Eternally Yours (11 page)

“Oh!” She flinched and rubbed her upper arms, her blue eyes wide as she looked toward Mark. “Where is that horrible chill

coming from?”

Horrible?
Geoff balked, nearly as startled as she. For a

moment he’d forgotten himself--forgotten what he was.

Shoulders sagging, he glided away from her. He only prayed that the other spirit skulking nearby hadn’t see what a spectacle he’d made of himself.

“I don’t feel anything.” Mark moved toward her but stopped short, passing up a perfect opportunity to provide comfort to a woman. Any real lover knew where that led.

“The feeling’s fading now.” She gave her head a quick shake. “That was really creepy.”

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Mark took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the door.

Creepy
, Geoff echoed in his mind, disgusted with himself. He had sunken to such a level! Geoffrey Vereker, poet extraordinaire, formerly known as the “Don Juan of the New World,” could no longer get within a yard of a lady without making her shudder.

Not that her reaction had necessarily been all his fault. The macabre air of the room may well have affected her sensibilities. He looked around at the four walls. Though he could see no evidence, he still sensed another party’s presence. When he looked at the fireplace, a feeling of familiarity struck him. He had been here before, sometime during his lifetime. Perhaps he’d once had a tryst in the little room. Indeed, he

believed he had.

“Wait a minute.” Lara froze in place, Mark’s hands still on her shoulders. She stared toward one of the back corners. “There’s something over there on the floor.”

A folded paper lay where she indicated, tucked partially under the molding.

Letting go of her, Mark picked up one of those modern portable electric lamps. He aimed the beam into the corner. A red wax emblem stood out in the center of the document.

“Another letter.” He raised his eyebrows. “Maybe this will answer some questions.”

Lara bit her lip. “I’m not sure I want the answers.”

Geoff tended to agree with her. He had a feeling of foreboding about the letter. As soon as he’d lain eyes on it, something heavy had pressed down on him, an unexplained weight of despair. While he’d lived he had managed to avoid such unpleasant emotions, but after a century of virtual solitude he was no longer a stranger to hopelessness.

Mark stepped forward and picked up the paper, flipping it over to the other side. “It just says ‘G’ on the front. There’s no street address.”

Geoff swallowed, feeling strange. Had he been alive, he would have called the sensation dizziness. The addressee on the

note had the same first initial as he. He couldn’t help viewing the coincidence as a bad sign.

His descendant walked back to Lara and held out the letter. “Would you like to do the honors?”

She hesitated, looking at the paper with fear-filled eyes. Eventually she took it from him, though for another moment she only stared at the outside. At last she lifted the seal and unfolded the sheet. She glanced from Mark to the letter and moistened her lips.

“‘Dear G,” she read, “‘Yes, I still call you dear, despite learning how slight your esteem is for me.’“

“Uh-oh, a jilted lover.” Mark made a face. “This is bound to get melodramatic.”

She fired a frown at him but continued reading. “‘I know you returned from Baltimore a good week ago, and I have waited each night for you to come.’“

Peculiar
, the ghost thought. Not only did this poor chap share his first initial, he too had been to Baltimore. Geoff had passed many happy visits in the city with a cohort who had moved there from Philadelphia.

“‘But tonight when I saw you ride by with Miss Sullivan, I finally realized you would never keep your promise.’“

Geoff started. A Miss Sullivan--Molly Sullivan--had been a

favorite consort of his at one time, until she’d left Falls Borough to “move up” to the demimonde of New York City. Indeed, he had driven down this very street with the little trollop on many occasions. In fact--

His heart caught in his throat. Could this be the house where--yes, it was!

He’d avoided the place for so long he hadn’t recognized it, but now he realized that a lover of his had once lived here.

        “Mariah,” he whispered. He’d spent years trying to forget her, but to this day there were times when she popped into his mind. She was a farmer’s daughter, an innocent little creature, rather too naive for his tastes. But during one dull summer he had spent several evenings in her arms...

Damnation.
He whirled around, taking in the room again. He
had
enjoyed a tryst in here--with Mariah.

And the letter was written to him.

