Chapter Eleven

 

Woding seemed more tense than usual, Serena thought. His eyes had the wide watchfulness of a wary horse, as if he was expecting something to jump out at him from behind every corner. It was what she wanted, but she wished she knew what had brought it on so suddenly. Maybe it was that whole incident with Beezely.

The cat even now brushed up against her leg, and she bent down to pet him. “Naughty kitty,” she said, scratching him under his chin, feeling his purr rumble against her fingers. “Do you appear to them on purpose?”

She followed Woding to his bedroom, where he shucked off his shoes and lay down on the bed. She knew his habits well enough by now to know that he must be intending to watch stars tonight, and sought to prepare himself with a nap. The clear sky boded well for stargazing.

He didn’t look in the proper state of mind for napping, though. He lay flat on his back, his hands clasped together on his belly, his ankles crossed. She sat down cross-legged on the empty half of the bed, pulling at her skirts so they were loose over her knees. She put her chin in her palm, her elbow on one knee, and settled in to wait.

This was her least favorite part of haunting Woding. Observing him sleep was entertaining for only the first few minutes, and then she began to get both jealous and bored. Jealous because she no longer knew the joys of sleep: she could fade into oblivion easily enough, but it was a black and empty oblivion, devoid of dreams or the luxurious sensations of slumber. The boredom came because he did nothing but lie there. The thrashings of his nightmares held a certain interest, but even that was a frustration, as she had no way of knowing what images tormented his mind.

Woding was staring wide-eyed at the fabric lining the underside of the tester, a vein throbbing in his temple. She leaned over to look directly into his face. It was a handsome face, she had to admit. She wondered what he’d do if she touched it, maybe brushed her fingertips across those tightly closed lips. Those smooth, well-formed lips that looked soft and firm at once.

Her fingers tingled with the desire to do it, but she held back. She had to remember that he was the enemy. She should not be having thoughts like this about him.

Eventually he closed his eyes, and bit by bit his breathing deepened. She stretched out beside him on the covers, her fingers playing with the ends of his hair on the pillow, passing through without disturbing them.

He wasn’t an entirely bad man, she reluctantly admitted to herself, watching him sleep. She could imagine no other hiring a stable-lass. She still couldn’t quite believe that he had done it. Maybe all those times she thought he was being manipulative of servants or of his sister, he was instead being kind.

No, that couldn’t be right. Manipulative and sly fit her vision of him much better than did generous and kind. He might use the carrot instead of the stick, but he still managed to get his own way. Her brothers would have underestimated him, thinking him weak and laughing at his methods. But who would have laughed last? The sly fox, that’s who.

And yet… She had never once see him be unkind. Exasperated and annoyed, yes, but the only temper she’d seen him display had been directed at her, after she’d thrown a tantrum in his study.

The thought made her uncomfortable. She nibbled a thumbnail. If Woding was a good man, where did that leave her and her plans to be rid of him?

 

Alex woke feeling more tired than when he had laid down, restless images from his dreams flitting through his disjointed memory. She was the cause of his poor sleep; he was certain of it. Daytime be damned, it was Serena who had him thrashing and sweating when he sought calm slumber. He turned his head, catching the pale shape in the corner of his eye.

He needn’t have checked. She had been staying so close to his side these past days, it felt as if she were attached to him—and always would be. He wondered which of them had the greater stamina to endure such closeness. He feared anyone who had hung around a pile of ruined rock for half a millennium might have already proved her staying power.

The thought made him groan, and he quickly masked it with a stretch, easing his stiff muscles. If he knew what she wanted, he would give it to her, if only she would go away. Of course, that was probably exactly what she wanted from him: his departure. And that was the one thing he would not give. He could not imagine explaining to his fellow amateur astronomers that he had left his perfect star viewing tower because a female ghost insisted on sleeping beside him at night and watching him at his bath.

He groaned again. His bath. It had been bad enough when he only felt her presence in his room, but could still force himself to dismiss it as his imagination. To actually catch glimpses of a watching woman while he bathed... that would be a different experience.

Perhaps going mad was the best solution. He would simply never again change his clothes or wash his body.

