The Haunting of Brier Rose (2 page)

"I will never be happy here. Not without Nathaniel!"

"Nathaniel?" He laughed mirthlessly. "Nathaniel is
but a pawn, a tool to get thee ready."

"Ready for what?"

"For thy role as wife and helpmeet. To me."

She gaped at Seth in utter disbelief, stunned.

"No!" Nathaniel exploded. He grabbed a branch from the
ground. "Never!"

Seth lunged for him and glanced a powerful blow off the oak
branch. Constance staggered backward against the cold stone, watching in horror
as Seth closed in upon Nathaniel, slashing the air.

"Nathaniel!" she cried, realizing that Seth meant to
hurt Nathaniel, not just
drive
him away.

"Run!" Nathaniel yelled, holding up the branch to ward
off a blow.

For a moment Constance hesitated, frozen with worry. What if
Nathaniel was struck by the saber? What if Seth meant to kill him? What could
she do? Run for help? She hadn't the faintest idea how far away Nathaniel's
ship was anchored, and whether or not he had come ashore with any of the crew.

"For God's sake, run!" Nathaniel yelled, just as the saber
broke through the branch, splintering it with a loud crack. Before Nathaniel
could recover, Seth struck again, slicing through Nathaniel's leg, laying the
flesh open clean to the bone. In agony, Nathaniel toppled to the ground,
holding his leg while blood gushed over his hand.

"Nathaniel!" she screamed, dashing to his side.

Seth barked commands to two of the other robed men. They grabbed
Constance's arms and pulled her away.

"Don't kill him!" she cried. "Please, don't kill
him!"

"No need," Seth replied. "He'll bleed to death
before long. Besides, 'twill be better should he be forced to watch."

"Connie, go!" Nathaniel moaned, struggling to get up.
He slipped on his own blood and fell back to the damp matted grass.

Seth surveyed him while he untied the robe at his throat. His
eyes held neither compassion nor concern. Constance watched in horror, unable to
help Nathaniel, who lay panting with pain, in too much agony to speak except
with his eyes, which pleaded to her to do something to save herself.

She writhed, but the two Bastyr men held her fast.

"Dost thou love him?" Seth demanded.

"Yes." She raised her chin in defiance.

"All the better." His eyes narrowed. "Then thou
will give thyself to me to save him?"

"Yes."

"No, Connie!" rasped Nathaniel. She could tell by the
weak sound of his voice that his strength was flowing out of his body as surely
as his blood.

She swung back to face Seth. "Spare him and I will do
anything you ask."

"Anything? How generous." The corners of his mouth
twitched. He turned to his daughter, a bloated, prematurely gray matron who was
years older than Constance. "Fetch me the cloth, Patience," he
instructed. Patience walked forward, holding a folded garment in her outstretched
hands, as if offering up a sacred object. Constance glanced at her, wondering
if the woman was in some kind of trance. She made no eye contact, and her face
held no expression in the shadow of her hooded robe.

What was Seth going to do to her? Rape her in front of everyone?
It couldn't be possible, not after the pious speeches she had heard from his
own lips in which he damned fornication and all the other sins that took people
down the wrong path. Yet he had asked that she give herself to him. Did he mean
spiritually? If so, why had he untied his robe?

The thought of Seth touching her in any way, spiritually or
sexually, made her stomach flop over with dread. Constance tried to yank
herself loose, but the men gripped her firmly and ordered her to be quiet.

Patience gave the bundle to Seth. He took it and clutched it
under his arm. Then he turned to Constance, snatched away the dress she had
gathered to her breasts and then ripped off her thin chemise. She stood completely
nude before the Bastyrs, her only covering the cloak of her unbound russet
hair, which rippled around her in the autumn breeze.

She couldn't run. Pleas would be useless. All she could do was
stand there, a prisoner. Her only hope was that her humiliation might save Nathaniel.
Waves of shame and anger washed over her as she felt the eyes of every man and
woman present feeding on the sight of her naked flesh.

"Hoist her up," Seth said, nodding to the men who held
her.

They lifted her off her feet while a third man pulled her to the
flat surface of the sundial, dragging her across the rough edge of the stone
slab and scraping her thigh.

