Ready & Willing (12 page)

Well, a good score years younger than he was in his current manifestation. Were he to take into consideration their specific dates of birth, he was a good century—and then some—older than she.

He tried to see into her, tried to read what she was thinking or feeling, the way he had been able to do with Mrs. Magill from time to time. But it was like trying to see through the murk of a river bottom. He’d come to understand that the only times he was able to breach Mrs. Magill’s thoughts and feelings were when her emotions were running especially high. If he could read nothing of this Cecilia Havens, even when she was in a situation that caused her alarm—which this one certainly must—it was because she kept a very tight rein on her own thoughts and feelings.

She spun around and looked at where Audrey had indicated he was standing, but her gaze remained unfocused, and he could tell that she didn’t see him. As if to confirm that, she said, “I don’t see anything. Are you sure he’s there?”

“Oh, he’s there,” Mrs. Magill assured her. “You can’t see him?”

Miss Havens shook her head. “No.”

“But you can hear me?” Silas asked, deliberately speaking even louder this time.

She flinched at the increase in volume, her hand flying to her chest in a gesture of self-preservation. “Dammit, could you stop yelling?” she demanded. “You’re scaring the hell out of me.”

Silas winced at her easy use of profanity. What had happened to women since his day that they bandied about such language with nary a thought to propriety? He’d heard Mrs. Magill, too, swear with both enthusiasm and creativity when she’d broken something or hurt herself while performing some task.

But it wasn’t really the sad state of feminine vocabulary that made a ribbon of melancholy unwind inside Silas. It was the fact that Miss Havens couldn’t see him when Mrs. Magill clearly could. Though why something like that should evoke melancholy was a conundrum. He wasn’t here to enlist the aid of Miss Havens—or enlist anything else from Miss Havens—so why would she be able to see him? Nevertheless, she had obviously heard him speak. Why was she aware of him in one way, but not the other?

Before he had a chance to ponder that, he heard Mrs. Magill say, “Yeah, that’s my ghost.” Then, after a pregnant pause, she added, “I can’t believe I’m able to say that with such matter-of-factness. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Cecilia. It’s just my ghost,’ ” she mimicked herself in a Pollyanna voice. “ ‘What? Don’t you have one at your house, too? Doesn’t everyone?’ ” She shook her head. “No wonder Nathaniel Summerfield thinks I’m a nut job.”

Miss Havens ignored that last part of the statement—if indeed she even heard it—and continued look at the stairwell, where Silas stood in the landing. But it was clear she still didn’t see him.

“He’s standing right where you’re looking,” Mrs. Magill said.

“All I see is the stairs,” Miss Havens told her.

“Silas, say something else,” Mrs. Magill instructed.

He descended the two steps into the living room, his boots silent on the hardwood floor. But when he said, “Miss Havens,” the woman flinched again, as if someone had just dragged a hot ember down her spine. Unable to help himself, he asked, “What possessed you to do that to your hair, woman?”

He saw Mrs. Magill lift a hand to cover her mouth, though whether she was shocked by the question or covering a smile, Silas couldn’t have said. Miss Havens’s reaction, however, was unmistakable. Her mouth dropped open and the color drained from her face, and her entire body began to tremble.
She’s terrified
, Silas marveled.
Truly, terrified
. Even though she’d already claimed to have been haunted before.

He would have understood her fear otherwise, since the appearance in the here and now of someone who should have been dead for three quarters of a century defied both explanation and excuse. When he was alive, he’d been appalled by anyone who bought into the rubbish of psychics and the claptrap of spiritualists, because he’d thought them—no, he’d known them—to be utter nonsense. Those who thought otherwise were stupid and gullible. Ghosts? Preposterous. There was no such thing. When one died, there was only the harmony of heaven or the horror of hell in which to find oneself, and there was no escaping either one or the other.

Of course, now that Silas had arrived on the other side, he knew differently. Now, he knew . . .

Well, actually, he still couldn’t remember much of the place he had left behind to come here, other than that he had been happy there. Something told him, though, that his afterlife had been nothing like he had anticipated. Nothing like he’d imagined. Nothing like what he’d been promised. It had in fact been even better than all of those things.

