Page 13 of This Haunted Heart

Rynn Mavis

I awoke alone in the grass. The sun had dipped in the sky, and I was no longer pressed against the warm body of a man. My skin was bare to the elements. The drop in temperature as the shadows grew longer pulled me from my slumber.

My God, that had been an excellent fuck. My hips were covered in rounded fingerprint marks. My core ached pleasantly. My ass was still tender. The memories alone were enough to heat my skin all over again.

I hadn’t slumbered well at all the night before. It was no wonder I’d fallen so deeply asleep after two overpowering releases. My heart was an erratic mess, beating in a staccato that had to be unhealthy. My body was filthy. I pulled leaves and twigs free of my curls. My shoes were gone. My clothing was nowhere to be found.

My pirate was also gone.

He’d abandoned me out here without a stitch of clothing and no boots. I climbed to my feet, grumbling under my breath. Covering my breasts with my palms, feeling exposed and embarrassed, I marched for Nightingale House, cursing Finley’s name every time I stepped on a rock or scraped my foot on a stick.

“You will rue the day, you pirate,” I growled. “Rue. The. Day.”

My progress was slow, but I finally made it in through the front doors. Finley had left a housecoat hanging from a bronze torchier in the foyer for me. I stared stubbornly at the peace offering for a long moment before I slipped it on. Rolled up on an oaken chest was a large terry-cloth towel. I took it too, setting off for the lavatory. A bath sounded divine, and based on the filthy footprints I was leaving on the floorboards, it was a necessity.

I was more familiar with the back stairs than I was the main set, so I headed for them, passing the locked central room and the dining hall. As I neared the back stairs, I felt a pull in my gut, a tug of curiosity. I hadn’t thought about that strange black door again since I’d found it, but I was getting closer to it, could sense myself drawing near like iron to a lodestone. The temperature cooled, pebbling my skin.

I should have gone straight to the bathroom, but instead I padded down that hall, leaving more dirty footprints on floorboards that longed to be tread upon. The roses that flanked the door had been traded out for an even fresher set. These blooms were a dark shade of purple.

“I’m not curious because of ghosts,” I whispered to myself, failing to repress a shiver. “It’s all those locks. Not that supernatural nonsense. Who locks a door like that?”

Cold caressed my skin as I moved closer. Reaching out for the heavy padlock, the hairs on my arms rose to unsettling attention. I was inches from touching it when a knock sounded.

The thud was hollow and sudden and seemed to echo from everywhere all at once, surprising a squeal out of me. I sprinted from the hall, turned the corner sharply, and rushed up the stairs.

“It’s not haunted, it’s not haunted,” I chanted to myself, taking the steps two at a time. “Big houses make noises. That’s just what they do as they settle. You’ve let Finley get in your head!”

When I finally made it to the lavatory, I took a steadying breath and convinced myself to push all spooky nonsense out of my mind. That sound could have been anything.

A figment of my stressed imagination.

Wood beams creaking in a strong wind.

A bird flying into one of the many windows.

I crossed to the copper tub, heeding its call of peace and cleanliness. It was large, with ornate clawed feet and a matching cabinet. I’d heard rumors of baths that had great iron water heaters right beside them but had never partaken in such luxury before. It seemed like something that should belong in a palace. Seated on the side of the tub, I turned on the taps and let the water warm.

Finley had set out a bar of castile soap, a variety of coarse sponges and brushes, a bottle of vinegar, sliced up lemons and oranges, creams and oils and perfumes, all laid out in a neat row across the counter. I found a bottle that smelled like Finley’s peppery fragrance, and I added a generous amount to my bath. Inhaling deeply, I stirred the water with my arm, then added the citrus.

Before I hung up his housecoat, I peeked around the room, listening for more strange sounds.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I scolded the walls, “but if this house is haunted, know that it’s rude to watch a woman bathe, even if you’re dead.”

Finley had spilled inside me when he came, so I washed with vinegar first to deter pregnancy. The next time I saw him, I’d give him hell for being so careless.

As I sunk into the giant tub and hot water caressed my skin, my nose filled with that spicy fragrance, and it grew harder and harder to hold on to my irritation—harder to hold on to anything but a peaceful bliss as my muscles loosened and the dirt and sweat washed away.

I took a sponge and the bar of soap to my body, scrubbing harshly until my skin and nails felt new again. I even took the time to wash and brush my hair, a daunting task because I’d been a bit neglectful of it lately, but I drowned my curls and set to it, showing them much needed love.

