This Haunted Heart

Chapter 19

Lochlan Finley

I hadn’t been back to the house of my youth in ages. Not since the waters began to rise as growth in nearby cities doubled, and the marsh flooded. I’d returned just once to make sure my adoptive mother was delivered safely to her sister’s home in Ohio, and then I abandoned that horrid place completely.

Nature had reclaimed it. Ivy wound up the steep gables and overwhelmed the lattice. Greenery covered most of the windows. The tree canopy above us had grown so thick, sunlight filtered through in weakened beams.

“It’s sinking,” Rynn said as I helped her dismount.

It was. As we neared, its unlevel foundation buried in the water became clearer. We left our horses on higher ground between two ash trees .

“The mire will claim it all eventually,” I said. The house leaned slightly to the west. There was something satisfying about knowing that it would soon exist no more. I hoped it would take all my dreadful memories with it.

“It’s not claiming it fast enough,” she said, and I understood immediately what she meant. She wanted it gone, too. Wanted to obliterate it and everything it represented from the earth forevermore.

Rynn hoisted her skirts and marched through the wet.

“The house isn’t safe. Especially not on that side where it’s sinking,” I cautioned, and nerves had my heart thundering in my chest, but determined as she was, she didn’t slow. I raced after her, splashing in the muck that came up over my ankles.

“Do you have your lighter?” she asked when I caught up to her.

“Yes, but—”

“Good. I’m going to burn it down!”

“Rynn,” I said, concern diminishing my voice. “ He’s in there.”

She knew immediately who I meant, and she stopped, dropping her skirt into the water. Muck soaked up into the hem, darkening the blue shade to black.

Rynn let out a shuddering breath. “I’m so fucking tired of being afraid of that man . . .” She stuck her hand out, palm up. “Give me your lighter.”

“No. I’m going with you,” I said, more resolve in my voice than I felt in my soul. I was tired of fearing Father too, though the sentiment did nothing to dull the sensation tightening my chest and pebbling my skin.

Water gushed over the entry steps. We climbed the porch to dry ground. The front doors stuck from disuse but were unlocked. I muscled them open. We were careful where we stepped, avoiding floorboards that were too soft. We moved cautiously out of the entryway, around the main staircase, and into the drawing room where the uneven floors inclined.

The fireplace was piled high with dried logs, crinkled leaves, and ash. A thick layer of dust settled over everything. A single sofa remained, stained with age, abandoned like the rest of the estate.

I pointed to the wide windows. “I saw you for the very first time right through there.”

Rynn came and stood beside me, dress dripping into a puddle beneath her. We peered out of the dingy glass together, seeing what once was: A long drive. Boren, tall and pale, chopping wood near the stables. Gertrude tending to the floors while my mother crocheted on the sofa. Martha creating heavenly smells in the kitchen.

And lovely little raven-haired Rynn, walking up the drive carrying an old potato sack full of her things between her small hands.

“I saw you, too, saw you looking at me, and I hoped you were nice.” She slipped her hand inside mine and gave it a squeeze. “And you were.”

I smirked at her. “Not a pirate?”

“Not at all. Well, not yet.” Her smile was sweet, and it crinkled the corners of her dark eyes.

We set to work then. I pushed the sofa up against the central wall. Then I gathered the logs from the fireplace and built a pyre around the old seat. Rynn ripped down the dusty curtains and added them to the mess.

She opened the closet door, searching for discarded linens. The door clattered against the wall, and Rynn stopped, eyes downcast. I moved to see what had made her pause .

The bottom of the door was scored with scratch marks made by tiny hands—our tiny hands.

I crossed to her, steps echoing in the quiet room, and I moved her aside gently. Age and wear had turned the door brittle. I kicked it apart in two brutal strikes. The boards splintered, raining down broken bits like matchwood. Lip quivering, Rynn helped me gather the pieces, and we added them to the very top of the pile.

A floorboard creaked overhead, and we both froze. My breath caught. Our gazes drifted to the ceiling, following the sound of groaning wood. Upstairs, a door opened then closed. Another flew wide, smacking against a wall before shutting just as sharply.

Rynn’s throat bobbed. “Is that him?”

