The Haunting of Brier Rose

by Simpson, Patricia

  "I didn't know!" she wheezed. She wiped away the tears that had sprung to her eyes. "I've never had any before!"

  He gave the glass back to her. "Some things in life need to be taken slowly. Brandy's one."

  His glinting eyes told her there were others, and she could guess what one of them might be. Lovemaking. Flustered, Rose took a careful sip this time, trying to avoid making eye contact with him.

  "What are all the books about?" she asked, searching for a safer topic of conversation.

  "The books? Research."

  "About your eyes? Have you found anything?"

  "Yeah, but I don't know whether I buy it."

  She glanced at him in surprise. "Why?"

  "The authors try to pass their work off as scientific theory, but it seems like farfetched bunk to me."

  "For instance?"

  "Here, I'll show you." He reached down and retrieved an old-looking hardback in dark green with gold lettering on the front. He touched the dog-eared corners and the slightly cracked spine.

  "It's funny. I don't remember ordering this particular title," he said, "but of all the books that were delivered yesterday, it has the most information."

  "What does it say about your vision?"

  "Crazy stuff. That what I'm seeing is normal for some people."

  "Normal?" Rose sipped her brandy, feeling much more at ease.

  "From what it says here, the colored halos I've been seeing are called auras. They're emissions of energy that most animate and inanimate objects give off. Some people view auras as a key to personality traits. Different colors mean different things."

  "Like what?"

  "Take yours, for instance. You have what is called a crystal coloration."

  "You've seen my aura?"

  "Yeah. Yours is like a rainbow. It's the sign of a healer." He opened the book to a marked paged. "Crystals become the medium, or the conduit, through which healing passes." He ran his finger down to another paragraph. "Crystals can have the physical feeling of being fractured and are jealous of their private space."

  He looked at her and grimaced. "The healer part I can accept. But the rest of it doesn't sound like you, does it?"

  "Kind of." She thought of the way her life had splintered in the last few days as she learned of her past and her parents. Yet she had always felt somewhat fractured, as if she were not a whole being, with the big question of her parentage hanging over her like a cloud. "How about you, Taylor? What's your aura like?"

  "I've never seen my own aura."

  "How about Mrs. Jacoby's? Have you seen hers?"

  "Once in passing. So what?"

  "What color was it?"

  "Mostly yellow."

  "What does yellow mean?" Rose leaned closer, highly conscious of his bare shoulder inches from her nose.

  Taylor flipped through the book. He found the section on yellow and tilted the book in her direction.

  She read the passage out loud. " 'Yellows are like puppies—warm, lovable, eager to please and loyal.'"

  Taylor looked down at Rose and cocked an eyebrow at her. "That doesn't sound like the Mrs. Jacoby I know."

  "You haven't seen her at her best. Bea is usually a dear."

  "See what I mean? You can twist these things just like you can twist a horoscope to conform to the events of the day." He was about to pull the book away when a section caught his attention. "Wait a minute—"

  "What is it?" Rose tipped her snifter to her lips. Taylor's company and the brandy were doing a good job of smoothing the rough edges of her fright and warming her toes. She felt unusually companionable and had the strongest urge to snuggle up against his arm.

  "It talks about spots in the aura. I've noticed a black spot in yours. It floats above your right shoulder."

  "A black spot? What does that mean?"

  "It says here that we can carry images in our auras of people who have been significant in our lives or figures we have been thinking strongly about. It could be a family member or a character in a book you've just read."

  "Does my spot have a face?" Certainly an image of a family member couldn't reside in her aura. Other than Bea and Donald, she hadn't known any of her family well enough for them to be significant. And no amount of brandy could take the edge off the pain of that realization. Rose felt a wave of sadness pass over her and glanced up to find Taylor studying her.

  "I don't know. I'll have to look at you more closely in the morning and see if I can get a clearer image." He paused, and she looked away, hoping to hide her melancholy thoughts from him. "Are you all right?" he asked, reaching backward to set his snifter and the book on the nightstand.

