Anna opened her eyes, forcing deep breaths into her lungs before she sat up. Her nightgown stuck to her skin and her hands shook. She tightened them into fists and glanced around the room. No trace of the ghostly apparition of Ms. Cotton permeated there and Anna caught the reflection of the clock. Too early to be awake and yet too late to effectively return to sleep.

Throwing her covers off, though the sheets just billowed in the breeze from her open windows, Anna groaned and got up to change. The water basin in the room offered little relief to her sticky skin, the warmth of the water only adding to the heat and the blush that radiated over her body. Anna ground her teeth and tried to force her thoughts anywhere but the heatedly erotic vision Ms. Cotton allowed her to see.

"Because that's necessary or helpful." She muttered, finding her clothes and forcing them over her dewed skin as she almost fought her brassiere for dominance. "Show me all the things I can't have and then let me wake up. Very generous of you."

There was no response from the darkness and Anna managed to tie her hair up in a complicated knot before splashing her face with the water from the basin in the hopes she could reduce the blush on her skin. All she accomplished was wetting her skin further and dampening her collar. With a growl, she snapped the towel to dab at her face and neck.

When she set the towel to dry on the rack, Anna caught sight of the tinge of gray on the horizon. As she sighed, her mind already exhausted and her body calling for the chance to return to sleep, she caught sight of a light flickering in the outbuildings. The building that Anna recognized as John's workshop.

Without another thought, although is she had any she might have suspected they were planted there by good intentions of a meddling ghost, Anna set off through the house. The back stairs Ms. Cotton showed her in the first dream provided Anna the cover of darkness but stopped her heart when she incorrectly anticipated one of the steps. Her hands flew out to catch herself on the walls and paused long enough to catch her breath.

Unfortunately it was also long enough for Anna to debate her actions. Even if John was in his workshop, his wife was on the grounds. The wife that still held legal claim to him. The wife who had seen their kiss and threatened worse should she see any more. The wife…

The wife John was trying to divorce. The wife he did not love, if he was as similar to Mr. Higgins as Ms. Cotton seemed inclined to suggest. The wife who held him in her thrall for nothing more than her own demented pleasure. The wife…

Anna forced herself down the stairs. Be it the start of the day or the end of it, none of those thoughts mattered. What mattered was ink and paper and the law and… She paused again, her hand on the back door as her eyes focused on the lights on in his workshop.

And the heart. That mattered. It mattered more than everything else. It was what drove a thousand ships to launch to Troy. It is was what toppled empires and burned kingdoms to the ground. It was what drove men to ignore the paper and the ink and the law because it was the oldest decision of time. It had Adam eating the apple Eve offered him at the risk of leaving Eden forever. And it was what forced Anna through the door and out onto the dewy morning grass.

The fog rising from the ground as it steamed whispered around Anna with each step she set toward the buildings. She rounded them the long way, not eager to place herself close to the cabin John claimed as his home, and stopped before his workshop. With one last darting glance toward the building where Anna prayed John's wife still slept, she raised her knuckles to knock the wood of the door before her.

It opened with a creak and the familiar brown eye that peeked out of the space soon revealed John's face. He smiled and then frowned and then sought an expression for a face struggling to interpret what Anna guessed were the same tumult of emotions she experienced for herself. The door opened wider and John's frame filled the space before he stepped to the side.

Anna entered, noting the dangling airplanes and models that wafted scents of paint and finish over half-completed pieces of furniture. She pointed to a rocking chair that twitched on its own and John nodded for her to take it as he selected one of the multitude of stools available to him. As Anna sat, using her toes to rock in the chair a moment, they just stared at one another.

A whispering tick somewhere, perhaps from a watch concealed on John's person, set the beat for Anna's motions on the chair. Time passed between then as they sat in the silence of his workshop, surrounded by his craft. Eventually Anna reached a hand out and dragged her fingers along his. He caught hers and held tightly, as if that would say everything that tumbled and jostled around their minds.

But as the echoes of sounds from the house roused them, Anna noting the flinch John made as he released her hand, they stood. She put a hand to his arm, holding him still so he would not leave her for the door. With a forced swallow, leaving her throat no less dry than before, Anna finally managed to speak.