He checked the clock and saw that it was time for dinner under the watchful eyes of the Canadian caribou. The presence tagged along, and as he sat down at the head of the empty table he gave a moment’s thought to what Serena might think of this new version of her castle. Did she like the caribou? The castle must not look much as she remembered. Briggs had not cared much for historical accuracy, and even the flight of stone stairs that Serena had supposedly fallen down was nowhere to be seen. For all he knew they’d been pulled up and the stones used in the walls.

The table was already set, and a ring of the bell brought Marcy and Dickie, carrying the dishes that held his dinner: lamb stew, a pudding, and an overabundance of boiled peas. Daisy Hutchins was not an imaginative cook, but he would not be left starving. And, truth be told, he rather preferred plain fare to some of the elaborate, sauce-drenched dishes that Leboff had forced on him. He would miss the ice cream, though.

Marcy and Dickie left him alone to fill his plate and eat, and he soon found his mind wandering off into the starry skies, far beyond the realms of stews and puddings. He ate by rote, fork and knife working together without his interference.

Then he noticed the peas. Two of them, sitting on the tablecloth.

Had he done that? He didn’t think he’d been so careless. His sisters had ensured that his table manners were impeccable, even when he was not paying attention.

A third pea hopped off his plate, making a little splat of gravy as it landed on the linen. He stared at the offending legume for a long moment, then from the corner of his eye caught the white movement of a presence.

Serena.

A pea suddenly shot off the table, much as if someone had flicked it with a finger. With his knife and fork, he carefully picked up the two remaining peas, depositing them back on his plate.

Yet another pea inched up the edge of the plate and dropped over the edge. It slowly rolled toward Serena, then took off across the dining room, hitting one of the leaded-glass windowpanes with a soft pat and dropping to the floor, leaving a smudge of gravy on the glass.

Alex took a deep breath, watching as a fifth pea made its escape from his plate. He didn’t know if this came under proper ghostly behavior, playing with someone’s food. It seemed more like something a bored child would do. It certainly was not frightening, although he would admit it was plenty annoying.

The pea took flight, landing in the flower arrangement at the center of the table. Another dropped off his plate.

He turned his eyes away, until he could catch in his peripheral vision the cloudy outline of Serena, her arm extended as she made the pea dance a gravy gavotte on the tablecloth. Still looking away, he readied his fork in his hand, and then—whap!—he slapped at where her hand should be with the flat of the utensil.

The shape leaped backward, but not before the fork bounced off something solid. His lips were curling in boyish victory when his entire plate violently upended, sending stew and peas all over the table. He shoved his chair back, standing just in time to save himself from being dripped on by a rivulet of gravy.

He stood surveying the mess, aware of the white figure and unwilling to give her any satisfaction for such a childish display. He rang the bell, and in a minute Marcy bobbed in, her hazel eyes going wide at the mess.

“Please bring a fresh plate,” Alex said.

“Yes, sir,” Marcy said, having the good sense not to ask the obvious question. “I’ll have Dickie come help me remove the cloth.”

Alex nodded, and waited while the two young people cleared away the mess, resetting the table with fresh dishes and cutlery. Dickie knocked over the empty wineglasses twice, obviously having suspicions about what had occurred. When they’d finished, Alex sat down again as if nothing had happened, and served himself small portions of each dish. He would not let a petulant ghost deprive him of his pudding and peas.

He could see the figure move back into place at the seat to his left, and when that vague white shape of a hand moved toward his plate, he lifted his fork in a threatening manner, making it very clear he knew what she was about. The hand stopped.

He ate the remainder of his meal in peace.

This was no good, Serena fretted, chewing her upper lip, sitting with crossed arms watching Woding eat. How had he known what she was about to do? Was his sense of her that good, and he had been pretending otherwise all this time?

Or—horrid thought—what if he could see her, the way Ben Flury could so often see Beezely? Her fingers went to the scar across her face, tracing the path. The thought of it made her feel sick to her stomach. Almost no one had seen her for centuries, and that was the way she liked it. No one knew what a lumbering giant she was, or that she had an ugly face. It had been one of the few benefits of her undead state.

Maybe it was something with his astrology that helped him to gauge her so well. She would have to watch him more closely, and pay more attention to what he did. It would help vastly if she could read, but even had she been taught, she doubted she would be able to decipher his scratchings. What flowed from his nib bore little resemblance to the thick script she had seen in her family’s Bible.

