger. “Tell me what I want to know.”

“Vieve won’t be singing tonight,” he said.

“I can see that.” With effort I kept the grumble out of my tone, rolling up my wallet and returning it to my pocket one-handed. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs.” He jutted his round chin in the direction of the stairwell. “You won’t find her down here. She hasn’t worked the parlor for several months now. She’s got herself a man, and her mister pays handsomely not to share her.”

My fingers flexed around the edge of the bar. It took a full minute for me to compose myself enough that I could speak in a manner that wouldn’t draw unwanted eyes. “She stays in her room during open hours, then?”

He nodded. “That’s right. Unless he wants to show her off.”

My teeth came together in a grimace. This mister thought he could buy her, but he couldn’t. Her heart would never belong to anyone else. Not after we’d been forged together in the same hellfire.

“Who is he?” I asked gruffly.

The barkeep went tightlipped, tugging at the notes. Finally, I released them. He balled them up and stuffed them into the pocket of his waistcoat, shooting a glance over his shoulder at the other patrons. “He’s new money. A blowhard who goes by Utrecht. He’s in the coal business, and that’s all I know.”

“Is he nice to her, this Utrecht?”

The question seemed to surprise him. He regarded me with new eyes. Working his throat, he chose his words more carefully. “Utrecht isn’t nice to anybody.”

I should have known. The worst devils were drawn to her—myself included—like wandering spirits were to wrath.

“Which room belongs to her?” I asked quickly before he could sidle away from me.

“Second door on the left,” he whispered.

I dropped a coin onto the bar to pay for my neglected beer, placed my hat back on my head, then abandoned my stool. I moved through the busy establishment like I belonged amongst them, and no one stopped me. The hall upstairs filled with movement, a patron reluctantly leaving the bedroom of a miss. I made for the nearest nook and pretended to be preparing to smoke, fishing out my lighter and striking the flint.

I waited until the reluctant patron made his final plea for more attention before I shook out the flame. When the hall had gone still, I crept from my corner and headed for the second door on the left. The floorboards creaked under my weight.

My palms were slick with sweat as I gripped the knob. I gave it a twist, not surprised it was locked.

Checking over my shoulder, I pulled out my knife and unfolded the blade, pressing the sharp metal into the crack in the door carefully so as not to scratch up the wood. I used it as a lever to force back the bolt that barred my entrance. The click of it sounded loud in my ears. I checked again behind me, listening for movement. When none came, I let myself in.

It was after midnight, and the hinges needed oil. I closed the creaking door carefully, then took in the suite before me: a plush sofa, floral wallpaper, the back wall lined by a small fortune in books. The elegant sitting room came to a head at an ornate archway. I wished I had the patience to browse, to take in the sights and smells, to learn more of what she’d been up to all these years, but the knowledge of her nearness compelled me forward.

Leaning into her boudoir, I found her at long last. She was asleep on the bed, angelic and peaceful.

Anger turned my vision red-tinged. Nothing about my time these past years had been peaceful. She’d made sure of that, tricking and stealing from me, abandoning me to the wrath of a monster, and she would soon pay the price. Drawn in by my emotions, the prickle of a passing spirit cascaded down the back of my neck.

“Rynn,” I breathed her name, and an agony burned in my chest. My pulse pounded in my ears, drowning out the sound of revelry from downstairs.

She’d changed in some ways. Rynn was shapelier than in our youth. Even more beautiful. The cream-colored lace of her shift tangled between her thighs and hugged her ripe hips. A woman capable of so much harm shouldn’t have such a lovely form. One glance at her had me questioning the goodness of God.

Light fawn skin contrasted her jet-colored hair. Supple and soft, each strand was full of curls. They sprang across her pillows in tight coils. Her face was turned away from me, but I didn’t need to see it to recall the exact shade and shape of her big brown doe eyes.

Even the memory of her mischievous smile was contagious.

She was up to no good. Always plotting and playing games, eager for excitement whatever the consequences. I was the boy just trying to stay out of trouble, stay hidden, go ignored. She was the girl that made me live.

Furies spare me, how I missed her! The pain of it about opened my chest right there.

She slept with a lantern on. The bronze glow of it called me to her bedroom window. Moving like a burglar, I swiped a smudge off the warm glass with a pad of my thumb because it had been made by her finger.

“I still can’t sleep in the dark either, Rynn,” I whispered to her slumbering form. We’d walked the same hell, endured the same abyss. I kept candles and lanterns burning all night, too.

It was then I noticed the sling draped around her bedpost. It fluttered disjointedly in a breeze from her cracked window, flapping like the broken wing of a satin bird.

Was she injured?

A new fury erupted within me, tightening my stomach. Absolutely no one should be harming this indefensible woman but me. Her left arm lay over her belly, cradled against her body.

The urge to inspect her was overwhelming, but if I moved closer, I would have trouble keeping my hands to myself. I didn’t want to wake her.

Not yet.

Another breeze blew in, cooling my clammy skin, carrying the scent of jasmine from the trellis outside. I removed the cigarette from my ear with fingers that shook. I turned it in my hand, considering it. Then I placed it beside the lantern like an offering, allowing the sweet scent of the tobacco to ride the wind. I wanted to give her a piece of the land she’d left behind.

I wanted to do a lot of things.

To hold her. Press my lips to hers again.

Wanted to shake her awake and scream at her. I wanted to imprison her in my manor where she belonged, so the ghosts there could haunt her the way she haunted me. If she was a spirit, I’d let her under my skin right then, let her possess me. Why not? In so many ways, she did already.

She’d tricked me, then abandoned me to an abyss without her. She’d let me believe she’d been dead all this time, left me crippled by grief at the loss of her, and that was most unforgivable of all.

But God above, how I’d missed her. Now that I finally had her back, it was almost a shame I had to punish her at all.