I liked the acoustics of the room and found the scenery in the fixtures inspiring, so I began to sing. First quietly, then my voice steadily carried as my confidence grew. It was easy to feel alone in such a giant house, to feel free to do as I pleased.

I fed the lonely walls my soprano, gifted the melancholy floorboards and the neglected furniture a song about springtime and love that feels like it won’t ever end. I sang about growth and new friendships. I sang about suffering and a heartache that endures before finally finding its happy ending.

I sang until my throat hurt a little and my hair was starting to dry.

A noise in the hall caught my notice, and I fell quiet to listen.

“Is that you, Finley . . . ? Or the ghosts?” I called.

“It’s me,” he said somberly through the door, then he let himself in.

“Good that you’re here,” I said, putting on an aggravated tone I couldn’t fully feel in the deliciously hot water. “You were reckless outside. I’m doubling my fee. You now owe me twice what you stole from my safe and—”

“You can have whatever of mine you want,” he said, and his voice was so gloomy it brought me up short. Deep frown lines bracketed his mouth.

He lingered near the threshold, rubbing at some imperfection in the plaster. Sunlight bathed him through the high window. It caught in his hair and lightened it to a shade more auburn than brown. His short beard too had grown so light in the glow that I almost couldn’t see it at all.

Then he pressed his cheek to the wall, cooling his face, concealing his scarred side from my view, and recognition hit me like a freight train.

I stopped breathing. My heart leapt into my throat. It was several fleshy thumps later before I could speak at all.

“Loch,” I gasped.

There was no doubt about who he was. There stood the young man I had loved with my whole soul. The one whom I’d given my heart and then betrayed so horrendously.

“Oh my God,” I breathed. “Loch, is that really you?”

He didn’t answer me, but he didn’t need to. His cheek remained soundlessly pressed to the wall, just like when we were young. Our tears were dangerous things—they brought out the baron’s wrath quick as a lightning strike— and so when we needed to hide them, we’d press our hot faces to the wall. The coolness against our skin eased the sting of our misery and helped to smother the evidence of our sadness.

“You were singing,” he rasped, “just like you do in my dreams.”

A sob caught in my throat. I sprang from the tub, splashing the floors with water, and flung his housecoat over myself, still sopping wet.

He put his back to the wall and slid down it all the way to the marble tiles. I tied the housecoat briskly, dropping to my knees at his side. I reached for him with a hand that had gone pruney in the bathwater, stopping just short of touching him. It hung there between us, afraid to caress his scars in that casual manner I had before. I was dying inside to heal the thing I’d hurt so badly, dying to grab him up, to hold him, to squeeze him to my chest until I burst.

How could I fix the things I’d clearly broken?

I wanted to help like I had when we were young. That had always been my instinct when his father was cruel. Fix Lochlan. Make it better. Make him smile. I could always make it better if I tried hard enough. I could stopper his tears, heal his pain, clean and fix his injuries. No wonder his sadness had impacted me so profoundly when I’d seen him in my room that day.

I should have known. I should have recognized him. He didn’t look anything like he had twenty years ago, but I should have recognized the impact that haunted heart of his always had on me.

I swallowed, still reaching uselessly toward his battered cheek. “Did the baron do this to you after I—”

“Yes,” he whispered .

“Because I—”

“Yes.” Menace flavored that singular word, and one tear streaked down his face, soaking into his beard.

I wiped the trail of it away with the baggy sleeve of his housecoat. “Saying I’m sorry isn’t enough, but I am so sorry. Oh God, Loch, I’m so terribly sorry!” I pushed the words out of my tightening throat. “I . . . I didn’t know he’d hurt you like this. I didn’t want him to hurt you this way.”

His malicious laugh turned my blood cold. “Did you forget who he was? No, I don’t believe you could have. You and I were the only ones who knew how truly wicked he could be. We were who he took his wrath out on.”

“Of course I didn’t forget! I just thought that once you were his heir officially and we were so much older than when he used to beat us—”

“Did you forget how he used to turn us into his furniture to humiliate us?” His gilded brown eyes lit with a fire that burned through me. “Did you forget the way he made you bend over his knee so he could eat a plate of food off your back? How he turned me into his footstool?”

My nostrils flared. “I didn’t fucking forget!”

