These Haunted Hearts: A Regency Ghost Story (3 page)

“Midnight,” she echoed, wondering just what she
promised.

FROM THE SHADOWS, Josiah watched as the
lovers kissed for a few minutes more before the young man swept the
tall, slender girl from the chamber. Their games and quarrels and
barely restrained passion inevitably proved a poignant reminder of
his wife. It seemed a grotesque, malicious jest that he was dead.
And alone.

A poisonous brew of grief and frustrated anger
swirled in his gut. He’d had a whole life ahead of him, a life of
love and achievement and purpose. A life with Isabella at his side.
A life with children and hope and happiness. A life he’d been
denied.

Who were these two people who embraced on his bed and
kissed and bickered, just as he and Isabella had kissed and
bickered? Although Isabella had been a queenly creature. The girl’s
eyes betrayed a vulnerability that was foreign to his darling.

Calista’s clothing was outlandish to his eyes. Too
light and simple to adorn a gentlewoman. Like a night rail rather
than a garment any decent woman would wear in public. Where were
her hoops? She wore no stomacher and her dress was belted high
under her breasts. Nor was her chestnut hair dressed with proper
care, just a simple knot half tumbled down her back after her tryst
on the bed.

Yet her voice, her manner, her sense of ownership of
this house—
his house
—indicated she must belong here. More,
the radiance that warmed that too serious face when she smiled
reminded him of his mother.

The man was a stranger. But Josiah was familiar
enough with the demeanor of a fellow desperately in love to
recognize his plight. He was a handsome devil of about thirty, the
sort women made fools of themselves over. But the intensity in his
eyes suggested intelligence and a discomfiting level of
perception.

The girl was something different. Plain and almost
forbidding with her severe Aston bone structure, always more suited
to masculine members of the family than females. Until she smiled,
when she became almost as beautiful as Isabella Verney.

He must say he admired the man’s spirit in luring his
lady into sharing his bed before the wedding. Josiah had frequently
tried to seduce Isabella, but for a girl famously indifferent to
society’s strictures, she’d surprised him with her prudishness.
Strange because when he met her, the tattle had been that Isabella
Verney was no virgin.

Josiah’s mind worked furiously. He could make little
sense of what he’d heard the couple say. What the hell had happened
here?

He gathered that people had dragged him from the
Chinese bed on his wedding day. Why? They hadn’t mentioned his
wife. Had she been there?

Wicked Josiah Aston?

The description seemed far too damning. Like any
sprig with gold in his pockets, he’d been wild in his youth. But
from the moment he’d seen Isabella the day after his twenty-eighth
birthday, he’d known what he wanted.

The beautiful heiress Isabella Verney had been
headstrong and at twenty-six, late to choose a husband. No matter.
He’d recognized his destiny. A year of courting her had seen off a
crowd of rivals, many of greater estate than he. Then, praise God,
she’d admitted her love and consented to become his wife.

Had he possessed Isabella before everything went
wrong? They’d married at Marston parish church. He remembered that
distinctly. Surely he wouldn’t take her to wife without seeking his
sweet reward. Yet something about the straining, bristling energy
in his body indicated he hadn’t had her. And he couldn’t imagine
he’d forget holding her in his arms.

The damnable thing was that his body continued to
experience sensation, however false the perception. He recognized
the day as warm for May. He was aware of the weight of his braided
blue velvet coat, newly tailored for his great day. His
non-existent blood still pulsed with desire for his absent
bride.

So, no, he doubted he’d tumbled her before
he…died.

Before he died.

Time had passed since his wedding day in 1749.

Years and years of it.

Time seemed determined to play nasty tricks on him.
The space between waking and now, late afternoon, had passed in
moments. He felt like he’d only stirred within the last hour, yet
the tiny ormolu clock on the carved chest indicated a whole day had
gone by.

What the devil had he done the day he married the
love of his life? He urgently needed to find out. More than that,
he needed to find Isabella. He couldn’t endure being here on his
own. An eternity without her was too cruel a punishment for any
crime, however heinous.

He turned toward the door, left ajar after the
lovers’ departure. Neither had had the slightest inkling that he
observed them. Gradually he came to understand the rules of this
bewildering new existence. He could see everything around him while
it seemed that nobody could see him.

Moving provided yet another uncanny experience.
Although his mind recognized that he had no physical substance, he
felt that he walked like a living man, covered distances like a
living man. Yet he kept tumbling into gaps in time when he
was…nowhere. Confusion, questions, contradictions battered him.

Wicked Josiah Aston?

The bedroom was full of unfamiliar furniture, apart
from the ostentatious bed. Little in the corridor was familiar
either, apart from the faded wallpaper and the tall window at the
end of the hall. He drifted through a few rooms, noting the
occasional ornament or table that remained from his time in the
house. The decorations weren’t nearly so elaborate as they’d been
in his day. Had the family come down in the world since his demise?
Or was he just observing a change in fashion? The house was his
house and yet it wasn’t. Another difficult concept to impress upon
his reeling mind.

Slowly, carefully, he made his way through the house,
seeking Isabella and some clue to his fate. Nothing provided any
indication, unless absence of evidence was indication enough. The
double portrait he’d commissioned from Allan Ramsay for his wedding
was nowhere to be seen. There were plenty of other family portraits
hanging on the walls, most with the familiar Aston dark hair and
blue eyes that he’d seen in his looking glass every day.

