This Haunted Heart

Chapter 14

Lochlan Finley

M aking love to her again had been too much for me. As Rynn had slept in my arms after, I’d felt a pain in my chest sharper and more piercing than ever before. It was like my shattered heart was trying to stitch itself back together but it no longer fit inside the cage of my ribs. It was too battered and swollen.

So I’d left her there in the grass, naked and exposed, needing to get far away from the woman who had broken me into too many pieces.

I took her belongings and secured them in my bedroom behind lock and key, and still my haunted heart tried to rip me apart. I felt gutted as I hung the housecoat for her by the entrance and readied the things for her bath. When I returned to the first floor to seek refuge in the drawing room, I felt the prickle of the ghosts responding to my agony, pulling in closer, made curious by the pain that radiated from me.

They filled my ears with their whispers.

I’d sent them all away with a shout. The ones tethered to me had to listen, and they took the others with them. That was my blessing and my curse now.

And then the house stayed quiet for a time.

Eventually, I went looking for her to make sure she made it inside before dark. It was her singing, her sweet soprano carrying down the halls that broke the silence and drew me to her. As she sang, voice echoing in the bathroom, I imagined she was singing just for me. Like in my dreams. She used to sing to me when we were young, but it was after I lost her, after I’d come to long for her nocturnal visits, that I started to think of her as my nightingale.

Now Rynn was seated next to me on the tile floor, staring at me, finally really seeing me. The knowledge of our past turned down her full lips and made her hickory-colored eyes glossy and dark as volcanic glass. Her chin hung toward her chest like it was too heavy to lift.

“I can make it better,” she whispered.

“You can’t,” I whispered back.

She flung her arms around my neck, and another tear escaped the corner of my stinging gaze. I pushed her away.

“Let me fix it,” she sobbed.

“You can’t!” I said, baring my teeth at her, vision blurring.

“Just let me try!” She hugged me again, and I let her for a moment, too weak to turn her away a second time. Rynn kissed that tear off my cheek, and a pang shot through my heart. It was too much.

“Stop.” I shoved her off .

She caught herself on the tile, my housecoat tangled between her legs. Her positioning reminded me of that moment in her bedroom what felt like ages ago now, when I’d dumped her onto the floor beneath me. But there was only determination in her gaze now, no defeat.

“I can fix it,” she insisted, surging back onto her knees. “Let me make it better. Let me help you just like I used to!”

I tried to push her away, but she clung to me. Rynn’s touch broke down my defenses and shattered me. I felt like a mess of parts there on the floor. Fingers and bones and eyes and ears, hair and teeth, all in a heap. This time she pressed her lips to the burn in my skin, the one just below my throat. My next breath stuttered out of me, stirring her curls. Then my arms disobeyed my mind’s wishes, listening instead to my broken heart. They pulled her closer, right up against my chest where I hurt the most.

She kissed my face, kissed my burning cheeks, kissed my scars until I couldn’t tell which tears were mine and which had fallen from her. Her kisses hurt me so sweetly. Rynn’s hands made fists in the lapels of my shirt, her grip tight enough to turn her knuckles white.

This was what I’d once wanted. Her sorry, her begging to help me feel better, but now I just ached. I felt battered and bruised, like I’d been caught in a stampede and trampled on. Like my old wounds had opened up all at once and were fresh and raw again. Every inch of my skin throbbed.

Unable to withstand her touch any longer, I peeled her fingers off me and stood.

She climbed to her feet beside me, lips trembling. “I want to make it better. I want to help you hurt less . . . I don’t know how yet, but I want to try . . . ”

“Banish all thoughts of freedom from your mind now,” I told her, and my cold tone stopped her from reaching for me again.

Her hair hung in damp curls over one shoulder as her gaze dropped to the floor. “I know you’re angry,” she said, wringing the quilted fabric of her borrowed housecoat. “God knows you have every right to be, but eventually this has to end. For your sake as well as mine. We can’t carry on this way forever. You can’t.”

