Occasionally he encountered a servant or a wedding guest. They paid him no attention, confirming his suspicion that, as with the couple upstairs, they couldn’t see him. In one bedroom, he found a half-finished letter inscribed at the top with the date. In horrified shock, he’d stared at the page.
God’s teeth, it was 1818, nearly seventy years since his wedding. Since presumably his…death.
How could he have no recollection of anything between that day and now? Where had he been for the space of two generations? Was it something to do with the Chinese bed where he’d woken? Was his spirit somehow attached to the bed? The young man—Miles, the girl had called him—had said it was only recently re-assembled. Did restoring the bed to use wake him from oblivion?
Only another question among so many.
Bewildering afternoon faded into bewildering evening, and still he searched. His eyes remained sharp as a cat’s, whether the room was dark or lit with candles. Another strange result of becoming a wraith.
Finally as night deepened toward midnight, he opened the door to the chamber in the east tower. The room Isabella had chosen as hers for the night before their wedding. On the last occasion he’d entered this room, stealing a few forbidden moments to kiss his bride, it had been an untidy jumble of silks and brocades and feminine gewgaws. Her jasmine perfume had scented the air. Her two pugs had curled together on the red counterpane and scowled at him as an unwelcome invader.
Isabella had always had an uncanny ability to make any space uniquely hers.
A woman still slept here, he immediately realized. But a woman very different from coquettish, worldly Isabella. Even before he noticed the pink silk gown in the immodest new style spread across the bed, he guessed this room, with its lovely outlook over the gardens, now belonged to his descendant Calista.
No, if he’d died without issue—the idea still struck a discordant note like a hammer hitting brass—his younger brother George must have inherited. Most likely Calista was George’s great-granddaughter.
Calista wasn’t present. She must have accepted her sweetheart’s entreaty to meet him. God grant her joy. He wished to Hades that he and Isabella had done the same.
He wandered across to lift a book from one of the tottering piles that litt
ered every flat surface. And only then realized that while he was invisible to all living beings, he could move physical objects.
What a deuced fool he was. Of course he could, he’d been opening doors throughout the house. In his lather to find Isabella, he just hadn’t noticed.
After combing the rest of the manor, he’d hoped to find his wife in this room, but Isabella wasn’t here. Was she anywhere? Or had her spirit ascended on high while his lingered to atone for some unidentified but clearly dreadful misdeed?
He glanced at the book. It was something serious and botanical. Definitely nothing Isabella would read. Her preferences had veered toward the sensational and romantic. And the room, apart from the massed books and papers, was much more orderly than any space Isabella ever inhabited. Even the set of scientific apparatus with scales and vials and microscopes on the desk in the corner was neat.
Josiah heard the door open behind him. Odd how his senses remained so attuned to the world when he no longer existed as a physical entity. Then all thoughts but one fled.
Isabella stared at him from the doorway.
***
Joy exploded with painful force. Isabella was here. She was here. Surely he could touch her. If he could lift a book or open a door, surely he could touch this woman who turned his world to sunlight.
“My love…” he choked out, stepping forward on shaky legs and reaching for her.
During their courtship, he’d inundated her with a thousand extravagant endearments. It had been a laughing game, what flamboyant compliments he could invent to please this woman he loved with such unfettered passion. He’d called her his treasure of Trebizond, his glorious angel of heaven, his exquisite diamond of Ind, his shining pearl of the Orient.
But all his playful praise had meant only one thing. Isabella was his love and he’d lay down his life for her.
“I’ve scoured the house for you.” He stepped closer, wondering at her silence, at her lack of movement toward him. She’d so rarely been still. It was part of the quicksilver brilliance of her character. She’d been endlessly fascinating, flashing like a jewel, his darling Isabella.
His darling Isabella who stared at him now as though she beheld a monster.
Her frozen expression made him pause before he touched her. His belly dipped with foreboding. “Isabella?”
She was trembling and pale as she’d never been in life. He couldn’t mistake the terror in her beautiful black eyes. She still wore the sumptuous dress of blue French silk she’d had made for the wedding. Delicate pearls and summer flowers twined in her intricate coils of shining black hair.
In an unmistakable attempt to ward him off, she raised her hands. “Stay…stay away from me.”
Of all the numerous shocks of the day, this was the worst. What the devil had happened on his wedding day? What the devil had he done?
“I don’t understand,” he said dully, dropping his shaking hands to his sides.
“Don’t come near me.”