Dance With the Dead by H.P. Mallory

Dance With the Dead

Chapter One

Petra and Me

The vacation I took to England’s West Country was one of my best and earliest memories.

I was eight or so at the time and it was my first time on a plane, my first time out of the country and the first time I remember leaving New York and its environs. For a child who’d known nothing but the city and its suburbs, the rolling fields and majestic hills of Somerset and Wiltshire (our American pronunciation of which greatly amused the locals) was a fantasy landscape, like the Shire from The Lord of the Rings.

My parents and I stayed in a bed and breakfast in a village called Morley-on-Avon, through which the river lazily snaked. It was a wonderland that imprinted itself on my young mind and I swore I would someday return.

But the trip was mostly memorable because it was the location where Petra became my constant companion, the ‘imaginary friend’ about whom my parents smiled quietly and for whom they even set a place at the table (as recommended by various parenting guides on the subject of ‘invisible friends’). Of course, that was before I patiently explained that Petra didn’t need to eat.

The day I met Petra is still etched in my mind in such vivid detail, it feels as if it were only yesterday.

“Petra Shearwater,” the tour guide had announced, an almost circular man with a moustache that appeared to be trying to take over his face. He was dressed in a red, velvet outfit that looked as if it was meant to mimic something Henry VIII would have worn, though the guide’s was a cheap imitation. I was fairly sure it was mustard that was staining the ruff around his neck. While the guide’s outward appearance was bland (with the notable exception of his monstrous moustache), he seemed to make up for that blandness with the shrillness of his voice and the theatrical waving of his arms. He looked like a man about to take off for the clouds.

“It was within this house, or just outside it, that she died and some say, she still haunts it.” He pointed at the dirt patch on which he stood and then did a strange little jig, as if Petra were reaching up from her grave to tickle the undersides of his feet. “On this very spot here, that I’m currently standing upon.”

We were standing in the mighty shadow of one of the great stately homes of the county. Not the biggest or most expensive that Britain had to offer (not quite Downton Abbey scale) but an impressive ‘country pile’ never the less. It was called Chambon Hall.

“Though, of course, it only got that name in the sixties when a pair of monied hippies,” the guide raised his eyebrows to show what he thought of said monied hippies, “Lucius and Delphine Chambon—better known as ‘Thor’ and ‘Feather’ to their circle of unwashed ragamuffins—bought it up for a song after the de Crecy family, who had lived on this site since the fifteenth century, went broke following bad investments. On the ponies,” he added with a wink and then did a little twirl that seemed to surprise all those in attendance.

“But back to Petra,” the guide continued. “She didn’t live in Chambon Hall, but she was a guest of the de Crecy family, from back when they were at their peak,” the guide went on, nodding at everyone in turn. “This was in the late nineteenth century, mind you. The Victorian era.” The guide cleared his throat and his voice rang out even louder. “Petra was invited to stay because young Roger de Crecy,” at which point the guide winked at my parents and continued, “Roger by name and Roger by nature—saving your daughter’s presence, aye?” My parents nodded uncertainly, and the guide continued on. “Roger had taken a fancy to Petra, who was renowned as a bit of a looker—which was perhaps exactly what had appealed to Roger. So, Petra was invited to stay and quite quickly into her stay, she died, some say by mysterious circumstances,” (accompanied by much wiggling of fingers). “She fell to her death, right here on this here spot.”

“Not true,” said a woman’s voice from beside me. “I fell over there,” and then she pointed to a place that was a few feet away. When she faced the guide again, she cocked an irritated brow in his direction. “And I certainly do not appreciate the fact that every time you tell this story erroneously, it is my reputation that suffers as you fail to mention that the de Crecy’s were cousins to my family and thus, I was not simply visiting an unattached man with whom I had no affiliation.”

The woman, presumably Petra, appeared to be in her early twenties with dark hair that was done up in curls around her face. She wore a bonnet and was dressed in a long and beautiful, emerald gown with bilious skirts that sashayed around her and touched the ground. I couldn’t help noticing that she was slightly transparent, so I could see through her to the tree line at the fringes of the lawn. Of course, I assumed that had to mean she was a ghost, but I wasn’t in the least bit frightened of her.

“Some believe Petra was killed by Roger’s father, who thought her to be ill-suited to marry his son,” the guide continued.