“Did you feel a draft just then?” Lara asked. Without benefit of turning her head she flicked her gaze from side to side.

The sight of the fireplace primed Geoff’s memory. They had made love in front of the hearth. Mariah had been beautiful--though not his usual ilk, for he’d typically preferred full-figured, experienced women. She’d been a wisp of a thing and

completely new to the arts of love. Surprisingly, she had caught on quickly. Hot images of their lovemaking seared him with longing for the days when he could fulfill his passions.

“It’s just the storm,” Mark said. “Read on.”

“I can’t.” Lara let her arm drop to her side, holding the letter against her thigh. “This is too scary. She goes on to say he’ll be happy about her being ‘gone.’ She must have committed suicide.”

Suicide?
Geoff recoiled. The notion appalled him so much he nearly felt a physical sensation of cold.

“You don’t know that. Maybe she ran away.” Mark held out his hand, palm up. “Here. Let me read the rest.”

Thunder reverberated outside.

Lara clapped her hand over her breastbone. “All right, but if the letter gets too upsetting, don’t read it out loud to me. If the woman killed herself here in this room, I don’t want to know.”

Geoff shuddered. Surely not Mariah, not that ingenuous young girl. He looked at the fireplace and imagined the spot as it had been, filled with leaping flames and radiant warmth from glowing embers. Suddenly Mariah’s face appeared in the empty hearth, not peach-tinged as it had been when he’d know her but gaunt and bloodless, like that of a corpse.

She fixed her gaze on him, her focus relentless, her irises black and hard like coal. He recalled that in life she’d had golden eyes, the color of topaz. Her lips wavered, as if she were trying to speak.

He froze, scarcely able to believe what he saw. Had he finally, after a hundred years, encountered another soul who wanted to communicate with him?

After the longest pause he’d ever endured, Mariah croaked, “Geoffrey...I carried...your child.”

He gaped, speechless.

The phantom faded, and the hearth once again stood empty and dark. He glanced at the mortals to see if they had witnessed the apparition. The two of them stood as they had before, clearly undisturbed.

He gulped. His hands trembled at his sides. He had never before seen a ghost, and being one himself didn’t make the experience any less frightening. Having a tortured soul tell you she had carried your child added another upsetting dimension to the episode. He’d had no idea he’d gotten the chit with child. To his knowledge, the only progeny he had ever produced were the disappointing pair of lummoxes his wife Deborah had presented to him.

“‘Those beautiful verses you write are nothing but empty

words, aren’t they, my love?’“ Mark laughed and looked up from the letter. “So the guy was a poet, like my late, great forefather. From what this letter implies, he was probably full of the same sound and fury, too.”

Geoff bristled. Speaking of his descendants, the line ended with this blathering fool. This was what one got for yielding to the wishes of one’s family and marrying where one’s parents recommended. Deborah, whom his mother and father had extolled for her fine stock, had given him the heirs they wanted: two talentless dullards who’d wasted their lives on nothing more interesting than overseeing fields and livestock--and not even excelling at that. Neither had a single iota of poetry in his being.

“Maybe it is your ancestor,” Lara said. “The man’s first initial is G. Did Geoffrey Vereker live in this area?”

Mark snorted. “I’m sure that in the last century or so there have been plenty of local residents with the initial G who dabbled in poetry.”

“But I found a volume of his verses here in this house.” She put her hand over her mouth. “Maybe it belonged to the woman who wrote that letter.”

“Is the book inscribed to anyone?”

“No, I think I would have noticed that. I don’t even remember seeing a bookplate inside the cover. I’ll have to take a better look, in case I’ve missed something.”

He shook his head. “I really doubt there’s any connection between my ancestor and this letter.”

The ghost turned away, dismayed by the fellow’s lack of insight. To own up to the truth, insight was not a dominant trait among his descendants. Some of the others had shown they took after Geoff in other areas--but with Lara at stake, he supposed he was lucky Mark was no lady’s man.

Looking back at the fireplace, he wondered how the child Mariah had carried might have turned out. She’d said “carried,” not “bore,” so he guessed the babe must not have come to term. If he had chosen another path in life--perhaps married for a reason other than convenience--he might have taken a greater interest in his children.