Frequently, in spite of his driving urgency to see
his wife, he’d find himself transfixed by something he knew from
his life. A painting of Venice that he’d bought on his Grand Tour.
The library. The view across the park to the lake, a scene which
had changed remarkably little. He’d stir to continue his
exploration, check one of the household clocks, and find that an
hour, two hours had passed. And still he had no idea what had
happened to him. Or his darling.

All the bedrooms on the floor below the Chinese room
were readied for wedding guests, but he didn’t miss the house’s
barely concealed signs of neglect. Many of the rooms reeked of
disuse, dust, stale air, in spite of windows flung wide to the late
spring afternoon.

Occasionally he encountered a servant or a wedding
guest. They paid him no attention, confirming his suspicion that,
as with the couple upstairs, they couldn’t see him. In one bedroom,
he found a half-finished letter inscribed at the top with the date.
In horrified shock, he’d stared at the page.

God’s teeth, it was 1818, nearly seventy years since
his wedding. Since presumably his…death.

How could he have no recollection of anything between
that day and now? Where had he been for the space of two
generations? Was it something to do with the Chinese bed where he’d
woken? Was his spirit somehow attached to the bed? The young
man—Miles, the girl had called him—had said it was only recently
re-assembled. Did restoring the bed to use wake him from
oblivion?

Only another question among so many.

Bewildering afternoon faded into bewildering evening,
and still he searched. His eyes remained sharp as a cat’s, whether
the room was dark or lit with candles. Another strange result of
becoming a wraith.

Finally as night deepened toward midnight, he opened
the door to the chamber in the east tower. The room Isabella had
chosen as hers for the night before their wedding. On the last
occasion he’d entered this room, stealing a few forbidden moments
to kiss his bride, it had been an untidy jumble of silks and
brocades and feminine gewgaws. Her jasmine perfume had scented the
air. Her two pugs had curled together on the red counterpane and
scowled at him as an unwelcome invader.

Isabella had always had an uncanny ability to make
any space uniquely hers.

A woman still slept here, he immediately realized.
But a woman very different from coquettish, worldly Isabella. Even
before he noticed the pink silk gown in the immodest new style
spread across the bed, he guessed this room, with its lovely
outlook over the gardens, now belonged to his descendant
Calista.

No, if he’d died without issue—the idea still struck
a discordant note like a hammer hitting brass—his younger brother
George must have inherited. Most likely Calista was George’s
great-granddaughter.

Calista wasn’t present. She must have accepted her
sweetheart’s entreaty to meet him. God grant her joy. He wished to
Hades that he and Isabella had done the same.

He wandered across to lift a book from one of the
tottering piles that littered every flat surface. And only then
realized that while he was invisible to all living beings, he could
move physical objects.

What a deuced fool he was. Of course he could, he’d
been opening doors throughout the house. In his lather to find
Isabella, he just hadn’t noticed.

After combing the rest of the manor, he’d hoped to
find his wife in this room, but Isabella wasn’t here. Was she
anywhere? Or had her spirit ascended on high while his lingered to
atone for some unidentified but clearly dreadful misdeed?

He glanced at the book. It was something serious and
botanical. Definitely nothing Isabella would read. Her preferences
had veered toward the sensational and romantic. And the room, apart
from the massed books and papers, was much more orderly than any
space Isabella ever inhabited. Even the set of scientific apparatus
with scales and vials and microscopes on the desk in the corner was
neat.

Josiah heard the door open behind him. Odd how his
senses remained so attuned to the world when he no longer existed
as a physical entity. Then all thoughts but one fled.

Isabella stared at him from the doorway.

***

Joy exploded with painful force. Isabella was
here. She was
here
. Surely he could touch her. If he could
lift a book or open a door, surely he could touch this woman who
turned his world to sunlight.

“My love…” he choked out, stepping forward on shaky
legs and reaching for her.

During their courtship, he’d inundated her with a
thousand extravagant endearments. It had been a laughing game, what
flamboyant compliments he could invent to please this woman he
loved with such unfettered passion. He’d called her his treasure of
Trebizond, his glorious angel of heaven, his exquisite diamond of
Ind, his shining pearl of the Orient.

But all his playful praise had meant only one thing.
Isabella was his love and he’d lay down his life for her.

“I’ve scoured the house for you.” He stepped closer,
wondering at her silence, at her lack of movement toward him. She’d
so rarely been still. It was part of the quicksilver brilliance of
her character. She’d been endlessly fascinating, flashing like a
jewel, his darling Isabella.

His darling Isabella who stared at him now as though
she beheld a monster.

Her frozen expression made him pause before he
touched her. His belly dipped with foreboding. “Isabella?”

She was trembling and pale as she’d never been in
life. He couldn’t mistake the terror in her beautiful black eyes.
She still wore the sumptuous dress of blue French silk she’d had
made for the wedding. Delicate pearls and summer flowers twined in
her intricate coils of shining black hair.

In an unmistakable attempt to ward him off, she
raised her hands. “Stay…stay away from me.”

Of all the numerous shocks of the day, this was the
worst. What the devil had happened on his wedding day?
What the
devil had he done?

“I don’t understand,” he said dully, dropping his
shaking hands to his sides.

“Don’t come near me.”

She sounded so frightened, his lovely girl who had
never been frightened of anything in her whole life. This was the
woman who had galloped hell for leather at the most dangerous
fences. This was the woman who had faced down her ambitious father,
Lord Fenburgh, and insisted she’d marry no man but the Earl of
Stansfield.

The Earl of Stansfield who apparently she now
loathed.