Three hundred years, Trevor thought later as he let himself into the house where Gwen had lived and died. A long time to wait. He’d listened to Jude tell the tale in her quiet, storyteller’s voice, without interrupting. Even to tell her that he knew parts of the story. Somehow he knew.

He’d dreamed them.

He hadn’t told her that he, too, could have described Gwen, down to the sea green of her eyes and the curve of her cheek. He’d dreamed her as well.

And had, he realized, nearly married Sylvia because she’d reminded him of that dream image. A soft woman with simple ways. It should have been right between them, he thought as he headed upstairs to shower off the day’s dirt. It still irritated him that it hadn’t been. In the end, it just hadn’t been right.

She’d known it first, and had gently let him go before he’d admitted he’d already had his eye on the door. Maybe that was what bothered him most of all. He hadn’t had the courtesy to do the ending. Though she’d forgiven him for it, he’d yet to forgive himself.

He caught the scent the minute he stepped into the bedroom. Delicate, female, like rose petals freshly fallen onto dewy grass.

“A ghost who wears perfume,” he murmured, oddly amused. “Well, if you’re modest turn your back.” So saying he stripped where he stood then walked into the bath.

He spent the rest of his evening alone catching up on paperwork, scanning the faxes that had come in on the machine he’d brought with him, shooting back replies. He treated himself to a beer and stood outside with it in the last of the dying light, listening to the aching silence and watching stars pulse to life.

Tim Riley, whoever the hell he was, looked to be right. There was no rain coming yet. The foundation he was building would set clean.

As he turned to go back in, a streak of movement overhead caught his eye. A blur of white and silver across the darkening sky. But when he looked back for it, narrowing his eyes to scan, he saw nothing but stars and the rise of the quarter moon.

A falling star, he decided. A ghost was one thing, but a flying horse ridden by the prince of the faeries was another entirely.

But he thought he heard the cheerful lilt of pipes and flutes dance across the silence as he shut the door of the cottage for the night.