Though her form was diminutive, her shoulders were not; they were straight and proud, held so by an erect spine and practiced posture. Said posture displayed her tear-shaped breasts to perfect effect, their nipples, peaked and puckered with cold, the same peach hue as her cupid’s bow mouth.
God but his hands ached to touch her. To explore every creamy inch of her. To find the places that made her gasp and tremble.
To discover where else she might be peach and perfect.
As if she was loath to leave the warmth of the fire, she took up the soap and her underthings, and tiptoed to the edge of the bath.
The crude basin only came up to about past her knees, so she barely had to lift her leg to test the water within. She dipped a toe, then engulfed the delightfully feminine arch of her foot before wading in to her shapely calf.
John had never been jealous of an inanimate object in his life, but as she hissed and sputtered whilst lowering her chilled body into the hot water, he would have changed places with the liquid in an instant.
It’s not as if he was exactly solid.
Though, he was getting hard…
He crouched when she did, his eyes unable to leave her as she drew her legs into her chest and settled into the heat with a sibilant sigh of surrender.
He’d give what was left of his soul to coax a sound like that from her. Especially now that he knew what she looked like with naked pleasure parting her lips, and the dew of steam curling the tendrils of her hair that she had yet to take down from its braided knot.
Abandoning her soap and undergarments to the side, she did little but enjoy the heat of the water for a moment, cupping it in her hand and pouring it over what parts of her chest, breasts, and shoulders, she couldn’t completely submerge.
God, he remembered what that felt like, sinking into a hot bath on a chilly night.
He’d give anything just to feel warmth.
John made himself dizzy trying to follow every bead of water that caught the firelight along the tantalizing peaks and valleys of her body. Though she was a woman in a crude basin on a packed floor on the edge of the civilized world, she might as well have been a winter goddess bathing in a dark pool.
Would that he could attend her. That he could follow the little bejeweled droplets with his tongue and find the intriguing places they would land.
Would that he could make her wet.
She eventually gathered up her undergarments, which were still rather clean all things considered, and scrubbed at them with the soap.
He remembered that she’d mentioned she had no trunk with her, and would likely need to wear them again tomorrow until her things could be fetched.
That finished, she wrung them out and set them aside before taking up the soap once more.
John had been no saint as a young man. He’d frolicked and fornicated in the presence of his young and noble mates, sharing courtesans and the like. He’d enjoyed watching women. What they did to each other, to other men.
To themselves.
But he could truly never remember gleaning as much intimate enjoyment as he did watching her start at her foot, and lather a bit of coarse soap up her leg to her thigh and in between them before working her way back down the other side.
Had he not been dead, he might have expired from the length of time he held his breath.
Restless, aroused, John drifted in circles around the tub as she washed, humming an unfamiliar tune softly as the firelight danced across her skin.
He found himself behind her as she ran a lathered hand over her shoulders and did her best to reach her back. She was about to get suds on a dark velvet curl that had escaped her coiffure and reflexively, John’s hand made to brush it aside.
Knowing he couldn’t. Understanding that his hand would pass through her before it actually did.
Even so, his body was helpless but to reach for her.
Which was why her muffled shriek startled them both.
CHAPTER 3
As gracefully as a gazelle, the woman surged to her feet, snatched the towel, and leapt from the bath to retreat as far away from him as possible.
John was almost too shocked to much lament the fact that she wrapped her torso in the towel and clutched it to her clavicles, protecting most of her lovely figure from view.
He looked down at his hand, pleased to note that it had become visible, or at least the transparent shadow of it, a flesh-colored outline through which he could see the floor beneath, interrupted only by the cuff of his crimson regimental jacket.
“Holy Moses,” she gasped, breathing as if she’d run apace. Enough of her skin was still visible to notice that she rippled with tiny goosebumps. “You’re a—shade. A man. A…”
“A ghost?” he politely finished for her.
She blanched unbelievably whiter, pressing a hand to her forehead as if to check for a fever. Apparently not finding one, she lowered her palm, unveiling a wrinkle of bemusement.
“You’re not Carrie,” she accused, her diction slow and uncertain.
“An astute observation,” he answered wryly.
“Did you know her?”
“Know her?” He found the question odd and out of place.
“You’re in her bedroom. Did you haunt her?” Brows lifting impossibly higher, her gaze shifted to the cobalt coverlet on the bed, and the spider-web thin lace of the curtains, no doubt making certain scandalized assumptions.
He opened his mouth to dispel them, but what came out was, “What year is it?”
She blinked back at him in mute confusion. Her eyes all but crossed and uncrossed as she looked at him, and then through him, and then at him again. “You’re English,” she said rather distantly. “But here…haunting the Highlands. Why?”
John drifted around the basin toward her. “Pay attention, woman, what bloody year is it?”
She swallowed, retreating from the bed and inching around the basin to keep it between them. “It’s eighteen ninety-one.”
He froze as his calculations astonished him. “I’ve been asleep for thirty-five years this time.”
“My,” she breathed, bending down to retrieve her undergarments from the edge of the tub as she backed toward the fire. “You must have been awfully knackered.”
He scowled at her, not understanding the word. “You’re quite calm for a woman being haunted. Why are you not running out of here, screaming for help at the top of your lungs?”
She seemed to consider his question carefully, letting go of one side of the towel as she tapped her chin in a contemplative posture. The towel slipped down her chest a little, and John felt his composure slip right along with it.
“For one, I’m not dressed. And for another, Bess warned me I’d spend the night with a ghost. I suppose it was my erroneous assumption that apparition would be female.”
He allowed her to keep the basin between them, even though he could have passed right through it and not even disturbed the water.
Not yet.
“I do apologize if I frightened you, miss,” he felt compelled to say. “Let me assure you I am a mostly harmless ghost.”
“That’s a relief to hear. Though I’ll admit I was more startled than frightened…almost.”
His scowl suddenly felt more like a pout, which irked him in the extreme. “I’ll have you know, the mention of my very name has struck terror in the hearts of entire regiments. And you expect me to believe you are so bold as to be fearless? I am a bloody apparition after all. You’re not even having a mild crisis of nerves?”