She, meanwhile, scowled at him. “Yes, yes, always this about my being ill-suited for the rascal Roger de Crecy. The truth was, I had no interest in marrying the scoundrel! And as to the particulars of my death...” the woman went on, shaking her head as she made a dismissive gesture at the guide who had, apparently, gotten it all wrong. “I can’t recall why I was killed or by whom. Perhaps it was simply an accident.” Then she shook her head like the whole thing was one big shame and sighed. “You get the details incorrect every day on every tour and you never listen to me correcting you because you can’t hear me. None of you can.”

“I can hear you,” I said.

The transparent woman looked down at me and her mouth dropped open in shock.

“Well, that’s nice to know, little lady,” smiled the guide. “But I’m over here.”

There’s no need to go over the rest of the conversational cross purposes because you can probably guess how the rest of it went. The important thing is that, at the end of the day, Petra sat beside me in the back of our rental car, heading to the hotel in which we were staying. And it was no surprise either, because for over a hundred years she’d had no one to talk to but other departed spirits, whose conversation was apparently ‘limited and self-involved’, and who usually ‘moved on’ pretty quickly. Now she had a companion, and she wasn’t letting me go.

I was perfectly happy with my strange, new friend, and still happier when Petra regressed to childhood, appearing my own age and dressing in appropriate clothes for a Victorian child. As an only child, I’d sometimes struggled to make friends—now I had one who came with me everywhere. When we left for New York a week later, Petra was in tow.

It should be relatively clear by this point that Petra was not an imaginary friend, she was, for want of a better word, a ghost. But I didn’t really think of her as a ghost because there was nothing about her that was ghostlike or frightening. To me, she was more like a magical fairy who could change her appearance at will and who mostly just wanted to gossip. But she wasn’t the only deceased person I could see.

Maybe it was owing to my first seeing Petra, to whom I had some indefinable connection, but that day in Morley opened the floodgates, and from then on, I saw ghosts on a semi-regular basis. Only a few were like Petra, though: clear and almost solid to look at. Most were varying degrees of flickering translucency, some barely even human-shaped. I don’t recall ever being scared of them, though—they simply became a part of my life.

As I grew older, and began to better understand what it was I was seeing, then I also began to understand, mostly through Petra, what the rules were about the deceased and how it all worked.

The majority of people, after they died, moved on almost instantly, to that incredibly bright light that was the afterlife. Those with some unfinished business might linger around in a place Petra described as a sort of Limbo which existed in its own space and time. The walls between Limbo and the living world were pretty thin though, and those spirits would often manifest here, intentionally or otherwise, usually in the place where they died. Initially, the confusion of death made them unfocused, unable to communicate in words, but only able to radiate their emotions—I called those sorts of spirits ‘apparitions’. The longer they remained in Limbo, the more ‘normal looking’ they became—Petra being the ultimate result, a full-on ghost. Most didn’t stay anywhere in this realm nearly as long as Petra had. Once they understood what had happened to them and accepted it, they went elsewhere.

But even though Petra fully understood that she was dead and had been for a long while, she never seemed interested in moving on. And she never seemed able to recall what exactly had happened to her that caused her death in the first place. At first, I thought she just didn’t like to think about it—that her death had traumatized her and, thus, she didn’t want to focus on it. But as the years went on, I became more and more convinced that she really couldn’t remember the particulars. It was almost as though the whole thing was so terrible, that she’d simply forgotten all details—maybe as a way to protect herself? I wasn’t sure.

But as to moving on to the other side and Petra’s inability to do so, she said she liked things just as they were and that was why she stuck around. That was just fine with me because Petra became the sister I’d never had—only my sister was see-thru.

“Can you look any age you want?” I’d asked her once.

Petra shook her head. “Only an age I’ve been. It’s the same with clothing—I can’t dress like you because such clothes weren’t around when I was. And thank the good Lord for that—what passes as fashion these days should be criminal!”

Petra had many opinions regarding the modern era—most of which weren’t necessarily positive opinions. And I supposed that made sense, seeing as how she was brought up during a time in history that was known for being especially prudish and repressed. The ideal Victorian woman was ‘pure, chaste, refined and modest’ as Petra would tell me time and time again (usually in response to something I’d said or done that was decidedly not pure, chaste, refined or modest).

How much was choice and how much instinct, I never fully understood, but Petra always appeared my age, so as I grew up, she grew up with me. Until, that is, I passed twenty-two, at which age she’d died. And so, somewhat irritatingly, she stopped aging while I continued to do so for another (at the time of writing) twenty years.

