Midnight in Your Arms (14 page)

“I know because it’s happened before, and it will happen again, forever, until you and the master set it right.” She
tsk
ed impatiently. “Don’t you know that yourself? Don’t you
feel
it, in your bones, when you’re with him? You’ve been coming here like this forever. How else do you think the master could leave you Stonecross in his will? He leaves it to you because it’s what he’s always done. He waits for you for the rest of his days, married to a woman he doesn’t love, and then he dies, still waiting. I know, because I was there, waiting with him. And I will be again. Unless you do something to change it.”

Laura stared at the older woman with mounting dread. “But he doesn’t even know he’s supposed to leave it to me. He doesn’t really understand where I’m from, or why I’m at Stonecross to begin with. I don’t think he knows that I’m real.”

“Because you haven’t
made
him know it, young woman,” Tess chided. “You haven’t told him anything he needs to know.”

“It isn’t my fault,” Laura said. “It can’t be my fault—that he waits for me. I can’t stay there more than a few minutes at a time.”

“For now,” Tess agreed. “But you will get stronger. And you know why.”

“Because of All Hallows, when the veils between realms disappear,” Laura said, without knowing she would say it. It came instinctively.

“The night of the party, the master’s birthday,” Tess nodded. “The night he announces his engagement to Ellen Wright. Tomorrow night, sixty years ago exactly.”

“But I am not a spirit,” Laura said, with a frown. “The same rules can’t possibly apply.”

“You said it yourself, girl. You
are
a spirit to his world, as he is to yours. He isn’t what you are, it’s true, and that’s why you’re the one crossing over. He never will. Not until he really is a ghost. And then I will be there to make sure he doesn’t linger.” Tess nodded judiciously. “I’d never let a good man suffer much more than he has to. And that’s why you aren’t blundering into his real ghost, you see. Because it ain’t there. Any apparition of Alaric Storm you see is the man himself.”

Laura looked at her with wonder. “If all this is true, what do you expect me to do?”

“Stay with him, of course. You don’t belong here anymore. Surely you can feel that.”

Laura could. There was nothing left for her here but Stonecross, and she wouldn’t lose it. She would have it as it was meant to be, whole and living, a true home the like of which she had never had. “Stay with him,” she said slowly. “And stop him from marrying Ellen.”

“And ruining both of their lives, as well as yours.”

“Until I came here, I thought it already was ruined,” Laura said tremulously. “And then I met … him. And I knew he was mine, and that I was his. But it’s impossible, isn’t it? Surely I can’t stay there.”

“You don’t know until you’ve tried.”

“How do you know I haven’t tried already?”

“Because if you had, this wouldn’t be happening now. Everything would have changed. Time itself would have changed, and we would never know any better.”

Laura’s mind reeled. It made sense, and then again … it didn’t. Back and forth. The Möbius twisting. The serpent eating its own tail. She pressed her fists to her temples, and squeezed her eyes shut. “What if he doesn’t believe me? Damn, I hardly believe myself.”

“Make him,” Tess said.

Laura reached reflexively for the scattered tarot deck. It felt off-kilter to touch another medium’s cards, and her hands shook, as if resisting the terrible imposition she was forcing them to enact, but she compelled herself to shuffle, over and over again, until it felt right.

Tess watched her silently. Though she sipped her tea calmly, she looked like a carrion bird waiting for the leftovers of another creature’s kill.

Finally, Laura stopped. She cut the deck three times, and then turned over three cards.

The first card she chose was The Lovers, reversed.

The second was the Wheel of Fortune.

The final card was Death.

Past, present, and future were laid out before her. She knew if she had her own deck with her, she would draw the same three cards. She studied them, biting her lip until she drew a bright bead of blood. It slid from her lip, landing with an audible
plop
on the Death card.

Slowly, she rose. A sense of absolute serenity came over her, the sort of certainty she hadn’t experienced since her days as a nurse, in those moments when she had known absolutely what must be done, and how to do it. “I know what I must do,” she said, as if she needed to hear it aloud.

