Magick and Lipstick Blog

She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,

And lovers around her are sighing;

But coldly she turns from their gaze and weeps,

For her heart in his grave is lying.

–    Thomas Moore

Excerpt from "Whisper of Yesterday" March 2012 in ePrint all formats, paperback September 2012. Secret Cravings Publishing.

He was in her room. She watched while his valet helped him off with his topcoat and muddy boots, and knelt to add more wood to the dying fire in the black marble fireplace. The man he called Bevan retired, taking his master’s boots with him.

She shivered as the kindling burst into flame and the fire danced higher in the grate. How she hated fire. Although she felt none of its heat, she still remembered its torturous bite as it stole the life from her body. She crossed her hands over her chest in a protective gesture and moved closer to the man standing by the bed. He was loosening the buttons of his white lawn shirt.

He looked so like her love, if she could have wept, she would have now. His hair was blue-black like Cai’s, but whereas Cai’s had fallen in a tangle of curls past his shoulders, this man’s was trimmed short and settled upon his pointed collar.

His features looked softer, less angular, yet he seemed to carry an aura of deep sadness that she could not explain. He pulled his neck cloth from around his throat and tossed it onto a nearby brocade chair. A cravat, she thought they called it. Fashion had changed much over the last two centuries, but she had stayed abreast of it, watching people move in and out over the years, hearing them talk.

She smiled. None ever stayed long. Though, in a strange sort of way she missed them.

It had been some years now since the castle had been occupied by anyone other than herself and Tom. Since Meredith. She had liked the Countess. Meredith had reminded her a lot of herself, with her red flowing hair and green eyes and fun-loving nature. They had held such lively conversations in the garden, and Meredith had been not one whit afraid of her. But as for her foolish little husband—Alyssa wished she had pulled the trigger on him herself, the day he killed her friend.

Then there was Wyndham, who had stopped for less than a day, looked over the castle and stables, and hastened away. She had not even had to put in an appearance to get rid of that one. Though Tom had told her he still put his hand out for the money from the tenants these past fifteen months. Not that there had been much, for those who had come before had bled the place dry, selling off anything that would bring a shiny penny.

They had not touched her room, though. She had seen to that. And now he was here, and she knew neither the reason nor rhyme, and did not care. For two hundred years she had waited. Knowing one day he would come. He might have a new name, but to her he would always be Cai de Morgan, her lover, her husband.

Her breath caught as he pulled off his shirt. By all that was holy, were she not already dead, she thought surely she would die for the want of him. She stepped closer. His shoulders were wide; his waist trim, his chest so smooth it almost gleamed in the light of the candle on the dresser. As he undid the first button of his buff skin-tight breeches, she could see where the faint line of black hair trailed down to his—she cut off her thoughts as his hand stilled. His midnight blue eyes stared right through her into the shadowy darkness of the corner.

“Is someone there?”

His deep rich voice was like fine velvet, the exact timbre of Cai’s. Her heart hurt. Although she knew it beat no more, it was uncanny how she could still feel the emotions of the living. She moved to the window as he continued to undress.

She would not watch. She was no voyeur. She had seen enough to know he was Cai, her Cai, that he had come back to her, and that she could never touch him again. She swallowed the lump in her throat and stared down into the courtyard. The place she had died. She heard the whisper of cloth as his breeches hit the polished wooden floor, the rustle of bedclothes as he climbed into the four-poster. The bed she had shared with Cai on their wedding night—where they had pledged their love for eternity. And she felt grateful when a moment later the darkness descended, as it always did when she had stayed too long in the place of the living.

* * * *