Chapter Two
FROM THE SHADOWS, Josiah watched as the lovers kissed for a few minutes more before the young man swept the tall, slender girl from the chamber. Their games and quarrels and barely restrained passion inevitably proved a poignant reminder of his wife. It seemed a grotesque, malicious jest that he was dead. And alone.
A poisonous brew of grief and frustrated anger swirled in his gut. He’d had a whole life ahead of him, a life of love and achievement and purpose. A life with Isabella at his side. A life with children and hope and happiness. A life he’d been denied.
Who were these two people who embraced on his bed and kissed and bickered, just as he and Isabella had kissed and bickered? Although Isabella had been a queenly creature. The girl’s eyes betrayed a vulnerability that was foreign to his darling.
Calista’s clothing was outlandish to his eyes. Too light a
nd simple to adorn a gentlewoman. Like a night rail rather than a garment any decent woman would wear in public. Where were her hoops? She wore no stomacher and her dress was belted high under her breasts. Nor was her chestnut hair dressed with proper care, just a simple knot half tumbled down her back after her tryst on the bed.
Yet her voice, her manner, her sense of ownership of this house—his house—indicated she must belong here. More, the radiance that warmed that too serious face when she smiled reminded him of his mother.
The man was a stranger. But Josiah was familiar enough with the demeanor of a fellow desperately in love to recognize his plight. He was a handsome devil of about thirty, the sort women made fools of themselves over. But the intensity in his eyes suggested intelligence and a discomfiting level of perception.
The girl was something different. Plain and almost forbidding with her severe Aston bone structure, always more suited to masculine members of the family than females. Until she smiled, when she became almost as beautiful as Isabella Verney.
He must say he admired the man’s spirit in luring his lady into sharing his bed before the wedding. Josiah had frequently tried to seduce Isabella, but for a girl famously indifferent to society’s strictures, she’d surprised him with her prudishness. Strange because when he met her, the tattle had been that Isabella Verney was no virgin.
Josiah’s mind worked furiously. He could make little sense of what he’d heard the couple say. What the hell had happened here?
He gathered that people had dragged him from the Chinese bed on his wedding day. Why? They hadn’t mentioned his wife. Had she been there?
Wicked Josiah Aston?
The description seemed far too damning. Like any sprig with gold in his pockets, he’d been wild in his youth. But from the moment he’d seen Isabella the day after his twenty-eighth birthday, he’d known what he wanted.
The beautiful heiress Isabella Verney had been headstrong and at twenty-six, late to choose a husband. No matter. He’d recognized his destiny. A year of courting her had seen off a crowd of rivals, many of greater estate than he. Then, praise God, she’d admitted her love and consented to become his wife.
Had he possessed Isabella before everything went wrong? They’d married at Marston parish church. He remembered that distinctly. Surely he wouldn’t take her to wife without seeking his sweet reward. Yet something about the straining, bristling energy in his body indicated he hadn’t had her. And he couldn’t imagine he’d forget holding her in his arms.
The damnable thing was that his body continued to experience sensation, however false the perception. He recognized the day as warm for May. He was aware of the weight of his braided blue velvet coat, newly tailored for his great day. His non-existent blood still pulsed with desire for his absent bride.
So, no, he doubted he’d tumbled her before he…died.
Before he died.
Time had passed since his wedding day in 1749.
Years and years of it.
Time seemed determined to play nasty tricks on him. The space between waking and now, late afternoon, had passed in moments. He felt like he’d only stirred within the last hour, yet the tiny ormolu clock on the carved chest indicated a whole day had gone by.
What the devil had he done the day he married the love of his life? He urgently needed to find out. More than that, he needed to find Isabella. He couldn’t endure being here on his own. An eternity without her was too cruel a punishment for any crime, however heinous.
He turned toward the door, left ajar after the lovers’ departure. Neither had had the slightest inkling that he observed them. Gradually he came to understand the rules of this bewildering new existence. He could see everything around him while it seemed that nobody could see him.
Moving provided yet another uncanny experience. Although his mind recognized that he had no physical substance, he felt that he walked like a living man, covered distances like a living man. Yet he kept tumbling into gaps in time when he was…nowhere. Confusion, questions, contradictions battered him.
Wicked Josiah Aston?
The bedroom was full of unfamiliar furniture, apart from the ostentatious bed. Little in the corridor was familiar either, apart from the faded wallpaper and the tall window at the end of the hall. He drifted through a few rooms, noting the occasional ornament or table that remained from his time in the house. The decorations weren’t nearly so elaborate as they’d been in his day. Had the family come down in the world since his demise? Or was he just observing a change in fashion? The house was his house and yet it wasn’t. Another difficult concept to impress upon his reeling mind.
Slowly, carefully, he made his way through the house, seeking Isabella and some clue to his fate. Nothing provided any indication, unless absence of evidence was indication enough. The double portrait he’d commissioned from Allan Ramsay for his wedding was nowhere to be seen. There were plenty of other family portraits hanging on the walls, most with the familiar Aston dark hair and blue eyes that he’d seen in his looking glass every day.
Frequently, in spite of his driving urgency to see his wife, he’d find himself transfixed by something he knew from his life. A painting of Venice that he’d bought on his Grand Tour. The library. The view across the park to the lake, a scene which had changed remarkably little. He’d stir to continue his exploration, check one of the household clocks, and find that an hour, two hours had passed. And still he had no idea what had happened to him. Or his darling.
All the bedrooms on the floor below the Chinese room were readied for wedding guests, but he didn’t miss the house’s barely concealed signs of neglect. Many of the rooms reeked of disuse, dust, stale air, in spite of windows flung wide to the late spring afternoon.