Rebecca's Ghost

by Marianne Petit

  “I love your hands on me.” He kissed her in a long hot kiss. He ran his fingers up and down the length of her.

  Goose bumps of yearning prickled her skin; aroused her desires further…“Your skin is so soft… so soft,” he murmured between his kisses.

  She could feel the urgency in his quickening movements. His eyes darkened, shining with wild sensuality. He rotated his hip and pushed against her.

  She removed her hand, allowing him free access— removing any barrier, wanting to feel his hardness inside her; and this time she would not let him stop.

  She didn’t care about the consequences; didn’t care what others would think of her. All that mattered was his loving her this moment—this day.

  Hesitant, he peered down at her with hooded eyes. “Forgive me.” Gently he eased himself into her welcoming folds.

  Forgive him? A moan of rapturous pleasure slipped from her lips. “No regrets,” she whispered. No looking back.

  Fully aroused, he felt hard and massive inside her. Hip to hip, groin to groin they were one.

  His tongue swirled blending with hers. Their hearts galloped as they rode the tides of ecstasy. His loving rhythmic, like the continual motion of her armonica’s foot treadle, he pumped her up and down, and deeper still.

  She arched her body to meet his and surrendered completely to his masterful seduction.

  Together they found a united tempo of exquisite harmony; and loves euphoric music began to flow; carrying her higher and higher— an accelerated pulse beating within her—filling her ears; a sweet song from deep down in her soul. Then shimmering warmth ebbed through her; a song that sang of love and dreams fulfilled— if only for one day— this final day.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Day turned to night, night to dawn; and Philip and Elizabeth made love repeatedly until the sun, once again, shone on the ceiling. And at each moment before his seed was about to spill, he withdrew, leaving her empty and sad.

  If circumstances were different, she would love to have his child, whatever the outcome. But she knew his fear and held no animosity toward him. Instead, his actions only reinforced her decision to leave. She could not live in sin. He would not ask her to.

  He loved her. She could see it in his eyes, in the way he held her even now in the crux of his arm, with his head resting against hers. Though he had not said he loved her, she knew it. For those words would bind her to him, and his fear allowed no permanent place in his heart.

  Through dreamy eyes, Elizabeth saw Rebecca sitting on a chair. She was smiling.

  Gently, as not to awaken Philip, Elizabeth slipped out of bed.

  Quickly, she donned the blue traveling gown Mary had picked out for her.

  Rebecca arose and disappeared through the wall into the hall.

  Elizabeth opened the door and with a final glance at Philip, she slipped from the room.

  She followed Rebecca into the unfamiliar chambers that she realized was Rebecca’s bedchambers.

  Pink satin floor length drapers covered the two large windows. The bed was enclosed by curtains of the same pink color, the covering, embroidered with purple, sky blue and green flowers.

  Rebecca disappeared.

  “What do I seek?” Elizabeth glanced across the room.

  An unfinished needlework lay on a high back chair, left there as though Rebecca had just placed it aside to finish at a later date. A book rested on a bookstand, while others were neatly arranged on a shelf .

  “I beseech of you, talk to me. Any minute now, Marlinda will be rising and seek me out. Breakfast will be served, my bags are packed and waiting and Philip…”

  With no clue as to what she was looking for, Elizabeth hurried over to a carved cherry wood secretary where a quill pen sat in a white porcelain inkwell, painted with pink roses. Paper and envelopes were arranged in the small partitioned slots.

  She couldn’t think of him now; couldn’t bear to face him… to look upon his face and not remember the love they had shared.

  Studying the miniature glass figurines of different birds, lined up on the shelves, she pinched a bit of sweet floret smelling potpourri from a fluted glass tureen; then strolled to the bookstand and thumbed through a leather bound book that had been propped against the smooth wood.

  A single piece of parchment floated to the floor and a vision of a letter flashed before her eyes; a letter she knew would somehow change her future.

