The Ghost of a Kiss
The travel from Eagle’s Rest hunting lodge, Cotswolds to Library, Eagle’s Rest lodge consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The lodge’s library smelled of cedar. The scent curled into Dante’s lungs as he stood with his back to the fire, watching Nova circle the room like a creature testing the limits of a cage she’d chosen freely. Her fingers trailed over the spines of books she wasn’t reading, her gaze fixed on nothing.
The clock on the mantel ticked. It was the only sound between them for a long moment.
“Isadora has Noah in the conservatory,” Nova said, her voice pitched low. “She’s reading him something about a rabbit and a stolen pocket watch.”
“He won’t sit still for it.” Dante’s throat felt raw. He’d watched her move through the stables last night, had seen the fire reflected in her eyes as she stood beside Jasper and held a bucket of sand. She hadn’t flinched. Nova Montclair had never flinched at anything real—only at the ghosts she carried.
“He will if Isadora does the voices. She does a very good rabbit.” Nova stopped at the far window, her back to him. The glass showed her reflection, pale and blurred. “You said we would talk.”
“I said we would have time.”
“And now we have a burned stable, two dead horses, and a man with a torch standing in your treeline.” She turned. Her face was composed, but her hands were locked together at her waist, knuckles white. “Time is a luxury I stopped believing in six years ago.”
He crossed the room, stopping at the table that separated them. The polished mahogany held a brass lamp, a stack of ledgers, and the ghost of every conversation they’d never had. “Tell me what happened. The night I left.”
“You know what happened. You left.”
“I had reason.”
“You had a letter.”
The words landed like a slap. Dante’s blood went cold. “You saw it?”
“I found it.” Nova’s voice cracked, but she didn’t look away. “Three days after you vanished. It was wedged between the floorboards in your room at the inn, like you’d dropped it in a hurry. A letter from my father, telling you that if you didn’t leave London by sunrise, he would have you arrested for debt crimes he’d fabricated. That he had a magistrate on retainer and a cell waiting in Newgate.”
Dante’s hands gripped the edge of the table. The wood bit into his palms. “You read it.”
“I read it.” She took a step closer. “I also read the second page, which you apparently missed. The one where he wrote that if you told me the truth, if you so much as said goodbye with the words ‘I’m being forced,’ he would have my mother taken from her sickbed and put in the street.”
His chest tightened. He remembered the inn. The floorboards. The frantic unfolding of parchment by candlelight, his hands shaking as he’d read the threat, then read it again, then shoved the letter into his coat and fled into the rain. He hadn’t known there was a second page. He’d never thought to check.
“I would have stayed,” he said, the words scraping out of him. “If I had known—”
“You would have stayed and watched them destroy my family. Which is exactly why he wrote the threat behind the threat.” Nova’s eyes were bright, but her voice held steady. “My father was a cruel man, Dante, but he was not a stupid one. He knew you. He knew you would choose my safety over your own happiness.”
The fire popped. The sound cut through the silence like a gunshot.
Dante pushed away from the table and walked to the window, staring out at the dark treeline. The moon was a sliver behind clouds, barely shedding light on the acres of forest that surrounded the lodge. Somewhere out there, Cole Sterling had stood last night, torch in hand, and called Dante’s name like a curse.
“What did he threaten you with?” he asked, not turning around. “Your father. When he found out about us.”
The silence stretched. He heard her footsteps, soft on the Persian rug, and then she was standing beside him, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her arm through the space between them.
“He told me you were a fortune hunter,” she said. “That you had debts across three counties, that you’d targeted me for my inheritance, and that if I didn’t end the engagement publicly and with proper denouncement, he would have you killed in a duel that he would arrange to look legal.”
Dante turned his head. Her profile was sharp in the dim light, her jaw set.
“I didn’t believe him,” she continued. “But I was nineteen, and he was the authority in my life, and when he showed me a list of debts with your name on them, I thought—I thought maybe I’d misjudged you. That the man who held me like I was made of starlight was a performance.”
“The debts were his. He forged them.”
“I know that now.” She finally looked at him, and the pain in her eyes was an old wound, scarred over but never healed. “I spent three years hating you, Dante. Three years telling myself that I was better off, that you were a liar, that our love had been a convenient fiction. And then my father died, and I found his ledgers. Found the payments he made to the forger. Found the name of the magistrate he’d bribed to sign the arrest warrant he never used.”
Dante’s throat closed. “Nova—”
“I searched for you.” Her voice broke, finally, a crack in the porcelain. “For two years after I learned the truth, I hired men to find you. I placed notices in papers across England. I wrote to every registry office in the colonies. No trace. You’d vanished like smoke.”
“I changed my name,” he said. “Went by William Thorne for the first three years. Worked as a clerk in Liverpool, then a purser on a merchant ship. I didn’t stop moving until I had enough to buy this place, and even then, I didn’t stop looking over my shoulder.”
“For what? My father was dead.”
“For whoever had paid him to destroy us.” Dante turned to face her fully. They were close now, close enough that he could count the freckles dusted across her nose, could see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes that hadn’t been there six years ago. “Your father was cruel, but he wasn’t wealthy enough to fabricate an entire arrest scheme on his own. Someone put him up to it. Someone paid him to separate us.”
Nova’s breath caught. “The Sterlings.”
