Chapter One

O liver Gracehaven, the once-third Earl of Harwich stood high upon the battlements of Graven Fortress, overlooking the sea. Waves crashed against the western wall below him, their foamy whitecaps spraying upward toward the pointed turrets…and toward him. He stared out over the horizon, his gaze dulled with long-dead desires and the undying hope of revenge. It would never come.

He drew in a deep breath, letting phantom smells of the salty sea mist permeate his lungs. He remembered how the sea tasted in his mouth, being swallowed and swallowing him up at the same time while he sank to his watery grave. But he hadn't died by drowning. No, it was love that killed him. Loving Lady Eleanor Montgomery to be precise.

He ground his teeth in anger thinking of her, but he couldn't feel the satisfying clench of his jaw. Over the last six hundred years, while his body rotted somewhere in the murky fathoms below, he contemplated ways he'd exact revenge on her—if only he could.

It had been just a sennight after finally courting Eleanor Montgomery, the most beautiful woman in England, that he'd asked her to be his wife. He knew now that he'd been a colossal fool, but at the time, his heart ruled him. He scoffed at himself while the melodic sea breeze wafted through his obsidian locks without disheveling it. Never again would he fall victim to the cursed wiles of a beautiful woman. Never again would he—

"We need to make certain these battlements are safe before the men can begin working." A woman stood not ten feet away from him, looking around. Looking through him. Her gaze, for the space of a half-breath while it passed over him, left him feeling as if someone had fired a cannonball at his chest. "We don't want anyone to fall," she added, returning her attention to the man who was with her.

"Who are you?" Oliver demanded. He knew they couldn't hear him, but he would never get used to not being heard—not being seen. Indeed, he was in hell. He glared at them and shouted.

"What do you think you're doing here? Who gave you entry into Graven Fortress?" When his murderous gaze fell on the woman's, his heart would have stopped… if it were beating. She was looking straight at him! He watched as terror widened her chestnut eyes. Could she see him without his help? She leaped back. Her backside hit the short wall and she began to slip. She reached for him as she began to fall over the edge. His lips parted in stunned surprise. Her hands went through him as if he was fashioned from mist. He was. She flailed her arms, never taking her horrified eyes off him.

Oliver remembered falling over the wall, reaching for his wife, but Eleanor shook her solid hands away. He knew what it felt like to fall from this wall and know death was seconds away.

Among those who believed in ghosts, he'd become famous for frightening the wits out of people and keeping them away from Graven Fortress. But he'd never actually put their lives in danger—and none of his victims had ever fallen from the battlements. Now that it was happening, he felt as helpless as the day he died. There was nothing he could do for this woman but stare into her eyes that somehow, impossibly saw him.

The man who'd accompanied her grasped her wrists as they began to disappear over the side and pulled her back, propelling her against his chest, cushioned in his short, puffy coat. Oliver watched like an uninvited spectator as her companion's eyes took her in as if she brought the air he needed to live.

Oliver shook his head at the pathetic fool. Was he her husband?

"Did you see him?" the woman asked, gasping in a breath. She kept her gaze fastened to her friend's chest, appearing to be too frightened to look up.

"Who? Who did you see?" the man, who still hadn't let her go, asked.

"A man—"

No. It was impossible, Oliver told himself. She couldn't have seen him, and especially not for longer than five seconds! He hadn't touched her! He knew what he was and what he was whispered to be. No one could see him but for a few moments when he touched them. He hadn't touched her.

She'd looked at him, seeing him. Was it possible? Over the torturously long centuries, he'd grown used to not being truly seen. Though the way it made him feel when she looked into his eyes would argue otherwise.

"—He was standing right there." She held her arm out to her right but still withheld her gaze. "He was very pale, and he was glowering at me with such anger…" She covered her eyes with hands and didn't speak again.

In stunned silence, Oliver moved closer. Was this red-haired siren weeping? Now that she was safe, something inside him that he knew would keep him out of heaven, bubbled up into a hard smile, glad to have frightened her enough to make her weep. He'd done it every single time someone entered his fortress over the last half dozen centuries. He'd managed to keep every intruder out with deep wails so mournful they blocked out the sun with thick charcoal clouds. Some people were easier to terrorize than others. He especially enjoyed haunting the many so-called professionals in the field of chasing down ghosts. They provided many years of laughter when he left them surrounded in cold pockets and appeared as a spectral cloud beside them. Oh, how they all ran. He took pride in frightening living intruders. In the end though, he just wanted to be left alone.

"It was the Ghost of Graven," her beefy friend informed her. He paused to have a look around, and seeing nothing, returned his warm gaze on the woman.

"Right," she scoffed, and finally stepped out of his embrace. "I've read about him. He was betrayed by his new wife way back when and leaped to his death from these very walls."

