CHAPTER ONE
The cursor blinks at me like a tiny, judgmental heartbeat.
I’ve been staring at the same paragraph for the past twenty minutes, trying to decide if “Lady Eleanor’s breath caught in her throat” is romantic or a medical emergency. Given that I’ve written four variations of this sentence and deleted all four of them, I’m starting to think the real emergency is my career as a novelist.
You can do this, I tell myself. You’ve solved murders. You’ve battled a Victorian serial killer’s ghost on live television. You can figure out how to describe a kiss without making it sound as if your heroine is choking on a fish bone.
“You’ve been frowning at that screen for an alarming length of time,” Richard observes from his position near the bay window. “Has your contraption frozen again, or have you simply lost the will to continue?”
I look up from my laptop to find him watching me with that particular expression he gets when he’s pretending not to care about something he very much cares about. His arms are crossed over his perfectly tailored Victorian waistcoat, and his dark hair is artfully tousled in a way that no living man could achieve without professional help and an unhealthy relationship with hair product.
Not that Richard Lockwood would have the slightest clue what men use on their hair in the twenty-first century.
“Neither,” I say. “I’m reviewing the copy edits for Duchess in Bloom. Will’s editor friend sent them back this morning.” Will Cunningham is my cousin Lucy’s good friend and a famous author. He’s been helping me with my Regency romance novel. After a disheartening round of rejections from New York publishers, I’ve decided to self-publish my novel that’s apparently not sexy enough for modern audiences.
Richard’s posture shifts—a barely perceptible straightening of his already ramrod spine. To anyone else, he’d look indifferent. But I’ve spent more than eight months learning to read the microexpressions of a man … er, ghost, to be exact—who considers showing emotion to be a character flaw on the same par with public drunkenness.
He’s nervous.
He wants my novel to succeed, but he’s trying very hard to act indifferent, and honestly? It’s kind of adorable.
Not that I’d ever tell him that. He’d probably dematerialize out of sheer indignation.
“And how do these copy edits appear?” he asks, in the tone of someone inquiring about the weather rather than the creative work I’ve poured my heart and soul into for the past year.
“It seems I have a comma addiction, not to mention an unhealthy relationship with ellipses.” I scroll through the document, wincing at all the red marks. “I also use the word ‘smoldering’ seventeen times in the first three chapters.”
“Seventeen?” One dark eyebrow arches. “What precisely is smoldering with such relentless frequency?”
“Gabriel’s eyes, mostly. Sometimes his gaze. Occasionally his general … you know.” I gesture vaguely at my own face. “Expressions.”
“So your hero possesses eyes that are perpetually on the verge of combustion.” Richard moves closer to peer at the laptop screen, and I catch a whiff of that indefinable scent that always surrounds him—old books, wood smoke, and something else I’ve never been able to name. Something warm and slightly spiced that makes me want to lean in and sniff his neck.
Not that I would.
Obviously.
I’ve been seeing and communicating with ghosts since I was six years old, but I never thought much about how they smelled—only that each of them carries a unique scent, probably much as they did when they were alive. The spirits I’ve encountered over the years have run the gamut: lavender and mothballs, cheap cologne, hospital antiseptic. One unfortunate ghost I encountered died mid-cigarette and still reeked of stale Marlboros.
But Richard smells … unique. Like a library you’d want to get lost in. Like a fireplace you’d want to curl beside on a cold night. Like something you’d bottle and keep on your nightstand if you were the kind of person who did such a thing.
Which I’m not.
At least, I think I’m not.
His next words jolt me out of my thoughts. “One would think such a condition would require medical attention rather than romantic pursuit.” He looks at the blank expression on my face. “We were discussing your overuse of the word ‘smoldering.’”
Right.
I don’t bother to hide the snark in my tone. “It’s called a metaphor.”
“It’s a crutch. Seventeen times, madam. That’s not atmospheric. That’s a fire hazard.”
“Wow. Thanks for that supportive feedback.” I make a show of typing something, though, really, I’m just mashing random keys. “Let me just update my acknowledgments page: ‘Special thanks to Richard Lockwood, who made sure I knew exactly how terrible my writing is.’”