“This will not end. I will not stop, and they will not stop!” I gestured broadly at the room and the ghosts I could feel haunting it. They crowded in, attracted to my growing anger, drawn in by my grief until the room grew so cold I could see my breath mingling with hers, could see the spirits leaving footprints in the wet tiles on the floor around her. The steam that had been curling off the bath water evaporated in an instant.

That’s what I wanted most. Her to grieve with me.

She stood there frowning, oblivious to their movements. “What are you talking about, Loch? Who are they ?”

“Doesn’t matter that you don’t believe in ghosts, Rynn. They’re here, and the spirits won’t stop. God knows I’ve tried to send them away from me, but they never stay gone. Twenty years I’ve been haunted by them because of you. Now it’s your turn.”

Her nose turned red, and her big doe eyes brimmed over. I abandoned her there in the lavatory like she’d abandoned me.

* * *

I didn’t make it very far, pacing the hall, trying to calm my nerves for what felt like ages. Marching down the corridor, I shoved into my bedroom and slammed the door behind me. Then I fell against it, letting it hold up most of my weight. My head was pounding—my heart, too. At my sides, my fingers clenched so hard my nails dug little crescents into my palms.

I slid down my door to squat on the floor. There I remained, stuck in the cage of my mind until the light started to fade beyond my bedroom window. Before it got any darker, I needed to start a fire.

Footsteps in the hall stole my attention.

“Is that you, Rynn, or the ghosts?” I called through the door.

“It’s me,” she said somberly, and she must have carried a lantern with her, because an amber glow lit the edges of the door frame.

She set it on the floor, casting its light through the crack at the bottom, just like we used to when my father would lock us in somewhere as punishment for . . . God only knew what most of the time. A pantry or closet were his prisons of choice. When he was gone, we’d sit beside the door with a lantern to give the other some comfort, and we’d whisper to each other for as long as we were able.

We didn’t dare unlock the door. I tried that once to save Rynn, and Father broke three of my fingers.

Her shadow appeared, disrupting the light as she sat down next to her lantern, leaning against the door opposite me. “I’ve got just one question for you, Loch. I know you’re unhappy with me—as you should be—but I hope you’ll answer it anyway.”

I rested my head back against the wood, flexing my left fingers to chase out the phantom ache the memory had inspired. “What’s your question? ”

“When did you get so goddamn big?” She said it in the puckish way that never failed to draw a laugh out of me. “You are not the scrawny young man that I remember.”

I sensed the humor in her words but was too numb to share in it. “Right after my father died, I had a growth spurt. A considerable one. I was a late bloomer, I suppose you could say.”

“Ah,” she said. “It’s like when they cut a big tree down and the little ones nearby sprout up. They aren’t trapped in its shade anymore or choked by the bigger roots. Finally, they can get at the sunlight.”

“I suppose it was like that,” I said, closing my eyes because I was suddenly so tired. The ghosts had a habit of disturbing my sleep. They gave me nightmares and woke me throughout the night, and the events of the day had added substantially to my exhaustion.

“I lied about something,” she said, voice quiet.

“What’s that?” I blinked my eyes open, curious what she’d say next.

“I don’t have just the one question. I have loads of them.”

The urge to smile tugged at my cheeks, but I hadn’t the energy for even that small gesture. “You’d better get started then.”

“Why’d you tell me your name was Finley?”

“Because it is.”

She thought on my answer for a time. “Is that your blood family’s name? I can see why you’d want to go back to that one.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m also trying to figure out why you waited twenty years to avenge yourself on me if you were so angry all this time. There were moments early on when I thought someone would come for me, but then . . .” Her words fell away. I could almost hear the gears turning in her brain. “It was because of her, wasn’t it? The woman you loved who broke your heart twice. You forgot all about me, but then . . . then she died, and it was time to settle the score. Am I close?”

There were plenty of reasons it had taken me so long to come and find her. I hadn’t known she’d survived fleeing from my father, for one. I thought she had died and been taken out of my reach for good. I didn’t have it in me to discuss my reasons with her, though. Not now. Not like this. I was too worn out.

“You’re jealous ,” I accused her instead. The glimmer of glee her envy inspired was enough to put a small smile on my face.

