Page 13 of The Earl of Christmas Past
She swallowed around a dry tongue. “Always. People willalwaysquote Shakespeare.”
Ye gods, it had been a long time since she’d been alone with a handsome, virile man. One who looked at her like that. Who crowded her and invaded her space in a way she didn’t find the least bit irritating.
Overwhelming, yes. But in the best of terms.
She’d forgotten the heady experience of it. The places in her body that would come alive, and demand attention.
Once again, he retreated, floating backward to give her space to work. “What do you call yourself? A mystic investigator of some sort? You travel the world looking to make these realistic portraits, these…photographs of the unexplainable?”
“Not exactly. I travel the world searching for adventure. I just like to capture these adventures in effigy. Because it’s sort of like capturing a memory, isn’t it? Sometimes that means a Grecian ruin or a Galapagos tortoise, and sometimes…” She snatched the dark cover she had to put over her head in order to see through the lens. “It means a ghost or a relic of something supposedly extinct.”
He made a deep, appreciative sound in his throat. It plucked a chord inside of her that vibrated deep. Deeper than church bells or bagpipes or the crescendo of the most tragic opera. Deeper into the recesses of her body and soul than she dared contemplate just now.
She retreated beneath the dark cloth, looking through the lens of the camera, turning the dial to focus it.
When she spied him, she let out a little sound of triumph. “Put your hand to your lapel,” she directed. “And levitate perhaps…three more inches toward the ground.”
He leveled an abashed look somewhere above the lens, then tried to peek around it as if looking for her. “You’re not—trying to photographme, are you?” He seemed as if the idea had curdled his cream.
“I’ve heard any number of mediums have photographed ghosts. They say you can capture ectoplasm in photographs, and that’s supposed to be a gelatinous sort of goo left by spirits and ghosts. You’re ever so much more than goo.”
“Do try to contain your effusive admiration.” His voice could have dried the Amazon into the Sahara. “I’m endlessly flattered to be placed above ectoplasmicgooin your estimation.”
She giggled, a mischievous part of her wanting to trap the pinched and offended look on his savage features for posterity. “Come now, don’t be missish. You look so smart in your uniform. Handsome, I’d dare say.”
He straightened a bit, blinking this way and that as if looking for somewhere to place her compliment for safekeeping. “You think so?”
She looked him over, from his chagrined expression to his shiny boots. He was so tall and broad, almost offensively so. No one would call him elegant; he was too ferocious for that. But no one could call him wild; he was too regal for that.
So, what was he?Whowas he?
So many questions almost choked her mute until one was allowed to spill out.
“How did you die?”
He stalled.
She poked her head up from beneath the camera. “Oh, lands. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be uncouth. I just… Well you don’t look at all injured. I’d have assumed your coat would be riddled with bullets, or you’d have some ghostly axe sticking out of your head. I suppose I read too many penny dreadfuls.”
He didn’t move, except to tug at his collar before he returned his hand to rest on the lapel of his jacket. “It was a bayonet to the neck,” he informed her with almost no inflection at all.
“Oh…” Vanessa was sorry she asked. But his neck didn’t at all look—bayonetted. So that was lucky for them both, she supposed. He would have made for ghastly company. “Don’t move,” she directed before pointing the flash at him and shooting.
He flinched.
“I thought I said not to move,” she admonished him.
“You didn’t bloody warn me it would be as loud as a musket blast,” he muttered. “Can I move now?”
“You might as well,” she sighed.
She was going to have to get used to the silent way he sort of—floated around her. It just wasn’t seemly for a man of his stature.
“When do I get to see the photograph?” he asked, a boyish sort of anticipation making him appear years younger as he peeked over her shoulder.
A frown tugged at her lips as a heavy stone of sadness landed in her belly. “Well, you won’t. After a few minutes, a negative impression will appear on a pane of glass, and I can get that developed into a photograph when I go back to the city. But—you’ll only see shadows and light on the glass. I’ll bring the photo back here, though, if it actually captured you.”
“Perhaps it did,” he said blithely with a smile that didn’t at all reach his bleak, sapphire eyes. “For I am just like your negative…shadows and light.”