Tess nodded. She leaned forward and gathered up the three cards. She handed them to Laura. “Take them. To remind yourself.”

Laura took them, putting them in her pocket. “Goodbye, Tess,” she said, with a smile as meaningful as she could make it. “If all goes well, you won’t see me again.”

“But you’ll see me, young woman. Depend on it. Don’t let me give you any trouble, neither. I was a right impudent little scrap of calico in them days.”

Laura nodded. She reached impulsively for the old woman’s hand, whose grip was unsurprisingly fierce. “Thank you.”

She crossed the room, opened the door, and went out. There was just enough of the disjointed autumn light left to see her way home to Stonecross before darkness took her.

T
he first day of the house party was the single longest and most boring of Alaric’s life.

Guests—invited for the weekend—had arrived in droves. They pressed in on him from all sides, filling up the guest rooms, spilling out from the drawing rooms, parlors, dining hall, ballroom, billiards room, library, conservatory, and every other usable room with which Stonecross was furnished. Alaric mingled amongst them, playing the gracious host with a radiant Ellen never straying far from his side. He could see what she was about: making sure the two of them seemed like one impenetrable unit, already joined in spirit if not in fact. Though she had no understanding what such a bond meant. Ellen thought husbands were little more than fashionable accessories, at the least. At the most, they were symbols of status, equally valuable and as inanimate as the ropes of glittering diamonds she displayed to full effect against the creamy, untouchable backdrop of her beautiful neck.

He thought of Laura’s neck, unadorned but for a series of beauty marks much lovelier than any string of pearls, no matter how costly. There was nothing pretentious about her. She was all frankness, and yet she was mysterious, something one could see clearly but could never fully comprehend. Like the night sky in a poem.

Except, of course, when he couldn’t see her at all. Like now. He longed for her, but he could not go to her. She didn’t exist, except when she stood in front of him. And wherever she was right now, he certainly didn’t exist for her. When he had believed at first that she was a figment of his own mind, he wasn’t far wrong. He was also a figment of hers. He wondered if she thought about him nearly as much as he thought about her. Perhaps it was their thoughts that brought them together.

At the moment, all he could think of was Laura.

Even when other ladies were in front of him, vying for his attention, his thoughts strayed to her, as though he could caress her with his mind, and she could feel it. He didn’t know what she was, or the meaning of her sudden appearance in his life. All he knew was the way he felt when she was with him, just looking at him with her large, dark eyes.

Understood. Loved. Safe.

And lit on fire, a torch burning from the inside out.

The room was damnably hot. Alaric tugged at his neckcloth—Jeffries tied it so bloody
tight
. And there were too many people about, pressing against him. Ellen had promised him it wouldn’t be a crush. He should have listened more closely when she tried to talk to him about the guest list. Alaric felt as though every person he had ever met since the day he was born was in his house. If he listened closely enough, over the din of laughter, clinking crystal, and the strains of music coming from the ballroom, where the string quartet labored to create the appropriate ambience, he might be able to hear the foundation of Stonecross groaning in protest. Waves of heat rose up from the bodies of the guests, whose mingling scents clashed abominably. People always over-scented themselves for a party in an attempt to mask the inevitable odor of sweat that was the result of too many bodies crammed together, dancing and flirting. It was the smell of lust battling with that of propriety. In Alaric’s experience, lust usually won out, in one way or another. And then propriety dealt with the aftermath.

Just when he was seriously considering flinging himself from the nearest available window, dinner was announced. Some semblance of the order of precedence was followed. There were few peers present, because Alaric didn’t know many, other than some of the lads he went to school with who had come into their titles or retained their courtesy titles while they waited for their elders to pop decorously off into the netherworld. Alaric was glad, not for the first time, that he was not in possession of a title. The Storm fortune had once stunk rather badly of trade, but it was more than respectable now. He was a gentleman with no responsibilities other than to his tenants, and his land steward took care of that. Observing at his social superiors, some of whom were looking distinctly weedy and glad of a gratis meal, despite their pedigrees, Alaric felt a sense of pride in his costly, elegant attire. He used to be quite a young blood, once upon a time. Oddly, he felt rather more interested in his personal appearance than he had in years. It didn’t take much probing to realize that it was because of Laura. Because she could shimmer into being again at any moment. He wanted her to be proud to love and be loved by him, even if they could never be together.

