“Hurt me? I don’t understand.”
The voices were louder now. He could almost understand the words and that terrified him. Ambrose pressed his hands over his ears.
“You hear him, don’t you, Ambrose?” Eve tugged one of his hands away. “You hear him too.”
“The voices. They’re too loud.” Pain sliced through his head and speared behind his eyes.
“Stop hurting him!” Eve was back in his arms then, holding him tightly. With her body against his, the voices lowered to a whisper.
“Who?” he managed in a ragged tone. Who was here that only Eve could see?
She looked toward the fireplace. “He says his name is Lucien. Lucien Grey. The man whose portrait is missing from the gallery.”
All the air left his lungs in a rush. He dragged in another breath, feeling his heart begin to pound. “Lucien Grey is the man who cursed me.”
Heaviness filled the room with a sadness that made his heart ache.
Eve pulled him over to a chaise and made him sit, then sank down on the cushion beside him. “You can hear him.”
Ambrose shook his head. “Only indistinct voices. As if a dozen people are speaking all at once, none intelligibly. It’s the curse. It’s driven many of the male members of my family mad.”
“Many. Not all?”
“Only those who lived at Greyhaven or visited it.” He gave a short, hard laugh. “That was my mistake. When I inherited the title, I came to Greyhaven to take stock of the land and property.I’d heard stories of the curse my entire life. I didn’t believe in it and wasn’t concerned. I had no intention of staying the night.”
Eve threaded her fingers with his, offering comfort.
He breathed in her lavender scent, soothed by her touch, and forced the words out. “It didn’t matter. Not long after I entered the manor, the voices started. I knew then the grave mistake I’d made. Only madness waits for me now.”
“No, Ambrose. You’re like me.” A tear slipped from her eye. She brushed it away. “The voices you hear are spirits speaking to you. If you quiet your mind, you’ll hear him, like I do.”
He looked down at her. In the short time he’d known her, she hadn’t seemed addled, only sincere. “You see him.” It seemed impossible, but then, so were curses.
“Yes.”
“And others like him?”
“Not here,” she said. “At home, there is a woman named Rose who was once a chambermaid. It was she who encouraged me to flee.” Eve tucked a dark mahogany strand of hair behind her ear. “I must sound absurd, listening to a spirit for advice and running away. The viscount thought me mad. Everyone does. As much as I tried to be like other women of my station, spirits come to me. Too often, at a ball or a dinner party, someone would overhear me tell an empty space to go away. My father calls it a fanciful imagination, but my grandmama was the same. Like me.” She met his gaze. “Like you.”
The pain in her voice tugged at his heart. Eve was stronger than he realized. She’d accepted what she saw and heard, and continued to be part of society, despite its cutthroat nature. The gossips must have torn her to shreds. Yet here she was, offering him peace.
Ambrose reached for her. He pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. She fit perfectly against him.Holding her settled something inside him. All the raw edges dulled, and his mind quieted for the first time in two years.
Eve laid her head on his shoulder. “I thought no one would ever understand. Yet here you are.”
Her words echoed what was in his heart. Could it truly be that he wasn’t cursed to madness? He was afraid to hope.
Ambrose.
The whispered word startled him. “Lucien.”
“He’s so sad,” Eve said. “He’s tried to reach the men in your family for centuries, begging them not to make the same mistakes he made. They’ve heard him as you do.”
“And thought themselves mad. Both my grandfather and great-grandfather died here before their thirty-ninth birthdays. They took their own lives.”
Eve gasped.
“My great-grandfather killed two others before his death.”