  With a shaky hand, Elizabeth picked up the parchment and scanned the page.

  “‘Tis nothing but a list of fabrics!”

  Disappointment bit her soul. She sighed, then slipped the paper back into the book.

  Bending over, she ruffled through the books beneath the table.

  Nothing; no letter… no note--no nothing.

  “You disappear and tell me nothing. Tis fruitless and time to say my goodbyes.” Annoyed, Elizabeth straightened and picked up the hem of her gown.

  Sadness squeezed her heart. She would miss William terribly. He was progressing so nicely, had begun to recognize more letters, even certain words.

  And Philip…

  Tears clouded her eyes. She swiped her cheek with the back of her hand.

  God, how she’d miss him and Mary and even staunchly old Tyler.

  A claustrophobic sensation blanketed her. Quickly she headed for the door. She had to leave now, before she lost her courage and begged Philip to let her stay on, if nothing more than as William’s tutor.

  But Rebecca’s strong presence pulled her back into the room.

  “Stop!” Elizabeth spun around. “Stop tormenting me.” She pounded the air with her fists. “‘Tis bad enough I share your guilt.” Her shrill voice pierced the quiet room. “Though you betrayed your husband with another, I betray my heart, for I love him.”

  She took a deep breath. “I feel as though a poker of fire as been plunged deep within the cavity of my heart.” Her voice shook. Tears tumbled down her cheeks.

  She closed her eyes, praying that in the darkness a vision would come to her. “Rebecca, let me leave.”

  A moment passed. And then another.

  Elizabeth opened her eyes and reluctantly took a step forward. She crossed the room and opened a draw beside the bed.

  An oval gilded framed portrait of Rebecca and Philip lie inside.

  Elizabeth picked up the frame and shook it in her hand. “What. What do you wish me to know?”

  While Rebecca sat, her gold dress billowing around her.

  “Rebecca, in my vision so many days ago, was the sadness I’d felt my future and not of your past?”

  Behind Rebecca’s likeness, a high standing bookcase, with small drawers, lined the wall. The artist had painted rays of sunlight which seemed to bounce off the gold embossed mahogany to rest, like a warm palm, on the back of her neck.

  “How can a mere slip of parchment change my destiny?”

  She stared deeply into the portrait as though she would somehow find the answer hidden beneath the artists painted strokes.

  Rebecca stared across the room.

  Suddenly Elizabeth saw through Rebecca’s eyes and her breath caught. She knew. She knew where Rebecca’s secret lie.

  ***

  Philip stood over the grave. He stared down at the weathered gravestone bearing two angels and his wife’s name.

  “Rebecca, I love her. I love her so much the pain is unbearable.” He pressed his temples deeply in an effort to ease the pounding of his head.

  ‘Twas loving her that had broken his resistance that had allowed him to tuck his fears in the corner of his mind.

  “But what good is a love without the promise of a fulfilling tomorrow?”

  The sadness he had seen in Elizabeth’s eyes growing stronger after each time they’d made love, had twisted in his gut. God’s blood how he had wanted to couple with her completely.

  Pacing back and forth visions of her filled his mind. Elizabeth with her hair spilling over his arm, fanning the pillows like a halo; the way s
he had held him… caressed him, despite the insecurities he knew she harbored. And those luscious lips— that sweet kiss that rendered him senseless.

  They had shared a pleasure so long forgotten that it felt like the first time.

  When he had awoken to find her gone, he had felt as empty as his bed.

  Abruptly, he stopped in mid-stride and turned back toward the grave, a cold hard reminder of his past.

  He sighed deeply; a sigh that did little to lighten the pressure in his chest.

  “Tell me,” he whispered. “How can I marry her? ‘Twould be subjecting her to your same fate. ‘Twas in child birth your death and the death of our first child that drove you into the arms of another.”

  He knelt and lightly ran his hand over the cool tombstone. “‘Twould kill me to see her suffer as you had.”