“Of course I’m jealous,” she said indignantly. I pictured her pouting that plump bottom lip of hers.

“I like that you’re jealous,” I confessed. “I could listen to you being jealous all night.”

“Well then, settle in,” she grumbled. The door rocked as her weight shifted against it, and she let out a forlorn sigh that made me chuckle. “God, I bet she was beautiful. Probably some heiress, too. A truly sophisticated woman with an easy smile. Bet that’s where you got so much wealth. I mean, the baron was rich but not like this . This is . . . my word, this house is something else.”

“She was beautiful all right,” I said through the door. “You got that part correct.”

“Ugh. Don’t confirm it. You’re turning my insides molten. Now I can’t pretend she was tolerable in appearance and you just wanted her for her money. Or that you felt sorry for her because she was so plain.”

I let out a small laugh, falling into her vortex of delightfulness. The numbness faded. “That’s rich, coming from you. Considering your history, Rynn.”

“I was no monk during our time apart,” she agreed ruefully. “But there’s no one for you to be jealous of at all. Not even a little.”

“Father Walker,” I teased.

She snorted at that. “He was kind, but he was homely. And his sermons were dull. With his habit of lecturing constantly, we would never have suited. Ugh. How can you even look at me knowing my lengthy history? You’ve got the one . . . I assume just the one . . . You know what, don’t tell me if there’s more than her. I can’t bear it. How do you stand it knowing how I made my living?”

I crossed my arms over my chest, pondering her question. “We weren’t together. Obviously, you didn’t marry me. I’d have quite a bit more to say about it otherwise, of course.”

“Would have locked me up sooner than twenty years, I imagine.”

“Without a doubt.”

It wasn’t that it didn’t bother me entirely. Naturally, it rankled that she’d chosen a life of debauchery and risk over building something with me, but her history didn’t change anything for me. My wounded heart would have pined for her no matter how reckless she’d been while we were apart.

“Still. Just the thought . . .” She made a grieved noise in her throat. “You with someone else. Touching them, loving them, fucking someone who isn’t me . . .”

Her jealousy was like a balm to my aches and pains. “I pretend that none of your clients mattered to you at all,” I confessed.

“They didn’t!” she said earnestly. “Truly, not a single one made it into my heart. They couldn’t. I’d given it away already to you, so there was no path for them inside.”

“I tell myself that bedding them was a terrible chore because they were all boorish with tiny cocks—”

“Some of them didn’t even have cocks at all.”

I harumphed at that but not because of her flexible preferences. I’d seen the company of the lovely ladies she kept at the Lark. It made it hard to pretend that all of her prior partners were commonplace. She’d always had elastic tastes. She could find something attractive about most anyone, always looking for the best in people. I was the exact opposite. My preferences were Rynn. Just Rynn.

At thirteen, when I got my hands on my first photo of a scantily clad lady, I’d been curious what all the fuss was about. Rynn had been more interested than I was in the woman seated behind a sheer curtain, showing off her naked legs for the camera.

“I can’t decide if I want to be her or just want to keep looking at her,” she’d told me. But I couldn’t find anything appealing about a person I’d never met before. The woman was just a stranger in a photo to me.

“I like to pretend,” I continued, “that your clients were all tedious and you just needed the money desperately.”

“No client could hold a candle to you, Loch. Not even standing up all together. They don’t compare.”

It was exactly what I wanted to hear. In her own words, wasn’t that just the thing she was best at? Telling men and women what they wanted to hear. The thought soured my mood, stealing the bit of warmth her playfulness had inspired. I climbed up from the floor, rattling the door in the frame with my movements .

“I’m going to bed,” I muttered.

“All right . . . I guess I should, too.”

“You should,” I added firmly.

“Sweet dreams, Loch.”

My dreams were only ever sweet when my nightingale was in them. “Goodnight.”

* * *

The next morning, I started my day with a fresh shave. Rynn’s things arrived from Salt Rock. I went in search of her to let her know, but she wasn’t in her room. I started to panic when I couldn’t find her in the small library or the dining room either.

