“The Brave Lucinda clasped her hands before her. Did her eyes deceive her? But no! It was indeed her beloved, Sir Jethro, returned from the war. Truly he seemed weary and war-torn, his brightly blazoned armor daubed with blood—no doubt the blood of the innumerable poltroons he’d slain upon the battlefield. But these marks of battle only made his beauty shine more brightly. His black hair gleamed, his green eyes shone as she ran toward him.

‘My darling, you are alive,’ she cried.

He clasped her face between his cold hands. ‘I am not alive. I am a ghost, and only you can see me.’

‘It does not matter!’ cried Lucinda. ‘Alive or dead, I love you still!’ ”

Lucie snatched the page out of his hand. She was breathing hard. “Stop,” she said. “Stop reading.”

He rose to his feet. “I see why you didn’t want me to see this. I suppose it could be that you are mocking me—”

She stared at him. There was an angry shape to his mouth that seemed to change his whole face—or was it just that she had never seen him furious before? “No—how could you think that?”

“Clearly I am something of a joke to you, or my situation is.” There was still that awful curl to his mouth. That cold note in his voice. Yet through her humiliation, Lucie felt a spark of anger light.

“That is not true,” she said. “It is a story. And while there are—similarities—between Lord Jethro and you, it is only what writers do. We model bits and pieces of characters on what we see in real life. It means nothing.”

“You are right,” he said harshly. “That boy in the book is not me. I don’t know who he is—he is your imagined fantasy, Lucie.”

With shaking hands, Lucie crumpled the page of her book into a ball and threw it to the floor. “It’s just writing. Making a story.”

“It is quite clear that if I were not a ghost, I would be of little interest to you. Just a boy who hadn’t lived much, and died unheroically,” he said. He began to pace, his footsteps utterly soundless. She could see through him partially, through his shoulder as he turned. As if he were losing strength, she thought, chilled; losing the ability to appear solid and whole. “You want to create a story in which I died in battle, or perished nobly. Not foolishly, weakly, getting my first Mark.”

She glanced at the glass over her vanity table: she saw herself, very pale, her dressing gown wrapped tightly around her. And where Jesse stood, not even a ripple in the air. She tore her eyes away from the reflection.