Page 73 of This Haunted Heart

“I can’t figure out what he wants. The water is harmless—it vanishes away in a moment—but try telling that to my feet after my stockings have been soaked through. And Gertrude doesn’t like him. He keeps messing up things she’s tidied anddripping all over her flowers.”

“I left your boots under your bed,” he told me. “You could put them on to keep your feet dry.”

I acknowledged the peace offering with a warm smile that faltered on my lips after a moment. “I’ll do that.”

I left behind my book and crossed to the bed, avoiding the wet footprints the spirit insisted on leaving everywhere he went.

“I suspect he drowned nearby,” Lochlan said as I slipped my feet into my boots. “He’s confused obviously. He keeps doing the same things over and over again, like he’s caught in a mill, circling through his patterns, going nowhere. That happens sometimes. They’re not as troublesome as the angry sort, but they don’t seem to fully understand they’re dead either. They sense something is wrong, but they can’t seem to snap out of it.”

“Can you help him move on?” I lifted my feet up onto the bed one at a time to tie my laces.

“I don’t know him. If I knew what he was after, I might be able to do something. Most of the time, I can’t do a thing.”

My lips pursed. “You know Martha,” I said softly.

His jaw clenched. “I told you already. She’s keeping herself here.”

“I don’t think that’s true. It doesn’t feel that way to me.” I stared up at him pleadingly. “Won’t you please try letting her go?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck and loosened his stiff collar. “I don’t have anything to say to her, Rynn.”

“If you found it in yourself to offer her forgiveness . . . I think that’s what she wants. I think that’s what they all want.” That was certainly what I wanted.

His jaw clenched. A muscle in his cheek jumped. “She stood back and watched. They all did.”

I rose from the bed, holding my skirt up to keep it off the damp carpets. “She couldn’t have stopped the baron from hurting you.”

“Not me,” he rumbled, and his hands made fists at his sides. “She stood back and let my father hurtyou. She stood there and did nothing.”

I blinked up at him, trying to remember what he was talking about. The baron was certainly violent, but I couldn’t recall a single time Martha had stood by and watched.

It was Lochlan who had stopped fighting in the end. When he had stood up for me, it made things worse, so he quit doing that when his father was cruel—we both did. Afterward, he’d come and comfort me instead. It was safer for us.

I pictured the young scrawny version of him, hair a light auburn, arms folded protectively over his chest, face contorting with the misery of watching as his father brought the crop down across my thighs once more.

He wasn’t that young scrawny youth anymore, but his expression was much the same now. I returned to the window seat, studying his reflection in the glass, wondering if it was himself he was truly so angry with.

“Lochlan . . .” I said pleadingly, determined to relieve him of the burden of his misplaced guilt.

My words were cut off by the sound of a horse and rider cantering loudly up the drive. The gray gelding whinnied in an agitated manner, and the rider—

“Oh no,” I groaned.

Lochlan crossed to the window seat and peered out over me. “Who the devil is that?”

I rubbed my fingers into my brow, hiding my eyes with my hand. “Utrecht,” I confessed.

His gaze snapped to me and narrowed. “What’s he doing here, of all places? Shouldn’t everyone believe you’re in Texas?”

I reached out and touched his arm. Tension tightened his muscles. “I sent a foolish letter out before I knew you wereyou.”

His arm loosened under my fingers but only just. “How?”

“Mr. Mazibuko. He posted it for me,” I said, wincing as the chestnut-haired rider below dismounted and fought to calm his anxious horse.

“And yet you failed to mention it after you knew I was me,” he added pointedly.

I let out a sigh, certain I’d just given him yet another reason to hold a grudge for twenty more years. “It’s been weeks. I thought he didn’t care or didn’t ever receive it, and I assumed there was nothingtotell. Then it was out of my mind entirely.”

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