“Rynn? Rynn !” I shouted, fear fisting around my heart. My hand went to my waistcoat pocket, checking to make sure the house keys were still secured there by the chain I usually used to hold my timepiece. Surely, she wouldn’t have attempted another escape barefoot and without her savings.

Her voice reached me then, calling from the drawing room on the first level, and I let the breath trapped in my lungs out. My heart took longer to calm down its erratic racing. Seeing her helped a little.

Rynn wore an apron over her freshly laundered dressing gown. Dark smudges shadowed her eyes. The hutch was open, and she hunched before a table covered in the presentation silver. Linen cloth in hand, she cleaned the silver with water that gentle steamed.

I came to a stop just inside the doorway. Her gaze immediately went to my cleanshaven chin. She shot me a small smile but didn’t say anything. I felt different now after my confrontation with Rynn, changed in a way I couldn’t articulate, and so I’d wanted to look different, too.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

She finished drying the spoon in her hand with her apron, then she laid it out beside the others. A deep crease formed between her brows. “Penance, I think?”

“You hate cleaning.”

“Wouldn’t be penance if I enjoyed it.” Rynn rubbed at the back of her neck. “What did you want? I heard you yelling. It sounded serious.”

My feet shuffled beneath me, uncertain about this new development. Was all this a trick to put me off-guard? “I just didn’t know where you’d gone, and I worried. Your belongings arrived. I had them brought up to your bedroom.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Her bottom lip went between her teeth. “It’ll be nice to have my own clothing again.”

I disliked the tension between us, the mountain of words left unsaid. An unspoken question hung there, one I couldn’t answer.

Where do we go from here ?

Nothing had turned out the way I’d planned, not from the moment I’d met her in her rooms. Not from the second she’d smiled at me in that way only Rynn could. She was supposed to behave like a villain, a cruel, wretched thing that belonged in a prison, a woman deserving only of punishment for her crimes. She wasn’t supposed to be sad and sorry. And what was I to do with her acts of penance?

I hadn’t prepared for any of this at all.

Instead of a villain, she behaved like . . . Rynn. Just like the girl I knew. But the Rynn I knew was supposed to be an act, a ruse, at least in part .

“You could still wear my drawers, though, if you wanted,” I told her.

At that, some of the light returned to her eyes. She smirked at me. “How magnanimous of you.”

The rest of the week continued like that. I’d find Rynn doing some odd chores around the manor, the smudges under her eyes growing darker, fawn skin paler. Dressed in somber clothing, she’d eat with me when I asked her to do so, but otherwise she kept to herself.

She was doing all the punishing for me. And what was I supposed to do with all this love she claimed she still had for me . . . or was all of that reserved exclusively for the young man I’d once been?

Occasionally, she’d hole up in the small library with a copy of Inferno by Dante Alighieri, written in the original Italian. She was using it and her knowledge of Latin to teach herself a new language she was not yet fluent in.

Another week came and went, but I felt no closer to figuring out what was to become of us. We developed a new routine together, neither saying what the other had to be thinking.

What now? What now? What now?

Our mornings were spent outdoors, weather willing. She didn’t dare ask for her boots again. After dinner she helped in the kitchens, hopeful that she’d catch a staff member in there, but that wasn’t ever going to happen. Not inside the house.

We always concluded our evenings together in the drawing room. I would read in the armchair. Sometimes we’d share a pipe while we listened to music on the gramophone. Rynn had strong opinions about what I played, and she voiced them boisterously to my amusement. Nothing too dull or dreary was allowed. It had to be upbeat and to her tastes. She adored pieces with complicated piano ensembles and a strong bass accompaniment. She’d make herself comfortable on the small sofa after picking the tune. Sometimes she’d sing softly to the music. Those moments were always my favorite. When she seemed to forget I was around at all, forget all that lay between us, and she’d sing.

Rynn still wasn’t sleeping well. I often heard her crying in her bedroom through the walls, plagued by all the same demons I was. Her tears brought me back to the question left unspoken.

What now?

