Page 21 of The Earl of Christmas Past
“You need light to see?” The very idea seemed to surprise her.
He felt his features soften, the sadness melting into an endlessly amused half-smile. “I’m a ghost, not a vampire.”
She rolled her eyes at his teasing, swatting at him with no real heat. “How should I know the rules? I mean, you float above the floor and you can walk through walls.”
“Sadly, I cannot see in the dark.” Or through things. Like her clothing.
She made a noncommittal noise as she moved further along the chamber. Her ankle rolled beneath her skirts and she nearly lost her footing.
Reflexively, he reached for her, but she righted herself before he could do anything.
Clearing her embarrassment from her throat, she pointed beneath her and offered an abashed explanation. “The floor is uneven.”
He nodded his head, his heart too much in his throat to reply.
She returned to examining every single treasure. “Are yousurenone of this is familiar? These sabers, a hat, perhaps? Even a button?” She sounded almost desperate now.
He shook his head. “No, none of these are mine. Though I recognize a few of them as belonging to compatriots.”
Ones he mourned for many years.
She ran her hands across a bayonet, testing its edge. “You said you sleep a great deal. Is that truly what it’s like to be…” She made an uncomfortable gesture at his general personage.
“Dead?” he clipped.
“Well I didn’t want to seem indelicate.”
She was so delicate, she’d never seem anything but.
“It’s just I have so many questions. And I am afraid to ask them, but when else will I get the chance? Is there a light anywhere like people have claimed, at the end of a tunnel perhaps? Have you met others like yourself? Or angels? Or—or anyone else out of the ordinary? Out of our limited mortal understanding, I mean.”
He wished he could spin her a hypnotic yarn that would make death seem less depressing, but he was an honest ghost, and a boring one, evidently.
“I’ve met no other apparitions and my torpor, it’s—not even like sleep, exactly. It’s nothingness.” He almost hated to admit it, because sometimes the void terrified him. “I want to say darkness, but it’s not even that tangible. I am gone, and then I surface. I am here, but I have no part of myself. I have nothing but a vague sense of who I am. And each time I go under…I stay for longer. There are days I fear I’ll become one with nothing, and every part of who I was will be lost.”
What he didn’t say was that each time he went under, he was always disappointed to be brought back. He would rail and stomp and use what little power he had to throw things. To rattle the bedposts and windows and make the stones of his cage tremble. He’d frighten people just to do it. Because now that he’d found himself again, he’d have to dread the next time he was lost.
She blinked watery eyes up at him, her sharp chin pitting and quivering with emotion. “How do you endure it?”
“How can I do anything but?” he replied, his finger aching to smooth an unruly tendril of hair away from her furrowed brow.
Her throat worked over a difficult swallow. “I wish I could save you, somehow.”
A tenderness welled in him in that moment and threatened to spill over into emotion he had no idea what to do with. What a Countess she’d have made. So small and yet regal. So soft-spoken and yet brave. Independent. Unbiased. Kind. Honest.
God. He’d have offered for her hand after one chaperoned meeting. He’d have claimed her and planted children inside of her, creating an undeniable legacy of which any man would be proud.
It was almost worth one hundred and fifty years of loneliness to have met her.
She’d brought him back to himself, somehow.
Whatever she saw in his eyes caused her to step in toward him. And, once again, she stumbled.
Catching herself this time, she lifted her skirt to examine the packed earth beneath her.
Whatever she found caused her to gasp.
“Hold on.” Rushing past him—nearly rushing through him had he not moved out of the way in time—she retrieved the lantern from the entry and plucked a bayonet from the wall.