By the time Petra and I were twenty-two, I’d already embarked on the career to which I’d devote my life. I’d always written stories, and maybe it was the presence of Petra that dictated the direction those stories would eventually take. Without making a conscious decision, the genre I always seemed drawn to was in the direction of mystery, often with a folk horror twist. I’d become fascinated by mythology and legends, and spun those threads into my books in a way that, without any false modesty, seemed to appeal to the public. And so it was that I celebrated my twenty-fifth birthday with a first bestseller under my belt, and at the party thrown for me by my literary agent, I met the man with whom I was to spend much of the next fifteen years.

When talking about Ian, I don’t know whether to speak from my head or my heart. Maybe it’s better to stick to the facts because otherwise I’d be here all day and Ian is a relatively small part of this story—as in, he’s part of the set-up, not the narrative.

Anyway, we never got married, so maybe there was always something in the back of both of our heads telling us this relationship was only for as long as it lasted, not forever. But for as long as it lasted, it was good enough.

In the end, we still liked each other, but we’d ceased to love each other. Maybe you don’t notice that happening when you’re so used to a person, when you see them every single day. Making the final break can be hard, even when it’s preceded by months of tense, sexless silence, while waiting for the other person to step up and say something.

It was Ian who finally stepped up and said something, and my major regret was that I hadn’t said something sooner. Maybe we could have revived our relationship if I’d said something sooner—maybe there would have been something there worth saving if we’d found it in time? I didn’t know and supposed I never would. Regardless, the end of the relationship meant that someone had to move out of the apartment we’d comfortably shared for the last fifteen years. It also coincided with the release of a retrospective anthology of my ‘best’ work.

Looking at that volume, I found myself feeling dissatisfied, not with what I’d done, but with the idea that it was all I was ever going to do. Skimming through stories I’d written a decade earlier, I realized how similar they were to those I’d written last year. And that meant one thing: I was in a rut, and there would never be a better time to make a change.

I told Ian to keep the apartment.

The day after my forty-second birthday, I boarded a plane to keep a promise I’d made to myself when I was just an eight-year-old girl.

I was going back to Morley-on-Avon.

“Going home!” Petra enthused and beamed the biggest grin I’d seen in quite a while.

“Nothing was stopping you from going back a long time ago,” I pointed out.

“It’s quite a long walk.”

“Couldn’t you just go into Limbo and come back out in Morley?” I teased.

She gave me a look. “Gwendolyn,” (she always insisted on calling me as such, even though Gwendolyn wasn’t even my name. It was simply: Gwen). You know that is not how the afterlife works.”

I knew. I wasn’t sure exactly how it did work, but I knew she couldn’t just come and go as she pleased.

A housing agency in the UK had set up some viewings for me in Morley, but there was one place that appealed to me beyond all others, a place that was right in the heart of Morley—a real British cottage. Little and proper and completely adorable. How could I not buy it? And it was almost crazily cheap, presumably because if you’re English, then you don’t appreciate how wonderful such sorts of things are.

“I should imagine there’s quite a bit more to it than that,” said Petra, eyeing me in that way of hers, which meant she knew something I didn’t. Or thought she did. Strangely, for being alive over a hundred years, Petra didn’t really know much more than I did. And the things she did feign to know, were usually wrong. I wasn’t sure if it was owing to the fact that she hadn’t been a very informed person when she was alive, or maybe she just became confused after death, but Petra would quite literally just make stuff up. “The cottage shouldn’t be so inexpensive—you know what they say about such things.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

She responded by propping her nose into the air as she did when she was about to come up with a whopper. “I should imagine it has a... troll problem.”

“A troll problem?” I repeated, frowning.

“Yes, they really are quite beastly creatures—worse than raccoons. And if you’ve a troll problem at that humble little estate you’re considering, they will hardly be done away with easily.”

“I’ll take that bet,” I answered, not really in the mood for any of her shrewd opinions or ridiculous ideas. This was a new adventure, and I was planning on finding myself again in a different country. Not that I’d necessarily lost myself, but sometimes relationships begin to define you (especially the long ones) and pretty soon, you find yourself sans relationship and sans a sense of self. I had a feeling I’d find that self again in Morley-on-Avon. “You’ll see, there’s nothing wrong with it—no trolls and no raccoons.”

Petra shook her head. “When you reach my age, you’ll be more circumspect.”

“You’re twenty years younger than I am.”

She waved me away with an unconcerned hand. “Only in the physical sense. And since I have no physical presence any longer, that hardly counts, Gwendolyn, dear.”

In Morley-on-Avon we were shown around the houses by an agent, who pointed out each house’s good points and smiled a lot, but my mind wasn’t sold on any of these places.

I wanted the cottage.

