This Haunted Heart

Chapter 18

Rynn Mavis

I awoke on the sofa before Lochlan did. Weak sunlight filtered in through the eastern windows. The fire continued to burn in the hearth, evidence that a fresh log had been added to it recently. I laid a palm on his chest, my way of thanking him for keeping the darkness at bay. My hand rose and fell with his even breathing.

I re-dressed in the floral tea gown from the previous day, attended to my morning ablutions, then made my way to the kitchen, craving company.

I talked at Martha while she prepared breakfast, and I snacked on yesterday’s bread and some cheese. She always made something for herself as well out of habit but never ate it, of course. She couldn’t talk back to me, but I sensed she liked my presence there, enjoyed hearing her name on my lips, cherished being remembered. I assisted with a lot of the things I used to when I was a girl in her kitchen.

I wasn’t doing it for anyone but myself, so I didn’t mind the labor.

I peeled potatoes and boiled eggs. I chopped vegetables. I attended to all the things she sat in front of me.

Before, I’d tried to receive deliveries when they arrived at the back door, but the young boy who made them always behaved strangely. That morning, it was just the same. There was a thunderous knock that nearly startled me out of my stool. The familiar sound of dropping parcels and a hurled newspaper came next, and I opened the back door just in time to catch the young man sprinting away like a startled rabbit.

“Silly boy,” I said to the young man’s retreating back as he streaked across the gardens. “Imagine anyone being afraid of little ole you,” I told Martha.

The room warmed at that. Something brushed across my arm, like a veil against my skin, and I touched that spot on my forearm gingerly, feeling close again to the woman who’d been like a grandmother to me.

Lochlan came into the kitchen then. He hovered by the door. “There you are. What are you doing in here?”

“Just keeping Martha company,” I told him.

His expression hardened. “Oh,” he said.

My stomach plummeted. If Lochlan still couldn’t let go of his anger at poor Martha, of all people, what chance did I have of ever earning his forgiveness? Last night he’d been quick to comfort me. We’d shared that crowded sofa, and he was as gentle with me as he always was, but the glimmer of hope his affection had given me was dashed yet again. The thought soured my appetite completely .

“Your breakfast should be ready soon,” I said gently, rising from my stool at the table.

“Aren’t you going to dine with me?” he asked.

“Not this time. I had some bread and cheese already, and I’m not very hungry . . . See you soon, Martha,” I said, then I brushed by him out of the kitchen, eyes averted.

Considering how soon Lochlan came up to my room thereafter, I doubted he’d had much to eat himself. He gave me enough time to pin up my hair and change into fresh clothing, a dark blue day dress. The skirt was gathered high in the front and hung long in the back. I had just settled in the window seat with a copy of Purgatorio when there was a tentative knock at my door.

“Can I come in?” he called through the wood.

“Of course,” I told him, setting the book down in my lap.

As he entered, the room filled with the scent of talcum powder, and a bouquet of bright pink peonies appeared in the vase on the mantel. Paeonia lactiflora , the apology flower. Lochlan moved towards the center of my room but halted when his boots squelched in a puddle on the carpet. He frowned down at it.

Dirty ditchwater began to leak from the ceiling and down the walls, dripping in brown and gray rivulets over the fireplace.

“Not again,” I groaned.

“That ghost is still lingering around here, is he?” Lochlan said.

“I can’t figure out what he wants. The water is harmless—it vanishes away in a moment—but try telling that to my feet after my stockings have been soaked through. And Gertrude doesn’t like him. He keeps messing up things she’s tidied and dripping all over her flowers.”

“I left your boots under your bed,” he told me. “You could put them on to keep your feet dry.”

I acknowledged the peace offering with a warm smile that faltered on my lips after a moment. “I’ll do that.”

I left behind my book and crossed to the bed, avoiding the wet footprints the spirit insisted on leaving everywhere he went.

“I suspect he drowned nearby,” Lochlan said as I slipped my feet into my boots. “He’s confused obviously. He keeps doing the same things over and over again, like he’s caught in a mill, circling through his patterns, going nowhere. That happens sometimes. They’re not as troublesome as the angry sort, but they don’t seem to fully understand they’re dead either. They sense something is wrong, but they can’t seem to snap out of it.”

“Can you help him move on?” I lifted my feet up onto the bed one at a time to tie my laces.

“I don’t know him. If I knew what he was after, I might be able to do something. Most of the time, I can’t do a thing.”

My lips pursed. “You know Martha,” I said softly.

His jaw clenched. “I told you already. She’s keeping herself here.”

