by LK Rigel
She was sure she closed it earlier, concerned that damp and dirt would damage its pages. But how dumb was that? Better just to get it out of the observatory altogether. She tucked the journal under her arm and went down, careful to skip the weak tread and hold tight to the banister.
At the bottom of the stairs a feeling came over her, a sense of someone watching her. She looked back, but there was no one. The ghost or spirit that saved her had felt solid, real. She’d felt surrounded by his will, but it was more than that. When he guided her to the rail, she’d sensed real emotion, his terror that she might be hurt. Real. And wonderful.
No human being had ever cared so intensely about her. Not her parents. Not her husband. Pathetic.
Ghost, hallucination, whatever, he wasn’t here. Her sense of him was a memory. A memory of a hallucination. Sheesh. She continued on down the hall to the guest room where Bram waited for her.
Or not. The bed was entirely taken up by a spread-eagle, massive hunk of sleeping naked man, blankets kicked to the floor. Relieved, she plopped into the corner chair, tucked up her feet, and pulled the shawl over her legs. She should have expected as much. He’d had a long day. Drove hours through the mountains and up the winding coast to get here and take up the bed’s entire square footage.
He was probably dreaming of Bonnie. Stop it, Sara. That was unworthy.
She opened the journal to read for a while, to escape to Joss Montague’s world.
Turtledove Hill, January 1946
I’m home. Memory is a funny thing. I return to a life cherished in memory, but it isn’t there. Was it ever? Did it change? Did I?
Father built this house in 1912, the year I was born. He left this world when I was twenty, and I remember a hard man, a cold man who knew only duty and work. Yet I see Turtledove Hill now with the eyes of a prodigal. I see that my father must have appreciated beauty for he hired Greene & Greene to design this remarkable house. He must have loved knowledge, for he built a library anyone could be proud of.
I thought I’d brought beauty to Turtledove Hill. What time I could steal from the pears and hay I put into improving Turtledove Hill’s aesthetics. I planted roses and daffodils and lilies in abundance around the house as well as the wisteria and white lilac climbers. Now I know I merely set about expanding upon what my father had begun.
One day in the eucalyptus grove I came upon a pond made by a fallen tree. It would make a marvelous sanctuary. I planted iris and daffodils, lilies, pink ladies, and snowdrops. I never showed the pond to Mother. And when she died, and later Olivia became mistress of Turtledove Hill, I never brought her there either. I imagined it my sacred pool, the place I could escape the world for an hour and dream.
No wonder I couldn’t resist the Chinese man’s brass bell. The instant I saw it, I was struck by its beauty. And he was right, after all. It did save my soul. Throughout that cursed war, the snowdrops on the bell reminded me of the sacred pool and home.
I arrived this morning with trepidation, nervous to see my wife, but eager to see Turtledove Hill. I knew Jeremiah Poole would work the land well in my absence, but I was unprepared for his gifted husbandry. He has a love of farming I will never equal. I’m glad he left a few pear trees standing, but I won’t miss the hay. Turtledove Hill was made by God to produce wine grapes.
Olivia was unimpressed with the peonies I brought home from Japan. She thought they were mandrake root.
Sara rubbed her eyes. Talk about a hands-on husband. As Montague described it, upon his engagement to Olivia he’d bought all new carpets, paint, wallpapers, and furnishings for the house. The paper he chose for the kitchen pictured paired turtledoves on a background of robin’s egg blue.
Not hideous orange velveteen barn animals. Aunt Amelia must have put those up later, to go with the avocado appliances. Argh.
Montague’s marriage didn’t go well. Not a year after the wedding, he leased the land to Gracien Poole’s father Jeremiah and went away on what he called a sabbatical. He ended up in Hawaii just before the attack on Pearl Harbor and never got home again until five years later, after the war.
He wasn’t a diligent diarist. The next entry was made over a year and a half later.
Turtledove Hill, August 1947
We buried Livy last week…
Livy. Montague’s nickname for Olivia. The name her savior had called out before he really saw her. The man who hadn’t aged since Sara saw him in the kitchen fifteen years ago wasn’t a man at all. She was right. The man in the kitchen and the man on the stairs were the same—the ghost of the man who wrote this journal. Joss Montague.
“That’s why you didn’t age,” Sara said to the journal. He must have been in his thirties when he died. The first time she saw him, when she was fourteen, he’d seemed so much older. Now…not so much. In fact, except for the being dead part, the ghost had struck her as vibrant and manly. She glanced guiltily toward the bed where Bram snored away.
We buried Livy last week. I am only now able to set words to paper to express my emotions. Daniel is too young to understand he’s lost his mother. For that, I must be grateful.
As for my own feelings, I find that none plague me but an uncanny relief. Poor Olivia. I tried to give her everything, but she wanted nothing of the life I offered. From the beginning I feared she had no love for me, a suspicion confirmed the night I arrived home from the war.