The cottage was called Bluebells and looking around it, I found it even more perfect than it had appeared online. Yes, this was where I wanted to live. This was where I wanted to write, and my mind was crowded with the possibilities of the sorts of stories I could dream up in such a place.

“Tell me you don’t like it,” I whispered to Petra as we looked around. I was careful to talk to Petra only when the agent wasn’t within hearing distance. In my long association with her, I’d learned how to avoid appearing as if I were speaking to the air. After all, people get very uncomfortable when you speak to others they can’t see.

“I never said I did not like it, though it is rather small,” Petra answered and she glanced around herself with what appeared to be distaste. “Such accommodations would have been quite substantial for the servants back in my day, but alas... times have certainly changed.” That was a common rejoinder for Petra whenever she was comparing the Victorian age with the modern one and finding the modern lacking. “Do I get my own room?”

“No,” I responded. “You have your own plane of reality.”

Over the years, Petra had become more of a visitor than an actual house guest. As children, we’d lived and played together, but as I got older (as we both got older) that became less comfortable, particularly after Ian and I moved in together. Petra was nothing if not accommodating and always made herself scarce during dates, romantic dinners, and what she primly referred to as ‘amorous congress’. I think it was more along the lines that she was extremely uncomfortable with anything that was ‘taboo’ and simply couldn’t handle displays of affection and certainly not ‘convivial society’ (another of her terms for the horizontal mambo).

Limbo was only ever a footstep away, so she always had somewhere to go and read a book or whatever it was they did in Limbo—it was a subject on which she was cagey for contractual reasons.

“All I said was that there was something wrong with the place,” she insisted, propping her hands on her hips as she glared at me. “A reason it should be so inexpensive,” she repeated.

“Don’t be silly.” I shook my head and hoped she was wrong.

Chapter Two

Morley-on-Avon

“Now,” said the agent, with a certain tone in his voice, “cards on the table...”

“Of course!” Petra answered, throwing her hands into the air. “Did I or did I not tell you there was something wrong with it?” I did my best to ignore her, keeping my attention firmly on the young man and his mop of carrot-orange hair.

“Something... wrong?” I asked.

“There’s a reason this place is going so cheap,” the agent went on and I could feel Petra’s expression of ‘told you so’ even though I still refused to look at her. “The last owner passed away... in the house.”

“Oh,” I shrugged, thinking a death in the house was certainly preferable to a troll infestation.

“Does that... lessen your interest?”

I shrugged again. “I mean... I guess that happens.”

“Violently,” the agent added, nodding as the mop of hair landed in his eyes and he had to push it out of the way again. I was fairly sure he’d introduced himself as Harry, and it was quite a fitting name.

“Murdered?” I asked, suddenly a little anxious.

“Oh, no, no, no, no,” Harry reassured me as he laughed and shook his head as if my imagination had run away with me. “Nothing like that, I can assure you.”

“And what about trolls?” Petra asked the man, even though he couldn’t see or hear her. Of course, she knew as much, but this was just her way of letting me know she expected me to ask him the same question. Of course, that wasn’t going to happen.

“What happened then?” I asked him.

“Well.” He scratched the back of his head. “Unfortunately, the last owner tripped, fell down the stairs, and broke her neck.”

“Oh!” I couldn’t help but cringe.

“I told you so!” Petra called out from beside me, but I continued to ignore her. “I just knew there was more to this... shack!”

The agent nodded. “They found her just about where you’re standing now.”

Suddenly I recalled the tour guide from all those years ago, talking about the place where Petra had landed and broken her own neck.

“Freak accident,” Harry continued, hurriedly. “But it has given the place a bit of a reputation with the locals. You know what country folk are like.”

“Not really.”

“No, I suppose coming from New York, you wouldn’t.”

“Right,” I answered. “Was this a while ago?”

“Last month,” admitted the agent. “They wanted to move the cottage on quick.”

I wasn’t sure who ‘they’ were, but I supposed it didn’t matter. A death inside the house certainly wasn’t something that was on my checklist of desirable features in a property, but on the other hand, every property had some sort of a history—especially in a country as old as this one. The point was: you took the rough with the smooth.

“I’ll take it.”

***

Things moved fast, which is what happens when you buy the cursed house no one else wants. Soon enough, I was moving my stuff in, deciding which was my bedroom and which my office, where furniture went, which pictures went where. In between the moving, I took long walks around the village and the country in which it was set, feeling very pleased with my decision to move here.

Morley-on-Avon was everything I remembered and everything I’d treasured as a little girl. While I’d gotten older, it seemed as if Morley had been frozen in time—that everything I remembered as a child was exactly the same now. And that suited me just fine.

