Page 7 of The Witching Hour
She gaped at him, the heart that should have been a deadened thing in her chest lurching into a single beat with one painful wrench before it froze again. She slapped her hand over it, waiting, but she could hardly feel the flutter of it under her palm.
One beat, then. That was all she was permitted, it seemed, but considering she was in fact more dead than alive, one beat was more than she’d expected.
“Sylvie, are you here?”
Wasshe here? Or half here? She wasn’t entirely gone, certainly.
How shortsighted she’d been, to imagine there was only alive or dead, one thing or the other, and nothing in between, but perhaps this was part of what Silas had been referring to, when he’d asked Ada,you’ve an idea to put it to rights, I reckon?
And then Ada’s peculiar reply.There’s only one way to set such a thing to rights.
What could she have meant? How could such a thing be set things to rights? What was Sylvie meant todohere, in this strange suspension between life and death? Was she a discontented spirit now, cursed to haunt these halls with all the castle’s other weary ghosts?
One would think she might have gained some sort of insight into these things from this experience, yet here she was, as confused as she’d ever been.
She echoed James’s sigh, and he whipped his head toward her, for all the world as if he’d heard her. He couldn’t see her—she could tell by the way his gaze darted back and forth, the way he looked right through her, but that didn’t stop him from pleading with her. “Please don’t go, Sylvie. Don’t leave me.”
Ah, how easy it would be, to heed his pleas, and fall into his arms once again!
But what promise could he make her he hadn’t already made? What words could pass been them that hadn’t already been spoken dozens of times before? There was nothing he could say, no plea he hadn’t already made, no argument he hadn’t already voiced. No, they were as much at odds as they’d ever been, and she couldn’t go back to the life of loneliness and misery she’d lived before.
She rose unsteadily to her feet, but something held her there nonetheless, captive to the pain and longing in his face, the plea in his voice. Perhaps she could stay, just for a moment longer. Just until he went back to bed, and fell asleep—
But the grandfather chimed again then, once. It was one o’clock in the morning. The witching hour had come to an end for tonight, and her time was up. How she knew this was the case she couldn’t have said, but she did, just as she knew there was no arguing it, no naysaying it.
There was no place for her to go but back up the stairs to her bedchamber, slip under the coverlet, and wait for…well, she didn’t know what. To die? To live? For midnight to come again, so she might creep about the castle in the darkness with all the other ghosts?
Because that was what she was now. One of the castle’s many ghosts, haunting the heart of the man she loved.
CHAPTER3
Weak sunlight was just cresting the horizon when James heard footsteps in the hallway outside Sylvie’s bedchamber. Ada shuffled into the room with a bundle of snowy white linens in her arms, with Silas was right on her heels, carrying a heavy porcelain pitcher.
James watched them from his place beside Sylvie’s bed. He hadn’t opened the heavy silk draperies, and was so well hidden in the shadows that Ada stopped short and let out a gasp when she saw him. “My lord? You should be in your bed. Ye’ll catch yer death in this chill.”
His death? What an interesting choice of words. “I’m perfectly well.”
“And how does my lady do this morning?” Ada crossed to the bed and touched the back of her hand to Sylvie’s cheek. “The fever has still got a hold on ’er. Poor lass.” She tsked, shaking her head. “There’s naught ye can do for ’er, my lord. Go on now, and let us tend to her.”
Silas crossed the bedchamber, emptied the pitcher into the basin, then turned to James. “Come with me, my lord, and I’ll take ye back to yer bed—”
“No.” James curled a protective arm around his wife’s shoulders, wincing at how slight she was, how thin she’d become. “No one may touch Sylvie without my permission.”
Silas exchanged a glance with Ada, one bristled eyebrow raised, but she shook her head. “Ye don’t want to interfere in this business, my lord. No good will come of it. Let the lass go on to ’er final rest—”
“There’s nothing final about Sylvie’s rest, Ada.” He’d been sitting in the straight-backed chair beside his wife’s bed since he’d felt her presence leave the music room last night. He’d followed her upstairs, and one thought had been chasing itself through his head in dizzying circles since then. He fixed his bleary gaze on her pale, set face, on his large hand wrapped tightly around her limp one. “She was wandering the castle last night. I saw her myself.”
It wasn’t quite the truth. He hadn’t seenher, exactly—only a flicker of something in the looking-glass—but he was as certain it was her as if he’d seen her face.
He looked up to see Silas cast another furtive glance at Ada, who was staring at James, her wrinkled brow pinched in a frown. “Ye mean, my lord, that you visited her here in this bedchamber?”
He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “No. I mean I saw her, or sensed her, in the music room last night.” He sounded utterly mad, like a bereaved husband driven out of his wits with despair, but the presence he’d sensed in the music room last nighthadbeen Sylvie.
He was absolutely certain of it. Too many months had passed since he’d last spent time with her, but he knew his wife. He returned his gaze to his Sylvie’s pale, motionless form, hoping for a twitch, a shallow breath, anything to indicate there was a bit of life left inside her, but if she could hear him, she gave no sign of it, not even the slightest pressure of her fingers against his.
Ada was still frowning, but the watery gray eyes peering out at him from the papery folds of her wrinkled flesh were sharp, considering. “In the music room, ye say? I reckon that’s impossible, my lord.”
“Is it, Ada? Is it, indeed?” James set Sylvie’s hand gently down on the coverlet and rose to his feet, struggling to smother the defiance in his stance, the tinge of hysteria in his voice. “God knows itshouldbe, but I know what I saw.”