  Despair welled in his throat. He would have to let her go. A besieging void deadened his heart. His vision misted.

  To keep Elizabeth here would do her an injustice.

  He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Once again, I am without answers.”

  Rebecca had been snatched away from him and there wasn’t a thing he could do to save her. Now Elizabeth would walk out of his life and once again, he felt powerless.

  She could not be his wife, and he would not ask her to be his mistress.

  To keep her here as William’s teacher, to see her day after day and not touch her…

  “Nay.” He shook his head and opened his eyes. “‘Twould be hell all over again. I could not bear to relive the torment, the loneliness I’d felt watching you.”

  After the death of their first-born, he’d watched his wife slip away from him. He had wanted to comfort her, hold her, but the light in her eyes had died, replaced by a dull nothingness that had held him at bay.

  Birds chirped. The sun beat down upon his heavy shoulders.

  As he stared down at the grave, his long distorted shadow, darken the ground, before him, like the shadow of guilt darkening the foundation of his soul.

  “I rationalized you needed time alone to deal with your sorrow. But the plain and simple truth was I… I couldn’t face the emptiness in your eyes. The emptiness I put there.”

  Devastation ran in his blood. William’s ailment… the death of his first born… Rebecca had seen what the Ablington males were capable of.

  Nay.

  Philip raked his fingers through his hair.

  I cannot subject Elizabeth to share my burdens.

  ***

  Elizabeth hiked up her skirt and swung around.

  The letter was in the Rebecca’s secretary!

  She crossed Rebecca’s chambers with quickened steps, plopped down into the chair, in front of the desk, and rustled through the papers and envelopes.

  ‘Twas here she just knew it.

  Frantically, she pulled open the drawers and rummaged through their contents.

  “It must be,” she reassured herself. That letter was somewhere on this desk.

  She ran her hands under the drawers, hoping to find a false bottom.

  Finding nothing, she leaned back against the chair, and studied the front of the desk. Six small boxlike slots met the writing table. Above that, nine more compartments of the same size filled the space. On the top half, separated by three columns, were shelves where Rebecca had put her figurines.

  Standing, Elizabeth ran her finger over the bottom shelf.

  She was close. She could feel it, just like when she’d played hide-and seek with her mother, only she always had the advantage, she knew when she was getting hotter-closer to her find.

  Carefully, she lifted a small glass bluebird from the shelf and reached behind.

  Nothing; no note stuck out from the corner.

  She gave the shelf a tug. It wouldn’t budge. On tipped toes, she reached for the top shelf and gave it a tug. Abruptly, the shelf pulled out, as did the one beside it. The one below, slid out just as easily.

  Excitement warmed her blood, though she wasn’t sure why, for there appeared to be no parchment on any shelf.

  Carefully, she patted the back panels, listening for any difference in sound. Hearing nothing unusual, she frowned, then took another bird from the shelf.

  By the time she finished removing the top shelves from the unit, her frustration had built as high as the pile of wood on the desk. All that was left in the upper portion of the unit were three columns.

  She drummed her fingers impatiently on a column and glanced around.

  Perhaps her vision had been wrong. Perhaps, she was supposed to search the desk in the portrait.

  “Oh Fiddlesticks!” Her fingers tensely curled around the column.

  She didn’t have time to search through another room.

  Annoyed, she dropped back on her heels and the slender curved piece of wood stayed in her hand.

  Quickly, she dropped the wood on the desk and once again reached up on tipped toes.

  There, wedged in the long dark hollowed out space was a letter; a letter that would shape her destiny.

  Her pupils dilated. Her heart galloping, her palms clammy, she reached for the parchment. Her fingers shook so violently, she could barely lift the flap.

  Dearest Rebecca. ’Tis with much regret I post this letter to you, for I fear, upon reading my words, the pain they will cause will be great.

  Elizabeth scanned the page further.

