Ghost Girl

Chapter 1

Hertfordshire, Spring 1889

The ghosts crowded around to get a better look at my corpse. Hands skimmed over my face like feathery kisses from cold lips. A little blonde spirit girl brushed her fingers through my hair, hypnotized by the dark curls that sprang free. A fat gentleman with florid cheeks peered into my eyes, the skin on his heavy brow crumpling with concern, and a gray-haired woman wearing only a nightgown knelt at my side. She fussed over me, inspecting me for wounds. She turned to lift my skirt and I gasped in horror. One side of her face was red and puckered, the skin resembling half-cooked meat. She'd been burned to death.

"No obvious wounds," she said, apparently unconcerned by my ill-mannered reaction. I ought to have been more prepared—I'd had a lot of experience with the dead, after all—but I was out of sorts. It seemed death could muddle one's thoughts.

"You shouldn't be here," the man said. Did he mean me? "Do you hear me?" he shouted.

I winced and the girl jumped in alarm.

"Of course she can hear you," the woman said, her voice as brittle as a dried leaf. "She's dead, not deaf."

"She should be in the Waiting Area."

"Are you sure?" the little girl asked.

"About what?"

"That she's dead. She seems so…alive." She was still studying my hair, letting it cascade through her fingers, her big eyes intent on the strands. She suddenly stopped and sniffed it. "She doesn't smell dead."

Please don't let me be dead.

I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out. The ghosts were checking me over once again for signs of injury or illness. Surely they should be able to see that I'd been sick? The fever ought to be evident in my eyes and the color of my cheeks. I'd seen the ghosts of people who'd died from fevers before. Their faces were perpetually damp and hot, the skin beneath their eyes bruised.

The woman was lifting my skirt again, and the gentleman joined her to look. I struggled to sit up and push my skirt down, but I couldn't even seem to manage that.

"Leave her." The commanding voice sent the ghosts scattering to the corners of the bedroom.

I turned my head on the pillow and a breath escaped my lips in a wheeze. It rattled in my chest, but it was definitely a breath. Perhaps I wasn't dead. Please, God, I don't want to die.

I would have prayed harder, but I was distracted by the bare-chested man in my bedroom. The last man I'd seen in a similar state of undress had been in spirit form. He'd died in a mine collapse. His body had been nothing like that of the fellow who stood by the door, however. This man's arms crossed over a magnificently muscular chest, just above a stomach ridged with yet more muscle. Did his arms bulge like that because of the pose or were they honed to masculine perfection from physical use? My sister-in-law, Celia, would suffer an attack of hysteria if she knew I was gazing upon a man's bare skin. In my defense, I couldn't very well not look. He was, after all, standing right there.

Ordinarily ghosts were a little smudged at the edges, as if they were disappearing into a mist, but the large half-naked man was as fully realized as I was. Yet I didn't think he was human, either. What kind of fellow walked around in nothing but a pair of tight leather pants with a sword strapped to his hip? Certainly no Englishman would be so indecent.

I dragged my gaze from his chest, up his broad shoulders to his face. Another wheezing gasp escaped from my heavy chest. I must be dead. Surely this was some sort of angel come to take me away? No mere human could be that handsome. Dark hair framed smooth skin, stretched over bold cheekbones and chiseled jaw. His face was saved from being too angular by the ends of his hair curling at his ears and nape, and the curve of his mouth. His lips were set firmly together as he studied me through a pair of eyes the same shade of blue-green as the ocean I'd crossed mere months before.