  "Yes." She played with her nearly empty glass, hoping he wouldn't ask any personal questions. "I'm fine. The brandy is doing the trick."

  He sat back and for a moment was silent. She was aware that he was gazing at her from the side. Rose tried to relax, but his presence unnerved her, for she had no idea what he was thinking or what he was going to do next. She was sure that his bed was a dangerous place for her to be. She should leave. But where would she go? Not back to her own room. Not yet.

  Flustered, she thought of another subject. "What were you doing standing outside my bedroom door, anyway?"

  "I heard that sound again."

  "The pipe-organ sound?"

  "Yes." He turned toward her. "Do you have any idea why a man would break into the house?"

  Rose looked down. "Yes, but you wouldn't believe me."

  "Try me." His voice was low and full of warmth. She looked up at him from under her lashes and found that he was still gazing at her, the sardonic slant of his mouth replaced by a grim, straight line. All the expression in his face was centered in his black eyes, which were on fire with an emotion she couldn't name. She knew only that her gaze suddenly felt just as hot and raw as his, and that she couldn't look away.

  "Try me, Rose," he repeated, reaching for the side of her face. His hand slipped between her cheek and her hair to frame her jaw and ear. His head lowered to hers. "Trust me," he breathed. And then he kissed her.

  The kiss deepened as his tongue swept into her and his fingers eased into her hair. The kiss made her dizzy, disoriented. She remembered her mother's warning not to succumb to a man and reached up to put a restraining palm on his chest. But the touch of his smooth, warm skin sent her over the edge of restraint and made her ignore the letter and all its mysterious restrictions. Instead of pushing Taylor away, she ran her palm across the flat plane of his chest and over the tight muscle of his shoulder, marveling that his masculine flesh felt so different from hers—hard and uncompromising where hers was soft and yielding. What would the rest of him feel like?

  Then, as if someone had dashed cold water over her, Rose realized that she must never find out what the rest of Taylor felt like. She should not be here in his bed, kissing him and touching him. He had told her that his kisses meant nothing, which implied that his lovemaking would mean nothing, as well. Besides that, love with a man was forbidden to her—at least for a few more days. Shocked that she could let down her guard so easily, she pulled away just as Taylor broke from her lips.

  "Hand me your glass," he murmured.

  She gave the brandy snifter to him, and he set it aside.

  Then he turned back and looked down at her, his eyes smoldering with desire. "I won't hurt you, Rose," he said softly. "You should trust me, you know."

  "Why should I," she replied, "when you kiss me like that and then say it means nothing?"

  She tried to duck out of the bed, but he grabbed her wrist to keep her beside him. Rose watched as if hypnotized as his hand slid up her arm and came to rest at the column of her neck.

  "Maybe it does mean something," he admitted.

  "Such as?"

  "I'm not sure yet."

  "Oh?" She pulled away from his hand. "And I'm supposed to let you take advantage of me when you don't even know your own intentions?"

  "There's nothing wrong with exploring each o
ther's bodies."

  "Maybe for you. But not for me."

  He smiled slowly, the left side of his mouth rising ever so slightly. Rose tried to ignore him, but she felt her body respond with a melting sensation. She saw his gaze drop to the front of her robe, which had come unfastened, allowing him a view of her breasts beneath the filmy nightgown.

  "I may be inexperienced, Taylor, but I know where such explorations can lead."

  His gaze flickered up to her face. "And where is that, Rose?"

  "To…to bed."

  "We're already in bed." He reached out and gently drew down her robe to display the tops of her ivory shoulders.

  Rose fought to keep herself from melting into a spineless mass. "You know what I mean, Taylor. If I let you, you'd take off all my clothes."

  "You're right." He circled her breast with his fingertip and then cupped it. "I'd love to see what you really look like, Brier Rose."