  Though I have truly enjoyed the presence of your company, our, how shall I say this delicately, our brief tete a tete, is over. By the time you read this I will be engaged to marry another.

  Elizabeth felt a pang in her heart.

  Though she’d had no sympathy toward Rebecca for breaking Philip’s heart, the poor woman must have felt terribly rejected.

  We both knew our affair would end. The unfortunate fact that you carry my child…,

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened; lifted from the page. Her breath caught.

  William was not of Philip’s flesh and blood!

  She glanced at the door, wanting to run outside and shout the happy news. Joy as light and chipper as a robin’s song filled her heart.

  His seed was not bad!

  Quickly her gaze dropped to the rest of the sentence.

  …ends this reunion sooner than I had anticipated. I want no brat calling me father. So do what you would of it.

  Elizabeth sank into the chair.

  Poor Rebecca. She must have been devastated, frantic, her only recourse, to make Philip believe the child was his.

  Elizabeth continued to read.

  Know that if circumstances were different, there could have been a future for us. If this means anything to you, you were the only woman with whom I was truly happy.

  At least he loved her.

  Jonathan Tisdale

  The letter dropped from her hands. Her head spun with a dizziness that made her want to empty her stomach. She clutched the desk for support.

  Tisdale… Rebecca’s lover… betrothed to her mother… William’s father?

  Lord, it couldn’t be true! How could she tell this to Philip? He despised her guardian.

  Elizabeth scooped up the letter and scanned the contents again, hoping she’d miss read the words, hoping that between the lines lie a different answer.

  She shoved the parchment back into the envelope; jammed the note back into the slot, then snatched it back out.

  William not his? Philip would be devastated.

  Staring at the letter, her mind whirled with confusion.

  Philip loved her; he loved William; now they all could be together. Surely he would see how this changed everything. They could have children—they could—she spun on her heel and glanced at the door.

  What if he couldn’t look at William the same? What if the progress he’d made with his son took a turn backward with the news?

  Her throat tightened. Her head pounded as she hurried from the room.

  Tisdale and Rebecca? How? When?

 
She would have to tell him.

  Learning Philip was in the graveyard in the back of the house, Elizabeth ran down the wide stone steps.

  She hurried through the garden ducking under an archway of thorny yellow roses that scratched her arm as she ran. She scurried along the pebble path of the herb garden and boxwood hedges. Large tropical fernlike leaves fanned the pathway; an annoying barrier she brushed them aside.

  Sickly, sweet white clusters of hawthorn trees perfumed the air.

  She rounded the bend and stopped short.

  An open area surrounded by large pines and bright flowering bushes had been cut into the landscape. The pathway split and fanned out in a circular pattern, surrounding a large white marble statue of a woman praying. At her feet, white and red flowers were in bloom.

  Elizabeth’s gaze turned toward the other end of the garden.

  Two graves rested beneath the shade of a flowering tree.

  Philip sat back on his haunches before the graves.

  She took a step toward him, then hesitated; glanced at the letter in her hand then back at him.

  Quietly she continued down the path and stopped a short distance behind him. From behind a tree, hidden from his sight, she stood silent, listening to his heart-felt words.

  “Look where our love brought us.”

  His words spoken so tenderly, so laden with sadness, stirred her insecurities.

  “I am filled with revenge and you…” He placed a sunflower on the tombstone. “Rest gently, dear wife. Rest, knowing I forgive you,” he dropped to his knees, “as I beg for your forgiveness.” His chin dropped dejectedly.

  A sense of inadequacy swept over Elizabeth.

  Could a man ever love another, as he had his first love? Would she ever be able to fill the hole Rebecca had left in his heart? Though he’d sworn he harbored no love toward his wife, she wondered how much of that was true. How much of his words had been said out of anger, out of feelings of betrayal? He’d never said he loved her, not once.

  She glanced down at the parchment in her hand. Though its contents could change their lives, she wondered if ‘twould be for the better.