"On your knees," Seth commanded.

Were they going to pray? Perhaps he planned to humiliate her as
some sort of penance? A small hope flickered in her chest that she might yet
escape physical harm.

“On your knees,” he repeated.

Constance refused to obey him and looked him directly in the eyes.
He came to a standstill a few feet from her. His eyes glittered up at her, lit
by the moon. For a moment he stared at her face, and then his gaze traveled
downward, over her neck, her breasts, her belly and her thighs. Constance felt
a new flush of outrage course through her. But to save Nathaniel, she would
have to submit to anything Seth asked of her.

"Ye are lovely," he remarked in a dry voice. "Now,
down on thy knees. 'Tis long past time."

Constance shot a glance at Nathaniel. His eyelids fluttered as he
tried not to succumb to his injury. For Nathaniel, she must be strong. Choking
back her rage, she sank to her knees.

Another robed figure lashed her wrists with a leather thong to
the crude iron gnomon of the sundial. Constance watched him, realizing in an
offhand way that the moon cast a shadow much like the sun, and that the time on
the dial showed midnight. She had reached the evening of her twenty-first
birthday and the end of her servitude, only to be lashed to a sundial for
purposes she didn't even want to contemplate. Pockets of gloom ringed the dial,
where strange angular symbols had been carved in the stone long ago.

"Lift me," Seth demanded. Out of the corner of her eye,
she saw him being raised to the flat surface of the rock. He walked to the
center of the dial and gazed down at her.

"Lean over," Seth commanded. "And present thyself
to thy master."

She placed her palms on the stone. The indignity of the position
was nearly too much to bear. Tears of humiliation clung in her throat while she
stared at the rough stone beneath her, too ashamed to look at Nathaniel.

Terror sped like wildfire through Constance's veins. What was
going on? How could Patience let her be treated this way? How could another
woman just stand there like that and watch?

Suddenly she realized the people in the robes had begun to chant
in a soft drone that blended with the rustling breeze in the oaks. She couldn't
understand the words, whether because they were spoken in a strange tongue or
were sung too softly to be heard
, she couldn't tell.
Unnerved, Constance craned her neck in an effort to look behind her. The
moonlight silvered the pale skin of Seth's bare feet and legs and cast a sheen
on the cloth in which he had wrapped himself.

For a moment he regarded her from above while the chanting
increased. Someone hit a small drum as if to mimic the sound of a heartbeat,
although Constance's heart raced far more quickly than the thump-thump,
thump-thump of the drum. Through eyes burning with hatred, she watched Seth
step up behind her.

"And so it begins in the New World," he said. "A
new world, a new family, a new bride."

New bride.
The words
resounded in her ears as if a thunderclap had boomed overhead. His hands
clutched the shining cloth around his shoulders, and she suddenly realized the
cloth was the very same fabric she had been weaving on her loom, and that he
was stark naked beneath the shining cloak.

She watched him smile and knew that he had seen the recognition
in her face. The smile sickened her. His bride? Was this why they had sent for
her two years ago—to become his bride? That hadn't been part of the
contract. She wrenched at the thong that bound her wrists but she couldn't
break free. There was no escape. No hope.

The drum suddenly stopped beating.

"This union shall strengthen us," Seth declared to the
sky. "And this woman's love for Nathaniel Cooper shall nourish us."

With a flourish, Seth opened his robe. Moonlight poured over him,
highlighting the front of his body. Horrified, Constance gaped at him, for she
had never seen a naked man before, and certainly not one in full arousal. The
sight repulsed her. She cried out and yanked on the thongs as Seth knelt down.
The drum began to beat furiously, again echoing the hammering of her heart. He
draped the shining cloth over her, covering her entirely, as if he did not want
to see her body or her face. Beneath the cloth she felt as if she would
suffocate from the musky smell of him and the heat of his body. The cloth
turned her skin to fire and then to ice. She tried to hold on to the image of
Nathaniel, tried to convince herself that this would be over soon and she would
be saved. But she couldn't think over the thundering sound of the drum. Then
Seth's cold hands imprisoned her hips, and as he clutched her, the image of
Nathaniel faded, became a blur and disappeared forever.

