Page 60 of This Haunted Heart

“I don’t feel good, Rynn,”Lochlan told me days later, nearly delirious with fever.

I’d heard Cook whispering with the maid. If he didn’t pull through, he’d be dead by the week’s end.

I sang him to sleep so he wouldn’t fret while I was gone. I was terrified of the fading light outside, but I was even more afraid of losing Lochlan. I took a lantern that was nearly too big for me to carry and went in search of leeches. Thankfully, they were plentiful in the swamps. I put them on his wounds, let them get fat sucking the pus and poison out of his torn skin.

“You’d better not die, Loch,”I whispered to the sleeping boy I loved more than life. “You’d just better not. If that horrid baron killed you, I’m going to kill him back. I’ll poison his soup.”

Lochlan had stirred then as I’d hoped he would, and my young heart jolted.“Don’t kill my pa,” he said drowsily.

“You just better not die then, hadn’t you? Don’t you leave me here all alone,”I said.

He promised he wouldn’t, and he kept that promise. Lochalways kept his word. I wasn’t so good at that, though.

* * *

The next week crawled by. I had nightmares most nights, dreams fed by more than my dark past. The stress of wondering how things would end between Lochlan and I, the anxiety of trying to figure out what I wanted from life now that I had him back, kept me restless. But Lochlan always came to pull me out of the worst of them. Sometimes I woke up in the hallway with him beside me, guiding me back into my bedroom.

What should I do now? Did I even want to escape Nightingale House anymore? What I truly craved was a clear path toward fixing things, a solution that would repair what I’d broken, but what if that didn’t exist?

And if it didn’t exist, shouldn’t I try to leave here again?

I no longer cared about retiring. One glimpse at Lochlan’s horrible scars and I knew I didn’t deserve such tranquility.

“Does it ever get easier to live here?” I asked him. I’d woken up in his bed with no memory of how I’d gotten there.

It was disorienting, but his nearness steadied me. We lay facing each other, sharing the same pillow.

“It does,” he promised drowsily, eyes shut. “It’s never perfect, but it gets easier.”

I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t convinced. Within those walls, it felt like I’d never be cheerful again. Not completely. I’d always think of my past. I’d always know what I’d done. Guilt was the monster riding around on my back, reminding me it was there with its sharp talons every moment I dared to distract myself.

Exhausted by a bad dream of that horrid house in the mire, I just didn’t go back to sleep. Lochlan tried to coax me into it, but I refused to listen. I needed a break from our history. I found something to read instead.

After dinner the following evening, I returned to my room in a sleep-deprived fog. The scent of roses and talcum powder hung in the air. The combination reminded me of the old maid who’d once served Lochlan’s mother. Her name was Gertrude. I’d thought of her often while I spent time in my bedroom. I saw her in the crisp way my clothing was folded, in the smell of sorrel salt on the linens, and in the neat manner in which my boxes of books had been stacked.

I wondered if it was Gertrude who haunted this space, who kept refilling the vase on the fireplace mantel with beautiful roses. She had loved flowers. Collecting bouquets from the gardens had been her favorite chore.

Seated at the vanity, I worked a wooden comb through my curls, and I felt a breeze at my back that couldn’t be a breeze. The windows were shut. Something touched me, like the thinnest veil brushing over my back.

“Gertrude?” I whispered. “Is that you?”

The vanity mirror tipped forward an inch, and I jumped in my seat. The room went cold, and the glass fogged up. That horrid thump like a heavy heartbeat followed, and I grit my teeth against the tightening sensation in my chest.

“Why do you stay here, Gertrude?” I asked somberly. All her life she’d served that horrible baron. Surely, she didn’t want to spend her eternity doing more of the same. “Wouldn’t you rather go on? Be with your own family? Have peace and rest?”

The thumping stopped. A shadowy figure appeared in thereflective glass. I turned to find the shade hovering near the corner of my bed. I squinted, trying to make sense of the darkness. The subtle lines in the shadows made a shape I couldn’t comprehend. They swirled like smoke.

“Gertrude?” I muttered.

The shadow charged at me. An icy weight, a force unlike any I’d ever felt before, gripped my wrist in a band as solid and heavy as an iron shackle.

“Stop!” I begged. I tried to pull away and couldn’t. My arms and legs went inert on the seat cushion. “Please stop!” I shouted as shadows bathed me, blocking out the precious light.

The room went cold enough to turn my breath into mist. My legs came back to me then, numb and tingling. I lurched to my feet, leaping away from the darkness. Cradling my injured wrist to my chest, I scrambled for the door.

In the hall, I stepped in a puddle that soaked through my stockings. Wet footprints led off in the direction of the lavatory. Another figure stood there shading the corridor.

I ran from the shadows, screaming. Tripping over my own feet, I caught myself on the railing at the stairs. The skin at my wrist was red and puffy where the spirit had grabbed me. A knocking sound echoed when I hit the bottom of the staircase, an incessant thump coming from that black mystery door full of locks.

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