"Why are you out here John?"

"I couldn't be in there… Not with her." John shook his head. "I couldn't… I can't be somewhere with her when I've spent time with you."

"She's your wife John." Anna let her hand drop, fingers curling toward her palm to dig her nails into her skin. "I've got no claim on you."

"You've more of a claim than she does." John moved closer to Anna, his own fingers whispering over her blouse. "Do you think I could've sat in silence like that with her and shared so much without sharing anything at all?"

"I don't know anything about her so I don't know."

"Don't…" John closed his eyes, as if trying to force his mind past a bit of pain. "Don't say that when you know it's not true. I know she went to speak to you."

"She only told me what we both know already." Anna stayed within the circle of his touch as John's fingers drew up and down her arms.

"And what's that?"

"She wants you back."

"She only wants to cause me pain."

Anna nodded, "I know."

John blinked at her. "And you're alright with that?"

"When did I say I was?" Anna took his hand from her arm to hold close to her.

"But if you're-"

Anna tugged his arm and used her free hand to grace the back of John's neck so she could better pull his mouth to hers. At first they both waited, as if hoping the other might see sense and stop them. When neither did they dived deeper as if they could now seek some kind of treasure only the other could offer.

John's hands framed her face, carefully manipulating her so he could seek every crevice and depth to her mouth with gently insistent explorations of his tongue. Anna's fingers crunched in the fabric of his shirt, wrinkling it under the fierce hold she established, and brought herself so close their feet shuffled to allow them to stand on top of one another. They breathed the same air and would not separate for anything.

Anything but the bang of a door in the distance.

They stopped, freezing in place as if they could disappear into the shadows themselves if they stayed quiet enough, and endured the silence before another sound forced Anna to release her hold on John's shirt. She tried to pat the area, brushing over the creases, but John stopped her hands with his. Turning her head up, Anna accepted the kiss John pressed there.

John stepped back, kissing over her fingers and hands with all his energy until she could not reach so far. She remained behind so John could turn off the lights in his workshop and close the door. In the dark she waited until his cabin door opened and closed again.

Moving gingerly across the floor, wary of any possible misstep, Anna slipped through the door and hurried back to the house. A house not quite awake as Anna snuck herself up the wrapping stairs to her room. The room that she refused to enter and so proceeded to toward the attic.

The door creaked and whined as Anna pushed at it to ascend the last few stairs. There, in the gray shadows of morning, Anna noted the efforts of the workmen from the floor below trying to shore up the damaged boards and rot that inevitably set in when an old house succumbed to damp and humidity. Weaving her way carefully back to the blackened trunk in the middle of the floor, undisturbed from her work with it, Anna knelt and opened the lid again.

With the letters gone it almost appeared hollow and empty. Anna gazed at the carved letters, tracing over them as if they changed. But she was the one who changed for where they once were nothing but a mystery to her, she now knew the man who owned them.

The man who held his dying love in his arms. Who bore two children but only knew of the one to the wife he detested. The man who served in a house to help others escape slavery and then lost everything that mattered to him. A man so like the one who left a passionate kiss on her lips before returning to the company of his wife.

"It's not as simple as all that." Anna jumped and as she noticed someone sitting on the other side of the trunk. "It's more complicated than you make it seem when you reduce it to pretty phrases."

"Was I speaking aloud?"

"No." He shook his head, sighing, "Sometimes thoughts can be louder if they're about you. I've gotten to be quite the skilled detector of the ones about me."

"Have you?" Anna eyed him up and down, "Why's your trunk in the attic Mr. Higgins?"

"I'd prefer if you called me 'John'."

"And I'd prefer if you both left me alone but since we can't get what we want, why don't we settle for what we can get." Anna inspected the bottom of the trunk. "There's nothing else in here."

"It only needed to hold my letters." Mr. Higgins ran his ghostly fingers over the surface. "It just needed to hold that part of us that remained here."

"You knew where she kept her letters?"

"We both kept them in that room she helped you discover." Anna frowned but Mr. Higgins only shrugged. "I know my Anna. I've known her for almost a hundred years. I recognized when she set to work again."

"Again?"

"She's tried, over the years to break the barrier between us." Mr. Higgins sighed, his mouth quirking into a bit of a smile. "You were the first person who made it this far. Most of the others thought they were mad or possessed."