I nodded. My body had gone inert. For a moment, I couldn’t even get my fingers to respond to my orders.

“What’s he doing?” she whispered.

I wasn’t yet sure. More doors opened. More boards groaned above us. Heavy bootsteps clomped down the stairs. Tension gathered in my shoulders, coiling my muscles. A part of me half expected to see him there exactly as I remembered him: the tall man with the big mean hands, a smile that never reached his eyes, and a barbed tongue that could tear me to shreds faster than his whip ever could.

The man who was supposed to be my father.

But there was nothing but a shade of him now. His ghost, a smoky transparent essence, moved solemnly downstairs, peeking into one room before trying the next.

“He’s searching for something,” I said, then it dawned on me. “He’s looking for my mother. She hasn’t lived here for fifteen years at least. He’s caught in a mill, like the spirit that won’t stop making your floor wet. He searches room by room. Then he begins again . . . There he goes now, back upstairs to start over.”

Rynn’s brows lifted. Then she frowned. “He’s been searching for her here for that long?”

“Yes,” I said resolutely as doors clattered above us. “He’s not even paying any attention to us.”

She sighed. “I hate how much that makes me feel sorry for him.”

I rubbed a hand across my chest, easing the twinge of sympathy building there between my ribs. “I hate it, too.”

“What will happen to him once we burn the house down?”

“He’ll keep searching the mire. He’ll never stop looking. There was no one else he cared about in all the world.” Mother was the only person my father ever showed any affection for, and he couldn’t find her. It had been a while, but I received a letter from her sister from time to time. She’d let me know how my adoptive mother was doing. She would still get confused at times, and in those moments, she always asked after my father, wanting to know when he would come home.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” Rynn said, face crumpling. “I want the house dead and gone too . . . but I don’t need to add to his suffering now. Not in this way.”

“I could help him,” I said, peeking down at the mud on my boots, “but I don’t know if I want to.”

Rynn hooked her arm around mine and laid her head against my shoulder. “It should be whatever you want, Loch. I think you should decide, but it doesn’t have to be right now. We could always come back here, you know? There’s no rule saying it has to be today.”

The freedom to choose felt like the most beautiful gift. With her warmth pressed against my side, I knew what I wanted: him gone from here, far from us, and this house gone with him. I waited until his form returned to the stairs.

“Pa?” I said gently, and the creaking on the steps ceased.

The shade hovered there, and the house went cold, so cold the windows frosted over, and my breath fogged up. Rynn pressed against me, shivering.

“Don’t you remember, Pa?” I told him. “Mother’s not here. She’s at her sister’s, and she’s expecting you. You’re not going to leave her waiting, are you?”

The shadows darkened to a pitch-black I couldn’t see through, and the temperature dropped further. I hugged Rynn to my chest against the bitter bite of the cold.

“Loch?” Rynn gasped.

A familiar fear gripped my heart, crippling me. I clung to her as the darkness moved to cover us. Rynn buried her head in my waistcoat, and I hid my eyes in her hair. The shadows swallowing us up were absolute.

I felt like a boy again, small and powerless, shrouded in a night that was full of all the same strange sounds I’d come to fear the most. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t feel anything but the cold and the icy grip of Rynn’s fingers digging into me.

I was drowning in the darkness, in the scritch-scratching against the wood, the eerie creaks and groans of creatures I couldn’t see.

But then Rynn began to sing. The melodious tune grew louder, drowning out those horrid sounds. It wasn’t a song like anything I’d hear in a music hall. It wasn’t sultry or beguiling. It wasn’t haunting like the ballads my nightingale performed in my dreams. It was nothing like the songs she’d sung when I was sick.

This was a silly made-up song little Rynn used to sing just for fun. The joy of it cut straight through the darkness. The urge to laugh warmed my soul, chasing off the brutal cold.

“Pa,” I said, and the darkness faded from an inky black to a light blue like the sky when the sun was rising. His shade loomed there, a foggy presence I stared directly at, daring him to come for me. “You were a shit father.”

“Damn right he was,” Rynn added at my side, and I pushed her behind me. Then a breathy, nervous chortle escaped her before she went back to humming her silly song.

The shade hovered, growing darker, casting a shadow down the staircase that wrapped around the banister. He charged but stopped just in front of me.

