'That would be close enough.'
'And the other corporal?'
'Made it to the Barlow house. A servant took him inside, and the mistress was preparing to tend to him when her husband shot him.'
She didn't shudder. She was well used to cruelties, small and large. 'Because he didn't see a boy, but the wrong color uniform?'
'That's right. So the mistress of the house, Abigail Barlow, turned from her husband and went into seclusion. She died a couple of years later.'
'A sad story. Useless deaths make for uneasy ghosts. Still, it always feels—' she closed her eyes, let the air dance over her face '—inviting here. They just don't want to be forgotten. Do you want to know where they fought?'
Something in her tone had him looking down at her. 'Why?'
She opened her eyes again. They were darker than the shadows, more mysterious than the night. 'To the west, fifty yards, by a clump of rocks and a burled tree.'
He felt cool fingers brush the nape of his neck. But her hands were in his. 'Yes. I've sat on the rocks there and heard the bayonets clash.'
'So have I. But I wondered who. And why.'
'Is that usual for you?' His voice had roughened. Perhaps it was what they spoke of in the night wood. Or perhaps it was her eyes, so dark, so depthless, that he knew any man would blissfully drown in them.
'Your great-grandfather was a farmer who saw a young boy dying and tried to save him. Mine was a shaman who saw visions in the fire and tried to understand them. You still try to save people, don't you, Jared? And I still try to understand the visions.'
'Are you-?'
'Psychic?' She laughed quickly, richly. 'No. I feel things. We all do. The strongest part of my heritage accepts those feelings, respects them, honors them. I followed my feelings when I left Oklahoma. I knew that I'd find where I belonged. And I took one look at that cabin, at those rocks, these woods, and I knew I was home. I watched you walk across the grass that first time, and I knew I'd end up wanting you.'
She leaned forward, touched her lips to his. 'And now, I know I have to get back and put my son to bed before he raids the refrigerator.'
'Savannah.' He caught her, hands again before she could turn away. His gaze was intense on her face, almost fierce. 'What do you feel about where we're going?'
She felt the heat, then the cold, then the heat once more, slide up her spine. But she kept her voice easy. 'I find that when you look too far ahead, you end up tripping over the present. Let's just worry about the now, Jared.'
When he lifted her hand to his lips, Savannah realized that now was going to be trouble enough.
* * *
She waited until the end of the week before she acted on Jared's suggestion and detoured by the Barlow place. The MacKade place, she corrected, amused at herself for having picked up the town's name for the old stone house on the hill.
The Barlows hadn't lived in it for over fifty years. The last family, a couple from the north of the county, had bought it, lived in it briefly, then abandoned it twenty years ago. It had been up for sale off and on during those decades, but no one had taken the plunge.
Until Rafe MacKade.
Savannah considered that as she turned off the road and up the steep lane. Someone had begun to clear the overgrowth of brush and brambles, but it was going to be heavy going. Someone, she decided, was going to need a lot of vision.
The house itself was three stories of beautiful stone. Tall windows, arched windows, mullioned windows, gleaming. Most had been boarded up only months before—or so Savannah had been told when she was cornered by Mrs. Metz in the market.
There were double porches. The one that graced the second floor was in the process of being torn down. It needed to be, Savannah mused. It was rotted and sagging and undoubtedly treacherous. But the lower one was obviously new, still unpainted, and straight as a military band on parade day.
Scaffolding ran up the east wing, and piles of material sat under plastic tarps in the overgrown yard. She pulled up beside a pickup that was loaded with debris and shut off her engine.
When she knocked, she heard an answering shout, faintly irritated by the tone of it. She stepped inside and stood, shocked and swamped by the deluge of sensation. Laughter and tears and horror and happiness. The emotions rolled over her, then ebbed, like a breaking wave.
She saw the man at the top of the steps. Smiled, stepped forward. 'Jared, I didn't expect to see you. Oh.'
She saw her mistake immediately. Not Jared. The eyes were a darker green, the hair slightly longer and definitely less well-groomed. Jared's face was just a bit more narrow, his eyebrows had more of an arch.
But that MacKade grin was identical, as sharp and lethal as an arrow from a master's bow.
'I'm better-looking,' Rafe told her as he started down.
'Hard to say. The family resemblance is almost ridiculous.' She held out a hand. 'You'd be Rafe MacKade.'
'Guilty.'
'I'm—'
'Savannah Morningstar.' He didn't shake her hand, just held it while he gave her a long, practiced once-over. 'Regan was dead on,' he decided.
'Excuse me?'
'You met my wife last weekend at her shop. She told me to think of Isis. That didn't do me a hell of a lot of good, so she said to think of a woman who'd stop a man's heart at ten paces and have him on his knees at five.'
'That's quite an endorsement.'
'And dead on,' he repeated. 'Jared said you might be coming by.'' He tucked his thumbs in his tool belt.
'I don't want to interrupt your work.'
'Please, interrupt my work.' He aimed that grin again. 'I'm just killing time until Regan gets home from the shop. We're living here temporarily. Want a beer?'
This was the kind of man she understood and was at ease with. 'Now that you mention it.'
But she hadn't taken two steps behind him when she stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the curve of the staircase.
Intrigued, Rafe watched her. 'Problem?'
'There. It was there, on the stairs.'
'I take it Jared told you about our ghosts.'
She felt weak inside, jittery at the fingertips. 'He told me there had been a young Confederate soldier, that Barlow had shot him after a servant had brought him into the house. But he didn't say—he didn't tell me where.'
Her legs felt heavy as she walked to the stairs, as she followed the compulsion to go up. The cold was like a blade through the heart, through to the bone. Her knuckles went white on the rail.
'Here.' She could barely get the words out. 'Here on the stairs. He could smell roses, and hope, and then... He only wanted to go home.'
She shook herself, stepped back one step, then two before turning. 'I could use that beer.'
'Yeah.' Rafe let out a long breath. 'Me too.'
* * *
'Do you, ah, do that kind of thing often?' Rafe asked as he popped the tops on two beers in the kitchen.
'No,' Savannah told him, very definitely. 'There are some places around this area... this house, the woods out there...' She let the words trail off as she looked out the window. 'There's a spot on my bank where I planted columbine, and areas of the battlefield that break your heart.' With an effort, she shook off the mood and took the beer Rafe offered. 'Leftover emotions. The strong ones can last centuries.'
'I've had a dream.' He'd only told Regan of it, but it seemed appropriate now. 'I'm running through the woods,