I introduced myself at the local shops, spoke to my neighbors, and found everyone friendly and very welcoming of the colonial commoner making her home here. At the end of my first week, I decided to get out of the house and spend an evening in the local pub.

“Do you wish for me to chaperone you to that awful place?” asked Petra. As a proper Victorian woman, she didn’t think highly of alcohol. “I do hope you don’t swizzle yourself until you’re blootered.”

“Up to you.”

“That’s a ‘yes’ then.”

She knew me better than anyone, and she was right—I definitely wanted company, mostly because I didn’t want to drink alone. Of course, I basically was drinking alone because no one else could see or hear Petra, but the point still stood.

***

The local pub was called ‘The Swan’ and had a beer garden out back that stretched down to the river. Inside was noisily convivial and pleasingly absent of the English cliches that Americans abroad expect; no Morris dancers, abusive football fans, or men in smocks with strings around their pant legs and straw sticking out of their sleeves. One of my closer neighbors (I wanted to say their names were Maisie, and her husband, Keith) recognized me and waved which I tentatively returned as I made my way to the bar where I almost collided with a big man who was carrying two pints of cider.

“Whoa! Sorry!” He deftly executed an arabesque of his arms, somehow managing to avoid spilling any of the drinks. “I didn’t see you there.”

“My fault.” I looked up into a pair of blazingly blue eyes set in a rugged, yet desperately apologetic, face. His skin was tan and revealed a spattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose and cheeks, no doubt from spending too much time in the sun. His hair was dark brown and had a certain wave to it, or maybe it was just unbrushed. It was hard to tell. His jaw was square and broad and his forearms were the girth of my thighs. I felt like I’d suddenly walked into the Beauty and the Beast cartoon and nearly collided with Gaston.

“No. The fault is all mine,” Gaston insisted and shook his head, color rising into his cheeks. “I’m clumsy as hell.”

Now it’s a general rule that I like tall men. Ian was over six-foot-two, but this man was taller and thicker set with muscles that seemed simultaneously shy of announcing their presence but too prominent to hide beneath his plaid shirt which looked like it was one bicep curl away from splitting.

I grinned. “No harm done.”

“Oh, my goodness,” murmured Petra to my side, shaking her head, because she knew my type as well as I did.

“Let me buy you a drink to say I’m sorry,” suggested the big man with a slight grin. “And to welcome you to Morley?”

“How did you know I’m new?”

He laughed at that. “I’ve never seen you before.”

“Oh.”

“A drink?” he asked again.

I shook my head. “There’s no need.”

“Oh. Okay.” He obviously didn’t want to push himself on a woman he didn’t know, but I probably would have acquiesced if he’d asked again. “I’m Leo, by the way. Pleased to meet you, Miss?”

He started to reach out to shake my hand, but then seemed to realize there was still a pint of cider in his and so settled for an elbow bump—as in the times of Covid. Even though Covid was now a thing of the not-so-distant-past.

“Gwen. Gwen Dance.”

“Was I right and you are new in town?”

“I am.”

“To live or just traveling through?”

“I just moved here.”

He nodded and even though he was asking me a ton of questions, there was still something shy in his eyes. Something that said conversation didn’t come easily to him, but he was trying on my account.

“And did you happen to move into Vic’s old place, yes?”

“Bluebells? The cottage?” I suggested. I wasn’t sure what ‘Vic’s old place’ was.

“Yes—Vic as in Victoria.” Leo’s features (handsome features if you liked men who looked like they were hewn from oak—and, I had to admit, I did) creased. “And you must be the mystery novelist?”

I felt my eyebrows rise of their own volition. “Apparently, news travels fast.”

Leo chuckled. “Around Morley? Yes, yes, it does.”

“Well, yes, I am the mystery novelist who now lives in Victoria’s cottage.”

“Then I’m sure you probably know the sad story.”

“Yes.” The story about how Victoria and the stairs had been up close and personal. “She was a friend of yours?”

Leo shrugged, managing to spill the cider he’d so dexterously preserved earlier. “Damn,” he said as he frowned down at it. “But yeah. Morley—you know? It’s a town even small towns would call small.” I laughed at that. “Everyone’s a friend. Or at least—I suppose—everyone knows each other. Not necessarily the same thing. But mostly friends.”

“Good to know.” I gave him a smile and tried not to notice how large his hands were, and such long fingers...

“Try not to be so obvious,” Petra chided, as she appeared right beside me. “And even though you’re quite the tart, could you at least pretend to be a lady?”