"What? Leaped—" Oliver stammered out rushing closer, hoping to terrify them both. He spotted her gaze flicking to his and he scowled and roared. "I'll kill anyone who spreads that lie!"

She squeaked, making Oliver's day, but instead of leaping back and finishing what she'd started earlier, she swatted him. She would have hit him had he been corporeal. "Go away!"

Part of him was surprised by her again. Not everyone was afraid, but no one had ever tried to strike him. That just made her more dangerous.

"I will absolutely not go away!" he shouted. "This is my fortress. You go away! You're the intruder here!"

She squinted her eyes in his direction. Was her vision of him fading? He stepped forward.

"I think he's shouting at me," she whispered on a shaky breath. "I hear something. It's very faint."

Her companion stepped away from her, apparently not wanting the air he breathed to be contaminated by a crazy woman having a conversation with the Ghost of Graven.

Oliver, on the other hand, could barely move. His breath, real or imagined, came hard. Could she truly hear him?

"You…you can really see him?" her friend asked.

She nodded—and then shook her head. "I think he's gone."

Oliver blinked. No. No, he wasn't gone. Why couldn't she see him anymore? Was that it for being seen for the next half dozen centuries? He couldn't do it. He wouldn't do it.

Her friend laughed. "You told the Ghost of Graven to go away and he did!"

Oliver didn't care if he had blood to fire his veins or not. His fury was real. He reached out and pushed his index finger against the man's forehead. "Get out."

The woman's friend paled. He didn't hear Oliver's voice, but the Ghost of Graven showed himself, directly in front of him, blue and bloating and half eaten by fish. Her friend turned and fled for the battlement exits. Oliver turned to have a look at the woman. What did she think of a man who ran away and left her?

She looked around, appearing less afraid but still cautious. Her fiery brown gaze passed him.

"Did you really leave?" she asked the air.

"No, I would never allow someone like you to order me—"

"You're still here, aren't you?"

He stared at her. Who was she that she could see him, hear him, sense him? "Lady—"

"You seem very angry," she reasoned cautiously with a quirk of her russet brow. "Is it because you were betrayed?"

He should scream in her face, or appear to her as a rotting corpse. Instead, for a moment he let his gaze rove over the thick bun atop her head. He disappeared and then appeared again floating about her head. With a deep exhale, he caused a gust of wind from the dark skies to swirl around her until her hair came loose. It fell to her waist in thick, crinkly waves splashed in the bright colors of autumn and blew across her face. She still couldn't see him but that didn't stop her cheeks from matching her hair.

He stood over her, his eyes fastened on the full, natural pout of her softly painted red lips. She wasn't the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Eleanor would always hold that title. Perhaps it was because this woman was rather plain at first glance, that he allowed his vision to soak in the sight of her and make him want to smile. She was beguiling. He chuckled. He wouldn't be fooled by a woman again. But he wanted her to see him. To feel another's gaze on him—on the way he looked before he died—so he could feel…alive again.

He could force her to see him for a few moments, with a touch, as he'd done to her male companion. But that was a tactic usually reserved to terrorize, he wouldn't try to frighten her. Besides, she'd vanquished her fear like a warrior heading for the battlefield. But he wouldn't admire her. She was nothing special. He turned away to leave when another man appeared under the archway.

Oliver stopped and returned his incredulous gaze to the woman. How many men had followed her here?

"I'm Dave, the foreman on site." Dave smiled at her, looking a little captivated by her hair, swaying like flames over her shoulders. "We'll be starting soon."

"Starting what?" Oliver demanded. No one answered.

"If you begin today," she said, twisting her hair on top of her head and jabbing a pen into it to hold it in place, "you should be finished in three months as we planned."

"What?" Oliver demanded. "Do you think you'll be here for three months? I won't—"

"You'll find that I'm a man of my word, Ms. Montgomery."

"—allow it! I…" Oliver's lips snapped shut. Montgomery? Of all the emotions Oliver could feel, rage reigned supreme above the rest. Had the day finally come when he could take his revenge on a Montgomery? So what if she wasn't Eleanor? A descendent was good enough. He would not only touch her, he would go into her and she would see, and what she saw would drive her mad. Letting fury rule, he moved forward and then rushed through her. Now, he did want to frighten her. He knew what he wanted this Montgomery woman to see. He'd driven many from the fortress with the vision of him as pale as death, decaying and grotesque while his gaze still held them still.

But before he was able to complete his task, his senses were bombarded with her, with the rhythm of her breath, the heat of her complexion, the explosion of jasmine blended with the scent of the wind in her hair. He was engulfed in life. Life, so sorely missed, flowed through him. Her life.

Before the rapture of it tempted him never to leave her, he tore out of the back of her and disappeared over the wall and into the surging sea.