"I often think I'm a bit of both." Anna closed the lid of the trunk and shoved it toward the door so they could sit across from one another. "Why did you bring the trunk up here?"

"Because I couldn't leave it down there. What if no one found the letters?"

"It would save someone from reading some of your more pornographic thoughts."

Mr. Higgins had the dignity to appear slightly abashed by her comment. "We were passionate people."

"So she's led me to see." Anna wrapped herself in a hug. "Why?"

"Her explanation would be that she wants you to better understand."

"So she's said."

"It's more than that."

"So I believe." Anna brought up her knees, ensuring her skirt stretched over them before wanting to laugh at maintaining modesty in the presence of a ghost she had seen naked in her dreams. "Is it how she remembers?"

"It's more of how she relives it."

"Like insisting I kiss Mr. Bates yesterday?"

"That's part of it." Mr. Higgins traced his fingers over his lips. "It's how we can feel connected. Some memories, like thoughts, are too powerful not to hear."

"And you heard them?"

"It's a bit like a love note across the barrier that separates us."

Anna shuffled over the floor, "Why does a barrier separate you?"

Mr. Higgins dragged his legs up to mimic Anna's position. "I'm sure you're smart enough to realize that while there are those spirits that wish to move on to the next life and only be happy that other wish for the demise of their fellow spirits."

"I've heard of the Devil and his angels in my Sunday school classes."

"It's not quite like that." Mr. Higgins put a hand through his hair, ruffling it. "It's… It's more that there are those, like Anna and I, who are stuck because we can't move on without the other."

"Won't you be together if you meet there?"

Mr. Higgins shrugged, managing another smile. "There are some who believe that. Rather insistent young men with name tags who've visited the house a few times in the past to pass on their message."

"Don't you believe them?"

"I believe when they speak about free will that it doesn't end with death. It's my choice and since I've not decided to move on to whatever comes next I can't. I've got to pass on my own but I've no way to ensure that Anna'll be there."

"So you're saying you'd rather travel there together and risk separation at the arrival than go there and wonder if she ever made it at all?"

"That's the long and the short of it, yes."

"Oh." Anna nodded, resting her chin on her knees a moment before rousing to her next thought. "Then there are other spirits just confused and trapped here?"

"Some. Fear is a powerful motivator and I've spent time wandering the world trying to convince the confused to move forward." Mr. Higgins tightened his jaw. "But the confused aren't the ones that worry me."

"Then you're saying there's a third group?"

Mr. Higgins nodded, "They're the bad ones. The ones who know that they've done horrible things and that there's not a paradise waiting for them on the other side. The ones afraid of whatever punishment God's decided to mete out to them so they'll delay that as long as possible."

"And make it difficult for others to move on?" Anna furrowed her brow and then shook her head. "What do they care about anyone else moving on?"

"What does anyone in life care about the concerns of others?" Mr. Higgins waited but Anna had no answer. "Death doesn't change us. We're the people we are when we died and we'll remain those people until we change ourselves. Those who did wickedly in life will do the same in death if given the chance."

"Then the barrier, between the two of you, isn't just some kind of guard to convince you both to leave this life. It's there on purpose."

"The same way that Anna and I can feel one another by the increased connection between yourself and your John, others feel that too. There are… tremors, of sorts, that go about and they can be felt on this side of life. Sometimes they're strong enough to be felt on your side as well but I won't speak to that since I've got more than enough to worry over here."

Anna took a breath, "Then my increased involvement with your… case, for lack of a better word, has drawn the undesired attention of some malignant spirit?"

"I could tell you exactly which spirit as well, but I doubt you'd be surprised."

"Your wife?" Anna risked and then blinked her surprise when he shook his head. "She moved on?"

"For all the things my wife was in life, she chose to not be those things in death. Death was…" He stopped, jaw shifting as if he could not find a good way to describe it. "Death was not kind to her. She spent her last few weeks burning with a fever and raging near madness. It was all she could do to maintain her lucidity and I think part of that meant she had no desire to haunt me any longer when she knew what it was to be haunted."

"If not your wife than who would take the trouble to separate you two?"