Through a shimmering haze, Nathaniel watched Seth Bastyr thrust
himself against Constance.

"No!" Nathaniel wailed. "No!"

He tried to get up, to rally all his remaining strength, but it
wasn't enough. He couldn't even get to his knees. He never should have lingered
in the clearing. He should have taken Constance to the ship at once, just as
she had asked him to do. Why hadn't he listened to her? Why had he let his lust
dictate to him? Now they were both paying the price for his foolhardiness. His
Connie—ah, God, his Connie—was paying the highest price of all.

The chanting droned through the buzzing in Nathaniel's ears as he
struggled once more to stand. He stumbled to the sundial. "Connie!"
he gasped, sliding on the wet grass. He fell to the ground near her satchel,
mouthing her name, and knew that he had failed her. Panting in frustration and
helplessness, he laid his head on the ground and closed his eyes, trying to
fight the heavy lassitude that weighted his limbs. He was so tired—so
tired. For a moment he closed his eyes. Then blackness swept up in a wave and
devoured him.

Brierwood, outside Seattle, the Present

"Bea!"

Twenty-year-old Rose Quennel rushed down the stairs. She had just
heard the strangest noise—something akin to a chord on an organ, with
deep ominous notes. The sound had come from the gardens behind the house and
had been loud enough to reach her workroom on the third floor. Perhaps Bea had
heard it, too, and would be able to identify the sound.

Rose called again and searched the gardens to the rear of the
mansion, thinking she would find her guardian in the vegetable patch weeding in
the cool of the evening. Mrs. Jacoby was not there. Perplexed, Rose stood near
a clump of poppies, her light cotton dress wafting against her shins. The
summer evening breeze suddenly felt chilly. Rose shuddered and glanced around.
Where was Bea? Her guardian, the housekeeper of Brierwood, was old and not one
to wander too far when daylight began to fade.

Suspecting that something was wrong, Rose broke into a trot. She
ran past the sundial to the herb garden, which was enclosed by an old
stone wall
, and pushed through the wooden gate. There stood
Bea, staring at the still figure of her husband, who lay facedown, his arms and
legs splayed like that of a tragic scarecrow. All around him, the pennyroyal
and lady slippers were withered and brown, as if a killing frost had struck
both the plants and Mr. Jacoby, toppling him into the garden.

"Bea, what happened?" Rose dashed to the old woman's
side.

"I don't know, Rose! I heard an awful noise and came out and
found my Donald lying dead!" She turned to face Rose, her wrinkled face
gray with shock. "He's dead, Rose! He's dead!"

Rose dropped to her knees beside the man who had been her
surrogate father and her friend, while shock dammed a flood of tears that
sprang into her throat. She reached out to touch Donald Jacoby and instantly
recoiled. His skin was cold, even though the summer night was balmy.

"Did you hear him cry out?" Rose asked.

"No. Nothing." Bea fingered the lace collar of her
dress, and her hand trembled visibly. "Just that awful noise. Oh, Rose, my
Donald's gone!"

What had happened to him? Rose surely would have heard him if he
had cried out. Rose's workroom on the third floor of the house was directly
above the garden, and she had been up there all day with the windows wide open.
Had Donald come out to the garden and collapsed? Was it something as common as
a heart attack, or had someone killed him? She wondered if the strange noise had
something to do with his death.

Rose forced herself to reach out again. She eased Mr. Jacoby onto
his back, a difficult feat because of the old man's bulk, and then glanced at
his face, afraid that she would see a mask of terror and fear. But Mr. Jacoby's
eyes were closed, and his wrinkled mouth was slightly parted, as if he slept.
Rose inspected the rest of his ample frame. She could find no evidence of
violence. Perhaps he
had
died of a
heart attack out here in the garden. He was seventy-five years old and had
never practiced healthy eating habits.

Yet why were the herbs withered? And what had made that horrible
noise? She looked back at his body, at his outstretched right hand. It was then
that she noticed the emerald was missing from his ring. Had a thief killed
Donald Jacoby for the sake of the modest gem? Somehow, she didn't think so.