“I don’t think that’s true. It doesn’t feel that way to me.” I stared up at him pleadingly. “Won’t you please try letting her go?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck and loosened his stiff collar. “I don’t have anything to say to her, Rynn.”

“If you found it in yourself to offer her forgiveness . . . I think that’s what she wants. I think that’s what they all want.” That was certainly what I wanted .

His jaw clenched. A muscle in his cheek jumped. “She stood back and watched. They all did.”

I rose from the bed, holding my skirt up to keep it off the damp carpets. “She couldn’t have stopped the baron from hurting you.”

“Not me,” he rumbled, and his hands made fists at his sides. “She stood back and let my father hurt you . She stood there and did nothing.”

I blinked up at him, trying to remember what he was talking about. The baron was certainly violent, but I couldn’t recall a single time Martha had stood by and watched.

It was Lochlan who had stopped fighting in the end. When he had stood up for me, it made things worse, so he quit doing that when his father was cruel—we both did. Afterward, he’d come and comfort me instead. It was safer for us.

I pictured the young scrawny version of him, hair a light auburn, arms folded protectively over his chest, face contorting with the misery of watching as his father brought the crop down across my thighs once more.

He wasn’t that young scrawny youth anymore, but his expression was much the same now. I returned to the window seat, studying his reflection in the glass, wondering if it was himself he was truly so angry with.

“Lochlan . . .” I said pleadingly, determined to relieve him of the burden of his misplaced guilt.

My words were cut off by the sound of a horse and rider cantering loudly up the drive. The gray gelding whinnied in an agitated manner, and the rider—

“Oh no,” I groaned.

Lochlan crossed to the window seat and peered out over me. “Who the devil is that? ”

I rubbed my fingers into my brow, hiding my eyes with my hand. “Utrecht,” I confessed.

His gaze snapped to me and narrowed. “What’s he doing here, of all places? Shouldn’t everyone believe you’re in Texas?”

I reached out and touched his arm. Tension tightened his muscles. “I sent a foolish letter out before I knew you were you .”

His arm loosened under my fingers but only just. “How?”

“Mr. Mazibuko. He posted it for me,” I said, wincing as the chestnut-haired rider below dismounted and fought to calm his anxious horse.

“And yet you failed to mention it after you knew I was me,” he added pointedly.

I let out a sigh, certain I’d just given him yet another reason to hold a grudge for twenty more years. “It’s been weeks. I thought he didn’t care or didn’t ever receive it, and I assumed there was nothing to tell. Then it was out of my mind entirely.”

“What did this letter say?” He stared down his nose at me, one brow arched.

“I told him I was leaving him for a better man.” I grimaced. “I told him my new lover had more wealth and a bigger cock and not to come looking for me at Nightingale House in the heart of Blackwood County. I told him he wasn’t wanted here.”

Lochlan’s lips twitched. “You just had to bring his cock into it.”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

He folded his arms over his chest. “What exactly were you planning? In a jealous rage, he’d come and save you from the pirate Finley, then you’d ride off into the sunset with him and hope he didn’t put your arm back in a sling? ”

“Actually no,” I said as below us Utrecht battled to calm his gelding. His light cloak was knocked from his broad shoulders, and he lost his top hat in the struggle. “I was hoping he’d come and pick a fight with Finley. Then while those two serpents had it out, I’d sneak away from the both of them . . . into the sunset with myself and my cash.”

“What a dreadful idea,” Lochlan grumbled.

I shot him a glare. “You didn’t leave me a lot of choices, you pirate . . . He’s not one of your workers. How’d he even get on the grounds?”

“I unlocked the gates after my sister visited,” he confessed, and my stomach flipped. “The groundskeeper Willoughby lives outside the fence, nearby. He’s getting on in years, and making him fuss with those big gates is too much. His young crew only assists him a couple of times a week, but he pops in daily to keep an eye on things. Besides, you were no longer interested in getting away, and I never wanted to be your jailer forever.”

Utrecht tied his horse to a hitching post near the lion statues. He picked his hat up off the gravel and dusted it down. His brows were dark brown and heavy. They drew together in a scowl. He sat his hat back over his hair and sauntered toward the entrance.

Lochlan turned to leave. I caught him, gripping the back of his waistcoat. “Let’s not answer the door,” I suggested. When he returned to my side, I hooked my arm through his to keep him there. “Let him get bored and go away.”

We waited and waited. There was pounding at the door, some cursing and shouting, then a jeered challenge followed by a string of oaths.