Did I still have it in me to punish her when she so clearly punished herself? I certainly couldn’t just let her go. I’d never have the strength for that. We were trapped in a limbo of sorts, neither speaking of it. We simply existed around each other and that question.

That evening, she fell asleep on the sofa, trying to read, waiting on me to call it a night. Her book slipped from her fingers, and the spine clattered against the floor.

I planned to carry her up after I finished my chapter, but then Rynn began to stir. She rose up on unsteady legs, sleepwalking. I followed her, curious where she’d go, ready to steer her toward her bed and away from danger as needed. Eventually, she made it to the back staircase and then down the hall, headed for the parlor I kept sealed with locks.

“Rynn,” I said gently, hoping she’d come to at the sound of my voice.

Instead, she went and sniffed the empty vases that flanked the black door, like she was smelling flowers in her dreams.

Her nearness stirred up the spirits shut inside the parlor. They knocked against the door, the thuds hollow and quiet and as insistent as a heartbeat. The hall grew colder.

“Rynn,” I called a bit more forcefully. “Come here, sweetheart.”

She padded toward me then. Her eyes were open but vacant. I took her by the elbow and guided her up to her room. I helped her undress down to her chemise, then I tucked her into bed tightly under the covers to discourage further sleepwalking. I gathered an old antique bell that I kept in my office near the small library, and I hung it around her doorknob. It would wake her and me if she got up again.

* * *

The next morning, our walk was interrupted by a guest. The sound of horse hooves on gravel and rumbling carriage wheels disturbed the quiet of the woods around us.

“What’s that?” Rynn asked.

“I’m not sure.” I was as puzzled as she was because I didn’t get visitors, and I couldn’t see how they’d gotten through the locked gates.

We walked swiftly out of the trees, stopping before the water gardens. I recognized the carriage pulling up to the front beside the sandstone statues of rearing lions, and I grinned.

“Who is that?” Rynn demanded as a copper-haired woman of nineteen climbed down from the carriage with the help of her driver.

“That’s Josephine. My sister,” I told her. No one visited me, it was true. My birth mother and sister usually left it to me to call upon them because I so frequently traveled between my properties that it was a bother to track me down, and I preferred things that way .

I turned to face Rynn. “If I asked you to stay right here until I sent her away, would you?” I pleaded.

Rynn scoffed. “Not a chance.”

“I was afraid of that.” Resigned to my fate, I stomped across the lawn and waved a half-hearted greeting to my beloved sister.

Rynn, to my surprise, came closer but kept at a respectful distance, stopping on the other side of the water gardens.

The horses whinnied and clomped their hooves uneasily. The driver and his partner battled to calm them.

“Lochlan,” Josephine cried, pulling me into a warm hug. Then she held me at a distance to inspect me. “Are you well? Why were the gates locked? We had to track down your groundskeeper to open them for us. Thankfully Mr. Willoughby recognized me.”

“I’m well,” I said gruffly, pleased to see her but flummoxed all the same. “To what emergency do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

She frowned at me, her golden brows pulling together. “My goodness, you’re already trying to get rid of me. That never happens.”

“It’s not that,” I said, catching her wrist and squeezing it fondly—though technically that truly was my purpose. “I just know that you wouldn’t have put yourself to so much trouble to track me down if it wasn’t important. I simply wish to save us both time.”

She squinted at me, unconvinced. Her blue eyes always saw too much. I admired that about her usually. Today, it was a most inconvenient quality. “In that case,” she said, then she took a steadying breath, and I braced myself for her news. “I came to tell you that I’m in love. ”

I lifted a brow at her archly. “Is that so? Who is she?”

She swatted my arm, a gentle admonishment. “Don’t ask it that way, like you’re about to interrogate me.”

“That’s exactly what I’m about to do.”

Her cheeks filled with a pearly smile, brightened by affection and joy. “Her name is Margaret. She’s the one , Loch.”

My eyes went wide. “You’ve never said that to me before.”

“I’ve never felt that before. This isn’t like the others. Those were silly things not worth dwelling on. Youthful indiscretions.” The wind picked up, and my sister held her small hat over her copper hair.