I ignored her as I was wont to do when other, living, people were around.

“Sorry, I’ve got to…” Leo looked around at a table where some other similarly large men (though none quite on Leo’s scale) sat watching and waiting for their drinks. “But it was nice meeting you, Gwen.”

“Nice meeting you too, Leo.”

“I’m at the smith’s. If you need anything—railings, gates, horseshoes—come by.” Then he chuckled, and it was a deep, baritone sort of sound. One I liked.

I frowned. “Smiths?”

“Blacksmiths?”

“Oh,” I nodded.

Leo smiled, and it was a lopsided smile full of large, white, and straight teeth. It was a smile that was suddenly boyish and shy, yet naughty, all the same. I swallowed hard.

“Blacksmithing—that’s what I do.”

My taste in literature had never leaned towards the crinolined romances in which ladies from the upper crust of polite society developed a socially frowned upon crush on farm hands, chimney sweeps, and blacksmiths, but right now I could see the appeal. An honest to goodness blacksmith. This was a love story that was writing itself and for a moment, it was nice to write it in my mind.

“I’ve never met a blacksmith before.”

Leo shrugged again, spilling again. “I’ve never met a Gwen before.”

I gave him a smile as Petra shook her head. “He’s aiming to go smithing up the valley between your thighs.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” I said chidingly out of the side of my mouth.

“What was that?” Leo asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I answered, shaking my head as I remembered myself. “A real blacksmith, huh?”

He nodded. “I don’t suppose you’d have met one before. America—not so many to be found there, I presume. Although iron is iron. There must be a few.”

“Leo!” A call from the table behind him and a waving of empty glasses and Leo smiled a goodbye, his apparent shyness an appealing contrast to his hulking presence.

“That didn’t take long,” said Petra, as I ordered a drink from a friendly woman behind the bar.

“What?”

She gave me that reprimanding look. “You know what.”

I did know what, and I was okay with it. Romance had been missing from my life for too long and with it some of the more fun aspects of being in a relationship. Though we’d parted company recently, Ian and I had been running on fumes for a while. Our sex life hadn’t ground to a complete halt, but it was definitely stuck in traffic.

We’d been reduced to going through the motions on a monthly basis and… damn it, I missed that passion you feel when you’re with someone who’s right there with you, in the moment; the intimacy, the fun, the blind ecstasy when it seems like the world might implode around you. It had been a long time since I’d felt passion, since I’d had a ‘good shagging’ to use an especially British term. And if the person administering that good shagging was sweet and shy and built along the lines of an English castle, all the better. And, who knew—maybe it could be more than much-needed-between-the-sheets action, maybe it could evolve into something with substance, which would be good too.

My new life in England wasn’t limited to a new home and a new book, I was open to new love too. New love at forty-two. And as forty-two-year-olds went, I wasn’t half bad. I still had the same charms I had in my twenties, only now I knew what I wanted and I knew how to go about getting it.

I’d by now found a place to sit and while I had Petra for company, to the rest of the room I was just that woman sitting on her own who seemingly makes everyone else in the room uncomfortable with her aloneness.

“Good evening.”

I looked up to see a man standing over me. And smiling. His hair was as black as a moonless night, his eyes large and dark brown. His symmetry of features was near perfect and he looked like he belonged on the cover of GQ magazine, not in a tiny pub in a tiny town.

“Hi,” I said and figured maybe he was a bartender coming to see if I needed another drink. But, no, mine was still full.

“I heard your American accent and figured you were a stranger in a strange place, so I thought I might see if you wanted company.”

The man was handsome—shockingly so—the kind of handsome you can’t help but notice in the first few seconds of your acquaintance. It wasn’t the sort of handsomeness that grew on you—it was the kind that knocked you over the head. It was a handsomeness that was very different to Leo’s. This man was, for starters, younger—I would have guessed a lot younger than Leo, which in turn meant he was also a lot younger than me—maybe ten or fifteen years younger, even. He had boyish good looks, like the pretty one in a boyband, and was dressed in the sort of casual attire that radiates expense: it costs money to look so matter of fact. He was probably around six-foot-one, considerably shorter than Leo, and he was fit and trim rather than large and hulking like Leo.

I noted all these things because, while this guy looked around twenty-seven (at the most thirty) that meant that surely he wasn’t hitting on forty-two-year-old me. Yet everything about his posture, his smile, and his tone said he was hitting on me. Hmm.

“You’re new in town, aren’t you?”

I’m also old enough to be... your aunt or your older sister. I definitely wasn’t going to go anywhere near the mother category.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I just moved into Bluebells.”

