“Will you do something for me, Vanessa?”
“Anything.”
He slid the ring that belonged on his pinky onto her ring finger. “Return this ring to Lioncross Abbey for me. Perhaps it can put me to final rest.”
She curled her fingers into a fist. “Perhaps, if I keep the ring with me, I’ll keep you, too,” she slurred, half asleep. “You could be my ghost. You could haunt me.”
Somehow, he knew it wouldn’t work, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her so. His fingers worked over her face, as if learning her features like a blind man. Smoothing at her brows with featherlight touches until her jaw cracked on a yawn.
“Don’t make me sleep.” She fought it valiantly as a recalcitrant toddler. “I haven’t shown you your photograph yet. The glass negative.”
“Tomorrow.” He said the word like a promise. A promise he already knew he would break. “I love you, Vanessa.”
She mumbled something he thought might be the reply he hoped for. It didn’t matter. As much as he desired her heart, he also wanted it free. Because she would live the most extraordinary life, and he was just lucky to be a part of it for one memorable solstice night.
CHAPTER 8
CHRISTMAS DAY—LIONCROSS ABBEY
Vanessa let out a violent sneeze as she once more descended into the dust of the de Lohr crypts, her body and her heart recoiling from what she was about to do.
She’d infiltrated the de Lohr crypt, a monolithic cavern beneath the granite cliffs upon which the incomparable stones of Lioncross Abbey lorded over lush and verdant lands.
If the noble family had been in residence, there’d be signs of life, but as she circled the grounds on horseback, she’d spied none. No gas lamps lit the predawn light, nor did even so much as a drape twitch in the tower.
The castle itself was an impenetrable fortress, but sometime over the past hundred years or so, an enterprising Earl had added on a lavish manner home to the keep and landscaped it in such a way that the gardens at Versailles would weep with envy.
The crypts, fortunately for her, were situated on a dark corner of the grounds and were accessible enough if an enterprising body didn’t mind clipping away vines of ivy and squeezing through the slats of an iron fence that would have kept out an invading army.
But not one enterprising slip of a woman.
She’d eschewed her skirt for the mission, donning a pair of lad’s trousers and a coat that swallowed her to the knees. She’d pinned her hair high on her head and hid it beneath a cap.
Frost had crunched beneath her feet as she crept across the outer bailey to the mausoleum-like crypt entrance. She descended a few of the spiral stairs down below the frosted earth, before lighting her lantern. She tiptoed past the stone slabs covering many a de Lohr ancestor until she came to the one marked the year of Culloden, chiseled with the same name as was etched into her heart.
She pulled the chain upon which the ring rested from beneath her blouse, and wrapped her fingers lovingly around it, letting it burn against her palm. Could she do this? Could she uncover his bones and not fall to pieces at the sight of them?
She’d only known him one night. And that was all it took to fall.
Whatever shame and sadness she wore as a coronet before was no comparable tragedy to the past few days she’d spent waiting for him to appear.
Awaking in the sunshine after a Scottish storm, alone in the bed they’d shared, had just about broken her spirit.
He was lost to her, of that she had no doubt. Lost so soon, when she’d only just found the one man to whom she’d consider relinquishing both her name, her hand, and her heart. A man who’d transfixed and teased her. Who’d pleasured and protected her. A man to whom true honor meant more than reputation.
He’d only ever asked one thing of her.
But it was a cruel thing.
She closed her eyes and took a fortifying breath, filling her lungs with the loamy scent of earth and frost and a hint of decay. She released the ring, letting it settle between her breasts, a comforting weight around her neck.
One she’d have to give up.
She could do this. She’d done difficult things before.
She set the lantern onto the earth and discarded her gloves beside it before placing her hands on the stone slab above his coffin and pushing with all her strength. She groaned and strained, even let out a few curses, but it didn’t budge.
Blast. She’d need leverage. Perhaps a—
Strong arms seized her from behind, drawing her back against a body as hard as iron. One arm locked beneath her breasts, the other around her throat.
“I’ll give you two breaths to tell me what you are doing here, before I snap your neck.” The growl was ferocious, arrogant, and alarming.
And no sound had ever been so dear.
“John?” she whispered around the tightness of her heart throbbing in her throat. She turned her face to the side, instinctively searching for his warmth. “John, is it really you?”
“A woman?” As quickly as she was seized, she was released. Cast away from the embrace she craved with the strength of an opium fiend.
She turned to see him, drinking in the sight of him with the thirst of someone finding an oasis in the desert.
Before her glowered a man of pure flesh and blood. Sinew and strength. His golden hair was cut in neat layers, even though it now spiked in wild disarray, as if he’d rolled out of bed only minutes prior. It suited him, the lord of Lioncross. The structure of his body was achingly familiar. The same long frame, the same wide shoulders and tapered waist accentuated by a dark wool coat thrown over a hastily buttoned shirt.
Aside from deeper brackets around his hard mouth and longer sideburns, he was John.
Except.
His eyes were perfectly dull and flat. So empty a blue as to almost be called grey as they assessed her with all the emotion one might attribute to a shark.
“You address me so informally, madam,” he said over an imperious look.
Her heart gave one powerful, painful thump, before sputtering and dying. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I can explain.”
One golden brow arched over a look of recognition. “We’ve met before.”
“Y-yes,” she stammered. “At Lady Bainbridge’s fete.”
Recognition flared in the dim lantern light. “You’re Veronica’s sister.”
Just when she thought her heart could sink no lower. “Yes. I am.”
He made a rumbly, pensive sound, half between a purr and a snarl. “I still don’t understand why they call her the pretty one.”
“What?” Suddenly it was impossible to breathe.
He shook his head, blinking as if trying to clear it. “Sorry. Do you mind telling me what the bloody devil you’re doing in my crypt on Christmas?”
“I um…” She itched at her hair beneath her cap, wondering just how to get herself out of this predicament without being thrown in an asylum. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
He leveled her a droll look, propping his shoulder against a stone wall. “Try me.”
She gazed at him a long time, at the lantern light splashing deep hollows beneath his chiseled cheekbones. Something in the imperturbable stillness of his gaze told her she could say anything.