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Maeve
A Love For All Time
Paula Quinn
Chapter One
Oliver Gracehaven, theonce-third Earl of Harwich stood high upon the battlements of Graven Fortress, overlooking the sea. Waves crashed against the western wall below him, their foamy whitecaps spraying upward toward the pointed turrets…and toward him. He stared out over the horizon, his gaze dulled with long-dead desires and the undying hope of revenge. It would never come.
He drew in a deep breath, letting phantom smells of the salty sea mist permeate his lungs. He remembered how the sea tasted in his mouth, being swallowed and swallowing him up at the same time while he sank to his watery grave. But he hadn’t died by drowning. No, it was love that killed him. Loving Lady Eleanor Montgomery to be precise.
He ground his teeth in anger thinking of her, but he couldn’t feel the satisfying clench of his jaw. Over the last six hundred years, while his body rotted somewhere in the murky fathoms below, he contemplated ways he’d exact revenge on her—if only he could.
It had been just a sennight after finally courting Eleanor Montgomery, the most beautiful woman in England, that he’d asked her to be his wife. He knew now that he’d been a colossal fool, but at the time, his heart ruled him. He scoffed at himself while the melodic sea breeze wafted through his obsidian lockswithout disheveling it. Never again would he fall victim to the cursed wiles of a beautiful woman. Never again would he—
“We need to make certain these battlements are safe before the men can begin working.” A woman stood not ten feet away from him, looking around. Looking through him. Her gaze, for the space of a half-breath while it passed over him, left him feeling as if someone had fired a cannonball at his chest. “We don’t want anyone to fall,” she added, returning her attention to the man who was with her.
“Who are you?” Oliver demanded. He knew they couldn’t hear him, but he would never get used to not being heard—not being seen. Indeed, he was in hell. He glared at them and shouted.
“What do you think you’re doing here? Who gave you entry into Graven Fortress?” When his murderous gaze fell on the woman’s, his heart would have stopped… if it were beating. She was looking straight at him! He watched as terror widened her chestnut eyes. Could she see him without his help? She leaped back. Her backside hit the short wall and she began to slip. She reached for him as she began to fall over the edge. His lips parted in stunned surprise. Her hands went through him as if he was fashioned from mist. He was. She flailed her arms, never taking her horrified eyes off him.
Oliver remembered falling over the wall, reaching for his wife, but Eleanor shook her solid hands away. He knew what it felt like to fall from this wall and know death was seconds away.
Among those who believed in ghosts, he’d become famous for frightening the wits out of people and keeping them away from Graven Fortress. But he’d never actually put their lives in danger—and none of his victims had ever fallen from the battlements. Now that it was happening, he felt as helpless as the day he died. There was nothing he could do for this woman but stare into her eyes that somehow, impossibly saw him.
The man who’d accompanied her grasped her wrists as they began to disappear over the side and pulled her back, propelling her against his chest, cushioned in his short, puffy coat. Oliver watched like an uninvited spectator as her companion’s eyes took her in as if she brought the air he needed to live.
Oliver shook his head at the pathetic fool. Was he her husband?
“Did you see him?” the woman asked, gasping in a breath. She kept her gaze fastened to her friend’s chest, appearing to be too frightened to look up.
“Who? Who did you see?” the man, who still hadn’t let her go, asked.
“A man—”
No. It was impossible, Oliver told himself. She couldn’t have seen him, and especially not for longer than five seconds! He hadn’t touched her! He knew what he was and what he was whispered to be. No one could see him but for a few moments when he touched them. He hadn’t touched her.
She’d looked at him, seeing him. Was it possible? Over the torturously long centuries, he’d grown used to not being truly seen. Though the way it made him feel when she looked into his eyes would argue otherwise.
“—He was standing right there.” She held her arm out to her right but still withheld her gaze. “He was very pale, and he was glowering at me with such anger…” She covered her eyes with hands and didn’t speak again.
In stunned silence, Oliver moved closer. Was this red-haired siren weeping? Now that she was safe, something inside him that he knew would keep him out of heaven, bubbled up into a hard smile, glad to have frightened her enough to make her weep. He’d done it every single time someone entered his fortress over the last half dozen centuries. He’d managed to keep every intruder out with deep wails so mournful they blocked outthe sun with thick charcoal clouds. Some people were easier to terrorize than others. He especially enjoyed haunting the many so-called professionals in the field of chasing down ghosts. They provided many years of laughter when he left them surrounded in cold pockets and appeared as a spectral cloud beside them. Oh, how they all ran. He took pride in frightening living intruders. In the end though, he just wanted to be left alone.
“It was the Ghost of Graven,” her beefy friend informed her. He paused to have a look around, and seeing nothing, returned his warm gaze on the woman.
“Right,” she scoffed, and finally stepped out of his embrace. “I’ve read about him. He was betrayed by his new wife way back when and leaped to his death from these very walls.”
