Read Online These Haunted Hearts: A Regency Ghost Story by Anna Campbell - Free Book Online

winked out to nothing. The air suddenly seemed cleaner,
cooler, untinged by the low buzz of malevolence.
    Josiah glanced up to see Isabella approaching him, a
smile transfiguring her face, too. At last she looked like the
woman he’d kissed so passionately on their wedding day. At last he
read neither suspicion nor hatred in her eyes as she looked at
him.
    She reached for his hand. It was the first time she’d
touched him since he’d woken to this new century.
    “Isabella—” he stammered. Turbulent hoped crammed his
throat, making a wreck of eloquence.
    She was trembling. So was he. Her touch contained
magic. It always had. Now she made him feel alive, as if he was
once again that joyful bridegroom of so long ago. His fingers
closed hard around hers in a silent assertion of union that he
defied her to deny.
    How fiercely he’d loved her, loved her still. And
staring into her brilliant black eyes, he could almost imagine that
she remembered just how she’d loved him in return.
    He could never have killed her. Never. Whatever she’d
done. Whatever she believed. He’d rip his beating heart from his
chest before he’d hurt her.
    She raised a finger to her lips and turned to watch
as Miles and Calista drew apart. Calista stared across at Josiah
and Isabella and one of her beautiful smiles lit her expression,
almost as if…
    “Do you see them?” she whispered to Miles.
    The young man kept his arm around his bride’s
shoulders. “I do.”
    Astonished, Josiah realized that he and Isabella had
become visible to the couple. He raised his hand in a heartfelt
gesture of blessing and Miles bowed in acknowledgement. Isabella
curtsied with flirtatious grace, her wide skirts swaying into a
graceful bell.
    “It must be Josiah Aston and Isabella Verney,”
Calista said breathlessly. “You know, he doesn’t look…wicked.”
    “No, he looks like a man besotted. Believe me, I know
the signs.” Miles pressed his lips to Calista’s hair in a caress
that expressed adoration and gratitude in equal measure.
    “Calista and Miles, I wish you both—” Josiah began,
but Isabella squeezed his hand and shook her head.
    “They can’t hear us.”
    “But they can see us.”
    “No longer,” she said softly.
    Calista turned to Miles. “They’re gone,” she said
regretfully.
    “Yes.” Miles drew her closer into his body. “Do you
believe in ghosts now?”
    The girl responded with a choked laugh. “I don’t
know. I suppose I must.” She tilted her chin so that she could gaze
into her lover’s eyes. “Whatever I believe, we’re going to burn
that bed and throw the ashes into the sea.”
    Miles smiled down at her as if he beheld a priceless
treasure. “We are indeed, my love. Now kiss me before I go
mad.”
    “With pleasure,” she sighed and pressed her lips to
Miles’s with a sensual confidence that gladdened Josiah’s
heart.
    Josiah blinked to clear his vision as a strange wall
of gray descended. He blinked again, but still the fog enveloped
the couple, made them seem strangely distant for all that they
embraced only a few feet away. The gray encroached on everything
around him except Isabella who still burned as brightly as a candle
in his sight.
    Isabella’s regard was open and trusting as he’d
longed to see it. “Do you remember everything, Josiah?”
    Just like that, he did.
    Memory crashed through him with the force of a
towering wave. Reeling under the onslaught of recollection, his
clasp tightened on Isabella’s hand. “When you told me you weren’t a
virgin, I acted like an ass and lost my temper. We were in the
Chinese bedroom.”
    “Standing near the bed.” She released his hand and
turned to face him.
    He’d acted like an ass but he hadn’t killed her. He’d
known that he hadn’t, he’d known it to his bones, but it was a
mighty relief to have the truth confirmed. “You remember too?”
    “Yes. At last. I was so angry with you. Angry and
guilty. I should have told you before we married, but