Shadows (23 page)

“Please tell us, Christophe.”  Melissa smiled across the table.  “We want to help, don’t we, Rory?”

Stony-faced, Rory went on eating.

Christophe put down his fork, took a gulp of wine and sat back in his chair.  “Je ne comprends pas.”  One hand waved in the air.  “’ow can I tell that which I do not understand?”

~~~

“Try.”  Rory watched his knife slice through a chunk of duck and wished the Frenchman would get on with it.  “It may be important.”

“Je suis désolé.”   Christophe, paling rapidly, looked directly at Rory.  “Mais…j’adore Melissa.”

The translated words floated through Rory’s brain.  “I am sorry, but I love Melissa,” and turned him cold.  Stunned, he turned to Melissa.

Her eyes wide, she simply looked at him in the humming silence that followed Christophe’s remark.  She withdrew her hand from Christophe’s, and thrust it beneath the table.  A faint blush crept across her face.

Steady, Rory told himself.  Stay in control or things will get out of hand.

“Please to understand.”  Christophe was gabbling now.  “Not now, précisément.  But then, in 1735.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Christophe.”  Melissa, scarlet-faced, shuffled in her chair.

Rory forced himself to considered Christophe’s statement.  “If you are saying the spirit was in love with Melissa, I can understand that.  After all, she is incredibly lovable.”  Then he shook his head slowly.  “Impossible.  The spirit could not know Melissa.”

Christophe’s haggard blue gaze remained steady.  “Pierre loved Justine.  The spirit of Pierre, c’est moi.  The spirit of Justine, c’est Melissa.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”  Rory crumpled his napkin and flung it onto the table.  This idiot would have them believing all sorts of rubbish.

Christophe’s gaze turned to Melissa.  “Cherie, n’est-il vrai pas?   Nous été comme un, et nous a vous parler.”

“For God’s sake.”  With growing impatience Rory looked at Melissa, who gasped aloud, her mouth opening and shutting like a stunned fish.

Christophe frowned at her as well.  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?  What is it?  What?”

Melissa stuttered.  “I…I can…I understood you.  You spoke French, and your eyes were brown, but now they’re blue.”

“Melissa, he spoke French, and even I understood him.  There’s no need to make this more confusing than it already is.”  What the hell did she mean, his eyes were brown?

“Then tell me what he said?”  Her eyes challenged him.

“‘We were one and we speak to you.’  Satisfied?”

“Oh, well.  Okay.  You understood it.  There’s no need to be nasty about it.”  Obviously rattled, she stared at her unfinished meal.  “But just for a second, Christophe looked like the man on the bolly.  He looked like the monk.”

Rory carefully placed his cutlery together on the plate.  Still chewing, he pressed his napkin to his lips and stared at them both in turn.  He couldn't let this lunacy go any further.  Settling his elbows on the table, he interlinked his fingers and rested his mouth against them.  “I’m beginning to think I’m having dinner with two idiots.  You are telling me in all seriousness that Christophe thinks he is Pierre, that he remembers Pierre’s death, three hundred years ago and you think that while we were sitting here in this restaurant, Christophe turned into Pierre for a moment?  I know the wine is good, but really, that’s going too far.”

Melissa frowned at the tablecloth.

Rory turned to her, desperate to get the evening back to some kind of normality.  “Please tell me that you don’t share these weird experiences along with him.”

She opened her mouth as if to speak, and then closed it.

“I’ve seen these ghosts once, perhaps twice.”  Rory struggled to be factual.  “Nothing more than that.  They are not taking over people’s personalities.”  Good God, he might need more than a priest to sort this out.

Ignoring the clink of glass and little cries of delight that greeted a waiter at a nearby table, Melissa carefully put down her knife and fork.

“I have something to tell you.”  Her face flamed with embarrassment and she couldn't look him in the eye.  Head down, staring at nothing, she described the recent evening when she had shared Justine’s emotions as Pierre made love to her.

Rory struggled to keep rising horror and anger in check.  He shot a hard glance at Christophe.  He'd suspected all evening that she liked the Frenchman, and this seemed to be proof.  “Do you want Christophe?  Is that what this is all about?  For heaven’s sake, all you have to do is tell me, and I’ll leave the two of you together.  There’s no need for such a—oh, to hell with it.”

He pushed back his chair with a screech of wood on stone and strode out of the restaurant.

Out in the warm night air, his speed carried him up the slope onto the road.  He unclenched his hands and found, within twenty yards, he’d fisted them again.  Damn the Frenchman and his irritating accent.  He was a menace, distracting Melissa with all this rubbish about ghosts.

Feeling the emotions of ghosts, indeed.  Did she really believe what she’d said back there at the dinner table?  He shook his head and strode out along the lane leading back to the mill.

Within half a mile, his temper receded.  In his working life, he’d learned to differentiate between truth and lies, and his training made him sift through facts.  Melissa was telling him the truth, though she knew what she said was unbelievable.  He snorted.  As if anyone would believe such rubbish.

He didn’t want to accept it.  That was the problem.  If he couldn’t accept it, then she must be lying.  He could not both believe her and refute what she said.  That was where his deliberations left him.  But what if the unbelievable thing was the truth?

He halted and shoved his hands into his pockets.

The urge to grab Christophe and punch him on the nose had been so strong he’d had to leave.  Melissa’s blue eyes had been guiltless, her expression concerned, and to be honest, the Frenchman had looked ill.  Whatever was happening, Christophe wasn't enjoying the experience.

Rory glanced up at the sky.  Tatters of cloud, driven by a lethargic wind, trailed across the face of the moon.  All that hand-holding had annoyed him.  Convinced Christophe wanted to take Melissa away from him, and that Melissa wanted to go, Rory's anger had grown until he couldn't sit still any longer.