“Who is this woman?” I asked. “How long have you known her?”

Jo folded her arms defiantly across her chest. “Margaret is a young widow. We met at a house party. She’s the most agreeable woman in all the world, and that’s all you need to know until you meet her. I’ll not be questioned like I don’t know my own business. Not by anyone. Not even by you!”

“It just all seems so sudden,” I said, scratching at my hair. “You’ve never even mentioned her before.”

“If you came around more, I would have,” she said tartly. “What are you so worried about, brother? Do you honestly think that I, of all people, would ever put myself in a position to be taken advantage of by anyone? Me?”

“I suppose not,” I grumbled.

“And you know how Mother worries needlessly,” she added pointedly. “I convinced you to invest the dowry you set aside for me at sixteen, and now I’m one of the wealthiest young women in Pennsylvania. I will never cease reminding you that it’s because of me you sold off those farms that were bringing you nothing but debt and bought the successful breweries instead, and still , I’m the one Mother wastes her time worrying about.”

“It’s a mother’s job to worry, I suppose,” I said consolingly. “And you are the baby of the family. I don’t think she’ll ever stop doing that, but of course you will have my full support with her, Josephine. If you say this woman is—”

“She is!” she said earnestly, coming up on her toes in her excitement. She grabbed my arm and squeezed it. “She truly is.”

I’d never seen her like this before. “Then Margaret must be the one,” I concluded.

Jo exhaled, and some of the tension in her shoulders eased out of her. “Thank you, brother. Now that’s settled,” she said, nudging me aside so she could draw my attention back across the water gardens, “who, pray tell, is she?” Her grin went wicked.

“ She ,” I drawled, “is none of your damn business. She is also the reason why visiting me unannounced as you have—”

“I tried to announce my visit! You never responded, you cad!” She swatted me on the arm again, and this time it smarted a little.

My cheeks warmed. I rubbed a hand across the back of my neck ruefully. “I’ve been traveling, and I’m a bit behind on my correspondence.” I left out all the coercion and pirating from my story because my little sister could be frightful when she was angry, and I didn’t dare draw out her wrath.

Jo folded her arms stubbornly. “Who is she? She’s beautiful.”

“She is . . . unfortunately,” I growled.

“What does that mean?” Jo’s sharp eyes narrowed.

“It means she’s no one you need to concern yourself with. She is here because there is history between us that needs resolving. She’s no business of yours because we have nothing but reasons to loathe one another.”

“Loathe? My, that’s a strong word.” Jo didn’t sound as if she believed me at all. “Goodness, she’s extremely lovely, though. Have you seen her properly? If I loathed a woman who looked like her . . . well, I probably don’t need to tell you what I’d do with all that.”

“Of course I’ve seen her. And no. Please, baby sister, do not tell me what you would do. I would have to set my ears on fire.”

“So lovely,” she purred.

“You found ‘the one,’” I reminded her sharply. “You’re supposed to be smitten with Margaret.”

Jo fanned herself playfully. “I’m suddenly feeling a little less smitten.”

“Stop staring at her like that, will you?” I grumped. I knew she was having me on, but it bothered me anyway. “She’s going to notice.”

Her face split in a mocking grin. “I’m only teasing you. I just wanted to see what you’d do. Test a theory, if you will, since I knew you’d avoid answering my questions. Must you be so secretive all the time?”

“What theory?” I muttered.

“I won’t trespass upon you further. I’ll leave you alone to figure out this history business,” she said, shuffling back toward her carriage, “but word to the wise, brother: stop telling yourself you loathe her. Clearly you don’t. And—”

“I didn’t ask for your advice. I’m the older sibling. I give the unwanted guidance, not you.”

“—start acting like you love her. Because clearly you do,” she said, continuing as though I’d never spoken at all. “You’ll get much further with her behaving that way—like a fool in love. And write me back, you rude man! Or I’ll drop in unannounced again soon, and you won’t be able to usher me out quickly next time. I’ll stay a whole week just to spite you!”