“The ghosts won’t let him in, will they?” I aske d

“I don’t think so,” Lochlan said, expression pensive. “A real charmer, this one is.” His lip curled at the corner in a half smile.

“I have terrible taste in men,” I said meaningfully.

Lochlan chuckled. “Touché.”

Shattered glass echoed from down below

“What was that?” I gasped.

“ That was the sound of a rock being hurled through my window,” he ground out, pulling his arm from mine.

“I don’t want you to get hurt! Loch—”

“We tried it your way,” he said sternly. “Now it’s my turn.”

“Wait! What exactly is your way?” Nerves had my stomach in knots. I reached for him, but he pulled out of my grasp.

“If he’s lucky, I’ll just put both of his arms in slings, then see him out. Here in the middle of the weavers’ woods and in a house full of ghosts, I could do much worse to a man like him.”

“Loch!” I dogged his heels. “I didn’t mean to—”

He stopped at the door and shot me a stern look. “Stay here. You’ve done enough, Rynn.”

His words sent another dart through my chest, more fuel for the monster on my back to torture me with. He left, closing the door behind him with a decisive snap.

I paced the room impatiently, sloshing through puddles and wet footprints, splashing the hem of my skirt. Dirty water began to drip down the walls again.

“Could you please do something more useful?” I grumped at the spirit.

It was then I decided that I would go and do something more useful. I wouldn’t stand there another minute, waiting to see what became of Lochlan. Opening the door carefully, I slipped into the hall. At the top of the stairs, muffled voices reached me from below and I leaned in. My heart thumped against the cage of my ribs, and my palms went clammy.

Determined footsteps came next, then more muffled voices quickly followed by shouted threats and broken furniture, the hollow thud of heavy things being thrown about.

I rushed down the stairs and rounded the hall into the gallery, toward the chorus of chaos. My heart was a war drum in my chest. Breaths left my lips in panicked puffs. Evidence of a battle was everywhere: paintings fallen from walls, a sculpture toppled on its side.

The sounds of fighting brought me sprinting into the hall through the back of the gallery, just as Utrecht came stumbling out of a sitting room. His nose bled, red stained the disheveled collar of his shirt, and he favored his left arm as he threw the door shut, grabbed up a chair from the hall and shoved it under the knob, locking it in place.

Utrecht leaned heavily against the door, his functioning arm holding up his weight, the injured one clutched to his heaving chest.

Blood dripped from his nose, down to his chin. He smiled at me, looking maniacal with crimson on his lips and in his mustache.

“My God, Rynn,” he said as the door vibrated from the force of Lochlan ramming into it from the other side, “you’ve found yourself a madman.”

I stopped a good distance away, relieved Lochlan was in decent enough shape to fight for his freedom as hard as he did. He rammed the door, and the frame rattled.

He was like a man possessed.

“I made a mistake, Utrecht,” I said loud enough to be heard over the commotion. “I never should have sent you that letter. ”

Utrecht’s grin went devilish. “No, you probably shouldn’t have. I almost didn’t come. Then I realized that if you were truly done with me, you’d never have goaded me so.”

“Stay away from her,” Finley bellowed, “or I’ll break both of your arms!”

I stole a steadying breath, regret hardening into a stone in my gut. “I shouldn’t have—”

“You don’t sound like yourself.” Utrecht squinted at me. The door rocked, and the chair legs scraped against the floor. He stood back from it, moving closer to me.

I slid away from him, farther down the hall. He was right. I didn’t sound like myself. The woman he knew didn’t have it in her to admit when she’d made a mistake. Admitting fault was a weakness I didn’t dare show to devils like him.

Utrecht swiped at his nose, staining his kid-skinned gloves red, then he extended his hand to me. “Let’s leave behind the madman before he breaks out of his cage.”

“She’s not going anywhere with you!” Finley roared, and the pounding against the door intensified.

I shook my head. “I’m staying here.”

Utrecht’s expression hardened to cold stone, smile vanishing. It was a look I knew well. If I wanted to fix this, I needed to make him feel like he’d won. That was the only way I ever got what I needed from him.

“I have money . . . for your troubles,” I offered. “If you agree to leave peacefully, I’ll pay you well.”

His lip twitched. “Now you sound more like yourself. Let’s go and get your money, then we’ll leave.”

“That’s not what I’m offering, Utrecht.”

Abruptly, the pounding at the door stopped. “I have money,” Finley said, his voice carrying. “Look around you. If it’s money you desire, take mine. Only leave her here.”

“I think you broke my nose.” Utrecht chuckled, dabbing at the blood drying in his mustache, and the sound of his maniacal mirth turned the blood in my veins to ice. It reminded me of the times he’d fight in the street for sport or just to frighten me into behaving the way he wanted. “Let’s have it then.”