“Oh, no,” Petra commented from where she was floating beside me. “The wolf has come calling.”

“Lovely cottage,” the man answered and smiled with teeth—broad, straight, and white ones. His smile was beautiful. “I’m Bastian.”

“Gwen.”

“What a beautiful name,” he glanced down and motioned to the empty chair beside me. “May I?”

“Sure,” I answered, still pretty amazed he was hitting on me. Or maybe he was just being polite. Maybe he was part of the welcoming team of Morley—those friendly citizens who made a point of welcoming others. Of course, as far as I knew, there was no such thing as the welcoming team of Morley.

“Gwen,” Bastian continued. “The name suits you. Is it short for Gwendolyn? Gwyneth? Guinevere?”

I laughed as images of Lancelot and King Arthur started assaulting my head. “No, just Gwen. Short for nothing.”

“You should insist it’s short for Gwendolyn,” Petra replied. “A proper lady’s name.”

Bastion smiled. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Um... that’s really nice of you,” I replied, still confused because the age gap between us was obvious to anyone with eyes. And I wasn’t used to getting hit on by much younger men. A few years? Sure. Ten to fifteen years? Not so much. “But not necessary.”

“Not necessary,” agreed Bastian with a quick nod and another languid smile. “But I find it a useful icebreaker and something to do between now and… later.”

It shouldn’t have been possible to make the word ‘later’ sound like an indecent proposal and yet... Still, I refused to believe this kid was trying to take me home. “And what comes later?”

“You,” replied Bastian with a shrug, removing all doubt that his intentions were anything but gleefully dishonorable.

“The cad!” Petra said and sucked in a shocked mouthful of air, which was something that always threw me, considering she couldn’t breathe.

“You’re very sure of yourself,” I noted, still somewhat shocked by how forward this man was. Weren’t British men supposed to be bumbling like Hugh Grant or overconcerned with propriety like Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy? Apparently not because Bastian was anything but.

Bastian shrugged. “Landed gentry. We’re not noted for our insecurity.”

“Apparently not,” I answered, and swallowed the rest of my drink.

“If a man spoke to me like that,” Petra started, shaking her head. “I’d wash his mouth out with soap!”

“So, back to attempting to sell you on myself,” Bastian considered with that wolfish smile. “Here you have a man,” he started, and then pointed to himself. “Thirty-one years old.”

“I thought you weren’t a day over eighteen,” I laughed.

“Old enough to know my way around a woman’s body,” he continued, apparently deciding to ignore my little barb. “A man who’s fit, quite wealthy, comes from a noble family, intelligent, funny, charming, well-educated, well-bred, and well-endowed.”

“My goodness!” Petra announced, and then promptly disappeared as she was apt to do when she was faced with anything that contradicted her strict, Victorian ideals. But my attention was mainly centered on Bastion as I tried to understand whether he was being serious with all of this, or just trying to get a laugh out of me.

“And well filled with a sense of self-importance,” I finished for him, to which he laughed and extended his hand.

“My name is Bastian Chambon—ask around and you can verify any and all of those facts. Particularly the last one.”

“Chambon of Chambon Hall?” I asked, remembering the name of the house where I’d first met Petra as a child.

“The very same,” Bastian answered with a flourish of a bow. “How about that drink now—after my long list of credentials. We can continue my interview?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“On the interview or on me?”

“On both,” I replied with an apologetic smile and then cheered him with my empty glass.

“Well said,” Petra commented from where she had just blinked back into existence and was now sitting across from me.

“A shame,” Bastian responded, shaking his head. “You had me quite excited. It’s not every day we have yanks showing up in Morley.”

“Yanks?” I repeated, laughing.

“Americans, colonists, betrayers,” Bastian answered, waving his hand like they were all one and the same.

“Betrayers?” I repeated, frowning in confusion.

“Ask any Redcoat around the time of the Revolutionary War and I’d wager he’d think you a rebel and betrayer.”

“Um, you’re like three hundred years too late with that point,” I laughed.

“Better late than never,” Bastian answered with a shrug before he honed in on my empty glass. “You’re sure—”

“I’m old enough to be your mother.” Only just, but still.

“But you’re not my mother,” Bastian pointed out. “And what you are is an extremely beautiful woman to whom I’m quite sensibly attracted.”

“Quite sensibly?” I repeated. “No wonder you get all the women with descriptions like that!”

He nodded and acted as if my comment had bounced right off him. “Age has no bearing on this whatsoever.”

“Doesn’t it?”

