He slanted her a meditative look. “What do you think they are?”
She pursed her mouth and raised her brows. “I asked you first.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I know not.”
She sighed, pushing the loose hair behind her ear and giving him a challenging stare, daring him to call her foolish. “I think it’s the soul.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Then it certainly follows why you think it is a gift from God. But to actually see a person’s soul would make us more than human, don’t you think? Like some sort of angel or saint.”
She frowned at him, bewildered. “What are you talking about? ‘Gift from God’? I didn’t say that.”
He suppressed a smile. “Your letters. My favorite phrase—repeated in nearly every letter—was how it was my duty to God and mankind to help your father. I had to wonder, however, that if God shared His great design withyou,just when He planned to reveal it tome.I have wondered all these years and am now feeling rather left out. He seems to have forgotten me up in the mountains.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Youdidmock my letters!”
He laughed aloud at her horror. “I didn’t, Rose, I vow it. I loved your letters. Every one of them. I looked forward to them, in fact—with dreaded fascination.”
She arched a glacial brow. “Really? Then why did you ignore them?”
He disregarded her question, perversely enjoying how agitated she was becoming. “I didn’t just ignore them—I burned them, too.”
She let out a huffed breath and began tossing foodand linens back in the basket, muttering to herself all the while.
As she stood, William reached a hand toward her, grasping a handful of kirtle and pulling her back down, laughing in earnest now. “All but one—all but one. I kept one.”
She glared at him as she sat on her knees, still ready to flee. “Which one was that?”
“The one in which you shared something of yourself. I meant to answer that one…but I could never think of what to write.”
She planted her hands on her hips and shook her head in bewilderment. “You mock the source of your healing, but who else but God would give you such a wondrous gift?”
He tried to look evil, raising a brow. “Many say the devil.”
“A man’s contemporaries can never perceive greatness. Look to the Bible for such stories.”
His evil visage dissolved in pained laughter.“Rose.I am no saint. I have killed men with this gift. Your betrothed’s father, for one. Ididthat.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “No, I cannot believe it of you. You did what you thought was right at the time.”
“I don’t know that I thought it was right. Even at the time.”
She did not reply to that. Her mouth was still set in a stubborn line. He sighed. Her refusal to think ill of him was sweet, if terribly misguided.
Continuing with their earlier conversation, she said, “So…you do not believe the colors we see are the soul?”
“I don’t know what a soul is. Have you ever seen a ghost?”
“No, but my sister sees them.”
He leaned back on the grassy bank and stared across the water at the castle. “I saw one once. It spoke to me…and it looked human. No light or color—I even tried to pass my hands over it. There was nothing there. What is a ghost if not the soul trapped here on earth?”
When he glanced over at her, he could see that the thought intrigued her. She arched a fine auburn brow at him. “Then what are we seeing?”
“When a person dies, the color leaves them. But they are the same as before. A bag of flesh, containing bone and blood and humors. The light and color is what animates them, what makes the heart pound, the blood rush. It is what warms the skin…” He shook his head helplessly. “It’s as vital to life as the blood in our veins, but I still know not what it is.”
She smiled ruefully at him.
“What?”
