Page 53 of This Haunted Heart

I hadn’t prepared for any of this at all.

Instead of a villain, she behaved like . . . Rynn. Just like the girl I knew. But the Rynn I knew was supposed to be an act, a ruse, at least in part.

“You could still wear my drawers, though, if you wanted,” I told her.

At that, some of the light returned to her eyes. She smirked at me. “How magnanimous of you.”

The rest of the week continued like that. I’d find Rynn doing some odd chores around the manor, the smudges under her eyes growing darker, fawn skin paler. Dressed in somber clothing, she’d eat with me when I asked her to do so, but otherwise she kept to herself.

She was doing all the punishing for me. And what was I supposed to do with all this love she claimed she still had for me . . . or was all of that reserved exclusively for the young man I’d once been?

Occasionally, she’d hole up in the small library with a copy ofInfernoby Dante Alighieri, written in the original Italian. She was using it and her knowledge of Latin to teach herself a new language she was not yet fluent in.

Another week came and went, but I felt no closer to figuring out what was to become of us. We developed a new routine together, neither saying what the other had to be thinking.

What now? What now? What now?

Our mornings were spent outdoors, weather willing. She didn’t dare ask for her boots again. After dinner she helped in the kitchens, hopeful that she’d catch a staff member in there, but that wasn’t ever going to happen. Not inside the house.

We always concluded our evenings together in the drawing room. I would read in the armchair. Sometimes we’d share a pipe while we listened to music on the gramophone. Rynn had strong opinions about what I played, and she voiced them boisterously to my amusement. Nothing too dull or dreary was allowed. It had to be upbeat and to her tastes. She adoredpieces with complicated piano ensembles and a strong bass accompaniment. She’d make herself comfortable on the small sofa after picking the tune. Sometimes she’d sing softly to the music. Those moments were always my favorite. When she seemed to forget I was around at all, forget all that lay between us, and she’d sing.

Rynn still wasn’t sleeping well. I often heard her crying in her bedroom through the walls, plagued by all the same demons I was. Her tears brought me back to the question left unspoken.

What now?

Did I still have it in me to punish her when she so clearly punished herself? I certainly couldn’t just let her go. I’d never have the strength for that. We were trapped in a limbo of sorts, neither speaking of it. We simply existed around each other and that question.

That evening, she fell asleep on the sofa, trying to read, waiting on me to call it a night. Her book slipped from her fingers, and the spine clattered against the floor.

I planned to carry her up after I finished my chapter, but then Rynn began to stir. She rose up on unsteady legs, sleepwalking. I followed her, curious where she’d go, ready to steer her toward her bed and away from danger as needed. Eventually, she made it to the back staircase and then down the hall, headed for the parlor I kept sealed with locks.

“Rynn,” I said gently, hoping she’d come to at the sound of my voice.

Instead, she went and sniffed the empty vases that flanked the black door, like she was smelling flowers in her dreams.

Her nearness stirred up the spirits shut inside the parlor. They knocked against the door, the thuds hollow and quietand as insistent as a heartbeat. The hall grew colder.

“Rynn,” I called a bit more forcefully. “Come here, sweetheart.”

She padded toward me then. Her eyes were open but vacant. I took her by the elbow and guided her up to her room. I helped her undress down to her chemise, then I tucked her into bed tightly under the covers to discourage further sleepwalking. I gathered an old antique bell that I kept in my office near the small library, and I hung it around her doorknob. It would wake her and me if she got up again.

* * *

The next morning, our walk was interrupted by a guest. The sound of horse hooves on gravel and rumbling carriage wheels disturbed the quiet of the woods around us.

“What’s that?” Rynn asked.

“I’m not sure.” I was as puzzled as she was because I didn’t get visitors, and I couldn’t see how they’d gotten through the locked gates.

We walked swiftly out of the trees, stopping before the water gardens. I recognized the carriage pulling up to the front beside the sandstone statues of rearing lions, and I grinned.

“Who is that?” Rynn demanded as a copper-haired woman of nineteen climbed down from the carriage with the help of her driver.

“That’s Josephine. My sister,” I told her. No one visited me, it was true. My birth mother and sister usually left it to me to call upon them because I so frequently traveled between my properties that it was a bother to track me down, and I preferred things that way.

I turned to face Rynn. “If I asked you to stay right here until I sent her away, would you?” I pleaded.

Rynn scoffed. “Not a chance.”

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