“You know very well that I think you’re a talented writer. I merely observed that your hero appears to have a chronic ocular inflammation.” The corner of his mouth twitches—his version of a belly laugh. “Perhaps in your revisions, you might consider having him blink occasionally. It would do wonders for his corneal health.”
“You’re hilarious. Really. Have you considered a career in stand-up comedy? Oh wait—” I snap my fingers. “You can’t. Because you’re dead.”
“And yet, somehow I’m still funnier than you.”
This is what we do now—this verbal sparring that walks the line between genuine irritation and something that feels dangerously close to flirting.
Daisy trots in from the hallway, her stubby little legs carrying her in a determined beeline toward her favorite sunny spot by the window. She gives Richard’s ankles an affectionate sniff—a gesture he pretends to find beneath his dignity—before she circles three times and collapses into a perfect dachshund spiral of contentment.
Ghost dog. Ghost man. Living woman with a laptop and an apparent comma problem.
Just another Monday afternoon at Lockwood Manor.
Seeing ghosts isn’t a gift I asked for, and for most of my life I’ve considered it more of a curse than a blessing. The dry mouth. The sudden chill that crawls along my skin like cold fingers whenever a spirit is around.
But with Richard, it’s different. Shortly after I moved into Lockwood Manor, he found a way to redirect his energy so I don’t experience those uncomfortable telltale signs. Of course, it also allows him to sneak up on me anytime he wants.
“Read me the scene you’re working on,” Richard commands, settling into the leather armchair beside my desk with the air of a king taking his throne.
“It’s not ready.”
“It was ready enough for your copy editor.”
“That’s different. She’s a professional. You’re …” I wave my hand at him. “You’re you.”
“I am the son of an English duke and a former Scotland Yard detective who spent his formative years navigating the treacherous social waters of London’s elite.” He adjusts his cravat with the solemnity of a judge preparing to deliver a verdict. “I have personally witnessed more romantic entanglements, ill-advised affairs, and scandalous liaisons than your Lady Eleanor could dream of in a dozen novels. I believe that makes me eminently qualified.”
I sigh heavily—making sure he knows I’m relenting under protest—and scroll to the passage I’ve been agonizing over. The first kiss. The moment everything changes between Lady Eleanor and her mysterious gardener Gabriel Stone.
“Fine. But no interrupting.”
He gestures imperiously at the laptop. “The scene. If you please.”
I count to five in my head, reminding myself that strangling a ghost is physically impossible, and begin reading.
“The greenhouse was thick with the scent of jasmine and possibility. Lady Eleanor knew she should leave—knew that every moment she lingered brought her closer to ruin. But Gabriel’s hands were cradling her face now, his calloused thumbs tracing the curve of her cheekbones with a tenderness that made her forget every rule she’d ever learned.”
I glance up. Richard looks like he’s cataloging all the things he plans to critique the moment I stop reading.
“‘We cannot do this,’ she whispered, even as her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt.”
“Why is she whispering?” Richard asks. “Aren’t they alone?”
“Excuse me. I thought you promised not to interrupt?”
He gives me a look that says he promised no such thing.
I clear my throat. “‘I know,’ Gabriel said, his voice rough as the garden soil beneath their feet. ‘But I find myself unable to resist you. Every dawn I spend among your roses, I think of you. Every dusk, I dream of this moment.’”
“He’s laying it on rather thick, isn’t he?”
“Richard.”
“I’m merely noting that your gardener seems to have an impressive grasp of poetic declaration for a man who spends his days elbow-deep in fertilizer.”
“He’s not actually a gardener. He’s a nobleman in disguise. You know this. We’ve discussed it before.”
“Ah yes. The secret identity. How convenient that he possesses both manual labor skills and the vocabulary of a poet. Does he also rescue orphans and play the pianoforte?”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. Continue.”
I grit my teeth and find my place again.
“Eleanor looked up into his eyes—those impossible eyes, deep and rich as the newly turned earth after a spring rain.” I wait for him to say something.
Daisy lifts her head as if she, too, is expecting a comment.
“Well?” I say.
“What color are Gabriel’s eyes?” he asks.
“Brown. A warm brown.”
“Then describe them as such. You might even venture into the ‘deep amber of aged whiskey’ or ‘mahogany burnished by firelight.’” He rises from the chair and begins to pace. “Not freshly turned earth. The whole thing sounds too agricultural.”
