These Haunted Hearts: A Regency Ghost Story (8 page)

For a moment, Josiah thought she hadn’t heard him. He
braced for her to fall. Hope and wretchedness warred in her eyes
before at last, she ventured one shaky step toward Miles.

Again she wavered in trembling indecision. The red
lights blazed in a frenzy around her.

Whatever held her was strong, it was malevolent, and
it wanted her dead.

For an endless moment, red fire meshed the girl,
threatened to immolate her. Calista moved no closer to Miles and
with her surrender to its promptings, the red light grew so bright
that it hurt Josiah’s eyes.

“For God’s sake, Calista, run!” Josiah shouted at
her, but she didn’t hear. The glaze in her eyes hinted she couldn’t
even see Miles anymore.

“They can’t hear you,” Isabella said, her voice
shaking with grief and horror.

“Don’t leave me,” Miles whispered, reaching out
without touching Calista. Surely it was too late. The red lights’
power seemed too strong for frail flesh and blood to vanquish.

Still Calista didn’t move. The girl’s eyes were stark
with longing and doubt and fear. Her gaze didn’t waver from where
Miles stood, but heaven knew what she saw.

Josiah’s belly knotted with anguish. And how must
Isabella feel, witnessing events that so closely mirrored her own
death? And yet again on a wedding day.

Don’t let this lovely girl die.

Calista didn’t move or speak. For a long moment,
Josiah thought that the evil had won. Bleak hopelessness chilled
him. Love was strong. But not as strong as the powers of darkness.
Hadn’t he already learned that from his own fate?

Then he watched Calista suck in a deep breath.
Purpose, courage, life flooded her features. Slowly she
straightened and raised her chin with fresh defiance.

“I trust you, Miles.” Her voice emerged with steady
confidence. “I trust you and I love you and I want to be your
wife.”

The red lights ruptured into a blinding cascade of
flame, silhouetting her in scarlet, but this time Calista proved
herself immune to their lures. She smiled at Miles with the
radiance Josiah had noticed the first time he saw her. She wasn’t
beautiful, but when she smiled, she seemed beautiful.

With a stumble, she burst free of the seething cloud
of red. Miles groaned and dragged her into his arms, muttering an
incoherent litany of love and relief. Calista sagged against him in
exhaustion and started to cry.

Around her, the red lights circled in confusion, then
one by one, winked out to nothing. The air suddenly seemed cleaner,
cooler, untinged by the low buzz of malevolence.

Josiah glanced up to see Isabella approaching him, a
smile transfiguring her face, too. At last she looked like the
woman he’d kissed so passionately on their wedding day. At last he
read neither suspicion nor hatred in her eyes as she looked at
him.

She reached for his hand. It was the first time she’d
touched him since he’d woken to this new century.

“Isabella—” he stammered. Turbulent hoped crammed his
throat, making a wreck of eloquence.

She was trembling. So was he. Her touch contained
magic. It always had. Now she made him feel alive, as if he was
once again that joyful bridegroom of so long ago. His fingers
closed hard around hers in a silent assertion of union that he
defied her to deny.

How fiercely he’d loved her, loved her still. And
staring into her brilliant black eyes, he could almost imagine that
she remembered just how she’d loved him in return.

He could never have killed her. Never. Whatever she’d
done. Whatever she believed. He’d rip his beating heart from his
chest before he’d hurt her.

She raised a finger to her lips and turned to watch
as Miles and Calista drew apart. Calista stared across at Josiah
and Isabella and one of her beautiful smiles lit her expression,
almost as if…

“Do you see them?” she whispered to Miles.

The young man kept his arm around his bride’s
shoulders. “I do.”

Astonished, Josiah realized that he and Isabella had
become visible to the couple. He raised his hand in a heartfelt
gesture of blessing and Miles bowed in acknowledgement. Isabella
curtsied with flirtatious grace, her wide skirts swaying into a
graceful bell.

“It must be Josiah Aston and Isabella Verney,”
Calista said breathlessly. “You know, he doesn’t look…wicked.”

“No, he looks like a man besotted. Believe me, I know
the signs.” Miles pressed his lips to Calista’s hair in a caress
that expressed adoration and gratitude in equal measure.

“Calista and Miles, I wish you both—” Josiah began,
but Isabella squeezed his hand and shook her head.

“They can’t hear us.”

“But they can see us.”

“No longer,” she said softly.

Calista turned to Miles. “They’re gone,” she said
regretfully.

“Yes.” Miles drew her closer into his body. “Do you
believe in ghosts now?”

The girl responded with a choked laugh. “I don’t
know. I suppose I must.” She tilted her chin so that she could gaze
into her lover’s eyes. “Whatever I believe, we’re going to burn
that bed and throw the ashes into the sea.”

Miles smiled down at her as if he beheld a priceless
treasure. “We are indeed, my love. Now kiss me before I go
mad.”

“With pleasure,” she sighed and pressed her lips to
Miles’s with a sensual confidence that gladdened Josiah’s
heart.

Josiah blinked to clear his vision as a strange wall
of gray descended. He blinked again, but still the fog enveloped
the couple, made them seem strangely distant for all that they
embraced only a few feet away. The gray encroached on everything
around him except Isabella who still burned as brightly as a candle
in his sight.

