Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(126)
Author: Kristen Ashley

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in another time…

* * * * *

“Royce, stop.”

At Beatrice’s words, Royce pulled back Mallory’s reigns and the horse dutifully halted.

His beautiful new bride twisted to look at him and he caught her eyes, hiding his impatience. He was keen to get to Lacybourne, the weather had turned and the sky was threatening rain and worse.

But with one look at his beautiful new wife and Royce thought that imminent rain was the less important of the two reasons there were to get home, as quickly as possible, to Lacybourne.

“Is something amiss?” Royce asked, staring down into her eyes, noting they’d softened to a mellow brown with only the barest inflections of green at the pupils.

“This morning…” She pulled her lips between her teeth in a gesture he had become used to over the last several months, a habit he found quite endearing. Then she released them and whispered, “I should have told you before we wed, you may have decided…”

Royce sighed his impatience. “Beatrice, rain is coming, do you not feel it?”

“Royce, I think I’ve gone quite mad,” she burst out. Before he could comment on this, her latest bizarre utterance to add to the wealth of bizarre utterances she had amassed since he met her, she went on, “I… sometimes I…” she paused, looking for the right words then she found them, “drift away. These past months, with you, always with you, I just go away, somewhere nice, somewhere peaceful and then I come back and I find time is lost to me. You do not seem to notice I’ve been gone and we have… done things while I’m not here… and… I just do not remember.” She pulled in a broken breath and watched him closely before she whispered, “My love, I think I am mad.”

He did not speak because his entire body stilled.

She dropped her eyes to her lap. “What’s worse, sometimes I think you do it as well.” Her head lifted with a snap and her eyes caught his again. “Sometimes you are simply…” she hesitated again then finished, “not you.”

Royce regarded her for a moment and then swiftly alighted from Mallory’s back. He put his strong hands on Beatrice’s waist to pull her down and he set her before him. Very close before him.

She tilted her head up and he stared at her, her beautiful, dark, glossy hair shining on her shoulders (she’d worn it down, just for him). It was threaded liberally with flowers and he thought, with pleasure and unusual whimsy, that she looked somewhat like a nymph.

But now, her eyes were frightened and wary and she was waiting for him to react to her words.

“I feel it as well,” he admitted, “in me and in you.”

Her eyes warmed and she breathed, “Truly?”

Royce nodded.

Beatrice sagged against him

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said with extreme relief. “I thought it was only me.”

“You are pleased we are both mad?”

Her eyes were shining when she looked at him. “No… yes… no, but I think… yes.”

He grinned at her with every intention of keeping from her, for her own protection (of course) that he felt he knew the woman she became when she was no longer Beatrice. That he had a vague feeling they had been together, somewhere, not there. That she was good and kind, just like Beatrice. That there was nothing to fear because, in some way, she was Beatrice.

It was a fanciful notion and a man like Royce did not waste time on fanciful notions.

He lifted his hand to her neck, setting his thumb on the soft skin under her chin.

“Do you fear this night? Our night?” he asked gently.

Her eyes rounded. “Yes… no… yes, but I think… no.”

He shook his head but still grinned at her.

“You have nothing to fear, beloved.”

Her eyes melted to liquid.

And, at that familiar sight, Royce had no choice.

He bent his head to kiss her.

* * * * *

Esmeralda Crane rushed out of her cottage on her way to Lacybourne and was nearly so attuned to her task of saving the doomed lovers that she missed the change in the atmosphere.

Then she saw it.

It was not just golden but thick as stew.

She felt a timid hope spring into her heart and she quickened her step, clutching the potion to her.

* * * * *

In the present time, in the library, at Lacybourne…

* * * * *

Idly, Marian pulled the volume out of the shelf as she heard Phoebe ask distractedly, “What could have happened to them?”

Marian thought about what she hoped had happened to Colin and Sibyl, that they were breaking the curse. Which, considering Colin’s reputation, might take awhile. She turned the pages, leafing through the book as the guests chattered and the children played.

“I cannot imagine,” Mags answered Phoebe, enunciating every word playfully.

Marian’s eyes skimmed down the book. She hadn’t seen it in years and she had no idea what drew her to pulling it from the shelf. She had mostly memorised it, of course, but…

Her eyes stopped dead on some words on the page and her body got tight.

A date.

A date nearly five hundred years before.

How could she have forgotten?

And then her eyes widened when she saw all the words after the date had become misty and unreadable. As if, even though they were meant to tell the story of long-dead lovers, they had not yet been written. As if they were waiting to form, waiting for the story to unfold, a story that should have been forged with time.

A story that clearly was not.

A thrill ran up her spine, her head jerked up and she asked a question to which she already knew the answer. “What’s today’s date?”

She said it too loudly and with too much alarm. Several pairs of eyes swivelled to her and several mouths gave her the information she sought.

Marian snapped the book shut and strode purposefully toward Mags.

And when she made it to the other woman, she announced gravely, “Marguerite. It’s time.”

* * * * *

In the wood, the man shifted through the leaves, trying to be quiet and definitely being watchful.

No matter how quiet or watchful he was, he would never have heard or seen the spectre drifting behind him.

However, he did feel, for a brief, painful moment, the blow that struck him on the head.

The man collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.

The spectre drifted away.

Light work, it thought.

Resurrected by the dark soul mere moments previously, the spectre had only one gruesome mission this night. His reviver had tried to use beings in this time but they had failed. Thus, it had been called forward to do again what it had done many years before.