“I keep a safe in my parlor,” Finley said, and I repressed a gasp because I knew what the parlor contained. It wasn’t a safe.

“What’s the combination?” Utrecht spoke casually, like the businessman he was. That’s all I ever was to him. Business. An item to be purchased and played with, which was fine with me to a degree. That had been the bargain after all, but then he’d insisted on ownership of me I’d never granted.

My body could be bought for a time back then, but my heart never could. It would always belong to Lochlan.

“You’ll need the key. It’s in here with me,” Finley said, the threat in his voice not nearly veiled enough.

“Ha,” Utrecht scoffed. “Nice try.”

“I’ll give it to you, just let me out,” Finley insisted.

Utrecht leapt toward me then, catching me by the arm and reeling me in. I yelped, and Finley started at the door again, cursing and knocking against it so violently he nearly dislodged the chair.

“Don’t fuss now,” Utrecht whispered in my ear, his working arm hooking over my shoulder. He gripped my throat, and fear coursed through my veins.

Indeed, I was nothing like the woman Utrecht knew, because there was no thrill in the fear I felt as his hand closed around my neck. This fright was a torment that tasted of bile and ash. It twisted my stomach and brought the ghosts pouring into the room, turning the hall a biting, bitter cold.

“I’ll let you out, madman, but if you try to hurt me, I’ll hurt her,” Utrecht threatened, dragging me against him.

“Don’t. Touch. Her.” Finley barked each word, but his fight against the door ceased.

Utrecht kicked the chair out from under the knob. Finley surged out into the hall, his clothing disheveled, hair a mess across his brow, the bronze in his eyes glowing bright. He was otherwise unharmed, and I let out the air trapped in my lungs, relieved.

Utrecht shook me gently, reminding us both who was in control here. “Put the key in her hand. Don’t leave me waiting . . .”

Finley pulled out the chain attached to his waistcoat, freeing the ring of keys. Then his eyes found mine and softened, and he was my Lochlan again. He removed the key and placed it in my palm, the touch long and lingering.

“You know what to do,” Utrecht hissed in my ear.

I reached back and slipped the key into his pocket.

“That’s it,” Utrecht said, voice patronizing like I was a pet who’d finally gotten the trick right. Then he backed us against the wall. “You lead the way, madman. Try anything and you know what I’ll do.” He gave my neck a squeeze until my breath hitched and I wheezed.

Lochlan’s nostrils flared. Hands in fists, he marched ahead of us. I followed, pushed forward by Utrecht, his hand a leash around my neck. We cut through the gallery, then rounded the back stairs.

Our nearness to that ebonized door covered in locks frenzied the angry ghosts shut up inside. They pounded on the walls and doors so hard the beat of it reverberated under my feet.

Utrecht’s hand slid away from my throat. He stepped around me, eyes locked on the strange door, mouth gone slack. I remembered seeing the ebonized door for the first time, feeling the haunting pull of it.

“It’s only natural for the living to be curious about the dead,” Lochlan said coolly.

“What’s in there?” Utrecht asked, entranced.

“The greatest treasure of all. Answers,” Lochlan said. He stood casually with his hands in his pockets, like the fight was already over. “The answer to what will happen to you when you die.”

I peered cautiously between them.

“I don’t plan to ever die.” Utrecht stalked closer to the parlor with all the arrogance of a self-made man who’d gained his fortune through the dogged pursuit of things he needed to control. Like me. And now the mystery before him.

“There’s nothing in there you want to trifle with,” Lochlan said. The pounding grew, incessant. “But they certainly want you to try, don’t they? Can you hear them?”

“I hear . . . I’m not sure . . .” Utrecht stepped closer. The knocking grew so loud I felt it behind my breastbone. I muffled the sound with my palms pressed to my ears. Then all at once the pounding stopped.

“It’s the wrath in you,” Lochland said, voice piercing in the new quiet. “They want at you and all that rage. You’re just like they are.”

Utrecht stared at nothing, not listening at all. “Unlock the doors,” he whispered, fishing the key out of his pocket and pressing it back into Lochlan’s hand. He glanced briefly at the empty vases, and I wondered what his eyes saw there. What message had Gertrude left for him with her flowers?

Lochland returned the large brass key, holding it aloft. “You’ve been warned. I won’t be responsible for your destruction. You can do that to yourself.”

