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said to herself. Aric . She liked the sound of it.
    And she couldn’t wait to see him again.

    #

    Muffin eventually left, waving goodbye and promising to return the next day for tea and biscuits again. As soon as she was gone, Cora raced back to the gift shop and began to dig through the books, looking for references on the de Beauchamp family.
    She found several. All of them seemed to line up with Muffin’s tragic story of suicide after returning from the Crusades. She did find a bit more on Aric de Beauchamp himself—born in 1167, he was the heir of the first baron of Stonewood, then called de Beauchamp. He went off to crusade at the age of twenty-two, leaving behind a fiancée and his father, mother, and younger sisters. He returned from the long Crusade in the middle of the year in 1193—tired, weak and sick at heart from the long journey. Upon his return home, he discovered his family had been died of illness, his fields fallow as no one was there to lord over the fief. The taxes on the land were sky-high. Aric de Beauchamp had contacted his fiancée, only to discover that she had gone to court directly after he’d left on Crusade, and had been living as the personal whore of Prince John for some time.
    And after that, there was a small note about how he’d been found dead shortly thereafter returning home, obviously a suicide. The original castle had burned, but was rebuilt some years later.
    Cora closed the book after that and tossed it to one side, depressed. It was hard to conceive of such a beautiful man destroying himself. But the sadness she’d seen in his eyes was real.
    It depressed her just thinking about it. Eight hundred years past, and the thought of him killing himself was making her weepy. It was silly, really, but she couldn’t get her mind wrapped around that he was dead.
    Not when she’d felt the warmth pouring from his fingertips to her own.
    Cora spent the rest of the day exploring the grounds of the Abbey. She could have gone to town and explored, but she felt no need to leave the castle. She wanted to stay here, to be with him even if only in spirit. The gardens of the Abbey themselves were lovely, and she spent a good portion of the day soaking up the murky English sunshine and thinking about what she’d read.
    She decided to take a long, hot shower to get her mind off of things. Her mind was cluttered and a relaxing shower would help her unwind and get back on track. She stayed in for so long that her skin pruned up, and the water went cold. Eventually, when she could put it off no longer, she emerged from the shower, feeling more wrung out and emotionally exhausted than before. She thought of him—Aric—weary and heart-sore from a long war, returning home from Crusade to find everything in his life in ruins. Hot tears slid down her cheeks, and she felt a pang of intense grief for him.
    And here she’d thought she had problems. Hers were nothing compared to what he’d gone through. And he’d killed himself for it. She wiped away the tears on her face and sniffed. If she’d been with him, she’d have…
    She’d have what? Made him smile? Stopped him from going back into the burning castle? God, she was crazy. Cora shook her head. She was obsessing over a man 800
    years dead.
    When she emerged into her bedroom, the steam had filled her bedroom, flooding in from the crack under the door. The room was filled with light, the steam hanging in the air. The large mirror was covered in steam as well. She wrapped the towel slowly around her body and gave the daylight a mournful look—still hours before the sun went down. It would be a while yet before he made his appearance tonight— if he made his appearance tonight. Brushing such sad thoughts from her mind, Cora went to the mirror and grazed her hand across it at eye-level, wiping away the condensation.
    Eyes stared back out at her.
    Startled, a muffled scream erupted from Cora’s throat. She took an involuntary step backward, heart