She took me to her bed with every appearance of wanting to please me, but I felt the hardness in her belly, and I knew someone had been there in my absence.
Everyone believes Daniel was premature, and I pretend to believe.
Will I be a hypocrite and play the bereaved husband? In truth, I am liberated. I am sorry for wretched Livy, but not for myself. Such is life’s paradox. When the holy sacrament of union is perverted, the union is like a jail cell in hell.
Do I dare hope ever to find a true wife? To be a husband in every sense, mundane and sublime? I long for a woman I can worship, day and night, body and soul. A loving partner with whom I can create here an earthly paradise that deserves its name, where the flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
Bram snorted and scratched his belly, and Sara closed the journal. Her husband lay in pretty much the same position, flat on his back with the family jewels exposed to the world. She absently ran her fingers over the smooth luxury of the journal’s leather binding.
…and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
That’s where Turtledove Hill got its name, from the Song of Songs. So lovely—and so sad. Poor Joss Montague! Such a beautiful dream, and he lost his life before he could make it happen. So unfair. Like the saying went, never judge someone’s insides by their outsides.
Speaking of outsides, again Sara was struck by Bram’s good looks. He’d be attractive all his life—on the outside. What about his insides? Did he long for the kind of love Joss Montague wanted? There was no evidence of it. Sara had never felt worshipped, body and soul.
On the other hand, she’d never “worshipped” Bram either. And for all their problems, they weren’t mere roommates or friends with benefits—when there were benefits. They had loved each other since the day they met. She was his density, right? Maybe she shared at least a part of the blame for their troubles.
She left the journal in the chair under the shawl and sat on her knees on the bed between Bram’s legs. She ran her fingers over his thighs, raising chill bumps on his skin. Either he was still asleep or pretending to be. Worship, body and soul. Cliché, yes. But clichés came from truth.
She stroked more firmly, felt the hard muscles beneath taut, tanned skin, and moved up to his hips. He stirred, not enthusiastically. She was used to his preferring sleep to sex. That stopped now. This time was going to be different. She was taking charge.
“Keep still,” she whispered. “Let me do everything.” She kissed his neck, his collarbone, his chest, and his belly, and let her breasts caress h
is skin as she eased her way down. He moaned again, a little quieter, with a touch of sexual desperation—and desire.
A surge of power coursed through her. She controlled him and directed him as she liked, tongued his nipple and reached between his legs. He was hard and hot and dripping, and she spread his juices over him and made him bigger, squeezing and teasing with her fingers and thumb. She licked his nipple and sucked, delighting in his need for her. He cried out, and she put her hand over his mouth and sucked harder.
He belonged to her now, only her. She moved down and pushed her tongue against his pulsing vein.
“I can’t.” He choked out the words, his voice deep and strange. “I can’t stop.”
She took pity on him and straddled him and shuddered when he plunged into her. She moved his hands to her breasts and rocked with him and rode him.
“Oh, god!” He arched up, still inside, and wrapped his arms around her. He rolled her over on her back and opened his eyes. His stare drove darkly into her, intense to her core, and he moved deeper and deeper. Shockwaves of pleasure popped in tiny explosions, building and building until ecstatic convulsions washed over her. He let go, and she welcomed him entirely, his body and his soul to her body and soul.
“Sara,” he murmured in her ear. “It’s Sara.” He gathered her into his arms and held her tight against his chest. “I never knew it could be like this.”
She drifted toward sleep, and a tear fell out of the corner of her eye. His words of sublime happiness echoed inside her like a lullaby.
- 12 -
Murder Weapon
SARA WOKE TO THE GENTLE cooing of doves. Blue and white flowers covered the overhang outside the open window, and two mourning doves snuggled together in the wisteria. Too bad Bram wasn’t there to snuggle with. The faint smell of sautéed onions told her he was downstairs making breakfast. He liked to cook when he was in a good mood—no surprise after last night.
Last night! She hugged her pillow and smiled, tingly and happy thinking about it. Their long sexual drought was over. They would get past Bram’s affair. Things were going to be all right.
She’d never been so aggressive. Last night she wanted to please Bram as well as herself. And he let her in, closer than ever to the man inside, to tenderness and vulnerability she’d never known was there. It was more than sex. More than communication. It was communion.
What was it Joss Montague wrote? He wanted someone he could worship, day and night, body and soul. Exactly right. That’s what she wanted with Bram. Being at Turtledove Hill was the best thing for her marriage. A chance to hit the restart button, refresh, recharge, recommit. She could part with the vineyards when the time was right, but they had to keep the house.
She rolled over on her belly to search for her sleep shirt and found it clumped up on the floor near the foot of the bed. She swung her legs around and pulled the shirt over her head.
Joss Montague was watching her from the chair in the corner, solid and real.