“This house . . .” Utrecht said, and he sounded almost humbled as he spoke—a state I’d never heard him in before. He was not a meek man. “It’s the most unnatural thing I’ve ever come upon. I want to take it all apart and see inside it, down to its bones.”

“It’s not the house that’s unnatural,” Lochlan said, brushing a hand casually over his chest to smooth what was ruffled. “It’s the people in it, and you can’t see my bones, though I welcome you to try. They won’t hang a man who kills in self-defense. Where you’re concerned, I’m eager for the excuse.”

Utrecht swiftly took the key back from him and set to work on the locks, attacking them with vigor, wincing when he had to make use of his injured arm. The ghosts remained eerily quiet. I held my breath as the last chain came loose. Slowly, he gripped the knob and turned it. Then he peeked his head inside, and a small expectant breath rushed past my lips.

Utrecht stepped fully into the room, and the hall went wintry cold.

Lochlan pulled the door shut behind him, threw the latch, and attached the chain, and that’s when the screaming started.

The sound was so oppressive and blood-curdling, my legs were sprinting me away, down the hall past the gallery, before my mind caught up to the rest of me. Get out, get out, get out, my panicked brain shouted.

I didn’t slow down until I was shouldering my way out the front entrance, crunching broken window glass under my boots. The gelding in the drive whinnied and reared, and I slowed my pace, arms lifted.

There was my escape, my chance away from all that frightfulness.

I made soothing noises. My heart thundered in my chest and my hands shook, but the horse stopped rearing. It remained agitated, ears twitching and back hoof stomping. I sang a little song to calm the beast, one that used to help me with the animals when I was a domestic.

When I had the gelding calm and nuzzling my palm, I spared a thought for what I was doing. I’d left the house because the horrid screams had startled me. But where was I going now?

More shattered glass echoed in the distance, and Utrecht’s piercing scream rent the air. The horse huffed. I took his reins, untying him from the post, and whispered calmingly to him to keep him from rearing again. Utrecht sprinted out from the backside of the manor. His hair had gone completely white. He ran like he had death at his heels, until the woods and the shadows between the trees swallowed him whole.

I patted the horse’s neck, my mind whirling.

Should I go back inside to check on Lochlan? What would become of Utrecht now, and did I even care? No, I didn’t. The weaver women could have him.

The same thought I’d had that morning that stole my appetite came to visit me again, only it was louder this time. If Lochlan couldn’t forgive poor sweet Martha—if he couldn’t forgive himself—what chance was there for me? She’d been serving her sentence for eleven years, and my wrongs were so much worse than hers.

I couldn’t even forgive myself. How in hell did I expect Lochlan to manage it ?

I didn’t. I shouldn’t. There was no hope for that at all.

“But I love him,” I whispered to the horse, to the spirits, to the weaver women who might be listening.

I would always love him.

But, oh God, I didn’t want to be one of his ghosts anymore. I didn’t want to be ruined. I didn’t want him to carry around the pieces of my shattered heart in his breast pocket forevermore. I wanted to fix what I had broken—including the things broken about me. I wanted to help him, but it was becoming painfully clear that I wouldn’t be able to make anything right unless I took action, unless I did something.

My savings were inside the house. He’d told me exactly where I could find my cash, but I didn’t go back for it. Lochlan had searched and searched for whatever remained of me for twenty years. I’d spent that same amount of time trapped in guilt, lonely and struggling, earning that fortune. He could keep it. This was my final penance.

“Rynn?” At my back came the sad voice of the man I loved so much my chest hurt. “Please don’t go, Rynn.”

I didn’t look behind me for a long moment. I couldn’t. I knew how much watching me leave would hurt him even if I didn’t intend to stay gone, and I couldn’t bear it. In my mind I could see him crowding the doorway, his expression as broken as the shattered glass he stood in. Those sad eyes . . . I didn’t let myself think about them. I hated every second of causing him pain.

“Utrecht is gone,” he soothed. “You’re safe now.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” I whispered. “This isn’t goodbye.”

“Then why do you look like you’re about to start crying?” he said, a catch in his voice.

I sucked back the threat of tears, sniffling. “Because I don’t want to make you sad.” I coughed out a sob.

“Then stay !” He took one great step closer and hesitated, like I was the horse he didn’t want to make bolt.

“I need to fix it, Loch!” I swiped at my nose. “I can’t leave you this way. Look at what I did to you! How can I say I love you and just leave you like this? I promise I’ll come back to you, but please let me fix it! Let me make it right again!”

“Rynn.” That was all he said. That was all he had to. No plea in all the world would have struck me harder.