Her unwelcome advice was simple, and yet it hit me harder than it should have. I saw the carriage off with promises that I would write soon, then I returned to Rynn and our walk. I tried to shake Josephine’s guidance out of my mind, but it hung there stubbornly. A tiny voice of reason amongst the dark, dank parts of me. The sweeter bits of my person, which I thought had been burned out long ago, rejoiced.

* * *

Three days later, Rynn cleared the table after breakfast, carting the dishes into the kitchen. More penance, she said. It was taking her an inordinately long time to return to me, so I went looking for her.

I found her standing near the cabinetry in the kitchen, staring at the cookstove.

“Rynn?”

She blinked at the handle on the cast iron door, where a floral kitchen towel was tied.

I tried again to get her attention, placing a hand on her shoulder. Rynn turned to me then with a faraway look in her eyes like she’d only just realized I was there.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

She pointed to the towel. “Do you remember the old cook, Martha? I served under her.”

I nodded. “I remember her.”

She squinted at the offending towel. “Martha was getting on in years and she was always forgetting where she set her towel down. When the cookstove had cooled, she’d tie it to the handle in a loose knot just like that to keep herself from walking off with it again and losing another one before she needed it next.”

“All right,” I said, letting her work through her own thoughts.

“Just now, I carried the plates out to scrape them clean, but by the time I was half done and returned for the rest, the others were . . . well, they were already spotless and put away. The sink by the back door is wet. It’s muggy in there like the water heater has been working hard—but I hadn’t turned the taps on yet, Loch! Then I found the towel tied there, even though I’m sure it was folded up on the table before I went out the back.”

She stared at me imploringly, but I offered nothing in response.

“And there’s no one here ,” she stressed. “I checked. And this is not the first time something like this has happened. How do I keep missing your staff? Constantly, it’s like they just left a room I was in, but I can’t find anyone. Unless they’re quiet as mice, impossibly quick, and hiding from me on purpose!”

“Hm,” I said noncommittally. I had an answer for her, but of course it wasn’t one she would like. She didn’t believe in ghosts.

Her throat bobbed. “And I just keep seeing traces of Martha all over this kitchen. That oyster stew, it was her recipe. The lamb, too. This cabinet is organized exactly the way she preferred . . . But she’s much too old now to be serving in a kitchen, surely. Did you hire a relative or someone who worked under her? Someone especially gifted at hide-and-seek? ”

“No. Martha died some time back. About eleven years ago now,” I explained.

“Oh,” Rynn said softly. And then her eyes rounded in horror. “Oh!”

She glanced between me and the towel on the stove handle.

The air warmed around us, and a breeze that couldn’t be a breeze—the windows were shut—sent the towel swaying against the iron door. Rynn gasped and leapt back from it.

“They like it when you say their names, but they don’t like it when you try to stare at them too long,” I told her gently, studying her reactions, worried about pushing her too hard. It hadn’t been an easy thing for me to comprehend either. When I’d attempted the straightforward approach with her in the past, she’d rejected it. “I don’t always recognize them, but the ones tethered to me, the ones I do know, they seem to like it when I speak to them . . .”

I let the words trail away as her face drained of color.

“Why don’t we go for our morning walk,” I suggested. “You look like you could use the fresh air.”

She stepped away from me, pulling her hands in to wring her fingers together. “I . . . No, thank you . . . not this time.”

Rynn exited the room briskly.

* * *

She avoided me the rest of the day. That night, I awoke to screams.

The screams were usually mine. I shouted myself awake at least weekly, but this time it was coming from outside my room.

“Rynn,” I breathed, and I leapt from my bed .

I rushed to her, shoving through the doors, leaving them open at my back. Rynn tossed in her blankets, spine arched, screaming. The glow from the lantern on her end table cast an ominous shadow of her body contorting onto the ceiling. Palpable pain reverberated through her muffled cries and sent my stomach into a tumble.

I had to remind myself not to wake her suddenly. It was frightening to be woken like that. We’d been pulling each other from this state since we were young. I knew better.

I crawled into bed with her and hugged her thrashing body against my chest. Pushing fingers through her hair, I made soothing noises in her ear.