I thought I’d be frightened still, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t find even a sliver of fear in me for this loathsome man. I could sense the panic and terror in him, and I was no longer a small boy and no stranger to ghosts. I’d outgrown him. He’d looked like a big strong monster when I was a child, but to my adult eyes, my father was nothing more than a sad, pathetic man, too scared of shadows to face them himself. He’d turned Rynn and me into bait for the spirits that haunted him, and I could think of nothing more pitiful.

He was weak. Too desperate and wretched to hold my fear now.

“But I was wrong before,” I choked, remembering the words I’d used twenty years ago to trick him out into the marsh, away from seeing eyes. Rynn laced her fingers through mine, and I found strength in her touch. “I’m sorry, Father. I was wrong when I told you Mother went wandering in the mire. She’s not lost. She’s not here at all. ”

He wasn’t going to hurt us anymore. He couldn’t. Not without me hurting him worse. He was more afraid of us than we were of him. He was nothing but a shade now. No different than the shadows that once haunted him, as helpless as wrathful ghosts always were and just as lost.

The steps creaked, the floorboards rumbled, and the shadows melted away. The doors flew open, and an eerie wind whistled inside, bringing in the light. The room warmed once more, thawing the windows.

“Is it over?” Rynn asked me.

I pulled out my lighter and struck the flint. The small flame heated my hand.

“Not just yet,” I said, and the turn of my lips felt wild and wolfish.

I followed Rynn into the parlor. She settled in the center of the room, taking in the spartan space. Spiders spun cobwebs between the bar and the wall.

“I fell in love with you in this room,” she said, and the confession brought me up short.

“That so?” I was still emotional from the conversation with Father. Her words made my throat burn. I didn’t resist the tears when they came. Rynn had certainly witnessed me crying often enough that there was no shame in it now.

She pointed at the corner of the room nearest the archway. “My knees hurt and my hands were cramping after scrubbing the floors in the hall. I was hiding in here from more chores, but the baron caught me. He started in with his hollering. You were over there.”

I remembered the moment she described, and I could picture a smaller, scrawnier, twelve-year-old me hiding near the bar—afraid, but not for myself. I was scared he’d box her ears again or worse. I couldn’t stand it when he hit her. Nothing made me feel more useless—or angrier. I hated it most when no one else did anything. The other adults would pretend it hadn’t happened at all.

“You broke a glass for me,” she said, and her lips twisted just so with the sweetest hint of a smile. “I knew you’d done it on purpose. I saw you knock it off the bar. He turned on you instead, and I was sure of it then. I knew I loved you. I knew I always would . . . Do you believe me, Loch? Do you believe I love you?”

“I do,” I said urgently. I couldn’t form words to express what that meant to me. I could barely swallow for the catch in my throat. Rynn was a runner, but when the one man she’d always feared the absolute most had charged at us just now, she hadn’t left me.

She hadn’t run.

Rynn gave me my space then. She found an abandoned rocking chair in the parlor, and she threw it against the wall, repeatedly. She giggled gleefully while she shattered it. I made torches out of the broken pieces, wrapping the ends in curtain fabric while Rynn went looking for more things she could smash.

When she was finished, we used the torches to light the shattered remnants of the door first, burning away the evidence of the desperate scratch marks our smaller fingers had made. We stuffed our torches under the sofa, pushing them up against the wood piled there. It didn’t take long for it all to catch—everything was so aged and dry—and then we hurried out of the house, back into the marshy wetlands.

It was a slog to reach the horses, but once on dry land, we made a point of watching the thick smoke billow from the windows. The flames came next, burning away the greenery and blackening the glass. The fire roared and crackled as it expanded, carrying our retribution with it.

Rynn threw her hands up and cheered on the flames. I laughed at her exuberance. The walls caught. It was shocking how fast it all spread.

“Houses are supposed to protect people,” she said, as more fire licked up the wooden siding. “You were a shit house!”

I found a stone in the grass, and I hurled it through an attic window. Rynn joined me. We threw rocks until our arms were tired, and I worried we’d lose the light if we didn’t leave soon.

“Where are we going now?” I asked her.

“Home,” she said.

“We won’t make Salt Rock at this hour.”