"The same spirit who traced your John's wife and encouraged her to come."

Anna shrugged, "I've no idea why Vera's here. I suspected it was that she wants to settle the divorce… Or drag John back to Ireland."

"She's here because the ghost of Alex Green told her to come."

"Green?" Anna blinked a moment, trying to suss up the memory that pricked at the mention of the name. "There was a Mr. Green and someplace called Greenland but it wasn't the country."

"He owned my Anna before the Granthams bought her." Mr. Higgins shook his head, "I confronted him once and he never forgot about it."

"What?"

Mr. Higgins reached forward and the moment his fingers brushed across her forehead, Anna could see it for herself.

John wiped his hands and dropped the cloth back over the railing near the spigot. He reached for his hat but paused as the steady clip of hooves sounded on the drive. Craning around the side of the shed he saw the cloud of dust, rising Georgia red from the ground, and snatched his hat to greet the newcomers.

He reached the edge of the porch as the horse and the butler did. The butler nodded at him, descending the steps as John knelt down as if to check his shoe. Instead his fingers flipped a small shutter twice and the barely discernable sounds from below the house ceased. As he stood, the butler risked a look behind him and John nodded. All the tension released from the butler's shoulders and he approached the horse and its rider with confidence.

A confidence quickly repaid with dropped whip into his hand as the man on the horse followed suit a moment later. He handled the reins enough to lead the horse to John. "I assume you know what to do with one of these."

John tipped his head to the side and noted the scars along the horse's flank. "Better than you I'd imagine."

The man only snorted and turned to the Butler. "I do hope Mrs. Grantham is home because I've got some business I need to resolve immediately."

"Mrs. Grantham and her husband are in town." The butler wrestled the whip into position and handed it back to the man. "They won't be back until the evening and you'd be wasting your time waiting for them."

"Would I?" He removed his hat, brushing auburn hair back from his forehead. "I'm sure when I make a few choice suggestions to some of our friends they'll wish they'd paid me a bit more attention."

"Is that the kind of payment you get for being an insufferably arrogant man?" John handed the reins back to him. "They're not home and whatever you need say to them you can send in a note, I'm sure. That is, if you can read and write."

The man stopped, narrowing his eyes at John. "Aren't you the foreman here?"

"That's right."

"If I remember correctly, the ignorant Irish immigrant couldn't make heads or tails of the newspapers in town." The man scoffed, "Whatever note I send'll be mashed up by you I'm sure."

"The ignorant Irish immigrant is less ignorant now." John held himself higher. "We can all learn a few new skills. Unfortunately for you, it's harder to break habits than form them."

"Good breeding should never be broken."

"Good breeding would've suggested you actually know how to ride a horse and not cause her this much pain." John pointed at the horse. "I'm sure if she trusted you at all you wouldn't have to ride her so hard."

"If something happens to her then I'll do what I do when a slave wears out." He leaned forward, "I'll just buy another one. They're replaceable and, at the end of the day, expendable because they're just dumb brutes. Beasts of burden, nothing more."

John bristled but before he could say anything Anna came around the house, pushing a pram. Her eyes landed on the man and she froze in an instant. Froze in such a way that John knew exactly who the man before him was.

"If that's all you've to say, Mr. Green, I think you should be on your way." John stepped back from him, making as if to head back toward the fields but Green's voice rang out.

"Is that Anna? Have they house trained you?"

John pivoted to follow the man's path and stopped him reaching her. "She's caring for the children and should be left to her duties."

"Should she?" Green snorted, "It's like trusting a dog in the nursery to watch over the baby."

"That's uncalled for." The butler stepped forward as well. "Now, you've stated your business is with the Granthams and I've told you they're not home. Therefore there's nothing left for me to do but ask that you leave."

"I don't feel so inclined." Green dodged the both of them, heading toward Anna and where her fingers tightened to whiten on the handles of the pram. "I think I might want to say a few words to my former… What do I call you in polite company? You're still a slave, so I hear, but I guess now that you're handling children it's not exactly polite to tell everyone what you used to do for me."

He leered back over his shoulder at John and the butler. "Unless the Granthams are as liberal with their house slaves as they are with their wealth. If they are then the both of you've probably sampled her for yourselves. I know she's not new but she was already broken so I don't think you would've had any problems."

