Icy fingers caressed her face, soothing despite their chill. “All is well, love. You’re safe with me.”
White stars. So distant. So beautiful. Lenore smiled, even as darkness encroached into her whirling vision. “I should make a wish” she said, wondering why the words felt as thick and sticky as treacle in her mouth. “Two wishes.”
She floated above the ground, light as a feather, pressed against velvet woven from night. A steady heartbeat drummed against her ear, and Nathaniel’s voice teased her once more. “What will you wish for, my Lenore?”
Lenore nuzzled her cheek into the soft fabric. “That you come back to me so I can tell you...”The words weighed heavy on her tongue, and a high ringing filled her ears.
The soothing voice rose it above it all. “Tell me what?”
“Tell you yes instead of no.” The white stars disappeared and the voice and ringing with them until she was only the feather, and even that faded to nothing.
She awakened to the pungent scent of cheese mixed with dog breath and the lap of something wet and warm sliding across her cheek. She groaned and covered her face with her arm. “Hello, dog.” The greeting earned her a soft bark and another damp lick, this time near her ear.
Lenore lay still for several moments, resting on her side, and struggled to find her bearings. Someone had removed her bonnet. It rested in the cove of her body, one side misshapen.
The pain in her head had lessened from a tower bell’s clamor to a hand bell’s chime. Her right hand still throbbed, and she raised it for a better look. She’d lost her mitten, and the illumination from an unknown light source revealed the lacerations across her knuckles and the swelling in both her ring and smallest fingers. An experimental wiggle assured her nothing was broken.
She rested on a wooden floor, facing a dark wall of linen fold paneling gone gray with dust and years without a proper oiling. An equally forgotten fireplace interrupted the expanse of wood, the ashes in its grate long cold. Winter sunlight forced its way through the cloudy panes of a nearby window and battled for dominance against the flame of a lit oil lamp on a small table.
Except for the table and two chairs that looked in imminent danger of collapsing if someone dropped so much as a tea cozy on them, the room was bare. Stark and abandoned and colder than a crypt.
The dog pressed against her back and rested its chin on her waist. Lenore welcomed the shared warmth if not the reek of canine exhalations. “Good dog,” she murmured. “Thank you for trying to help.”
She recalled its hurt yelp, the body snatcher’s curses and her sadness that violent death had been the poor creature’s reward for its bravery. She herself might well have perished, not from a thief’s attack but from her own clumsiness. Lenore would have laughed if her head didn’t pain her so much. What a ridiculous eulogy that would be. Lenore Kenward, unfortunate spinster taken far too young by the malevolent machinations of a headstone. She did chuckle then, the sound cut short by the return of the tower bell thrum between her temples.
“Laughter is always a good sign.”
Lenore gasped at the sight of a paler shadow separating itself from the darker ones clotting the chamber’s doorway.
The Highgate Guardian stood in the entrance, holding a basin and pitcher, linen towels draped over one arm. “Don’t be frightened, Miss Kenward. You’re safe.”
“Lenore. I have you, my sweet.”
She blinked. He had called her Lenore, not Miss Kenward and sounded like her beloved Nathaniel. Good God, how hard of a knock to the head did she suffer? “I fell,” she said.
He glided across the room and set his burden on the table by the lamp. “Yes. Fortunately, your quick reflexes saved you from worse injury. Had you struck the headstone, I doubt we’d be having this conversation now. You still managed to strike a tree root when you fell, and you’ve a cut on your scalp. If you will allow me, I’ll tend to your wound.”
“Unfortunately, my clumsiness nearly got me killed in the first place.” She tried sitting up, only to pause as the room swam before her eyes. When her vision cleared, she stared into the Guardian’s porcelain features.
“Peace, Miss Kenward. Let me help you.” He bent and scooped her effortlessly into his arms.
Lenore placed her hands on his shoulders, feeling the flex of muscle as he shifted her weight. Unlike the hard black armor he wore when she first met him, he was garbed in the sober apparel of a vicar, minus the brimmed hat or white collar.
He set her gently down on one of the questionable chairs. Lenore waited a few tense moments for it to collapse under her and send her sprawling in a heap of skirts, petticoats and crinoline.
She offered the Guardian a small relieved smile when the chair held, wondering if his kind not only heard the whispers of the dead but the thoughts of the living when he told her in a wry voice “It’s sturdier than it looks.”
He seated himself across from her and waited patiently while she removed the pins from her hair. Lenore’s cheeks burned hotter with every pin she laid on the table, and the silence in the room thickened. The last time she performed this small intimacy in front of another person, she had been standing before Nathaniel in his bedroom, dressed in nothing more than a blush.
The Guardian busied himself with filling the basin with water from the pitcher and wetting one of the towels, his gaze on his task. Yet Lenore felt the weight of his scrutiny, intense and admiring.
The thought made her pause. Did Guardians feel as other men felt? Know affection and passion for another? Or had Dr. Harvel’s gruesome experiments left them so transformed that they retained only the shades of emotion?
“I have you my sweet.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Whatever horrors this Guardian had suffered under the mad doctor’s hands, he still possessed the ability to show kindness and express sympathy. And feel desire. She was certain of it, knew it right down to her bones.
With the removal of the last pin, her hair fell around her shoulders, thick and straight. She’d have a devil of a time taming it back into a neat bun, especially with her scalp hurting the way it did.
The Guardian stared at her, pale features expressionless. “Lean forward, please. I’ll tend that cut.”
Lenore did as he instructed and bent toward him so he could better see the crown of her head. She closed her eyes at the light touch of his fingers parting her hair.
The tree root she struck had left a nasty gash, and she hissed when he applied the wet towel to the wound.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I will do my best to be quick and careful.”
“I know you will,” she replied. “I trust you.” Those gentle hands rested briefly on her head before continuing their work.
To ease the silence and take her mind off her stinging scalp while she stared into her lap, Lenore asked a question. “Did you see them? The resurrectionists? I thought they were like rats and only scurried out at night.”
“They’re either growing bolder or more desperate.”