A rumble of thunder broke him from this fanciful line of thought. In truth, what other reason than convenience was there to marry? He didn’t really believe in love--not the sort people married for, in any case. When he had spoken of love in his poetry, he’d meant something more like passion, an emotion overpowering but fleeting. He suffered no delusion that desire of that order could last a lifetime.

“Listen to this.” Mark grinned. “She’s written him a poem. She says ‘Be assured the sentiment is genuine.’“

“Oh, Mark.” Lara shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t know if you should read any further, especially if you’re going to make fun of what she wrote. That poor woman’s heart was torn apart. There’s nothing funny about her pain.”

He pressed his lips together. “I know. I’m only trying to help you keep a healthy perspective about this. Her story is sad, but it happened generations ago. By now, everyone involved is dead. All of their pain is over.”

Geoff felt a muscle in his cheek twitch. Fool, he admonished himself.

“I suppose so.” Lara looked down at the floor.

“Then do you want to hear more?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, not now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Okay. I’ll just skim through the rest myself. There’s not much of it left.”

Geoff felt nearly as reluctant as Lara to learn what else his late lover had to say, but he thought he owed it to Mariah. Floating over behind the mortal, he read over his shoulder:

As you read these lines coming from the grave...

Damnation
, he thought. She did kill herself--or did she? Her remains weren’t here with the letter.

Despair of your own eternal rest to save.

His heart leapt into his throat. What was this about his eternal rest? Did Mariah know something about his ultimate fate?

Leaning closer to Mark, he read on:

Until you advance a love to stand in place

Of the love you once had but chose to debase.

At that point the letter ended with several lines of prose, but the words before Geoff’s eyes blurred. While his descendant finished reading in silence, the truth seeped into the ghost’s consciousness like a slow poison. The pounding of rain against the house grew louder as he began to comprehend the implications. When they hit him full force, he felt as though he had been cold-cocked.

She cursed me
, he thought.

Great God, Mariah was the cause of all of this! The little witch had sentenced him to this purgatory.

Lara gasped. “The chill is back.”

But Geoff swore that he felt heat. Though normally he no longer experienced bodily sensations, hot fury rose at the nape of his neck, slowly swelling to his ears. The burning spread around, up and down his being, filling him with rage like he’d never known before. This hell, this unending abyss of nothingness, was all that woman’s doing.

“Mark.” Lara’s eyes were huge, her face white. She hugged her body, her teeth chattering.

Mark stepped up to her and put his free arm around her, the letter still in his other hand. His jaw taut, he darted looks around the room. His gaze cut blindly through Geoff.

Crazed with impotent wrath, the ghost let his head fall back. He felt as if he could explode. The ceiling mocked him, like a barrier between him and the heavens. But though he might have been obstructed from eternal rest by fate, he knew he had no material barriers.

He glared at the plaster and rocketed into the ceiling, blasting through the house’s three other levels. His form soared up into the rain and pierced the black and swirling thunderclouds. Electricity crackled and sparked all around him.

The pure, unchecked energy suited his mood. He slowed his ascent and slashed his arms out through the dancing ions. Brilliant lightning flared with a deafening crash that roared in all directions around him.

“Mariah!” he howled.

Heartless wench!
How could she have done this to him?

Chapter 8

Thunder exploded outside, and Mark tightened his hold around Lara’s shoulders, the letter still in his free hand. The lamps flickered and died, and the room went black. She yelped and buried her face against his chest, clinging to his waist.

After the initial fright, she loosened her hold but still didn’t let go. Her body felt small and pliant, her breasts warm and soft against his abdomen.

“Just what we needed,” she said, her breath coming quickly. “The electricity’s gone out.”

“The flashlight’s on the floor, not far from our feet.” In a clumsy attempt to soothe her without getting too familiar, he patted her back. His own heart was probably pounding in her ear, but at least that terrifying coldness had tapered off. He’d never felt a draft like that before--though, of course, there must have been some rational explanation for it. The violence of the storm had played tricks on their minds. “Let me stoop down and I’ll get it.”