Montgomery hadn’t slept well for years. The only time he could remember sleeping deeply was after he’d been with Veronica, a fact that annoyed him.
She wasn’t a drug to be taken when he couldn’t sleep.
He’d stayed away from her for two nights to prove he could. Good, he’d won that battle; he needn’t continue to avoid his wife.
A physician had suggested, a year or so ago, he use laudanum, but he’d decided against it. There’d been too many times in the last year when he might have been tempted to take too much of it. He wasn’t a coward.
He could hear the River Tairn gurgle in its triumphant passage through the glen, pausing to rest in pools and, once rested, babbling over rocks. The air was clean and almost icy at Doncaster Hall, reminding him of being aloft. A curlew sounded mournfully from a nearby tree, accompanied by the hiss of the wind through the pines. He thought he saw the shadow of a deer peering out from the junipers, but in a moment it was gone.
The pines growing in stunted profusion around the base of the mountains were not the pine trees of home. Here, theyboasted a reddish brown bark, their shaggy branches growing only at the top of the tree.
Even the oaks were different. The massive gray trunks stretched up forty feet or more, the gnarled branches thick with emerald leaves. These Highland oaks looked resilient enough to endure any season and had done so for centuries.
In winter, the winds would howl, snow that even now capped the distant mountains would form drifts across the glen. The hardy Scots sheep, expected to subsist year long on a diet of Highland grass, would become indistinguishable from the snow.
He wasn’t certain he’d be here, then.
In the last few weeks, he’d learned the topography around Doncaster Hall well enough that he could walk the paths and the hills without the benefit of a full moon. Tonight, he’d walked for nearly an hour before retracing his steps to halt in front of the house.
The façade of Doncaster Hall reminded him so much of home that he could imagine himself there, five years ago, the sound of music carrying into the garden. The occasion was the first party they’d given since their parents had died of fever two years earlier. The first party, and the last, because plans had already been made. He was due to work with Thaddeus Lowe with his balloons, a decision garnering its share of ridicule from his brothers.
“He hasn’t given up thinking he can fly.” He could hear Alisdair’s voice so clear in his mind it was as if he stood there beside him.
“He’s not a bird,” James had said. “He’s a bat, and he’s going to hang upside down by his feet.”
He’d taken their good-natured ribbing in stride, knowing it concealed worry. His decision to join the Balloon Corps had made his defection marginally easier. His brothers were going to fight for Virginia while he was going to join the Union Army.
That night had been warmer than this one, the scent of honeysuckle so thick in the air, he’d suspected his clothes would forever smell of it. Besides the smell of the night and the swell of the music, he could remember laughter.
They’d all been so damn happy five years ago. Happy to be young, to be wealthy, to be going gallantly and magnificently off to war. He’d been the anti-soldier, the one person in the ballroom who hadn’t bragged of his division or his newly bestowed rank.
Only the four of them knew he was about to be a traitor to everything he’d known. Yet every time he remembered, he knew his decision would have been the same.
He glanced up at Veronica’s window, now darkened. If he went to her, she’d welcome him into her arms and grant him some sort of peace. Perhaps he didn’t deserve peace, after all. Perhaps he was destined to walk the night forever to pay for all his many sins.
Even so, he knew he was going to her.
Veronica stepped back from the window, grateful she’d extinguished the lamp. Montgomery couldn’t see her.
She pressed her fingertips to the glass, wishing she could call out to him or send comfort to him somehow. He would say she couldn’t be fey or possess her Gift. Yet even with distance separating them, she could feel his isolation and his pain.
Every night, for the last three weeks, it had been the same. Montgomery walked around Doncaster Hall, taking a solitary route down to the river and up to the hills. When he was done, he came to her.
What troubled him so much that he walked every night? What demons pursued him? Did memories of the war keep himawake? Or was Caroline the source of the deep and profound sadness she felt from him?
How very foolish to be jealous of a ghost. Yet she was.
She removed her wrapper and got into bed, tucking the covers around her and staring up at the ceiling.
How did she fight a ghost?
She was here and alive, willing to be a wife in all ways. Why, then, did Montgomery ignore her? Why was there only passion between them and nothing else? They never spoke or shared thoughts. They never planned for the future. Doncaster Hall was so large she could exist in it for weeks without seeing him.
Was that what he wanted?
She wanted more.
She wanted what her parents had had, a communion, a deep understanding she could feel from one to the other. She wanted passion, but she also wanted to be able to look across a room, meet Montgomery’s eyes, and know what he felt without using her Gift.
