Page 6 of The Witching Hour
It was exactly midnight.
The Witching Hour had begun.
He glanced back at the looking-glass, but the dark figure that had been taunting him had vanished. He found only his own reflection there, his face a pale oval with dark smudges for eye-sockets.
He should go to sleep, forget this madness…
But that wasn’t what he did. He remained where he was, his gaze fixed on his own face in the glass, reliving the moment when he’d first laid eyes on a golden-haired lady in a pale blue gown, music flowing from her fingertips, the notes of Schubert’sTrout Quintetplaying quietly in his head.
* * *
James’ssorrow clung to him, as palpable as the sticky cobwebs dripping from the rafters above. His head was bowed with it, his shoulders hunched with it.
There was no reason his grief should surprise her. The imminent death of one’s wife was a sad occasion, after all, yet…shewassurprised.
Sylvie hadn’t come across any other lonely spirits haunting the castle hallways, but if she had, she would have told them her husband’s sorrow at her untimely passing would be a shallow, fleeting thing, that he’d find ample compensation for her loss in London, that he’d long since ceased to think of her, but deep inside, in the most secret chamber of her heart, she’d nursed a wild hope that James might mourn her passing.
Perhaps it wasn’t fair, that she should be so surprised he’d come home, that he’d flown to her bedside. She was laid out on her deathbed, after all, and hewasher husband, for all that they’d drifted farther apart these past few years than she’d ever imagined they could.
Butthis…the devastation that dimmed his deep blue eyes, the surrender in every exhausted line of his body…she hadn’t expected it, or anticipated how much it would hurt her to see how broken he was.
In his absence, she’d forgotten that his pain was hers, his struggles hers. It had always been thus, each of them hopelessly entangled with the other. It tended to be so, when two people harbored both great love and great disappointment between them.
She crept closer to him, taking care to give the looking glass a wide berth. How a lady who was as close to being a spirit as she was could cast a reflection was a mystery, but he’d most certainly caught a glimpse of her in the glass, somehow.
But then she wasn’t dead yet, was she? Not quite.
It was all rather inexplicable, taken together. One would think she might do as she pleased without disruption now that she was mostly dead, but then she didn’t feel any more dead than she had when she’d been lying in her bed, the coverlet pulled up to her chin, listening as Ada and Silas whispered about what could be done for her, their heads bent together.
There’d been no sign of James, then. She’d had little enough hope then that he’d appear, yet here he was, somehow, in the music room, and she was here too, at least…well, at least in spirit.
Oh, dear. That wasn’t funny, was it? Tragedies never were.
James had heard her playing the pianoforte. It didn’t make the least sense that he should have, but there could be no other explanation for his sudden appearance in this part of the castle. He’d burst through the music room door as if he expected to find someone on the other side.
In truth, none of this should be happening at all, but then what did she know about it? She’d simply assumed all sensation would cease once she became detached from her physical body. Silly of her, really, to assume she knew anything at all about death.
Partial death, that is. Half-death? She hadn’t the vaguest idea how to describe it, but it was decidedly strange, though not altogether unpleasant. It felt rather like being alive, but without all the pain that state entailed. Being alive was a confusing, wearying business, with the pleasures and pains of it so tightly woven together one couldn’t tell one from the other.
She’d always imagined death would be easier, more peaceful, and nothing at all like living. But she could see James, hear him, smell him, that scent of woodsmoke and pine, leather and fresh country air. She’d never been able to resist his scent. Of all the things she’d yearned for during his long absences, she’d missed burying her face in the warm place where his neck met the curve of his shoulder, where his scent was the strongest.
She leaned over him, inhaled, and the delicious scent of him filled her head. Dear God, how could one man smell so delicious? His scent was the most exquisite torment, a curse and a blessing at once, depending on whether he was with her, or hundreds of miles away in London.
Slowly, she sank down onto the piano bench beside him, her leg brushing his, and oh, yes, she could sense his physical presence beside her, the solid warmth of his thigh against hers, and goodness, it was dizzying, the sensation of his blood rushing under his skin, every inch of him so warm and alive.
So far, the afterlife wasn’t proving to be nearly as cold and lonely as she’d thought it would be. If she could still see him, hear him and smell him, and he could glimpse her in the mirror, did that mean she could touch him? She hovered her hand over his, slowly lowering it inch by inch until her palm brushed over his knuckles. His hand twitched slightly under hers, but then he let out a little sigh, and relaxed beside her, his head bowing.
So handsome, James. Always so handsome, with the russet highlights in his dark hair and those hazel eyes with their absurdly long, dark eyelashes, and the tall, lean length of him that had made her breath catch even in her naivete, before she understood what he could do to her with that powerful body, the way he could make her writhe and gasp, make her cry out for him.
What a revelation their first night together had been! And then later, when she’d discovered she had as much power over his body as he did over hers, and she’d grown bolder…
Ah well, a lack of passion had never been one of the issues between them, had it? Even in their worst moments, when she’d wept bitter, resentful tears, when a part of her had despised him, her body had still craved his.
She leaned closer, her thigh pressing tighter against his, and drew in another dizzying lungful of his scent, then let it out in a gentle stream, her breath stirring the chestnut brown hair at the nape of his neck in that way that always made him shiver—
Wait. Herbreath?She’s had precious little ofthatwhen she’d been lying in her bed, but now—
James shot to his feet, a gasp on his lips. “Sylvie?”