Perhaps they were more susceptible to ghosts.  He’d been right beside Christophe in the cavern, and felt nothing at all.

The ghostly couple back in 1735 must have been lovers, and perhaps their love affair ended badly.  That of itself was hardly enough to merit them re-appearing in 2009.  There must have been hundred of thousands of unrequited lovers down the centuries.

If this pair of French lovers had left some kind of imprint and Christophe and Melissa were picking up on it, there had to be more to the story.

Once back at the mill, Rory poured himself a glass of wine, walked out onto the bolly and settled in one of the white chairs.  In the silent darkness he sipped the wine.  What could he expect when Melissa returned?  He didn’t think her the type to give him the cold shoulder.  Her style would be either a cold dissection of the facts, or an impassioned speech about truth and belief.

He'd never waited in such trepidation for a woman’s reaction.  No girl had ever caused him a moment’s worry.  He enjoyed their company until they left and he smiled upon the next new arrival in his life.  None of them ever stayed long.

Until now, he hadn’t considered it as a problem.  But now, he frowned into the darkness.  Why didn’t they stay?  Six weeks was usually the limit, but he wanted more than six weeks with Melissa.  He wanted her with him forever.  That of itself was frightening.

Over an hour later the lights of the little red Citroen bounced along the drive.  Anticipation tightened Rory’s fingers on the box of matches, but he sat quite still.  He wanted to see what they would do if they thought themselves unobserved.

Melissa got out of the car immediately and hurried toward the gate.  Christophe, he was glad to see, reversed, speeded down the drive and drove off home.

“Rory.”  She sounded breathless as she hurried toward him.  “Rory?”

Her high heeled sandals silent on the grass, she reached the flags of the bolly and hesitated.  “I can hardly see you sitting there in the dark.  Rory?  It is you?”

She must be wondering if the monk waited for her.  He lit a match, held it to the citronella candle at his feet.

She sighed in relief.  “We worried about you when you stormed out.”

“Of course you did.”

“We did.  We couldn’t believe you thought we were…well, you know.  There’s nothing between us except this stupid ghost thing.”

“So you hurried home to convince me?”  He couldn’t prevent the sarcasm.

She shifted her weight and moved forward.  “No.  We thought…I thought I’d give you some time to cool down.”  She sat in the chair opposite.  “We talked about going to the library tomorrow to see if we could find out more about Pierre and Justine.  If we knew more, we might be able to sort the whole thing out.”

And that was obviously more important than anything else.  Rory swallowed the harsh words that rose to his tongue.  “You’re both librarians.  You should discover something.”

Melissa dropped her clutch bag on the table.  “It’s where to start, that’s the problem.  All I sense is that they love each other and that it is somehow against the rules.  She visits him when he is alone.  Maybe the monastery has strict rules for its lay brothers as well as the ones serving God.”

“Sounds likely.”  She seemed to feel that there was no problem between them.  Or she chose to ignore it.  Anguish rose inside him.  “You should be able to find something in the monastery records.  If there are any.”

“It’ll be in French, that’s the problem.”  She lifted the candle from its place on the bolly and placed it on the table between them.  “Old, handwritten French, at that.”  She looked at him, and her smile wavered.

“Christophe can translate for you.”

Melissa blinked, hesitated.  “Will that make you cross?”  She waited, watching him.

When he did not speak, she got to her feet.  “I thought so.  But I shall go ahead with the plan.  Good night.”

Her coolness took him by surprise.  She walked toward the door and into the living room.  No.  She wasn’t going just like that.  Anger propelled him from the chair, and he caught her hand as she reached for the light switch.

He pressed her against the wall and sought her lips.  She squawked, got an arm free and batted at his head but he hardly registered the blows.

“Sorry,” he growled against her throat.  But he didn't let go, chose to press closer, hold her tight against him.

“No.  You great oaf, get off me.”

Retreat wasn't his first instinct.  But then common sense clicked in.  Good Lord, what had he done?  Breathing hard, he backed two yards from her.  She retreated to the far end of the room and snapped on the lamp there.  She looked wildly attractive in the cotton sundress.  One strap slipped off the point of her shoulder and his glance followed it.  Hastily she whipped it back into place.

“Are we not to touch?  Not to kiss?”  He had never pleaded with any female before today.  “Melissa, I…”  A pulse beat in the hollow of her throat.  Was it fright?  Or something else?  He prayed she wouldn't reject him.

Her gaze burned into his, but it was almost a whole minute before she answered.  “Perhaps.”  Unless he imagined it, a slight smile relaxed her mouth.  “After all, a kiss cannot hurt.”  She advanced one step.  “What follows might.”

He forced himself to stand still.

Slowly, tantalizing him, she took another step.  Testing him, perhaps.  He reached for her, but her hands warded him off, so he let them fall.  She was paying him back for his show of temper.  The third step brought her so close that the fabric of her dress rasped against his shirt.  He looked down.

Her fingers touched his hands.  Lightly, she allowed her fingertips to drift over his arms, trailing through the hairs.  He shuddered, caught his breath.  His pulse thundered through his blood.

She leaned against him, stood on tiptoe.  “Now you may kiss me.”

Rory held onto his control.  If he swept her off her feet and carried her to the bedroom, he would spoil everything.  That much he knew.  His lips touched hers, briefly.  Lifted, found her again.  Her eyes closed, and she tilted her head to the lightest pressure of his mouth.