The older woman cleared her throat delicately. “It seems this Damian was a man of great wealth and title, and he had a wife he most prized and adored. Her name was Elizabeth.”
A ripple of cold moved along Elizabeth’s spine, and her heart started a dreadful pounding.
Apparently oblivious to Elizabeth’s discomfort, Lady Deaning continued with her story. “During the Civil War his castle was besieged by Cromwell and in the battle his wife was tortured and killed most unspeakably before Damian’s very eyes.”
Elizabeth could not speak. What Lady Deaning was telling her confirmed in her mind what she might have suspected all along.
Damian isn’t real.
In her befuddled mind she must have concocted his appearance. At some time, perhaps when she was a child, she had read this tale or someone had told her about it. And now, in her loneliness, she had created a dream lover.
It was as everyone had said. She was not stable.
Mad.
If she did not take care, she would be sent away to live her life with others considered mad.
Lady Deaning observed Elizabeth with curiosity. “Shall I go on, dear? I didn’t know the story, but one night my husband and his friends spoke of it and I overheard them. It seems they deem such stories not fitting for feminine ears.” She laughed lightly. “That is what makes it ever more delicious.”
“Most diverting. Please, finish the story,” Elizabeth said, the hand that held her fan trembling slightly.
“Damian’s castle was set alight, and most within the walls were killed or taken prisoner. Damian managed to escape his captors and he killed the men who had done such horrid things to his wife. He was cut down by a blade and died.”
Elizabeth’s thoughts spun out of control.
Lord, save her.
Perhaps this was what Damian had meant when he told her he could not be with her. If he was real, if somehow he had been truly with her…no, it was not so…
“Please excuse me, Lady Deaning. I must get some air,” she said, her voice faint in her own ears. Her vision seemed to waver, as if she teetered on the edge of a dark abyss.
“Why of course, my dear. Would you like me to go with you?”
Elizabeth stood unsteadily. “No, thank you. Perhaps a little air and quiet will do me good.”
Composing her thoughts as best as she could after hearing the startling news, she made her way across the ballroom to the French doors and into the fresh air. Outside, cool air touched her face. A gentle fog drifted across the promenade below. She drank in deep breaths of air and attempted to steady the erratic pace of her heart.
* * * *
Elizabeth’s sorrow spiked Damian’s heart into fresh life, bringing his ghostly body into corporeal form once again.
As the pain lashed and pounded him, he realized she had called his name. From wherever she was she had called him and needed him more than anything in the world.
He groaned as his head throbbed. He clutched his fingers into fists as his body refused to materialize entirely. Fear twisted his gut.
“I must find a way to go to her. Please, God, grant me this reprieve. She needs me. I will ask nothing ever again as long as I can go to her this last time and help her.”
But there was no answer from the pure darkness around him, only the agony of knowing his beloved needed him, and he could not go to her.
“Damn you!” he screamed to the inky heavens. “Please do not let my sweet Elizabeth leave me again. For this woman is all I need. All I will
ever
need.”
Just when he thought there would be no answer, he heard the sound of laughter and voices. Instantly light appeared, dazzling his eyes and making him squint. All the sights and sounds of a ballroom assaulted his senses, leaping and loud and unruly. He had seconds to realize he wore the clothes of a nineteenth-century man and not his usual garb. The ballroom where he stood looked nothing like the stone of a far older castle.
He stood before the doors leading out of the ballroom onto a balcony. Drawn to the opening, he saw his beloved Elizabeth. Her back was turned to him.
* * * *
A man’s deep voice came from nearby. “Miss Albright, I see you have taken the fresh air as well. Rather warm inside, isn’t it?”
Lord Simmerton exited the ballroom, and she didn’t know whether to be glad for his presence or wish he would leave. “Miss Albright.” He frowned. “Are you all right?”
She put a hand to her throat, her head feeling light, her body almost floating. “I’m not certain.”
He came to her, his expression concerned. “What is wrong?”
What could she say? She couldn’t tell him the truth.
“She is waiting for me,” another male voice said nearby.