“Not there.” She shook her head, her smile small and sweet. “I want to go back to my house. The one you built for me.”

* * *

I shared her bed that night, though we were both too exhausted to do more than sleep. When I awoke at sunrise, I found her staring at the ceiling, already alert.

“What do you think happened with Utrecht?” she asked me. “Do you think he’ll bother us again?”

I tucked my arm under my pillow, propping up my head. “I doubt he’ll dare. The weaver women do not tolerate men like him. It’s unlikely he made it through their woods unscathed. If he survived them at all.”

“Good riddance, I suppose,” Rynn said, playing her fingers over the embroidery on the blankets, expression pensive. “Are the witches . . . are all of them dead?”

“They’re ghosts, yes.” I squinted at her, wondering how long she’d been awake, staring at the ceiling, pondering witches and ghosts. “Did you sleep well?”

“No,” she said solemnly, but then she shot me a grin. “But I didn’t dream about that damn house either.”

“An improvement,” I cooed.

She sighed, and her eyelids fluttered closed. “I know I need to get myself out of bed now . . . I just. I don’t know. I just feel rotten inside. I guess I’m disappointed because I was hoping I’d feel better after all of that yesterday. Shouldn’t I feel relieved? Renewed? Forgiven?”

“You are forgiven, but why do you have to get out of bed at all?”

“Oh, you know,” she said, waving my words off. “One shouldn’t wallow and all that.”

“Where is that written?” I asked her.

She snorted. “You know what I mean. It’s time to start the day. Time to shake off the ghosts, the darkness, and all the bad feelings. Time to get dressed, put on a smile, and get on with it.”

“Hm. Not today, I think,” I told her.

She turned onto her side to face me. “What are you suggesting?”

“We make our own rules, Rynn. That’s what I’m suggesting.” I threw off the blankets and popped to my feet. “Stay right there and don’t stop wallowing. I’ll be back.”

Her chuckling followed me out of the room.

I returned with a cart loaded with tea service, a kettle of coffee, and breakfast, including an assortment of boiled goose eggs courtesy of our friends the witches. Because it was her favorite, I brought extra butter and thick warm toast.

We ate breakfast in bed. She insisted on leaving to wash. I let her attend to her morning ablutions so I could visit the lavatory and see to mine, but then I instructed her to put her nightclothes back on. She re-joined me under the covers in the chemise I liked best, the one that was sheer in all the most tempting places and hugged her lush body.

I rolled on top of her, caging her in with my arms and easing between her inviting thighs. “Are we still wallowing?” I asked her.

She stuck her lip out in a pout. “A little.”

“I dare you not to smile,” I said, then I took her bottom lip gently into my mouth, and I sucked on it.

She made a valiant effort, fighting the grin off her face, but she lost eventually. With my fingers, I teased the tender skin of her inner thigh, working my way toward her heat. I found the split in her underthings, and I caressed her until her head went back and her eyes slid shut.

“Oh God,” she purred, “that’s even better than burning a house down!”

“Are you going to come for me this time, sweetheart?”

Her fingers dug into the blankets at her sides. “Definitely,” she panted.

I worked her into a frenzy with my hands, cupping her breasts, stroking her pussy. I made my nightingale sing when she came. She found her release with a moan that was as melodious as music in my ears. The sound made me painfully hard.

As her body relaxed, I cleaned my hands on the bed linens, then grabbed her loosely by the throat. “Breathe,” I instructed her, carefully tightening my grip just enough, just the way she liked.

She did as I bid her, smiling prettily. I knew she liked it when I held her this way, liked the pressure of it, but for what I had planned next, I needed to make sure she could inhale and exhale properly. I rose up onto my knees and pulled her hips against me. Then I entered her in one hard thrust, knocking a gasp out of her.

“I still plan to make love to you,” I warned her once I was fully seated, “but there won’t be anything gentle about it this time.”

She grabbed my forearm in both of her hands, readying herself, pupils widening to swallow up the hickory color of her irises. She locked her legs around my waist, holding me close. “I love the pirate parts of you too, Loch,” she said. “I dare you to show me your worst.”

I kept her in bed the rest of the day. She was very fond of my worst, and as it turns out, it’s hard to wallow naked.

