by Fortune Kent
“He must have been reading Dickens, too.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I was thinking of Grandmother telling me my coming here was like something in a Dickens novel. Go on.”
“He told me later he saw me across a courtyard and thought he’d found Jeffrey. For a few minutes he was wild with hope. Then he looked closer and knew his mistake. I do look like Jeffrey, or I did then.”
“The hair,” Beth said. “I think your hair is different, and perhaps your nose. When I saw you after my memory came back, I noticed a difference, an oddness, even after all this time. Like two coins from the same mint, of the same year; they should be identical and they’re not. One is blurred so slightly you can’t tell where the difference is. I think it’s your hair.”
“Yes, Jeffrey’s didn’t curl, or not so much. Charles commented on the hair too. But he brought me with him to England. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe he was already planning to substitute me for Jeffrey when he first saw me, maybe he decided on the way to meet Grandmother.”
“To England to see Grandmother?” Beth frowned. “She would have known. You could have fooled the servants perhaps, after being away for years, and the townspeople, for you always were remote. Yes, I can see them accepting you. But Grandmother would have known.”
“No, she didn’t. I don’t think she ever even guessed. Remember, she had lived in England since I was a small child. And I had Charles to help me as he’s helped me ever since. And after all these years even I think of myself as Jeffrey. To that extent, I am Jeffrey.”
She believed him. Questions swirled in her mind, but she believed him. Jeffrey was not her brother. She felt as if her world was turned upside down, knew a surge of exultation, of joy. Don’t be presumptuous, she told herself. Still, why else would he have told me? He didn’t have to tell, me, unless… She left the sentence unfinished.
“Didn’t you wonder,” he asked, “why I never challenged you more about the details of our life together when we were children? Weren’t you puzzled, even a little?”
“I was so relieved when you didn’t press me I didn’t stop to think,” she said. She paused. “Now I see why you were always so passionate in affirming I wasn’t your sister.”
“Yes, because I knew you weren’t. Whether you were Beth or not, and at first I thought you as much an imposter as I was, you couldn’t have been my sister. William Gundry had no sister.”
“And on our walks from the village to the estate,” Beth said. “When was it? Oh, yes, on Rent Day. I wondered why you didn’t say you’d lived here all your life instead of just the years since the shipwreck. At the time I thought you’d just made a slip of the tongue.”
“I probably made more mistakes,” he said. “I was so tired of being careful of everything I said to you. Thank God I don’t have to anymore.”
“And what now?” she asked.
He held his hands wide and shrugged. “Part of my gift to you,” he said. “It’s for you to say.”
“I don’t even know what to call you, Jeffrey or…William.”
“No matter what you decide,” he said, “I’ve been thinking of leaving the estate. Your physician friend isn’t the only one who’s restless.”
“Leaving?” She felt an emptiness.
“The country seems to be picking up and going to the West,” he said. “I’ve had experience selling stoves all along the eastern seaboard. In the West they’ll need more than stoves. And getting there, to Kansas and Nebraska and Missouri, we’ll need better railways than we have now. Did you know when I went from Buffalo to Albany last year I had to change trains seven times?”
“But there’s the Erie Canal,” she protested.
“The railways will finish the canal,” he said. “If someone had the capital and could combine all the lines from Albany to Buffalo into one—”
“Enough,” she said. “My head is spinning.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’d better go. If this storm doesn’t stop soon, the town will have the rollers out tomorrow.” He rose and stood over her. “One thing more,” he said. He reached down and touched her shoulder. “If I do go, I’d very much like you to go with me.”
Beth hid her confusion by tying her bonnet and fussing with her coat. “Thank you, Jeffrey,” she said.
They left the waiting room and went into the night where they found snowflakes whirling in front of the streetlamps. The ground was white and the sounds of the street, the horses, wagons and carriages, were muffled by the snow. A new world, Beth thought, much like the old one yet with the shapes and sounds all subtly changed.
A bell began to ring, slow, sonorous. “Seven o’clock,” Jeffrey said. A second bell joined the first in announcing the hour and then another and another until the air was filled with the tolling of the bells.
Jeffrey swung her about and held her by the arms, and she looked at him and saw his hat was white and his face was damp from melted snow. He kissed her, his lips warm on hers, and she felt the excitement mount as his arms pressed her body to his. Her mind was blank, as though she were in a hidden place without responsibility, without time, without a past or future. He stepped away and she gasped.
“Come along,” Jeffrey said, walking ahead, “before the snow gets deeper. Our carriage is across the street.”
Beth didn’t move and he stopped and looked over his shoulder, turned and came back to stand before her. “Are you coming?” he asked.
“Perhaps I’ll go with you, Jeffrey, to the West, or wherever. I probably will,” she said slowly and saw his face soften, and he smiled and she knew she loved him. “But I’ll never follow you anywhere, ever again.”
He bowed and, still smiling, offered her his arm. Beth saw an acknowledgment in the smile, a respect for her. She hesitated. Then with a sigh slipped one hand from her muff and took his arm, and together they walked through the falling snow to the carriage.