He shook his head. “I can’t think of one good reason why we shouldn’t go to my car right now (it’s a McClaren and is, I assure you, compensating for nothing), and drive someplace more secluded.”

“Or not.”

He nodded. “I’m not forcing the issue or pressing you.” He glanced down at his hands, which were clasped in his lap. “You will note I keep my hands to myself despite all temptation.”

“I’d give you an award, but I’m fresh out.”

He chuckled. “I’m not proposing anything more than fun, Gwen, the lovely American.”

I wouldn’t lie to myself: I was flattered. Maybe I was even a little tempted—I mean, he was as good-looking as he thought he was (which was incredibly good-looking) and his arrogance was weirdly endearing, even if you just wanted to test out how deserved it was. And I hadn’t experienced sexual passion in years. But still.

“Thank you for your interest, Bastian, but no thanks.”

Bastian shrugged. “I feel like we’re both missing out, but it’s, of course, your decision.”

“Of course.”

“And I respect that entirely, besides… Oh, Karen’s finished with her phone call.”

A blonde girl had just entered the room and was now looking around the bar for someone. She spotted Bastian and smiled as he stood up and returned her happy expression.

“Karen?” I asked at the same time Petra did. Even though I didn’t want to care or to let Bastian know I cared, I was trying to reason out what in the world was going through his head—all this time he was picking up on me, he already had a date? Truly, the man had balls and then some.

“So, you hit on me while you were on a date?” I asked, just wanting to make sure I fully understood.

“It’s not as though she was in the room,” Bastian pointed out with a shrug. “That would have been inconsiderate.”

I had to ask. “What would you have done if I’d said yes?”

“I’d have been very grateful,” said Bastian with a huge smile. “And I’m sure I would have come up with some solution to the logistical issue.”

“Quite logistical,” Petra repeated.

“One rather entertaining solution springs to mind,” Bastian continued, but then shook his head. “But I find very few women go for that.”

“Understandably so,” I said, figuring exactly what that solution was—the three of us.

“If nothing else, I’m free tomorrow night.” Then he winked. “That is to say, I’m still free tomorrow night.”

“Duly noted,” I answered.

As he began to walk away, there was a commotion in a corner of the room, nearest the bar, and the sharp cry of a woman. I looked across to see a man, maybe a little the worse for drink, grabbing a girl by the wrist.

“What’s the matter? It’s a compliment,” the man said, slurring every syllable.

“You wouldn’t speak to your mother like that!” The girl yelled at him.

“An’ you wouldn’t dress like that if you didn’t want attention,” the man responded.

Bastian was across the room in the blink of an eye, throwing himself in between the man and the woman. And his expression wasn’t a pleasant one—he looked like he was out for blood. “Let her go and apologize.”

The drunk snarled. “It’s got nothing to do with you, you prissy little shit.”

As the man gestured, he yanked the girl’s arm, again making her cry out, which was apparently enough for Bastian. His fist moved almost faster than I could see and the drunk was suddenly on the ground, looking as shocked as he probably felt. But he was back up a moment later, this time flanked by his friends. Bastian stood his ground as Petra and I looked on in a mix of horror and amazement.

“What has Morley become?” Petra asked, shaking her head.

“Bear in mind what the story tomorrow will be; you all had your asses handed to you by that spoilt Chambon brat,” Bastian said, glaring at the drunk and his two friends. “Is that really how you want this to go down? Three of you and you still couldn’t win? How would that look?”

“What if we do win?” asked drunk number two.

Bastian waved him away. “I discount that possibility.”

“So do I.” Suddenly, Bastian wasn’t alone. Leo loomed behind the smaller man, crossing his arms against his immense chest as they both glared down at their opposition.

When the drunks backed down, Bastian turned to the girl. “Are you alright, Stacey?”

The girl nodded.

There were two sides to everyone, even someone as apparently shallow and self-involved as Bastian Chambon. But it had been nice to see Leo step up to defend the woman. As the confrontation ended, the two men who had spoken to me that evening nodded to each other as passing acquaintances and all the fuss was apparently forgotten.

***

“I think I’m going to like living here,” I judged, as Petra and I walked home down the cobbled street that had no doubt seen wagons, carriages, and horses for hundreds of years.

“It’s certainly going to be interesting,” nodded Petra.

As we enteredthe cottage, Petra froze and shivered as she hovered above the threshold. “Something’s not right.”

I looked around myself sharply.

A dim glow came from the top of the stairs, not from a light but from a shape that hovered there.

Occasionally, its flickering form resembled that of a person—a woman.