* * *

I hated it when estate business kept me away from Rynn, but I needed to hire more staff, and that required putting out an ad and a great deal of correspondence. I added a letter to Josephine to make her happy. I let her know that Rynn was officially her business now, and I welcomed a visit so they could be properly introduced.

Late that evening, I retired to the drawing room, but Rynn was slow to join me. Piano music reverberated from the library. I enjoyed the music, but impatient for her company, I went to be near her.

When I rounded into the foyer, I realized it wasn’t Rynn playing at all as I had originally suspected. Wet footprints led in through the doorway. More trailed across the floor where the hardwood met the marble tiles. They stopped at the grand piano, which appeared to be playing itself.

Rynn was riding around on the ladder for the bookshelves, letting it carry her side to side. She was having so much fun, she didn’t notice when I crossed all the way into the room.

“Ahem,” I said finally, disguising a chortle as a cough.

Rynn nearly toppled from her rung. When the ladder came to a halt, she climbed down haphazardly, brushing her black skirts down her thighs, and hurriedly fixed her hair. It was then I noticed how finely she was dressed.

“I was just, um, making sure the ladder worked properly,” she said puckishly.

“Of course you were,” I teased, dragging my eyes down her body. “You look fetching tonight. Did you change clothing?” I never would have been able to attend to work if she’d worn that to lunch. I’d taken dinner in my office.

Her long sleeves were black lace. They hung off her shoulders, exposing the column of her throat and the swell of her breasts. The skirt was long in the back and high in the front, falling just below her knees to show off her shapely legs. She was wearing absolutely nothing underneath the dress. Her natural form filled out the bodice. She was dressed like a very, very expensive courtesan.

“I did. I just thought . . . I don’t know, actually. I just like this dress. It makes me happy, and dressing up sometimes helps with the wallowing.” She trapped her bottom lip between her teeth, and her cheeks went pink.

“I like that dress, too. I like it on you a lot,” I told her. Then I gestured at the piano. “Our watery friend has a hobby, it appears.”

She laughed. “I’ve been trying to guess his name because I knew that might help. I still haven’t figured it out, but then I got him to leave the floor at least. He followed me in here, and he’s been playing ever since. That’s an improvement, isn’t it?”

“A considerable improvement,” I agreed.

I made her dance with me. It took little coaxing. She was a lot better at it than I was. I had her sing for me too, like we were in a music hall. Afterward, she sat at the piano bench, and I attempted to play alongside our ghostly guest.

I kept one hand on Rynn’s exposed back while I played because it was impossible not to touch her in that dress.

* * *

That night, the ghosts kept me awake. There was nothing I could do for most of them. They cried at me, shouting confused things that made no sense, then moved on, gone just as quickly as they appeared. I slept in late the next morning. As the lunch hour neared, Rynn came to fetch me.

She ambled into my room and cruelly pulled aside the curtains, blinding me with sunlight.

“I’m having trouble getting out of bed,” I confessed groggily.

“I can see that,” she said, bathed in gilded light that glistened in her dark hair and made her fawn skin glow. “What’s the problem today?”

“Ghosts,” I told her, squinting into the brightness. She was an angel in a cream-colored dressing gown. A fallen one, because that gown was completely see-through in direct sunlight .

Rynn kicked off her slippers and climbed onto the bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “There’s nothing really to say. I wish they’d go away. I know they won’t. I wish I could help them. I know I can’t help them all. Most of them have to help themselves. You see the problem?”

Rynn climbed to her feet on the bed and began to jump. She started gingerly, then added so much force she nearly knocked me off the mattress.

A chuckle rumbled in my chest. “What the devil are you doing?”

“I’m helping,” she said, grinning down at me with a smile brighter than the sunlight streaming in through the windows. “Come on and join me. It works! I promise. It’s impossible to wallow when you’re jumping on a bed.”

She reached a hand down, still bouncing like a hare, trying to coax me into being silly with her. I took her offered hand and tugged her down beside me. She hit the mattress and erupted into giggles. I appreciated that she wanted to cheer me up, but I had a few better ideas for how she might do just that.

I pulled her under the blankets with me, lifted her gown, and convinced her to try my way with my mouth between her thighs.