“I need you to believe that I’ll come back,” I said, fighting to get the words out. I swallowed down another sob. “I keep making mistakes. Bringing Utrecht here was yet another. I’m going to fix what I did, find what I stole, and then I’ll return here like I should have before. I’ll prove that I love you. I promise you, Loch.”

“You won’t be able to find my ring,” he pleaded. “It’s been twenty years. Ground shifts. With the rain and the runoff, who knows where it is now? I believe you, all right? I believe you buried it. I know you’re sorry. I’d never ever stick you in that horrid cell in the basement. I can barely deny you anything now. Of course I’d never put you down there. Please come away from that horse.”

“I’m not worried about that stupid cage. I have to try this! I broke you. I stole from you. I made it impossible for you to forgive me. For the love of God, I have to fix something ! I can’t go back in time, but maybe I can do this one thing!”

I mounted the horse with some difficulty in my day dress. Even riding astride, I’d be uncomfortable, though Utrecht had spared no expense on the tack. The leather was fine and buttery soft, but I wasn’t wearing the right clothing. That wouldn’t deter me, though. Nothing would deter me from my new purpose.

Run away. Run away until it hurt a little less. That’s all I knew how to do. Was that what I was really doing now? Running until I found something else to distract me from the monster on my back and the talons of guilt in my gut, just a little? Just enough.

There was no doubt that when the time came that my body finally failed me, I’d return to this house. I would be one of his ghosts properly until he breathed his last and joined me, but I didn’t want us to live our lives that way, too.

“I’ll come back to you, Loch, like I should have before, and I’ll return what I took,” I vowed, and my voice carried. It echoed in my ears alongside the rush of my pulse. Tears blurred my vision as I pushed the gelding into a trot and left Nightingale House—my house—behind me.

* * *

The horse wanted to run, eager to get as far away from that eerie place as he could, but his speed was not comfortable for me. I didn’t often ride, and it was a struggle to slow him down.

Three times I nearly turned the gelding back. Leaving Lochlan hurt me so. The wound went as deep as it had that first time all those years ago. I was tired and hungry and parched. My eyes hurt from crying. There was some water in a canteen in the saddlebag, and a moderate amount of cash as well. It would see me to the bank at Salt Rock comfortably.

I could sell the horse. Purchase some equipment to hunt down the ring with. Pay a few extra hands to help me . . .

Or I could claim my emergency funds and begin again. I knew how to start over. I’d perfected that art in the last two decades.

I pushed the latter thought away. It had come to me out of an instinct built from years of surviving alone. I wouldn’t do that to Lochlan now. Not again. I had one mission here: save him. Whatever remained of him, he was still mine. I’d search for that damn ring I’d stolen, even if it took me twenty years.

If I thought the ghosts would leave me alone now that I was away from Lochlan and that house, I was wrong. A part of me had guessed that already. I’d been running from my past, hiding from the darkness all my life. I just didn’t realize there were spirits in it. But now I did, and they haunted me still.

They were attracted to my grief. The wayward ghosts that traveled the road passed by me and left me sad and cold and sent a prickle down my spine, because my heart was just as haunted as Lochlan’s and always had been.

“I don’t want to do the wrong thing,” I told no one particular. The horse or the spirits perhaps. Or the weaver women if they could hear me from their woods still. “Why does everything I do always feel like the wrong thing?”

Should I go back and reassure him more? Stay the course? Both seemed like the incorrect answer.

I followed the road, unfamiliar with my surroundings. I was faster on my own, and because I didn’t need to stop at a station to drop off mail like Mr. Mazibuko did, I made good time back to the inn that I knew.

I was nervous as I spotted the Drasland orchard. We hadn’t left our room in good shape. Perhaps the owners would turn me away, but I was hungry. My thighs were sore. It was nearing the lunch hour, which meant there wasn’t enough daylight for me to try to make it all the way back to the city, and the horse would need to rest. I didn’t know the animal and didn’t dare push him too hard.

I could still make it back to the house, though . . .

Maybe I just needed to sleep on it. Needed a night away to form a stronger plan. Lochlan was right. My chances of finding that tiny ring were slim, and I hadn’t buried it very deep. Runoff could have carried it anywhere.

The owner, Eva, was less friendly than before when I pulled up, and she handed the reins off to her boys, but she didn’t turn me away. In fact, she also didn’t seem surprised I was there as she guided me inside to a sitting room, promising tea while I waited on a meal.

“Rest here,” she said just outside the archway, then she departed.

The room was not empty. Lochlan sat in a wingback near the fireplace.

“How?” I demanded, voice rising.