  Rose sighed and closed her eyes. "But I can't allow you to do that, because you—"

  "Shh," he replied, his voice gravelly, before he cut off her protests with a kiss. Rose tasted the brandy on his tongue and felt the press of his thumb beneath her cheekbone while the release of doubt burst inside her. Yes. She would trust him. She longed to trust somebody. And somehow she knew she should have trusted Taylor all along. The violence she had felt with the other man faded to nothingness under Taylor's firm but gentle hand as he urged her back onto the pillows, his mouth still angled over hers.

  Then he lowered his head and took the tip of her breast in his mouth. She could feel the damp heat of him through the thin cotton fabric. Slowly he drew away, tightening his lips around the hard peak and using his teeth at the last moment. Rose gasped and arched toward him, hoping he would do it again, even though she knew she was courting danger with every moment she lingered in his bed. He took the other breast in his mouth. She reached up for him, running her hands along his straining neck and shoulders, reveling in the pure masculine power she felt beneath her fingers.

  His hands slipped the robe off. A ragged sigh flowed from her as she let her arms slide from him and lay back to allow him to disrobe her, at least to the waist. He eased down the gathered neckline of her nightgown, baring both breasts.

  "Look at you," he declared. Rose looked down and saw his hands pass over the rounded curves of her upraised breasts while his thumbs stroked her nipples. His skin was much darker than hers, and his long, blunt fingers belonged to the hands of a man, a sight she had never seen before on her breasts. He caressed her, sighing heavily. She sighed, too, and thought she would die of pleasure. He kissed her breasts, her throat, her chin, and her mouth.

  Then he lowered his bare chest to hers and she realized that the pleasure had only just begun. His skin was aflame, and the pressure of his weight on her made her ache with sharp desire deep inside. Together they sank into the pillows, locked in an embrace of searching hands and searing lips, of tumbling hair and writhing limbs. Taylor ripped away the barrier of the sheet and blanket that separated them, then came back down upon her, nudging aside one of her legs with his knee and angling himself along the length of her thigh. Rose felt the hard maleness of him and blossomed with heat and dew in the part of her that longed to know him as a woman knows a man. She trembled, well aware that she should stop him, but even so she held him, one of her hands splayed across the expanse of his wide back, the other buried in his shiny black hair. She knew this moment was as inevitable as the rise of the sun, the circle of the moon. This man was meant to he with her, on her, inside her, and she was meant to take him in.

  She felt the muscles of his back tense as he reached for her nightgown and pushed it upward. His warm palm trailed up her thigh, ever closer to the most private part of her. The thrill of the movement brought her back to her senses.

  "Taylor!"

  "Don't worry, Rose." His voice was thick and breathless.

  "We can't," she whispered. And yet she knew she should open herself to him, give herself over to his desire and take what he had to offer. She should open her heart to Taylor and form a bond that would never break, the kind of bond she had instinctively felt the first time she had seen him.

  "Just relax," he said, his mouth near her ear, and the rush of his warm breath made her skin tingle with a thousand pricks of delight. "I won't hurt you."

  Rose felt his hand near her belly and knew he was untying the drawstring of his pajamas. Could she allow herself to see him that way—touch him and know him that way?

  She closed her eyes while every sense screamed at her to break down and accept him.

  "Taylor, I can't," she whispered in anguish, pushing against his chest. “I want to, but I can’t.”

  Taylor rose up on his elbows. "What do you mean, you can't?"

  "I—I just can't. Don't ask me."

  "You afraid of what Mrs. Jacoby will say?"

  "No, I just can't."

  He pulled away. "It's my scars, isn't it? I don't turn you on, do I?" he asked bitterly.

  "No, it's not that at all."

  He sat up, taking his weight and warmth with him. "Don't lie, Rose. Just level with me."

  "It's not you, Taylor. It's me!" She sat up and put her legs over the side of the bed. "I should go."

  "No." Taylor rose from the bed and crossed his arms. "I don't want you going anywhere, Rose. If that intruder comes back—"

  "I'll be fine." She got to her feet, adjusted her nightgown and drew on her robe.

  "No. Stay here tonight. I won't touch you."

  She paused. The last place on earth she wanted to be tonight was in her own bedroom.