Elizabeth couldn’t believe what she was hearing and then what she saw as a tall, familiar man stepped from the shadows.
Damian.
Suddenly her world turned ebony, and she fell into the gloom. Her faint didn’t last long, or at least she didn’t think it did.
“Elizabeth. Elizabeth, wake up.”
Someone called to Elizabeth in urgent tones. Hard, powerful arms held her tightly.
“Sweet Elizabeth. Darling, please wake.”
It could not be.
But the scent of him and the feel of him were unmistakable. Damian?
She pulled her eyes open with effort and saw she had fallen into Damian’s arms, and he held her aloft. He walked with her over to a bench and sat down with her, holding her in his lap.
“Who are you?” Lord Simmerton asked as he walked up to them.
Damian threw him an annoyed glance. “I am her betrothed, sir. I will take care of her from now on.”
Simmerton’s eyes filled with disappointment and perhaps confusion. Ever the aristocrat, however, he straightened his shoulders and nodded. “But of course. I will leave you to your betrothed’s care, Miss Albright.”
With a slight bow, Lord Simmerton returned to the ballroom.
“Are you quite well, my darling?” The worried tone in Damian’s deep, masculine voice thrummed through her blood.
She was at once terrified by the familiar timbre of his voice, at once thrilled to the bottom of her heart.
Damian was attired like other men at the ball, in clothes befitting the day and age and the formality of the gathering. What set him apart was the thick queue at the back of his neck that pulled his black hair away from his stunning face. No other man at the gathering had such long hair.
“Damian?” Elizabeth voice faltered and trembled. “Damian…how…”
“You are well?” His eyes grew serious and worried. “You called for me. I knew you needed me.” He swallowed hard as he kissed her forehead. “I knew you needed me and then I was here.”
“I…I thought you were…” She faltered, her limbs trembling. “I’m well enough. I think.”
“You are pale.” He brought her closer, looking down at her with such rapt attention she felt the warmth of his regard steady her, remove the illness.
“I’m well now that you have come to me.”
He smiled. “At your service, mistress.”
In Elizabeth’s happiness she did not question how he came to be there, that he was as solid and as real as anyone. She took his hand and enjoyed the warmth of his palm, the heat reminding her of their lovemaking.
“I thought never to see you again,” she said.
“And I you.”
For too long her life had been full of mysteries that could not be explained. “You are the Damian in the tale Lady Deaning was just telling me about. You’ve been dead for all these years?”
He winced slightly. It was several moments before he nodded and answered. “Yes.”
The music swelled. A waltz flowed around them like a wave, brushing against them with beautiful strains, invading their hearts and minds. She relished his hard arms about her, heedless of propriety, caring nothing that they might be discovered. She savored time that might at any moment be taken from them.
Elizabeth simply looked at him, taking in the sculpted curves of his face. The dazzling light from the ballroom illuminated his male beauty. Heaven help her, he was more handsome than any man had a right to be.
The melody finished, and Elizabeth feared he would disappear, and she would find herself sitting by Lady Deaning and that he had never been there at all. Or she would wake from sleep and find herself in her bed at Penham Manor and their time together only a dream.
But as he held tight to her hand, he remained solid and warm.
The chill of night did not penetrate her clothes. Her happiness was too distracting, her heart too complete to care. Damian was here. He was alive. And he had come to her when she needed him.
“If God is willing, I shall never leave you again,” he said.
Before she could take a breath his mouth touched hers. Warm, tantalizing, brushing, and stroking her. She wanted him instantly with the fierce desire of one who had been denied their lover’s touch. When he broke the kiss, he drew back only slightly.
“I can touch you. I can feel you against me and it is all real.” He laughed and lifted her with his strong arms, twirling her about like a top. “Then it is true. I am free.”
“Free from what?” she asked.
“From the torture of my prison. For as much as I loved Cromar, it became my prison in death. I have not moved from Cromar since I died.”
She clasped him tightly about the waist and laid her head on his chest. “But how is this happening to me? I have so many questions. How is it I never heard such rumors of you before?”