Isabella’s regard was open and trusting as he’d
longed to see it. “Do you remember everything, Josiah?”

Just like that, he did.

Memory crashed through him with the force of a
towering wave. Reeling under the onslaught of recollection, his
clasp tightened on Isabella’s hand. “When you told me you weren’t a
virgin, I acted like an ass and lost my temper. We were in the
Chinese bedroom.”

“Standing near the bed.” She released his hand and
turned to face him.

He’d acted like an ass but he hadn’t killed her. He’d
known that he hadn’t, he’d known it to his bones, but it was a
mighty relief to have the truth confirmed. “You remember too?”

“Yes. At last. I was so angry with you. Angry and
guilty. I should have told you before we married, but I couldn’t
bear to think you’d forsake me.”

“I’d never forsake you,” he said.

“I know that now.” Without giving him time to digest
that extraordinary expression of trust, she went on. “Then a voice
started to repeat every petty resentment I’d ever felt toward you
and somehow made the resentments cause for hatred.”

“Whatever possessed Calista possessed you.” It wasn’t
a question.

“Wicked red eyes and a snide whisper telling me I
needed to escape you any way I could before you broke my heart.”
Her voice cracked and her eyes glittered with tears. “Oh, my love,
how could I have doubted you? Can you ever forgive me?”

Josiah smiled down into her lovely face and reached
out to cup her cheek. He could still hardly believe that at last he
was free to touch her. “I’m the one who should ask
forgiveness.”

With breathless speed, long ago events slammed into
order. He’d carried his bride into the Chinese room and started to
kiss and undress her. He’d never been so happy in his life—he’d
never imagined such happiness was possible—until she’d abruptly
pulled away and whispered a shaken confession that she wasn’t a
virgin.

Like an arrogant blockhead, Josiah hadn’t told her
that her affair didn’t matter a tinker’s damn, that she’d married
him and he’d love her forever. Instead, he’d succumbed to an excess
of masculine pride and started to shout his disappointment and
anger at her. Isabella’s remorse had swiftly transformed into
characteristic defiance.

Then with an eerie abruptness that made sense to him
now that he’d witnessed the deadly forces stalking Calista,
Isabella had fallen silent. She’d cast him one last look as though
her heart shattered into a thousand pieces, then whirled away and
fled the room as if devils pursued her.

Devils indeed.

Panicked by her incomprehensible actions, he’d
abandoned his pique and his pompous insistence on a full
confession. He’d raced after her down to the next floor, but not
fast enough to save her from flinging herself down the stairs.
Barely had her terrified scream echoed through the great hall
before she lay broken and silent on the tiles below.

After that, the world went mad. Nobody, particularly
Lord Fenburgh who had never liked him, ever questioned that the
Earl of Stansfield had killed his new bride. Josiah had been too
numb with grief to mount a convincing defense. Part of him, a large
part, had believed that the trial in London, the disgrace, the
hanging were just punishment for failing to protect his
beloved.

His beloved…

“And now, my glorious Isabella, we have eternity,” he
said gently, extending his arm with a formal gesture, as if they
were guests at a court ball and he invited her to dance.

“I can’t wait,” she whispered, smiling at him as
she’d smiled at him at their wedding so many years ago. She
accepted his arm and turned toward the stairs with an elegant flick
of her skirts.

His heart finally at peace, Josiah escorted Isabella
down the curved staircase and into the light.

Also by Anna Campbell:

A Rake’s Midnight Kiss
(September 2013)

Days of Rakes and Roses
(August 2013)

The Winter Wife: A Christmas Novella

Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed

Midnight’s Wild Passion

My Reckless Surrender

Captive of Sin

Tempt the Devil

Untouched

Claiming the Courtesan

Exclusive Excerpt of

The Winter Wife:
A Christmas Novella

North Yorkshire, Christmas Eve, 1825

THE CRASH OF shattering wood and the
terrified screams of horses pierced the frosty night like a
knife.

Sebastian Sinclair, Earl of Kinvarra, swore, brought
his restive mount under control, then spurred the animal around the
turn in the snowy road. With icy clarity, the full moon lit the
white landscape, starkly revealing the disaster before him.

A flashy black curricle lay on its side in a ditch,
the hood up against the weather. One horse had broken free and
wandered the roadway, harness dragging. The other plunged wildly in
the traces, struggling to escape.

Swiftly Kinvarra dismounted, knowing his mare would
await his signal, and ran to free the distressed horse. As he slid
down the muddy ditch, a hatless man scrambled out of the smashed
curricle.

“Are you hurt?” Kinvarra asked, casting a quick eye
over him.

“No, I thank you, sir.” The effete blond fellow
turned back to the carriage. “Come, darling. Let me assist
you.”

A graceful black-gloved hand extended from inside and
a cloaked woman emerged with more aplomb than Kinvarra would have
believed possible in the circumstances. Indications were that
neither traveler was injured, so he concentrated on the trapped
horse. When he spoke soothingly to the terrified beast, it quieted
to panting stillness, exhausted with thrashing. While Kinvarra
checked its legs, murmuring calm assurances, the stranger helped
the lady up to the roadside.

The horse shook itself and with a few ungainly jumps,
ascended the bank to trot along the road toward its partner.
Neither animal seemed to suffer worse than fright, a miracle
considering that the curricle was beyond repair.