by Jane Toombs
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 losing 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.
A family inheritance, a forbidden love, and a faceless enemy—can Beth endure it all?
Isle of the Seventh Sentry
© 2014 Fortune Kent
Lost at sea along with her parents as a young child, Beth Worthington shouldn’t have survived. Years later, she is returning to her family estate to claim her inheritance only to be appalled to discover what awaits her—a crumbling home, hostile people, and a violent uprising fomenting in the countryside.
Beth already cheated death once, but she knows with a sudden certainty that her life is once more at risk. Someone is trying to kill her. And number one on the list of suspects is the man she is beginning to fall in love with—her own brother!
Enjoy the following excerpt for Isle of the Seventh Sentry:
Beth Worthington, alone on the top deck of the steamship, shivered in the autumn breeze. She gripped the rail with both hands, her fingers tingling with the beat of the engines. The only other sound was the churning hiss of the great paddle wheels biting into the blue green waters of the Hudson.
Beth, her maroon redingote buttoned to her neck, the matching reticule at her side, stood tall and solitary on the white deck. The wind tousled her long black hair and brought color to her cheeks. Her face, with its high cheekbones and high forehead, was open and direct, almost challenging, yet her hazel eyes hinted at a warmth beneath.
She looked across the water, saw the shadows of the trees reaching like fingers from the far shore toward the ship, saw the sun low over the mountains of the highlands. For how many thousands of years, she wondered, had these mountains stood guard above the river? Beth felt the doubt and loneliness of an adventurer entering a foreign, hostile land, for somewhere on one of those wooded mountainsides was the Worthington estate. Could she, alone except for Mrs. Jamison, face the family and convince them? Would they believe she was Beth Worthington returning as though from the dead after fifteen years?
Last March—six months had seemed time enough and more to prepare—began a long summer of study and drill with Mrs. Jamison repeating each lesson over and over again. But now, as they sailed the last few miles up the river, Beth frowned. The dress rehearsal was almost over and the curtain was about to rise. Am I ready? she asked herself.
The wind-blown spray stung her face, and Beth’s eyes smarted until she grimaced to keep back the tears. But when the wind changed and she looked up, her dark hair blew free behind her and she lifted her face to the wind, exhilarated.
Footsteps sounded on the wooden deck. She turned, startled, then smiled as Margaret Jamison joined her. The older woman, wearing a black dress which accentuated her short and heavy figure, carried an embossed daybook by her right side. As a priest carries his missal, Beth thought.
“Less than an hour more,” Mrs. Jamison said. She pulled the black lace veil closer about her face to hide the white scars from the smallpox of long ago. What anxieties did her impassive features hide? Beth knew Mrs. Jamison had never seen the estate and, despite her sister’s four years of service there, was as much a stranger as Beth to the members of the household.
Beth held out her hand and touched the older woman on the sleeve. “Let me begin at the beginning,” Beth said. “Just once more before we dock at Newburgh. Please.”
Mrs. Jamison glanced around the almost-deserted deck. She nodded. “Bring a chair over here for me and one for yourself,” she said.
“May we walk instead?” Beth asked. “I don’t think I could sit still—we’re so near.”
Mrs. Jamison nodded, and the two women strolled toward the bow. “Your name?” Mrs. Jamison began.
“Beth Worthington.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-four. I was born on March 29, 1818.”
“Tell me about your family.”
“Why, there’s only Grandmother Worthington, my brother, and myself.”
“No, no, before the shipwreck, when you were growing up on the Worthington estate.”
“Oh. My father, mother, my brother, and, when I was a baby, Grandmother Worthington lived in the gatehouse.”
They turned near the bow and walked back along the other side of the ship. The river had narrowed, and on both sides mountains loomed above them, the slopes heavily wooded, the darkening valleys dropping precipitously into shrouded depths where sunlight never found its way.
A bell tolled on the shore and the sound—deep, funereal—made Beth tremble, for to her each peal of the bell said Death. Over and over. Death, death, death. The sound echoed from the steep sides of the mountains, and the bell and the echo seemed to rhyme—Death, Beth, death, Beth.
“What did you say?” Mrs. Jamison had asked another question.
“Why don’t you tell me about Jeffrey?”
“My brother Jeffrey. He was always moody and alone, tramping in the mountains with his dog, knowing more trails and hiding places than the locals who had lived in Canterbury all their lives. I was never close to Jeffrey, never thought of him as Jay or Jeff. I was more interested in books. And in my father.”
Mrs. Jamison leaned the daybook on the rail and turned the pages. “Here in Beth’s journal,” she said, “do you remember the passage about Jeffrey and the dog?”
“Wait,” Beth said, “let me think. Yes, I have it—‘Snowed all morning. The river is frozen, and the men were
out cutting ice this afternoon. Jeffrey missed supper. Papa was angry and sent him to bed. Served him right. Big came to me in the library tonight and sat at my feet. Big much prefers me, even if he is Jeffrey’s dog.’”
Mrs. Jamison nodded during Beth’s recital. “Remarkable,” she said, “word for word. You have a wonderful memory.”
“I can remember whatever happened since the accident, can picture whole pages of books, recall what people said, the things I’ve done. But I forget so much of what happened before. So unusual, don’t you agree?”
“Unusual?” Mrs. Jamison asked. She smiled, hearing Beth slip into her role.
“Strange, uncommon,” Beth explained. She heard her voice become more shrill, more artificial, and she felt a distaste for the pretense, but she went on.
“The accident is like a watershed in my life,” she said, “the fifteen years on this side as clear and well defined as a formal garden, the nine years before the shipwreck, on the far side, tangled and confused. In those first nine years of my life, though, here and there is a sort of promontory, an event I remember distinctly, but the rest is like a path overgrown with brush and weeds.”