“‘Mahogany burnished by firelight’?” I repeat. “That’s awfully poetic for someone who claims to disdain romantic fiction.”
“I possess a functional vocabulary. It would be irresponsible not to use it.” He stops pacing, his gaze drifting somewhere past my shoulder. “Consider the depth of color. The way the candlelight catches the variations in shade. The warmth that draws one in.” His voice has gone softer now, almost hypnotic. “You might describe how her eyes hold flecks of gold near the iris, visible only when she laughs. How they darken when she’s concentrating on her work, or brighten with that particular spark of mischief when she’s about to say something devastatingly clever—”
He stops abruptly.
The silence stretches between us like a held breath.
I clear my throat. “You mean his. Gabriel’s eyes. You said ‘her.’”
“Did I?” He readjusts his cravat. “A slip of the tongue. I meant the heroine, of course. Lady Eleanor.”
“Lady Eleanor has blue eyes. I established that in chapter one.”
“Then I misspoke. It happens. Even to those of us with functional vocabularies.”
But he won’t meet my gaze. And I notice—because I notice everything about him now, because I can’t seem to help myself—that his form has gone slightly translucent at the edges. The way it does when he’s feeling something he doesn’t want to feel.
I should let it go. I should make a joke and change the subject. I should pretend that I didn’t hear what I heard. That I didn’t realize he was actually describing my eyes.
I force my attention back to the laptop screen. “How about ‘eyes like polished chestnuts in firelight’?”
“That will do.” His voice has gone slightly rough. “Still botanical in nature but considerably less agricultural.”
I make the edit, hyperaware of Richard moving to stand behind my chair. I can feel the faint chill of his presence now—which means his concentration has slipped. It happens sometimes when he’s focused on something. Or someone. He forgets to maintain that careful redirection of energy, and I get a hint of what other people would feel if they could sense him at all.
I should probably tell him his supernatural thermostat is malfunctioning.
But the cold doesn’t bother me. If anything, it feels intimate—like a secret only the two of us share.
“The romantic tension is well constructed,” Richard says, his voice closer to my ear than I expected. “You’ve done an admirable job of building the attraction while maintaining some semblance of believability concerning the societal constraints.”
“Was that your convoluted way of giving me a compliment?”
“It was an objective assessment of craft.”
“From you, that’s practically a standing ovation. Should I prepare an acceptance speech?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” But when I twist around to look at him, he’s almost smiling. That barely-there curve of his lips that I’ve learned to recognize as his version of genuine pleasure.
My heart does something stupid.
Because here’s the thing I’ve been trying very hard not to think about for the past three and a half months. I’m in love with a man who’s been dead for a hundred and thirty-one years.
A man I can’t touch, can’t hold, can’t build any kind of a real future with. A man who kissed me on Christmas Eve using his great-great-grandson’s borrowed body—one perfect, impossible kiss—and then we both agreed to pretend it never happened.
And ever since Victoria Campbell’s ghost told me about the rumors she’d heard—spirits who crossed back, spirits who found a way to return to the living—I haven’t been able to stop wondering.
What if it’s not impossible?
What if there’s a way that Richard could truly come back as a living, breathing man?
I’ve been researching in secret. Late nights when Richard thinks I’ve been working on my novel, I’m actually falling down internet rabbit holes with phrases like “documented cases of spiritual resurrection” and “folklore surrounding the return of the dead.” I’ve requested obscure books through interlibrary loan with titles in Latin and German that I have to run through translation apps.
I’ve even—and I’m not proud of this—created a fake email account to join an online forum for “serious researchers of liminal existence,” which turned out to be mostly people who think they’re married to vampires. I mean, I try to keep an open mind about things, but … yeah, that feels a bit too out there. Even for me.
Most of what I’ve found is garbage. Wishful thinking wrapped up in pseudo-academic language. The desperate hopes of people like me. People who love someone they can’t have, who would do anything, believe anything, if it meant one more chance.
But some of it …
Some of it feels real.
There are stories that repeat across cultures and centuries. Patterns that emerge when you know what to look for. References to rituals, to conditions, to cosmic alignments that supposedly thin the veil between worlds. Most of it is maddeningly vague—“when the stars align” and “at the turning of the year,” and other prophecy-speak that can mean anything or nothing.