But he understood why someone still tethered to life and all things earthbound would be frightened of the unknown. Particularly when that unknown involved something that was inevitable to everyone—namely, death. However, this wasn’t unknown to Miss Havens. She had admitted that her grandmother had crossed the veil many times to visit her, and she’d seemed to consider those visits comforting. So why was she so terrified of him?

“I apologize, Miss Havens,” Silas said now, gentling his tone. “That was discourteous of me. I should have said something like, ‘Hello, Miss Havens. It’s lovely to make your acquaintance. What an interesting outfit you’ve chosen for the day. How interestingly you’ve chosen to arrange your hair.’ ”

“I bet you never said anything like that after meeting someone for the first time when you were alive, Mr. Gregarious-and-Genial,” Mrs. Magill said. “Why would you do it now?”

“Excellent point, madam,” Silas conceded. “So I shall start over by simply saying, ‘Hello, Miss Havens.’ ”

He completed a few more slow steps in her direction and inspected her more closely. He’d been so preoccupied marveling at the specter of her hair and attire that he hadn’t noticed what a beautiful woman she was. Genuinely beautiful. In a way that wasn’t contrived or striven to achieve. Even the atrocious thing she’d done to her hair couldn’t diminish it. Her eyes were enormous, the color of strong coffee, and her mouth was full and lush. Her cheekbones were well wrought and aristocratic, and she had one of those slender, elegant necks that drew a man’s fingertips in idle exploration. Her skin was creamy and flawless, and he knew a poignant disappointment at not being able to touch her. Or smell her. Or simply walk with her along the river at sunset.

She suddenly turned and was looking right at him, and had he had any breath, it would have hitched in his chest, because he thought in that moment that she could see him. But her gaze remained unfocused, and she lifted a hand blindly, as if she were trying to detect his presence. Before Silas realized how close she was, her hand was passing through the middle of his chest, and something hot and frantic was shuddering down his spine and into his belly, where it exploded into every extremity.

And that was when it happened. That was when he felt himself slip inside Cecilia Havens, the way he had been able to do with Mrs. Magill. Only instead of being a simple matter of knowing what she was thinking, or gaining intimacy with what she was feeling, it was as if a great, cragged chasm cracked open in her psyche and sucked him in with enough force to crush him. And once Silas was inside Cecilia Havens . . .

Good God. There was more fear and pain in her than most men twice her size would be able to bear. That she was carrying it inside her slight, lissome frame, and holding it so tightly that it was undetectable to outsiders, was staggering. But the fear and pain wasn’t a result of her alarm at coming into contact with his ghostly nature. She was afraid of him because he was a man.

Before he had time to discern the reason why that should be, Silas was being shoved back out again, and the chasm was closing, and Cecilia was dumping enough emotional rocks upon it that no one would ever be able to open it again.

She snatched her hand back toward herself, cradling it against her chest in her other as if she’d broken it. “My God, what was that?” she asked breathlessly, her eyes huge now. “What did you just do to me?”

“Cecilia?” Mrs. Magill asked with concern. “Are you okay?”

She covered the few steps between the two women and draped an arm over Cecilia’s shoulders in a way that was meant to console. But the moment Mrs. Magill touched her, Cecilia lurched away, uttering a small cry that sounded as if she’d been hurt somehow. She stumbled backward, feeling her way blindly behind herself, presumably looking for the front door so that she could escape. But her aim was off, and she ended up backing herself into a corner of the room near the front window instead. When she realized what she’d done, she reached for the flowered chintz curtain hanging near her and pulled it across herself, as if trying to protect herself from something with a meager scrap of cloth. Then she shot her gaze around the room again, as if trying to identify her most imminent danger, so that she would know which way to run.

Silas had never seen anything like it. The woman was reacting to what should have been a simple, comforting touch like an animal who’d been beaten with a strap.

“Don’t do that again,” she gasped, still visibly shaking. But it wasn’t clear if she was speaking to Mrs. Magill or to Silas.