About the Author
Fortune Kent aka Jane Toombs, author of around a hundred books in all categories except men's action and erotica, is now caretaker for her Significant Other who has Parkinson's. They've been together since 1994, are currently owned by a calico cat named Kinko and live in what used to be their home town on the south shore of Lake Superior.
Jane's website at: www.JaneToombs.com contains all her books, most recent ones first. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Look for these titles by Fortune Kent:
Now Available:
Writing as Jane Toombs
Point of Lost Souls
Tule Witch
Coming Soon:
Writing as Fortune Kent
The House at Canterbury
House of Masques
The Opal Legacy
Writing as Jane Toombs
The Fog Maiden
She was drowning in the nightmares of her past…
Point of Lost Souls
© 2014 Jane Toombs
At six, Mara was found in the waters of Lake Michigan. With no memories of how she got there or where she came from, she only knows she has a psychic talent—perhaps one inherited from her unknown relatives.
Adopted by a kindly judge, Mara has grown to adulthood always yearning to discover the secrets of her past hidden in her nightmares. Stumbling across a deck of tarot cards, Mara gleans some clues to her past and follows them to the lakeside cottage of her childhood. But sometimes secrets are meant to be buried, and the past is best left alone.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Point of Lost Souls:
Mara tossed in her bed, unable to sleep. If she relaxed and drifted, let her guard down, what would come? There’d been a long time without dreams. No dreams to remember until the bad time with Mike. Then the old nightmare came back, over and over, but she had ways to deal with the known—it was the new dream, the new horror that frightened her now. If she closed her eyes…
She sat up and switched on the bedside light. This was the farm, her old bedroom at the farm. She wasn’t at co
llege—no more Mike—she was home. The closet there and the dresser over there and Mara in the mirror staring back. Dark hair tangled over her face, she appeared disordered, abandoned—what Tim called her haunted, gypsy look. She was safe, safe at the farm in the Judge’s house.
But safe wasn’t good enough. Susan would wrap her in the familiar cocoon of love and protection and she’d smother. The new dream meant something, no matter how frightening, had gotten past the barrier in her mind. Mara shuddered, almost convincing herself she saw the glowing skull begin to form in the shadows of the room. The skull could be Mike’s fault, part of the whole hideous bit with him, but she wouldn’t think about that right now, not ever again if she could help it. She was over Mike, no longer wanted to warm herself in the glow from his charm. Charm which concealed the darkness within him.
But she did need to know herself, to search for a way to break through the mind block shutting off part of her life from recall. She shivered again, thinking of the whispering skull dream—one word repeated over and over, “cottage, cottage.” She would have to start there. The cottage. If she could only convince the Judge…
Mara got up and pulled her red terry cloth robe over her thin nightgown. The Judge was a stickler for covering up. She could well remember her first bikini and how shattered she’d felt when he told her, “You’d be more decent nude than in such a provocative bathing suit—please refrain from wearing it in my sight.”
He was in the library, his library since no one else dared use the room. Even Tim never had, and he was the Judge’s only grandchild, indulged in most things. Why was she standing here outside the door? The Judge was just a sick, old man in a wheelchair, wasn’t he?
The door was ajar, so she edged it open and saw him behind the old oak desk, sitting straight as always in his wheelchair, useless legs blocked from her view. The paralyzed left arm was folded into his lap but he clutched an old pipe in his right hand. The pipe was always there, but Mara thought she had never seen him light it in all the years she had lived with him. His white hair and beard were neatly trimmed, as usual. She smiled tentatively but said nothing.
He did not speak, either. This was his way, this silence, an attempt to force you to weaken your position by speaking first. He looked at Mara and she stared back at him. Indestructible old man, like some immortal ancient king who could not be killed but yet must suffer the ravages of age and disease. She thought the left side of his face still sagged slightly; he did not look well.
He nodded, a brief movement. Not exactly speaking, but she conceded. “I couldn’t sleep,” she told him.
“A common affliction.” His voice was ever so slightly slurred, but still resonant. He was acute mentally though he’d failed physically since his last illness. A CVA—cerebrovascular accident. In her mind Mara could hear him all over again when she’d called it that.
“Damn it! A stroke’s a stroke. You sound like Tim and the rest of those witch doctors—using polysyllabic medical jargon doesn’t change what happened one damn bit. I blew out a blood vessel. That’s a stroke, isn’t it? Getting too old for my innards.”
But the fierceness seemed assumed where it had been real enough once. Now he couldn’t use his left hand and arm, and this besides the paraplegia he’d had since the boating accident all those years ago. The accident in which he had lived and his son had drowned.
“I’ve been dreaming again,” she said, refusing to share her insomnia with him.
His eyes sharpened. “The same nightmare? You still dream about the night Tim’s dog found you?”
“Mr. B? No, I don’t dream about the dog. Just water and the dark. And now I have a new one…” her voice faltered but she swallowed and went on. “I hear something whisper to me.” She couldn’t tell him about the skull. “I think maybe if I went out to the cottage and stayed—at least for the summer—I might begin to remember. Maybe this new dream is a beginning and the cottage will bring more back.”
