So, she attempted the truth.
“I took refuge at a place in the Highlands of Scotland called Balthazar’s Inn on solstice night. While I stayed there I…met…” She sputtered and stalled out a bit. It was impossible to express her experience without choking up, so she reached behind her neck and unclasped the chain, letting the lion head ring slip from it into her palm. “I happened upon this, and was told it belonged to Johnathan de Lohr, the one who was lost at Culloden. I was…tasked to return it.”
Those heartless, ruthless eyes affixed on the ring, and she thought she might have read a spark of life in them.
But only just.
“The Lion’s Head.” His voice had become deeper, like a monk’s at prayer. “All this time. All these many generations have searched for it…and it just walks into Lioncross at Christmas.” He reached for it. Paused. And flicked his eyes back to hers. “May I?”
“It’s yours.” She offered it to him reluctantly, loath to let go all she had left of her lover.
He handled it as if it were made of spun glass, tilting it to unveil an inscription on the inside, which she’d never noticed. “Ever faithful.”
She leaned over to take a closer look, immediately aware that if either of them tilted their heads a fraction, their lips would meet.
“I’ve seen so many drawings. We’ve always assumed the ring was lost at the battle of Culloden. This was crafted in the Holy Land and gifted to the Lionclaw to always adorn the hand of the Earl of Worchester. In fact, a replica was never made because this one meant so much. They said there was a bit of magic crafted with it.”
Swallowing a surge of grief, Vanessa looked longingly at the coffin behind her. “I suppose I should have given it to you. I just thought…Well I wanted to return it to its rightful owner.”
The corner of his mouth tilted, and for a moment she thought she might burst into tears.
“That is good of you.” He hesitated, drawing a hand through his mane in an attempt to tame it. “It’s freezing out. Might I invite you in for some warm tea?”
She shook her head, needing to lick her wounds. Unwilling to have to look at him in the brilliant winter sun. “Oh. I don’t want to take up any of your—”
“Please,” he murmured, capturing her hand. “It’s a rather large castle, and it’s just me, now. The last de Lohr…well of my line, anyhow. You’d be doing a solitary man a kindness on Christmas.”
She swallowed a spurt of pity and called it ridiculous. He was one of the most eligible bachelors in the Empire. If he wanted companionship, he’d only have to crook a finger.
“I’m no sort of company,” she argued. “And not someone you’d want to be seen socializing with, besides.”
The tiniest hint of an azure flame flared behind his eyes, causing them to glow like black sapphires in the dark. “I’m a de Lohr. I do as I fucking wish.”
Worry crimped her forehead. “Perhaps you haven’t heard about me.”
“Oh, I heard,” he said meaningfully. “I saw the pamphlet that blackguard, Woodhaven, passed around my club.” His voice took on a savage bite to match the ferocity of his features. “I burned them all and got his bloody membership revoked.”
She smiled at that. “Well…maybe one cup of tea.”
He took up her lantern and turned away, so she followed his shoulders up the stone steps, blinking against the brightness of the morning.
Which was why she bumped into him.
It was like running into a boulder.
Jostled by her, he dropped the ring, and it rolled between his feet as he took a few steps before he realized.
Vanessa bent to pick it up, and a snowflake landed on the tip of her nose as she straightened. She blinked and looked around, mesmerized by the drifting crystals of frost dancing toward the earth. It was as if the sky had released little diamonds, and they’d chosen to land in the Lioncross gardens, adorning them with indescribable wealth.
“Odd,” he remarked, tilting his neck up. “It wasn’t snowing when I followed you down here. In fact, it was a clear morning.”
Something gripped her at the sight of his throat arched to the sky. Something both foreign and familiar, and she cleared her throat to dislodge any gathers of emotion and the odd impulse to fall upon it like a vampire.
“Here,” she offered, taking the ring between her thumb and fingers and reaching for his hand.
He looked down at her and relinquished his hand to her grip. It was so similar to the one she’d become acquainted with, she thought she might expire. A few different marks and calluses, but nothing remarkable enough.
She slid the ring over his knuckles.
A perfect fit.
She wanted to rip it off again. To claim it for her own. Because it didn’t belong to him, this man with the empty eyes and kind, familiar smile. It belonged to John. Her John. The ghost who’d been somehow more full of life than even this magnificent specimen of a man.
She wanted to go back down into the crypt and sit with his bones. She wanted to go back to Scotland and sleep in the bed she’d shared with him. And mourn. Wail. Cry.
She knew it was pathetic, and she couldn’t bring herself to care, because he was gone. She could feel not only his body but his soul missing the moment she’d awoken after the solstice.
Perhaps he was finally at rest.
“Vanessa.”
She jumped at the sound of his voice. Looked up into his face.
His face.
The hollows had disappeared and…the eyes! The eyes were the same. No longer a grey/ blue but sharp with that familiar larkspur brilliance.
His name escaped her on a choked whisper.
John.
She jumped into his arms and he caught her against his chest, sweeping her around in the cheerful flurry before setting her back down.
“How is this—? What are—? Is he still—?” She couldn’t seem to finish a sentence, she was too incandescently happy.
He put his hand to his temple and then threaded it through his hair, testing locks much shorter than his had been. “It isn’t just him. That is, it’s me. But also him.”
“I don’t understand,” she croaked, fighting tears of hope and disbelief.
His smile could have eclipsed the sun. “I can’t say I do, either. All I can tell you is…when we, you and I, met at the Bainbridge ball all those years ago, I wanted you then. But I’d already planned not to marry because I didn’t have a heart nor a soul to give to a woman, and you deserved everything of that and more.”
Johnathan de Lohr, the Earl of Worchester lifted his face to the sky once again, allowing snowflakes to gather on his eyelashes as if he enjoyed the sensation for the very first time.
“I was born empty,” he told the clouds. “It would scare my mother to look into my eyes. She said she didn’t think I had a soul. It was why she never had more children. And I felt it too…”
“And now?”
He captured her with his gaze. “Now, I think I was always a vessel. I am Johnathan de Lohr. Perhaps was meant to be him—me—whatever. I still have my memories.” He gave her a hot look that threatened to scorch through her trousers. “I have his memories, as well.”
She tried to believe it, though her mind couldn’t seem to grasp just what was happening, and then she realized. “I never told you my first name.”