But I keep searching. Keep hoping. Keep telling myself that I’m being thorough, not obsessive. That this is research, not desperation.
I haven’t told Richard. I’m not sure I ever will. Not unless I find something concrete.
Is it selfish, wanting this? Wanting him to give up whatever existence he has now for something uncertain and possibly dangerous? Because it’s not just Victoria Campbell’s whispered rumors that have been haunting me. Madame Corrine, Lockwood Cove’s self-appointed spiritual advisor and my personal purple-velvet nemesis, had a few things to say about my future.
A few weeks ago, at the grand opening party for my friend Hank’s B&B, she cornered me for a tarot card reading. Normally, I’d roll my eyes at her dramatic card-flipping and chalk the whole thing up to carnival theatrics. But this reading … this reading felt different.
A love that transcends ordinary boundaries.
A great sacrifice.
A great danger.
I’ve dealt with danger before. But … what if the sacrifice isn’t worth it? What if whatever ritual or cosmic loophole that might exist comes with a price too terrible to pay?
What if becoming human again isn’t in Richard’s destiny? What if it’s not even what he wants?
Oh, sure, every once in a while, he might mention that he wishes he could ride a horse again, feel the wind in his face, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. But he’s never actually come out and said he wants to be alive again.
Maybe he’s made peace with what he is. Maybe a hundred and thirty-one years is long enough to accept your fate.
Maybe I’m the only one who wants more.
What if I’m just a lonely, divorced woman projecting my feelings onto a ghost who’s been polite enough not to reject me outright? A ghost who may “care for me” but only because I’m the only person he’s had a real conversation with in over a century.
If you’d been alone for that long, wouldn’t you develop feelings for the first human who could actually see you? Wouldn’t anyone start to look good after a hundred and thirty-one years of silence?
These are the questions that keep me up at night. The ones I can’t answer no matter how many times I turn them over in my mind.
“You’ve gone frighteningly silent,” Richard observes. “Should I be alarmed?”
Ha! If he only knew.
I’m trying to think of a witty retort when something shifts.
It’s subtle at first—so subtle I almost miss it. A change in the quality of the air, like the barometric pressure before a storm. A faint ripple in the atmosphere that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
Richard goes very still.
“Did you feel that?” he asks, all trace of playful banter gone. Right now, he sounds more like a Scotland Yard detective than a bemused gentleman.
I pause, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. My mouth isn’t dry—not yet. There’s no chill in the air. Nothing that would signal another ghost was nearby.
But there’s something.
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “Maybe?”
Daisy lifts her head off her paws. Her ears perk forward, and her tail freezes mid-wag. She stares at the empty space near the bookshelf with the kind of focused intensity she usually reserves for squirrels.
Richard moves toward the center of the room, his form flickering slightly as he extends his awareness. I’ve seen him do this before—reaching out with senses I don’t fully understand, feeling for disturbances in whatever invisible currents ghosts navigate.
“Something is wrong,” he says. “Or perhaps not wrong but … different. There’s a presence. Faint. Confused.”
“Confused how?”
“I’m not entirely certain. It’s as if … ” He searches for the right words. “Like someone calling out from a great distance. Trying to find their way.”
The air near the bookshelf begins to shimmer.
My breath catches.
I know all too well what a ghost manifestation looks like. I’ve seen Richard do it hundreds of times, and I’ve witnessed plenty of other spirits materialize over the years. But this is different. Slower. Uncertain. Like watching someone try to remember how to walk after a long illness.
First, there’s a vague outline. A suggestion of a human form. Then color starts to bleed into it, faint and watercolor-pale: brown tweed, gray hair, the glint of wire-rimmed spectacles.
The figure solidifies bit by bit until an older gentleman appears.
“What—” He glances around, stunned. Then his gaze lands on me, and confusion hardens into indignation. “Who are you? What are you doing in my study?”
“Professor Ridley,” Richard says softly.
Professor Ridley. The previous tenant of Lockwood Manor—the philosophy professor who lived in this house for over twenty years before passing away in his sleep.
I’ve heard stories from Madelyn, my friend and real estate agent, about the bachelor academic who kept to himself.
And now here he is. Standing in his former study. Looking very much like a man who doesn’t realize he’s been dead for almost a year.
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