The Judge put his pipe down on the desktop and slowly rolled the wheelchair out around the desk, closer to her. “The mind won’t be forced, Mara. You must know enough about traumatic amnesia to realize it may be best left alone.”
“Let me try.” She took a step nearer, held out her hands, palms up.
“I can’t understand your desire to live in a place you dislike. Still—I won’t refuse you the use of the cottage. I am not unreasonable.” He was silent a long time and she dropped her hands, watching him.
“Your living there will prove to be as useless as your earlier stratagems. I thought you had become reconciled.”
She shook her head wordlessly.
“Why must you rehash this, Mara? Susan will be distressed, as usual, I am already annoyed and the end result will be nothing, also as usual.”
Mara blinked fast to keep tears back—she knew better than to show them or the Judge would leave in disgust. He dominated everything, as he always had.
“I have to try it,” she repeated.
“Very well. But I must point out once again that all the important avenues were explored years before, when you were a small girl. I did the necessary advertising, contacted law enforcement agencies about the area, even hired a private investigator. If nothing came of this when the clues were fresh, certainly no new material will be found so many years later.”
She wanted to cry out that her mind had never been searched—no one knew what might be there—but hesitated remembering the one time she had made an appointment with a psychiatrist.
The Judge seemed to read her thoughts. “I know you’re not mentally disturbed—God knows I’ve dealt with enough of those fool head doctors in court. You’re all right, Mara. But you must learn to forget your obsession once and for all.”
She looked at the old man in the wheelchair, useless legs hidden now by his violet lap robe, and wondered, as she often had, if he resented her. “But you will let me use the cottage?” she insisted.
He seemed to study her for a while, then nodded. “I don’t know about the road,” he said. “They want to fix it but not the way it should be done. I’m trying to work things out, but…” He put his good hand to his face. “I’m an old man, Mara…”
The admission of weakness shocked her into speechlessness.
“Never mind, child,” he told her finally. “Go to bed.”
Once more in her room, she lay back against her pillow and thought about the cottage. It was made of logs, with ends fitted together in workmanship no longer taught father to son—maybe no one knew how today. It wasn’t true she didn’t like the cottage. There’d been good vibes there: Warm in front of the fireplace with the lake shut firmly away for the night, childhood memories of helping Susan make supper in the old-fashioned kitchen, curling up with her in the double bed. No, the cottage had been security; the Judge was wrong to say she didn’t like it.
He knew the lake was what she was afraid of—the Judge knew that as well as she did. Lake Michigan, lying grey or green or blue, depending on the weather, but there, always there in front of the cottage, only a wide strip of sand between. The waves coming up on the beach, going back, coming up in their hypnotic rhythm…
Wetness closed her in, closed out the air. Blackness. No air. Mara twisted in her bed, struggling to come awake. She was dreaming the old dream and it held her under, not letting her come up for breath. Not really asleep but unable to wake fully, she fought against the panic, trying to think the words that had helped in the past: The dog is coming, Mr. B, and he has me by the shoulder and it hurts but soon there will be air. Mr. B is pulling me along, his teeth hurt my shoulder, but I can breathe.
Her shoulder ached and she rubbed it, wriggling to a sitting position. She stared out into the dimly lit bedroom. Yes, her own bedroom. If she called, Susan would hear and come to her. There was no dark choking water, no dog, no Mr. B, dead all these years, to bring her to Tim. And no Tim. Not dead, but gone all the same.
Shreds of the dream still fluttered in her mind; she was afraid of lo
sing the air, losing the reality of place. Was that a whisper? No, no, the hum of the electric clock—listen, that’s what it is. Just the clock. No sound of waves here on the farm, no murmuring pines. And no whispers. Listen—there is nothing.
She was no longer six-year-old Mara screaming and clutching at Susan because the dream wouldn’t go away, with Susan mothering her, the soothing voice repeating the familiar words: “Hush, dear, remember you’re with me. You aren’t in the water. Remember Mr. B pulling you in to shore—you are safe. Mr. B brought you to Tim and Tim carried you here safe. You’re safe in the cottage with me and the Judge and Tim. Mr. B is outside sleeping on the porch steps and everything is all right.” And gradually the dream would fade and fade and everything was all right. But six-year-old Mara had never remembered. Even twenty-year-old Mara remembered nothing but the water and the dark of the dream.
All is fair in love and in war…
Cast the First Stone
© 2013 Angela Arney
Living in Naples, Italy, in the midst of WWII, Liana is determined to survive. Poverty, war, desperation—she will defeat them all. And now, standing before a priest in a crumbling church, she is about to marry Nicholas Hamilton-Howard, Earl of Wessex.
Nicholas is her ticket out of the hell-hole Naples has become—bewitched by her youth and beauty, he is willing to marry her to gain her love. And Liana vows to do everything in her power to make Nicholas happy…even though their relationship has been built on lies and deception.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Cast the First Stone:
1 May 1944
“I do solemnly declare…”
When he was speaking Italian, Nicholas managed to sound more English than usual. The very preciseness of his tone was alien to the musical language. Now his clear voice echoed loudly as he repeated the marriage vows.