“I knew you’d stick to the road,” he said calmly enough, but his fingers told a different story, digging so hard into the leather of his seat that his nails went white. “I cut through the woods on horseback and halved the travel time. I know the mire well.”

He knew the mire well because he’d spent years searching the swamps for whatever remained of me. He hadn’t said it, but I heard that in his words anyway. The monster on my back sunk its talons into my gut. With great restraint, I resisted doubling over.

I was tired and thirsty and guilty and sad. I stomped over to the sofa seat and collapsed onto it. He poured me a cup of tea, and it steamed invitingly. I didn’t hesitate to bring it to my lips and drink, I was so desperate for comfort. The flow of warmth down my throat soothed my nerves.

Lochlan removed a leather pouch from his pocket and tossed it onto the table. “I thought about being a pirate and putting weaver-wood in the kettle.”

I set my cup down hastily, and he smirked at me.

“I didn’t do it,” he said, lifting the saucer and handing it back.

“That’s an improvement, I suppose,” I murmured, reclaiming the cup. The warmth between my fingers loosened the tension in my belly.

“And I didn’t bring a carriage or a wagon,” he said. “There wasn’t time. It’d be difficult to get you home in a stupor without one.”

I glared at him through the steam. “That’s less of an improvement, Loch.”

His grin went crooked. “I’m unreasonable around you, Rynn, but I am trying to be less of a pirate. Give me that, at least.”

I drank more of my tea, gathering strength from its heat between my fingers. “I need you to try much harder.”

He rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. “What you saw earlier, what happened with Utrecht . . . that had to be frightening. But that would never happen to you, Rynn. You aren’t like him. You’re safe in my house.”

“I think we both know I didn’t leave because of the spirits,” I said, avoiding his eyes. I could hardly stand the weight of them. “I told you what I planned to accomplish.”

“I don’t think that’s why you left.”

“I told you—”

“You’re running again.”

“I’m not!” I insisted, and my heart pinched.

“You are,” he said, reaching out to lay a hand over the teacup that rattled between my fingers. “I heard you all those times you told me you couldn’t stay and that you wanted to take me away. So this time I’m running with you.”

It was a good thing he put his hand over the cup when he did. He caught it when the next sob wracked me and I dropped it. He placed the cup on the table, and he sat back and let me cry. I wept until the image of him was a blur, my eyes were so wet.

“I’m supposed to be trying to fix you, not the other way around,” I said, but I wasn’t certain how much of that was coherent.

Lochlan pulled out a thick envelope from the lapel of his waistcoat, and he set it on the table beside the weaver-wood. I took both the pouch—best not to tempt him—and the envelope. My cash was inside. He hadn’t bothered to put on a coat, he’d been in such a hurry. But he’d made sure he brought me my fortune.

“You forgot that,” he said softly.

“Penance,” I told him, dropping it back on the table between us. It landed hollowly.

He shook his head. “I don’t want your penance.”

“Then what do you want from me, Loch? Because I can’t be one of your ghosts anymore.”

He didn’t have an immediate answer for me, or it wasn’t one he could articulate.

He watched the fire crackle for a moment, then his lips parted and he sighed somberly. “When I first went looking for you after Hulda told me the truth, I started in Light Lily and retraced your travels. I stopped at a number of music halls in places just outside of Blackwood County until I finally found the Night Lark. I didn’t want to let myself hope, but I couldn’t help noticing that you never traveled very far away from home. Not for someone who wanted to get away. In fact, had you gone far, it might have been impossible to find you.”

“I didn’t go far,” I agreed.

“Is there any chance at all, even in the slightest, that some part of you hoped I’d find you one day?”

A sorrowful moan caught in my throat. “There’s no doubt about it, Loch. Of course I wished for that. I didn’t let myself dwell on it, though. I didn’t dare hope, but I wanted that. I wanted to be wrong about everything. Wanted you to still have it in your heart to love me after all that I’d done. I ruined it, but then I always knew you were better than I deserved. So maybe you would fix what I couldn’t.”

“No part of me ever stopped loving you,” he said, and his breath hitched. “Even when I was my most unforgiving.”

I stared at him for a time, gathering my thoughts. Eventually I pulled my legs up under me, wanting to make myself smaller on the cushion. “I know you don’t think I’m capable of love,” I said softly, “and I understand why. There were even a few moments there when I was thinking on your words and I was scared that you might be right.”

I had his full attention now. His sad eyes glistened in the light from the hearth and the brightness from the windows. Mine stung with threatening tears.