“How he’d pretend to be in a decent mood until we dropped our guards? Then he’d surprise us with a horse crop and—”

“I won’t say it again! You heard me the first time!” I shouted. My hands balled into fists that shook. I didn’t know what to do with them, and so I shoved them into my lap and folded in on myself. “Oh, how I’d love to forget him and all of that. But I cannot.”

“You abandoned me to that hell,” he hissed, his voice cracking like a whip, the snap of it as cutting as the baron’s crop had been across our backs and thighs and asses when we’d committed the smallest transgression. “If you did not forget who he was, then you knew he would blame me for what you’d done. You made sure of it!”

I choked on my next breath because he was right. I had made sure of it. That was the horrible middle I’d left out of the retelling the night he demanded to know about the man I loved. “But I didn’t mean for—”

“You didn’t mean for it to happen?” he mocked with a laugh that felt like a dagger in my chest. “Why did you leave all those little things you’d stolen from my mother in my room? You knew she was the only person my father felt any kind of tenderness for.” His gaze narrowed to slits as he unbuttoned his shirt with brisk movements. “Why? Why’d you agree to marry me and then set me up for all of this?”

He jerked his shirt down and turned to show me his back. The scarred welts that matched mine I had expected, but there was more than that along his spine. There were injuries I couldn’t name. Strange burns, blotches that stained his skin.

“Because I’m horrid,” I said, turning away, disgusted with myself. “I’m the one who’s a serpent . . . a wretch. I did it because I was barely more than a stupid child! I was angry and young and impulsive and hopeless and . . .”

He jerked his shirt back up but left it to hang open in front. There was another burn high on his chest, just under his throat. It disrupted the dusting of auburn hair there. “That’s not an answer.”

My arms fell open at my sides. I sagged beside him. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want the truth. Why’d you ruin me? Why’d you rip my heart to pieces that day? Why’d you frame me with all those things you’d stolen before abandoning me to that hell house alone? You were the only good thing I had in all the world. Why, Rynn? Why ?”

Anger and sadness warred within me. Another breath shuddered past my lips, and my nostrils flared. I felt like I was that girl again. Like I’d lost years of my life, traveled back in time, shrunk to a silly underfed, almost-child. “Because you loved him . You loved him more than you loved me.” Even my voice sounded younger in my ears.

“That’s not true,” he said slowly, staring off at the wall like he was staring into another time. “There wasn’t anything or anyone I loved more than you.”

“You were my only good thing in the world, too,” I said earnestly. “I swear it.”

Another tear shot down his cheek. A remembered fear stirred in my gut, tightening the muscles in my abdomen to near nausea. We were alone here, I knew that, but his tears made me afraid for him, afraid of what would happen if he were caught crying. Unable to bear the sight of it, I wiped his cheek clean.

I sucked in a sharp inhale but felt no stronger for it. I could have fainted, I was so unsteady. It was a struggle to stay upright, my lungs had constricted so much. “No matter what he did to us, no matter what cruelty he visited upon me right in front of you, you still loved your father. You still wanted to please that devil of a man. I couldn’t bear it. Not a moment longer. I couldn’t stay to watch you turn me away for his approval.”

“That never would have happened. Not ever,” he bit out.

“You had already started to ignore me in his presence. When he was around, you wouldn’t speak to me. I knew that was just the beginning. I . . . I wasn’t convinced you’d keep me. Wasn’t convinced you should keep me. I wasn’t . . . I’ve never been a good girl, Loch . . . I was never going to amount to much.” Tears welled up in my eyes, then spilled over, shooting hotly down my cheeks. “I suppose we can’t know for sure what would have happened now.”

“I’m sure,” he said so forcefully I felt compelled to look back up at him, to see the blaze in his gaze. I was meek and useless as the focus of that fire sharpened once more on me and set me aflame. “I know what would have happened.”

“I saw no future for us because of him and because of me,” I confessed, laying my soul bare to his fire because he deserved that much at least. “And I hated how you loved him. Hated it so much that I . . . I hoped he’d cast you aside or you’d finally stop trying to win him over or . . . I don’t even know. Whatever he did to you, you loved him, and I thought finally , finally I would break you of the habit.” With hands that shook, I touched the scars that marred his wet cheek, caressing them with the pads of my fingers. “But I didn’t want this for you. Not any of it. I would never ever want you harmed!”

His jaw clenched. “Well,” he said, fresh sadness turning his eyes glassy, “your plan worked.”

His melancholy clawed at me, a monster riding on my back, digging in razor-sharp talons to tear me apart from the inside out. And I deserved every moment of its dreadful torture.