John lurched forward but the butler grabbed him by the shirt and vest, wrestling him back before Green could notice. "Focus John. We've got guests in the house and if he makes a scene we'll never get them out."

With a growl John righted himself, pulling out of the butler's grip. He met Anna's eyes and tried to nod to her but she focused on the baby, trying to push the pram out of Green's way but he blocked her. "Excuse me sir but you're preventing me doing my duties."

"I used to prevent you doing your 'duties' all the time." He reached a hand forward and his finger landed on her chin for a moment before she shook herself free of his touch. "Do you remember what I used to tell you?"

"Yes."

Green nodded his head at her, John moving closer to be on hand should she need him. "I'll assume you're just waiting to make it more tense."

"Begging your pardon, sir," Anna met his eyes, her jaw hard. "But you're not my master any longer and I don't need to answer you if I don't wish to."

"Is that what you think?" Green grabbed her wrist, tugging her toward him.

John rescued the pram from almost overturning and moved it toward the butler as Green and Anna struggled. "Let her go, Mr. Green."

"You think I'll stand for this uppity bitch to-"

In a second he unfurled the whip in his hand and brought it out as if to use it. But John caught the end of the whip with his arm and used it to tug Green toward him. The motion unsettled Green and he almost tripped. He recovered in time to tug his whip back but all he got was John's fist in his face.

Green hit the ground hard and John tossed the whip away before landing on the man's chest to beat his fists into him. Any bit of exposed skin was available to him until the butler yanked him off. John pulled and tugged himself free, noting with more than a touch of pride Green's sniveling, sobbing form on the ground.

He caught his breath and put an arm around Anna's shoulders to guide her back to the pram. In the moment they had, with their backs turned to Green, John traced his thumb over her lip and inspected her for injuries. His hand landed on her shaking one before he nodded and pushed her toward the house. She hurried off and Green's voice brought John back around to face him.

"You dare touch me you Irish bastard?"

"I'll touch anyone who dares try and touch what doesn't belong to them." John motioned about them. "This is the Grantham's land, not yours. Ms. Smith works for the Granthams and is, as such, not your slave. Anything within the bounds of this plantation aren't yours and therefore not for you to touch."

"I'll hang you from a tree and whip you raw."

"I'm not a slave and even if I were, I'm not one of yours." John stepped nose-to-nose with Green, forcing the slightly shorter man to cower back. "Now get your sorry ass off this property before I whip it raw and then stick the same whip so far up your ass you'll never walk straight again."

Green quivered with rage, and a bit of fear if the damp part of his trousers was any indication. "You wouldn't dare."

"Seeing what I've already dared do, Mr. Green, I wouldn't be the one to test me." John grabbed his collar and tossed the man toward his horse. "Now ride your sorry self off this property before I run you off it like a dog chasing a bitch in heat."

Green mounted his horse in a hurry and rode off, shouting something incoherent behind him. John let his breathing ease, the boil in his blood not helped by the heat of the afternoon. As he turned to the butler he only met the shake of the man's head.

"We'll get them out tonight."

"I'm more worried about him than our guests in the basement." The butler sighed, "He'll be out for blood now."

"Would you rather he touch Ms. Smith?"

"I'd rather have handled it like gentleman than ruffians at a local bar." The butler let his mouth quirk into a smile. "Although, I never say no to watching one of the landed gentry wet himself when confronted with someone who can actually beat his ass to the ground."

"Mr. Carson, that kind of talk is beneath you."

"And he's beneath you." Carson straightened his jacket. "Try to remember that in the future."

"No promises."

"I didn't think so."

Anna blinked and noted Mr. Higgins in front of her. He let his shoulders drop, "He never recovered from that slight. The Union soldiers burned Greenland to the ground and he died as a complication of wounds he received trying to fight them off."

"And now he's trying to stop you and Ms. Cotton's eternal happiness?"

"The evil will always be evil, Ms. Smith."

Anna nodded, "You're not wrong." She took a deep breath, "What do we do about it now?"

"We?"

"I assume we're going to work together to solve this problem." Anna pointed to him and then herself. "We've got the brains between us."

He smiled, "What's your plan?"