Or maybe it was as she had thought earlier, and he had a gift for seeing people as no one else could.

Woding finished his main course, and Marcy and Dickie returned to clear away the dishes and serve his dessert, a bread pudding with custard sauce. She really couldn’t let him win like this, sitting there smugly eating his sweet. He thought he’d beaten her, smacking her hand like he had. She’d show him.

Dickie was almost to the door with a tray load of dishes. Serena snuck up to him, took two peas from the dish, and popped one into each of his nostrils.

The resultant crash of dishes snapped Woding’s head around, and had Marcy giving a shriek of surprise.

“My nose!” Dickie cried, stumbling amid the fallen crockery, treading in stew. “I can’t breathe!”

Woding rose, but it was Marcy who reached Dickie first, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Let me see!” And then, when she did, she let go of him, stepping back.

“Oh, Dickie,” she said. “That’s not funny. You frightened me.”

Dickie gasped for air through his mouth, his lips hanging wide like the mouth of a fish. “I can’t breathe.” His fingertips touched his nose, jerking back at the smooth, firm texture of the peas. “What is it?” he yelped. “What’s in there?”

Marcy turned away from him, shaking her head in disgust, and began to clear up the mess on the floor. It was Woding who answered him, his face hard. “You have peas in your nose. Go find a mirror and remove them.”

He then stepped past Dickie, leaving the dining room and his dessert.

Serena followed, feeling rather pleased with that bit of mischief. She punched imaginary peas into noses all the way up to Woding’s tower room, wondering what would have happened if she’d used his nose instead of Dickie’s.

He sat down at his desk, placing both hands flat on its surface, staring at the papers scattered there. She could see his chest moving with his breathing under the white folds of his cravat.

“Serena,” he said, raising his eyes and looking straight at her.

She froze, her eyes wide, a fist in mid-pea punch, and just managed to keep herself from answering. She suddenly had the same feeling of dread and fear that had come with being called in front of her father for a misdeed.

“I have had enough of your childish games.”

Good. Maybe he would leave.

“For a while, I admit, I was growing curious about who you were,” he went on. “I have felt you following me, lying beside me in my bed, and watching me bathe.” He leaned back in his chair. “I have even dreamed about you, and what you may look like.” He looked at a spot in the distance, his eyes going vague as he recalled. “It seemed you were a tall woman, with long, pale blond hair flowing down past your hips.”

Her lips parted, a chill running up her body.

“I even thought, once or twice, about how fascinating it would be to speak with you, and to hear you talk about your life.”

What?

“Now, though, I am not at all certain that I want to know anything about you. I have doubts that you retain any more of your humanity than its worst qualities, paramount among them cruelty and violence. I fear you may be nothing but the echo of a disturbed mind.”

She was not disturbed! That was unfair. And she was more human than not—why else would she feel this pain when the living were near? He did not understand her, did not understand the purpose of her haunting, did not understand that it was in self-defense. He understood nothing!

He sighed. “Which are you, Serena? Are you a beautiful woman caught halfway between life and death, or are you nothing but an echo of the ugliest parts of humanity?”

Silence stretched to the corners of the room, trapping her mute in its bonds. She was neither, but she wished she could be the first of those, wished it as she always had, with all her heart. She wanted to be a beautiful woman about whom men dreamed.

“If you are indeed a woman, I should like to know you,” Woding said.

Serena drifted a few inches off the floor and sat in a nonexistent chair, trying to make sense of all this. People had but rarely spoken to her during her years as a ghost, and most often when they did they said things like “Stop it,” or “Don’t hurt me.” No one tried talking to her as if she might have something to say. Except for Thomas, no one in her lifetime had, either.

Woding had dreamed of her as a beautiful woman.

Stuffing peas up a boy’s nose suddenly seemed a petty thing to do, much more shameful for her than for poor Dickie, stumbling around with his green-plugged nostrils. For a moment she got a glimpse of how Woding must perceive her—not as a force to be reckoned with, as she had intended, but rather as a spiteful child.

He had dreamed of her as a beautiful woman. He guessed, or knew, that she was tall, with long, pale hair. He must not have seen her face in his dream.

She drifted backward, half disappearing into the stonework of the fireplace as she thought on his words, her mind trying to encompass this shift.

He claimed he wanted to know her.

Had anyone ever wanted to know her?