“But I know I’m capable of that most torturous of emotions,” I continued around the knot growing in my throat. “I know I love you by how much I hated the people and things that made me think of you while we were apart. Poetry? I can’t read it. Can’t stomach it anymore because it reminds me of those beautiful, lyrical letters you used to write to me. Shakespeare? Hate him. Can’t enjoy the bard without thinking about the way you comforted me after I read that damn tragedy.”

A fierceness lit his gaze. He looked like a man possessed. There was sadness there, too, but he was all Loch, all mine, because Loch and Finley were one and the same. My pirate.

I was a pirate too, though.

“A few years back,” I continued, wet lashes lowering, “I met a young man in Salt Rock who announced to the bar that he’d just sold all of his belongings so he could head west to seek his fortune. Everything he owned was in his purse. But how dare he look a bit like you used to. I stole that purse, because how dare he make me think of you when I was trying so hard not to. He wasn’t the only one either. Sometimes they smelled like you used to. Sometimes they had your eyes, or I caught them reading one of your favorite books. How dare they. So I stole from them too, and I never once felt bad about it. I just hated them so much for making me remember what I’d lost—what I foolishly gave up.”

“Why are you telling me this, Rynn?” he asked, a scratch in his voice.

“I know I’m not any good at loving you.” My voice cracked. “I’ve not been what you deserve, and I doubt I ever will be because I don’t truly know how to repair all I’ve done. But I do know that I love you. I loved you when you were a boy. Then I loved you when you were that young man I gave my heart away to. And I love whoever you are now. Finley and Lochlan. No matter what we do to each other, I can’t help it. I can’t make me stop it and neither can you. I love you, Loch.”

“But that doesn’t mean you’re coming with me right now, does it?” he said, shoulders rolling forward.

“I . . . I don’t know. All I’m certain of in this life is that I need loving you to hurt a little less,” I confessed. “And I think you need that, too. Maybe getting that ring back is the answer, and if it is, then it’s worth the hunt. However long it takes. ”

He left his chair and came to the sofa, sliding in next to me. I fell against him, needing his touch to soothe away the ache spreading across my chest.

“I want to forgive you and be forgiven,” he said, tears landing in my hair, his arms sturdy and warm as they encircled me. “I want to let it all go. I just don’t know how. Tell me how.”

“I don’t know either.” A tear dripped down my nose. Another fell across my lips. “The audacity of me, demanding something I don’t even know how to do.”

“Pirates are good at finding treasure,” he said playfully around the catch in his voice. “Why not take me with you?”

I shook my head. “If there’s to be any digging, it’s got to be me that does it, I think.”

He rocked me gently side to side, the motion calming as the fire warmed my face. “I often think about what it would be like if we could go back in time. What I would change. What if we could do that?”

“I would want to change so many things,” I said.

“What if you’d never buried my ring at all? Then no one would have to do any digging.” His voice took on a dreamy quality that soothed me. “What if we pretended you escaped to safety, then sent it back to me. My ring is stored away unharmed. I knew you were alive, and I came for you just like you always wanted me to. What if we pretended that’s what you’re doing here right now? You came to this inn, to meet me again for the first time.”

Turning in his arms, I blinked at him. Searching his face, I found him to be sincere. An excitement brewed inside me that made me feel lighter. “You want to begin again? Here and now?”

“As a start,” he said, squeezing me against him. “If we’d finally found each other right here and right now—no theft, no running away, no coercion, no revenge, no need for forgiveness because it’s all been righted—what would you want to do first?”

The fire consumed the logs with a spark of light and a crackle as I pondered his heavy question. “I don’t know if it’s the right thing . . .”

“Tell me anyway,” he said encouragingly. “Tell me whatever is on your mind. We’ll decide together.”

“I want to return to Light Lily,” I said, surprised by how resolved the words sounded sliding out of my lips. “I think I need to go back to the house one last time. I’m not quite sure why. I just know that when I looked through the window in the parlor, it finally made those dreams about that door stop, and when I learned the baron was really gone, I finally got his voice out of my nightmares. What if we could put that whole house out of our minds for good? Banish it forever ?”

“You think visiting the old house will make us stop dreaming about it?”

“Yes! But I could never go back there alone. I wouldn’t dare. If I’m pretending I met you here for the first time, if I think about why I’d come to this place over any other, I think that’s what I’d be trying to do. Trying to make myself go back there again.”

“Come with me.” He stood, holding my hand in his. “Cutting through the mire into Light Lily will be quick, but we should hurry while we have the sun. You’ll need to keep close to me on your horse. The mire is deceiving. It can appear safe, and then suddenly you’re chin-deep in muck.”