  "I'll sleep on the couch." Taylor motioned to the settee in front of the fireplace. "I just don't want you sleeping alone, Rose. Okay?"

  She gazed at him, amazed that he could still take her welfare into consideration after she had refused his advances.

  "I insist," he added. “You could be in danger.”

  "All right." Slowly she sank back down to the mattress. "Thank you, Taylor," she said, relieved. He hobbled to the cedar chest at the foot of the bed and took out a spare blanket, which he carried to the small sofa. Rose doubted he would be comfortable on the damask-covered cushions, but she had no recourse other than sharing the bed with him, and that was far too dangerous to consider.

  She watched him shake out the blanket and then lower himself to the settee. "Good night," he declared with a sigh.

  She watched his head disappear from view. "Good night."

  With more sighs and a great deal of rustling, he settled himself down for the night. Rose removed her robe and climbed into his bed. She turned off the light and listened to his breathing. With every intake of Taylor's breath, she could feel her heart burgeoning. She had considered Taylor’s arrival at Brierwood the worst thing that could have happened to her and Bea. But ever since she had fallen into the briers patch, he had shown himself to be a good man who had her best interests at heart. Rose slid her hands under her cheek and listened as he fell asleep, and knew at that moment that she was falling in love with him.

  A tear slid from the corner of her eye and ran over the edge of her hand. If what her mother had said was true- that the Bastyrs would feed on her love for a man—she must never reveal her feelings to Taylor. In fact, if she really loved him, she should do everything in her power to push him away.

  Rose fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed of running through a dense forest of oaks, her progress hampered by the long dress she wore. Surprised, she glanced down and saw she was attired in a strange long skirt made of dull coarsely woven cloth. A green shawl flapped around her shoulders and she carried a satchel in her left hand.

  Up ahead in a clearing, she caught a glimpse of a large table-like object, which materialized into a huge sundial made of granite, much like the sundial in the back garden of Brierwood.

  But somehow she knew this landscape of her dream did not represent Brierwood, and her clothes did not reflect modern fashion. In fact, her homespun dres
s looked as if it belonged to the Puritan era of New England.

  Just as she gained the sundial at the center of the raised clearing and dropped the satchel at her feet, she heard someone call her name.

  "Constance!"

  She turned to see Taylor running up the path to her. He was dressed in breeches, a long vest, and a white shirt with billowing sleeves. Her heart skipped a beat as she watched him sprint across the grass, both legs straight and strong. He was sleek and handsome and full of life, and she wanted more than anything to take him in her arms and kiss him, well aware that she had never felt his touch. Either she had forgotten what it was like to kiss him, or she had never really tasted his lips before.

  But a sudden fear pressed upon her, blocking out her joy at the sight of him. What if Seth Bastyr should find them, here in the darkness?

  "Hurry!" she urged. "We haven't much time!"

  "They didn't see you go?" he asked.

  "I don't think so. But they'll soon miss me and come looking. We've only a few minutes, Nathaniel."

  Why had she called him that name? As a matter of fact, why had he called her Constance? Before she could ask, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, backing her against the sundial. She returned the embrace and pressed into his body, forgetting everything but the feeling of his mouth on hers and her breasts thrust against his chest. She loved him. Ah, how she loved him. In a moment she would tell him, say the words, make him understand what he had come to mean to her.

  "Seducer!" a strange voice rang out.

  With a start, Rose jerked awake. She looked around warily, sure that Seth Bastyr had come to haunt her again. Perspiration beaded on ho forehead and her heart thumped with terror as she visually checked each shadowed corner of the room. No one was there. Slowly she sank back onto the pillow and calmed herself by listening to the steady rhythm of Taylor's breathing at the sofa nearby.

  The dream had been so real, just like the visions of her past that Seth conjured by hypnotizing ho. But where had the dream of the sundial come from? Why had Taylor called her by another name? What did it all mean? Shaken and disoriented, she tried to close her eyes and relax, but sleep didn't come for many hours.