Beth stopped and shook her head. “I can’t go on. I sound so false.”
“You were doing very well.”
“No, I wasn’t. I have to be natural, be myself.”
Mrs. Jamison frowned, and Beth turned from her and looked down at the wake foaming out to the side and behind the ship. I could actually be Beth Worthington, she told herself. Mrs. Jamison doesn’t believe it’s possible, but I could. I wouldn’t be here if I knew this was all a fraud, merely a scheme to inherit part of the Worthington estate. I had to come as long as there was a chance, however remote, to find out where I came from, who I am.
“Beth, please, try to be calm.” Mrs. Jamison’s voice was soothing. “I want to help you. You’re going to be challenged, tested from the moment you arrive at the estate. You can’t trust any of them, for each in his own way will try to trap you. And you can convince them by being the granddaughter old Mrs. Worthington expects and the sister Jeffrey expects. And I’m sure they picture you as a proper young lady. As it is, you’re too forthright, too outspoken.”
“But you know all of the Worthington women have been strong willed. My grandmother, my mother. Remember the stir Mother caused when she was being courted and was the talk of New York City?”
“Not the same, at all,” Mrs. Jamison replied. “Both your mother and grandmother were married by the time they were nineteen. The high spirits of a girl of seventeen or eighteen are quite different from the lack of good taste in a woman of twenty-four.”
“I think I must frighten young men.”
“Still, I’m surprised you never married. We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t take after the Worthington women, and they’re well known for their beauty.”
Was there a wistful note in Mrs. Jamison’s voice? Or a stronger emotion, like envy? Ever since they met months ago, Beth had sensed almost a hostility in Mrs. Jamison, usually well concealed but occasionally, as now, just beneath the surface.
Why does she direct her antagonism at me? Beth asked herself. Does she resent my clothes, my youth? She knew Margaret Jamison, scarred from childhood, never mentioned men in her life, not even the long-absent Mr. Jamison. Yet despite the older woman’s sharpness, Beth admired her purposefulness and determination. And now they found themselves bound together as though by chains of their own forging.
“Look!” Beth went to the rail.
“Why, what is it?”
“The island, there.” She pointed just ahead and to their left.
“Sentry Island,” Mrs. Jamison said.
“Sentry Island? The map said Krom’s Island.”
“Sentry Island must be the local name. My sister told me the sentries had to do with the Revolution.”
The ship’s whistle signaled their approach to port.
“Only two or three more miles to Newburgh,” Mrs. Jamison said. “We have to go below and get ready.”
Beth stared at the island which was now opposite them. “A few more minutes. You go ahead and I’ll join you.”
Mrs. Jamison hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll get our things together,” she said, “and meet you on the lower deck at the stairs.” She walked away from the rail and into the cabin.
The ship was past the island, and the wake was lapping at the rocky beach. Beyond the shore the trees and the dense underbrush were covered with a gauze of haze. On the far side, only barely visible, there appeared to be ruins—stone pillars with jagged cracks, incomplete archways, walls strewn with rubble. And everywhere twisting vines, tendrils exploring the decay, trying to take back what once had been theirs.
I’m afraid, Beth thought. I’m being foolish, but I’m afraid and I can’t say why. She turned her head as though listening, her lips tight, her hazel eyes half-closed.
Why did she say that? Had she imagined a woman had spoken, warning her? You must not go to the island alone, the woman said. You must not go to the island alone.
I’m tired and I’m imagining things, Beth told herself. She blinked her eyes. The island was well behind the ship now, and the setting sun reflected dazzlingly from the water, making the land a misty, receding blur in the distance.
Beth watched a seagull swoop down behind the stern and skim over the bubbling wake. The water seemed to have a life of its own, surging away from the ship in green, blue, and white swirls. She thought of the island, the woman’s voice, and the water below, and the dread flowed over her, the sometimes nightmare, sometimes daydream, remembered from early childhood, the terrible fear circling whirlpool-like within her.
She saw herself alone in a closet-small room, a room with three doors, water dripping, dripping, and the light flickered and went out. She heard a rumbling and she struggled to the door but found none where there had been three. No way out, enclosed, unable to see, the water gurgling on her legs, cold, higher and higher, and the knowledge, as certain as only dream knowledge can be, that in a few minutes she would no longer be able to breathe.
The whistle sounded. Beth shook her head. She turned from the rail and hurried to the lower deck and joined Mrs. Jamison and the other passengers who were waiting to disembark. A bell clanged and the clamor of the engines stilled, but the ship continued to glide unerringly toward the pilings of the wharf. Two seamen held the mooring lines poised, ready to throw them across to the men on shore.
“Newburgh, Newburgh,” a man’s voice rang out. “All ashore.” The landing platform clattered into place, the lines were secured.
It was only a dream, Beth told herself. She firmly grasped her reticule and walked with Mrs. Jamison down the ramp and entered her new life.
The Fog Maiden
Jane Toombs
Sometimes secrets are better left buried.
Janella Maki never felt as though she truly belonged. Haunted by bouts of amnesia and strange visions of her mysterious childhood, she is desperate for answers. When a strange man enters her life and introduces himself as her Uncle Lucien, Janella is eager to accompany him to her long lost home.
Leading her to a remote house, Lucien reveals the nightmares that her forgotten childhood was shielding her from. Possessed of supernatural powers, powers gained through occult rituals, powers beyond her control—Janella knows that through her, evil has been unleashed on the world.
This Retro Romance reprint was previously published in March 1976 by Ballantine.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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The Fog Maiden
Copyright © 2014 by Jane Toombs
ISBN: 978-1-61921-854-3
Edited by Heather Osborn
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Original Publication by Ballantine: March 1976
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: April 2014
www.samhainpublishing.com