“Beckett Sterling was your father’s business partner. He was also present at every social event we attended together. He saw us. He knew.” Dante’s voice dropped. “And Cole Sterling is the one who burned my stable last night. He’s the one who told me I can’t hide you forever. They didn’t just want me gone, Nova. They wanted me erased. They wanted a clean line of succession, and I was a variable they couldn’t control.”
The name Sterling hung in the air between them like smoke.
Nova’s hand moved first. She reached out, her fingers brushing against his wrist, and the contact sent a jolt through him that was almost painful in its familiarity. He’d felt that touch a thousand times, in a thousand different moments, and he’d taught himself to forget it. He’d failed.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” she whispered. “When I read your letter, when I realized you were alive, that you’d found Noah—I thought it was a trick. I thought the Sterlings had set another trap.”
“It’s not a trap.” He covered her hand with his, felt the delicate bones of her fingers against his calloused palm. “I found you because I had to. Because Noah deserves to know his mother. Because I have spent six years of my life in a world that was gray, and you were the only color I ever knew.”
Her laugh was broken, half sob. “That’s terrible. That sounds like something from the penny novels Isadora reads.”
“It’s true.”
“I know.” She stepped closer, close enough that he could smell the lavender soap on her skin, could see the pulse beating in her throat. “I know it’s true, because I’ve felt the same gray. Because every morning for six years, I woke up and reached for you, and you weren’t there.”
He lifted his free hand, cupped her jaw. Her skin was warm, soft, real. “I’m here now.”
“For how long?”
“As long as you’ll have me.”
She kissed him.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was the collision of six years of grief, of rage, of love that had never died but had merely learned to burn in the dark. Her hands came up to fist in his collar, pulling him down, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her like he was drowning and she was air.
The clock ticked. The fire crackled. The world outside the library windows continued to spin, filled with Sterlings and threats and burned stables, but in that moment, none of it existed.
When they broke apart, Nova was crying. Silent tears tracking down her cheeks, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
“I never stopped,” she said. “I never stopped loving you.”
“Neither did I.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “And I will burn the Sterling family to the ground before I let them take this from us again.”
She laughed, a wet, shaking sound. “That’s terribly dramatic.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” She pulled back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “But for now, we need to think. They know you’re here. They know I’m here. And Beckett Sterling has connections in the Crown’s land commission. He could take Eagle’s Rest from you legally before you’ve had a chance to prove anything.”
Dante’s jaw set firmly, but he forced the tension out, breath by breath. “Then we stay ahead of them. We gather evidence. We find out who paid your father, and we—”
The door opened.
Isadora stood in the threshold, her face pale. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, her voice tight. “But Noah is asking for you, Nova. He had a nightmare. The fire.”
Nova’s expression shifted, the mother rising through the lover. She brushed past Dante, pausing at the door to look back at him.
“We’ll finish this,” she said. “Tomorrow. Tonight, I need to hold my son.”
She was gone before he could answer, her footsteps fading down the hall.
Dante stood alone in the library, the fire at his back, the scent of her still in his lungs. He looked at the window, at his own reflection, at the ghost of the man he’d been standing beside the ghost of the woman he’d loved.
Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow, we fight.
—
Morning came gray and cold.
Dante woke at dawn, his body aching from the night spent on the library sofa, his mind already turning through plans and contingencies. He washed in the basin, dressed, and made his way to the dining room, where a fire had been lit and a breakfast laid out on the sideboard.
Nova was already there, seated at the table with Noah in her lap, feeding him toast. She looked up when Dante entered, and there was something new in her eyes—a warmth that had been absent since the day she’d arrived.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Morning.” He poured himself coffee, forcing his hands steady. “Did you sleep?”
“Not much. But Noah did.” She smiled down at the boy, who was watching Dante with the same cautious curiosity he’d worn since they’d arrived. “He wants to know if you’ll take him fishing.”
Dante looked at Noah. The boy’s eyes were wide, serious. “The lake has trout,” Dante said. “Big ones. But they’re clever. You have to be patient.”
“I can be patient,” Noah said, his voice small but certain.
“Then we’ll go this afternoon. After the frost burns off.”
Noah nodded, then buried his face in Nova’s shoulder, shy again.
Dante’s heart ached.
The morning passed in a strange domestic rhythm—Nova helping Noah with his breakfast, Isadora reading another chapter of the rabbit story, Dante reviewing maps of the estate with Jasper in the study. The burned stable was being cleared, the horses buried, the insurance forms filed. Life, such as it was, continued.
Then the doorbell rang.
Dante was in the entryway when the butler answered it. A boy stood on the step, no older than sixteen, holding a letter sealed with wax the color of dried blood.
“For Mrs. Montclair,” the boy said, his voice trembling. “From Lord Beckett Sterling. Urgent delivery.”
Dante took the letter before the butler could. The seal was intact. The paper was heavy, expensive, stamped with the Sterling crest—a hawk clutching a gavel.
He carried it to the dining room, where Nova was clearing the plates. She saw his face and froze.
“What is it?”
“A letter. From Beckett.” He held it out. “It’s addressed to you.”
She took it, her fingers steady despite the pallor in her cheeks. She broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and read.
The clock ticked. The fire crackled.
Her face went white.
“Nova. What does it say?”
She looked up, and the warmth that had been in her eyes this morning was gone, replaced by something cold and ancient and terrified.
“Nova opened the letter and her face went white. ‘He’s not just after the land, Dante. He’s claiming Noah is the bastard of a traitor—and he has forged letters to prove it.’”