As he led Ellen into the dining room, its vast table crammed end to end with laughing, chattering guests, Alaric imagined Laura appearing suddenly among them. What a stir she would create. Especially if she had neglected to get dressed. He hadn’t seen her fully dressed since that first day, when he thought he saw her at the front door.

Had she really been there?

He didn’t know. He hadn’t asked her. He didn’t know anything about who she was, or why she was at Stonecross.

The problem was that he had only just begun to think of her as a real person, in the sense that she had lived a life and experienced things he couldn’t imagine. Even if he didn’t understand who she was, he
had
to stop thinking of her as a creation of his own mind. He couldn’t bear the idea that she was little or nothing more.

She was so real. So much more so than anyone who now sat at his table. It wasn’t that they weren’t fully realized human beings, loveable and interesting, or despicable and petty, in their own ways, just as he was. It was that he didn’t know any of them, and they didn’t know him. He had never maintained any of his relationships. He had no idea what they were all doing here, pretending to fete him as though he were an old and beloved friend. It was all a beautiful farce, full of blinding footlights and elaborate costumes. Everyone made polite and suitable statements at the prescribed moments, just as they ate their palate-cleansing ices with the correct dainty spoons.

The only palate cleanser Alaric wanted was Laura.

He could taste her now, even as the spoonful of lavender- and lime-flavored ice melted over his tongue, and Ellen placed a proprietary hand none too discreetly on the sleeve of his coat. He caught sight of the two of them in one of the many sparkling mirrors placed strategically about the room in an attempt to multiply it endlessly, so the light would seem infinite, as would the room, and the number of guests. They looked well together, he had to admit, like a pair of perfectly matched grays about to be bridled to a common yoke, pulling the well-sprung carriage of their union down an endless street. Endless, that was, until one of them dropped dead.

Alaric had to admit that Ellen was everything she should be: beautiful, elegant, her conversation both decorous and entertaining without trespassing upon her partner’s wit. She wore the most fashionable garments, and her skin had never spent an instant too long beneath the sun. She would age like a dream, the perfect matriarch for their future brood of show horses. But that was not all he wanted. He wanted much more, and Ellen could never be more than she was, and if Alaric married her, he never would be, either.

Clenching his jaw, Alaric removed his arm from beneath her fingers as subtly as he could, but he saw the flush creep up from her bosom like the blush of pink in the heart of a rose. He used the hand he had taken from her to bring a glass of wine to his lips, so he wouldn’t embarrass her. She didn’t deserve the impatience he felt. She had every right to expect him to offer for her. He had not behaved like a gentleman. Not strictly speaking. And Ellen was the sort of woman who brought out the gentleman in men who weren’t even born to it. That was the problem. With Ellen, Alaric would be obliged to conduct himself with gentlemanly tact in every waking moment for the rest of his life—even, he had absolutely no doubt, in the bedroom.

Whenever he thought of taking her to bed, he imagined her made of cloth beneath her clothes, and stuffed with sawdust, like a doll, her arms and legs, shoulders, neck, and head all made of porcelain. When he laid her back, her eyes clicked shut.

When he thought of Laura, it was another matter entirely.

Which was the very reason why she should be the last thing on his mind as he sat at table with everyone he knew.

His loins tightened painfully beneath the sleek wool of his trousers, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glancing up at the mirror again to see if his lascivious thoughts had bled into his carefully arranged face. Mistaking his sudden movement for a signal, one of the footmen came instantly to his side, proffering a carafe of wine. Alaric nodded, and allowed the man to refill his glass, which he had barely touched.

Just as he had barely spoken to the woman at his side.