These Haunted Hearts
“Don’t touch me.”
The loathing in her voice made him feel ill. He spread his hands in a gesture of nonaggression and stepped back. “As you pointed out, I can’t hurt you now,” he said with a hint of snap. “You and I are beyond the reach of physical injury.”
Her delicate features were drawn and her great dark eyes glittered with wariness. “I don’t…I don’t want to see you. Can’t you go back to where you came from?”
“My love—”
“Don’t call me that,” she demanded with a trace of her old imperiousness. He was mightily glad to see something remained of his Isabella, apart from this timorous girl.
“Why not?” He drew himself to his full height and matched her hauteur. “That’s what you are. Seventy years haven’t changed how I love you. An eternity won’t change that.”
“You don’t love me,” she said sulkily, wrapping her arms around herself in a protective gesture that made him want to smash something. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t have killed me.”
He stifled the urge to rage, to tell her that she knew him better than this. Temper wouldn’t bring them through this mess. Isabella still looked like she might flee at the slightest sign of danger from him.
From him? The thought beggared belief.
Josiah struggled to keep his voice steady. “Tell me what you remember.”
She straightened and cast him a disdainful look familiar from life. She’d always been haughty and headstrong. “Surely you know.”
He’d always liked that his beloved was no pliable reed, but a woman ready to battle him head-on for what she wanted. Right now, damn it, her stubbornness operated against him and he wasn’t nearly so pleased with her strength.
Josiah slumped against the wall, folding his arms to stop himself reaching for her. It was torture to be so close without touching. “Humor me.”
She cast him an unimpressed glance under her thick sweep of black lashes. It was a look that had never failed to make him want her. The effect remained as powerful on the other side of the mortal divide.
“You act as if I owe you answers. I owe you nothing.”
He stared into her beautiful face and knew in every cell of his body that he couldn’t have killed her. There had to be some mistake. He sighed and chanced honesty. “All of this just seems so absurd. That you could credit I’d do you harm, when you know I’d give up the hope of heaven for your sake.”
The brief flicker of amusement, black as it was, was the first sign of softening in her manner. “I’d suggest that our presence here indicates we’ve both given up our hope of heaven.”
“The last thing I remember is stealing you away from the wedding breakfast,” he said evenly, not fool enough to find too much encouragement in the faint thaw. At least with every second that passed, she looked less likely to take to her heels.
“And then you murdered me.”
“Just like that?” He arched his eyebrows in unconcealed skepticism. “I went straight from kissing you in the hall to pricking you with my pocket knife? Or did I come into possession of a loaded pistol somewhere between vowing a lifetime’s devotion and getting you into bed?”
“You have no right to mock me.” Anger sparked in her black eyes. The push and pull between them was familiar, no matter how much time had passed. Although the ridiculous truth was that he felt like he’d only seen Isabella yesterday, when they were both alive and blissfully in love.
He shook his head in bewilderment. “It seems so unreal, sweeting. That we’re dead and at Marston Hall and it’s seventy years since I held you in my arms. And that you imagine I killed you.”
“You did kill me,” she said sullenly, stepping back into the room from the landing with a graceful sway of her wide skirts. His heart lurched with dizzying relief that at least she stayed. “Now you think it’s funny.”
“Anything but.” His tone was cool, and he didn’t make the mistake of interpreting her approach as an invitation to touch her.
What would it be like to touch her? Could he even touch her?
He could touch inanimate objects, but what about someone formed from the same indefinable material that he now was?
“You pushed me down the stairs in a fit of jealous rage.” She spoke as though her impossible statement ended all argument between them.
Shock held him motionless. Could he have done that? Could he have done that and forgotten?
Their courtship hadn’t been undiluted harmony. He’d loved her to distraction and she, knowing that, hadn’t been above teasing him. From the first, he’d been unsure of her chastity. Talk had been rife about what liberties she’d permitted her previous suitors. Even so, he couldn’t imagine killing her. Isabella could lie under every man in the Royal Navy and Josiah would still want her.
With difficulty, he kept his voice even. “Why? Had you betrayed me?”