“Everything’s all right, Rynn,” I whispered. “Hush now. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s gone. It’s done. It’s not here.”

“The baron,” she gasped, “he locked me up in the attic, and then I heard those horrible footsteps and a heart beating in my ears!”

“He’s gone. He’s not here,” I told her, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. Her skin tasted of salt and spicy sweat.

“You didn’t know where I was.” Her chest heaved. I held her under her arm, my palm pressed over her heart. The organ sped against my hand, fluttering as fast as hummingbird wings. “He’d forgotten about me again, and you didn’t know I was in the attic. You didn’t know to bring me food and water. And there were angry voices in the dark. His voice! He called me terrible names, Loch.”

“He’s gone,” I soothed. “He’s dead, and he’s never coming back.”

Some of the tension relaxed out of her. “He’s really dead?”

“Very much so.”

“You’re certain? ”

“I was there when he died. I’m certain.” I pressed closer to her, molding my body to hers, nestling her against my chest. “He’s been gone nearly two decades now. He’s not ever going to hurt you again, Rynn.”

Her ragged breathing blew against her pillow. She swallowed. “You were there?”

“I was.”

Gulping in air, she wrapped her arms around mine. “Did you kill him?” She murmured the question so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.

And when I did understand, when what she was asking sunk into me deep, her words hung there heavy and dark. Her fingers gripped my wrist. She worked her thumb gently down my racing pulse. I sensed no judgement in the inquiry, no shock or horror in her soothing touches. Just that one pressing question.

I rested my chin in her hair. “I murdered him in the mire just outside the house in Light Lily. Killed him with the same two hands I’m holding you with now. It was his fault I’d lost you, and I knew it.”

I’d thought he’d killed her. I’d thought he’d taken her from me for good. Forevermore.

“Good,” she said, and her voice cracked. Her body loosened further, going lax in my arms. “That’s real good, Loch.”

“Mother used to get confused and go wandering. Do you remember?” I felt her hair tickle my chin as she nodded. “I told him she was missing, and he rushed out to go looking for her. I followed him, surprised him, and strangled him until his legs stopped kicking.”

She coughed out a little sob, like it had caught in her throat. I knew without her saying so that the sob was for me, for the hard and horrible thing I’d had to do. Not because I’d shocked or upset her. I sensed it in her comforting touches, in her need to reassure me even as her heart raced faster under my palm.

Once I’d started, the words poured from me freely. “I covered his body in lilacs, wicker, straw, and whatever I had been able to fit in my pockets. And I left his corpse as a gift to the weaver women under a willow tree. He was gone by the next morning. No trace of him. When he never came home, everyone assumed he must have stumbled into a sinking spot in the marsh.”

“What happened after that?”

“Then the ghosts came,” I said, voice raspy. “Or, they were always there, I should say, filling up the dark places. But I was sure of them now. I could hear them all the time and see them even more clearly—not just when I was trapped in the shadows. I could feel them more crisply, too. They punish me and rightly so. They scream at me and keep me awake. They are my comeuppance. My penance.”

“If we left this house,” she said, sounding hopeful, “if I took you someplace else, would the spirits leave you alone?”

“For a short time. I’ve tried. I own several properties, but they always find me again eventually. It’s not the house that’s haunted, Rynn. It’s me. I’m haunted. Because of what I did to Pa.”

“I think I might be haunted too,” Rynn sniffled. “I know I should be sorry for the part I played in his death, but—”

“Not for that,” I told her. “There are many things I’ll let you be sorry for. Not him being dead. He doesn’t deserve it.”

The next quiet that fell between us was thick and sticky with tension, like I’d sunk into a vat of pine sap. I waited in earnest for her to fill the silence, could almost hear her thoughts churning to get out.

“Are you ever going to forgive me?” she asked, her voice so soft it was difficult to hear her over the rush of my pulse. “For the rest of it? Are you ever going to forgive me for leaving you?”

I didn’t have an answer for her, so I didn’t give her one. I stayed with her that night until her breathing evened and she fell asleep.