“I cannot answer them all, my sweet. I do not understand all of it myself. I know only that when I died and my body was taken away, my soul remained behind. Perhaps I was cursed by a family member of a man I killed. My household left Cromar, what was left of my family departed and scattered to the winds. I do not know what happened to them. Over time the castle decayed, and I was forced to watch it every minute, every day, deteriorate into what it is today. A deserted, forlorn hulk of rubble.”
Within his gaze she felt mesmerized. For their dark depths held a love so strong she knew nothing would harm her again. In her welled the strength she had always possessed but never knew of until now.
“Damian, it has never been deserted, so long as I was there. Perhaps when I was a child I felt you, and your spirit was kindred to mine. Both of us have been so lonely.”
He nodded and kissed her forehead reverently. “That may be the way of it.”
Content to be in his arms, she let a few moments elapse before speaking again. “Oh, Damian, I feel so for you. Your dear Elizabeth was taken from you.”
He sighed heavily. “At the time it was more horrible than anything you can imagine. And my hatred was deeper than a gorge.”
“So when you killed the men who murdered her, did you think it would bring her back?”
“No…”
Through the thin light she saw a secret and a struggling in his soul as yet untended. The one piece left of his ordeal not yet repaired. “What is it, Damian? Tell me all, so you might feel cleansed.”
He nodded and when she put her hands to his chest he sucked in a breath. “Lady Deaning knows the romantic tale. But as in all legends there are truths and there are lies. Elizabeth was not so good as I thought her. It was not just my enemies that wished to bring down a Royalist household. It was Elizabeth. She betrayed me with another man. It was not only the Roundheads that killed her. When she was kidnapped from Cromar Castle and taken away, I went to rescue her. I found them some miles away and she refused to come home with me. She was in love with this Roundhead, her lover. Her captor had come to take her.” His face contorted in remembered pain. “She had never loved me. It was all a lie.”
Elizabeth’s tears surged into her eyes, and she let them come down, relentlessly falling. “How awful.”
“Nothing so awful as what I did then.”
“Tell me.”
“The Roundhead thought of her as chattel, as a way to get back at me. He cut her across the face. I lunged at him and managed to stab him once. Elizabeth stepped in front of him as I plunged toward him again. I…” He swallowed hard. “I stabbed her through.”
She gasped and pulled back from him slightly. “Oh, heavens.”
“In my rage that I had killed her and in my hatred, I slaughtered several more men before I was cut down.”
She sobbed, and he held her more tightly.
“So you see, when you came to Cromar as a little girl, I could find peace in watching you, in seeing your innocence and your beauty. That your name was Elizabeth, too, should have hurt me. But you were everything she was not. Innocent, caring, beautiful in soul and spirit. I could feel your goodness whenever you came to Cromar. I watched over you so that nothing might harm you.”
She smiled. “It was you I felt watching me all that time. I often wondered why I felt so protected.”
“When you grew to be a woman I feared you would leave the castle. Just recently, I found myself capable of returning to solid form. I was no longer a wisp of air but a real man. In my human form I felt your physical love and knew that I loved all of you, body and soul. When you left for London I thought it was another sentence in hell. I was to be tortured again by your absence, and knowing another man would have you.”
Elizabeth shook her head vigorously. “No other man will have me. I swear it.”
He kissed her softly. Whatever he saw in her eyes compelled him to kiss her again until they both trembled with need. As his hands roamed her body and his mouth tortured her by touching her neck, her ears, and finally her mouth, she knew that her destiny lay with him.
“I will never leave you,” he said. “I have been given another chance. Perhaps I have atoned long enough for my mistakes.”
“But we cannot stay here.”
“We shall leave this all behind. What do you say about starting a new life in America?”
As startling and stunning as the idea was, it made her smile. “That would please me.” A frown creased her brow. “How would we manage it?”
He touched his pocket and the heavy coin within. “I have resources now. And you shall have access to your aunt’s money. We can go where our hearts desire and be at no one’s beck and call. Will you marry me?”
Elizabeth’s heart had been answered and her heart was now full.