Mrs. Magill seemed no more able to comprehend the other woman’s reaction than Silas, because after a brief, anxious glance in his direction, she began to cross the room to Cecilia.

“Stop,” Cecilia said when she saw her approaching, her voice little more than a whisper. “Don’t come any closer.”

There were tears in her eyes, Silas noted with no small distress, but she swiped them away fiercely before holding up her hand, palm out, to further illustrate her demand that her neighbor halt. Or perhaps she was telling Silas to do that. He still wasn’t sure who Cecilia was talking to, even if she couldn’t see him. But he wasn’t sure she knew, either. And although he was no more certain of what had just transpired between himself and Cecilia than she seemed to be, his first instinct had
not
been to escape it. On the contrary, he’d found himself wanting to explore the incident further.

And just when, he wondered, had he begun to think of her as Cecilia, instead of as Miss Havens?

“Just . . . don’t,” she repeated. But her voice was a little hardier this time, and her panic seemed to be ebbing.

She looked down to see what she had done with the drapery, made a face that indicated she was quite disgusted with herself, and thrust the fabric away. Then she ventured forward a few steps, not looking especially sturdy, but no longer looking wounded and terrified, either.

“Are you all right?” Mrs. Magill asked the young woman again, concern still etched on her features.

“I’m fine,” Cecilia replied in a voice that belied the condition. Nevertheless, she kept walking forward. She skirted Mrs. Magill noticeably, but instead of heading for the front door, as Silas would have thought she would, she came to a halt in the middle of the room.

“Captain Summerfield,” she said to the room at large.

“Yes, Miss Havens?” he replied from where he still stood, a good eight feet away from her.

She turned in that direction. “What did you just do to me?”

Silas began to walk toward her, then, remembering how she reacted the last time he was nearby, made himself stop. “I did nothing,” he told her. “When you reached out, your hand . . .” He hesitated. Her hand hadn’t touched him, since there was nothing of him to touch. “Your hand . . . made contact with me,” he finally said.

“It passed through him,” Mrs. Magill clarified for her guest. “Your hand went through his chest. Right by his heart.”

Cecilia’s eyes widened at that, then she nodded. “That makes sense, I guess.”

“Why?” Mrs. Magill asked. “What happened?” When Cecilia didn’t reply right away, she continued, “The other day, my fingers just sort of brushed where he was, and I kind of felt this electric shock jolt through me. And that was just from the tiniest little contact.”

Cecilia hesitated another telling moment, then said, very softly, “It was like a shock at first. But then . . .” She shook her head. “Then, suddenly, I felt like I was . . . like he was . . . like we were . . .” She shuddered visibly. “He was just way too close, that was all.”

“And you don’t like people getting too close,” Silas couldn’t help stating, since asking it as a question would be pointless after witnessing her reaction to Mrs. Magill’s attempt to comfort her.

“No,” Cecilia said. “I don’t like people in my space.”

“And why is that?” Silas asked.

“That’s none of your damned business,” she told him.

Silas knew her reluctance for people to be too close was related to the fear and pain inside her. He hadn’t been privy to all of her thoughts and feelings in that brief collision, but it made sense to conclude that she’d experienced something very painful. Perhaps even very recently.

She suddenly lifted both hands to drive them through her spiky hair and expelled an incredulous sound. “I can’t believe I’m standing here talking to a ghost.”

Silas objected, “But you said your grandmother often spoke to you after she died.”

“No, I said I woke up when I heard her calling my name, and that I still talk to her sometimes. I’ve never had a conversation like this with her. Talking to a ghost like this is just . . .”

“Bizarre,” Mrs. Magill finished, with not a little derision.

“Yeah,” Cecilia concurred with enthusiasm.

“Ladies, I am still present in the conversation,” Silas reminded them, “regardless of whether or not you can see me.”

Ignoring him, Cecilia turned to Mrs. Magill. “How long has this been going on? Was he here when you moved in?”

“He came with the portrait I bought,” Mrs. Magill told her.

“What portrait?”

“It’s upstairs.” Mrs. Magill dipped her head toward the stairway. “Come on. You should be able to see who you’re talking to.”