“Ai!’ She screamed and hiccupped at the same time, making a weird chirpy sound. Montague’s goofy grin morphed to a look of dismay—then he disappeared.
“Breathe, Sara,” she said aloud, mostly just to see if she could talk. She bent over and put her head between her legs. Wasn’t that what people in the movies always said to do? After two deep inhales and exhales, she sat up. The only things in the chair were the shawl and the journal.
That was no hallucination. It wasn’t because of exhaustion or stress or a caffeine-only diet. She had a great dinner last night topped of by fabulous tension-relieving sex and a blissful good night’s sleep.
She went to the window, and the mourning doves flew away. Turtledove Hill was haunted. He’s trapped. Aunt Amelia must have meant the man in the kitchen. Joss Montague. That’s why she left Turtledove Hill to Sara, to keep it with someone who knew about him. Never let them have it. He’s trapped.
“Babe!” Bram yelled up from the kitchen. “Get it while it’s hot!”
She went downstairs, jumping over the bad tread. If they were going to have a memorial for Aunt Amelia here at the house, they’d better have these stairs fixed. They could always rope off the stairs to the observatory.
“Hey, babe.” Bram blew her an air kiss and flipped the omelet he was working on. “First thing we buy with that thirty grand is a decent egg pan.”
She loved it that he knew about food and wine and cooking. He was so sexy standing at the stove, shirtless, in red pajama pants covered with panda bears. She hugged him from behind and rested her head against his back and smelled his skin.
“Mm, good morning,” she murmured. She was ready to go back to bed.
On the counter beside the stove two plates were loaded with fried potatoes and onions. She couldn’t believe what she saw plugged in under a cabinet.
“Bram, my hero!” The Keurig from home sat there, plugged in and ready to go.
“I knew she wouldn’t have a decent coffee maker. Nobody over fifty does.”
“Ageist.” She teasingly slapped his butt.
“Knock wood.” He rapped his knuckles against the cabinet drawer. “I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Especially when the house might be haunted,” Sara said—then wished she hadn’t. She didn’t want to feed Bram’s interest in Joss Montague. “And K-cups too,” she added. “You think of everything.”
“Yes, I do.” Bram nodded toward a satchel on the floor near the archway. “I also brought your blow dryer and shampoo and stuff, and some more clothes.”
That was Bram’s version of bringing a girl flowers and candy: remembering her toiletries and fresh underwear. Sara popped a pod in the coffee maker. “Last night—”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry about that. In my defense, I was exhausted.”
“Well, not completely.”
“A little drunk then? That Gracien makes a killer pinot.”
“But…” She just stared. Last night was so amazing. Extraordinary. Bram’s last words, I didn’t know it could be like this. And now he shook the omelet pan so nonchalantly, like it had been nothing special. Like he didn’t even remember.
“By the way, babe, where did this come from?” He held up the iron knife she’d left on the nook table. “These things are so cool.”
She felt sick. “It was in the barn.” He didn’t remember. Or didn’t want to. She was so confused.
“It’s called a spike knife,” he said. “They make these out of railroad spikes. This looks like an old one. I’ll bet Bonnie knows something about it. She’s totally into the history of Pelican Chase.”
“Bonnie.” Sara opened the refrigerator and looked for the half and half. As she added the cream to her cup while the coffee brewed, Bram came up behind her and put his hands on her sides. She ached with frustration. One minute he was aloof and withholding, and the next he was all flirty and suggestive. She couldn’t stand it.
“Don’t be hating on Bonnie. Yeah, she’s tall and gorgeous and ambitious, but I’m married to an heiress. Feels pretty good!” He pulled her hair to the side and tucked it behind her ear. Maybe she should let her hair grow. She knew he liked it better long, but this way it took less time to dry in the morning.
“Not helping, Bram.” She laughed because he did mean to be funny, but she couldn’t help feeling stung. Bonnie was tall, gorgeous, and ambitious. Was he saying she was short, not gorgeous, a loser—but acceptable now because she might have money? And since when was short a bad thing?
She was being an idiot. She’d read too much into last night. That journal had messed with her head. And no way was she jealous. Bram wanted to work things out, and so did she. She tilted her head for him to kiss her neck.
His breath was warm as he nibbled at her earlobe. “This would make a great murder weapon.” The spike knife was at her throat. “You think?” He pressed it against her skin.
“What the hell!” Her heart pounded and she twisted away, spilling hot coffee all over the counter.
&nb
sp; “Oh, babe.” Bram burst out laughing like a maniac. “Don’t take it personal.” He wrapped his arms around her and rocked her, still laughing. “I’m planning the murder in the next Hot book.”
“Jeez, Bram. You scared the shit out of me.”
“Good. Then it works. Now come over here and sit down.” He steered her to the nook by her shoulders. The flowers were cheerful, and morning sunshine poured in through the window. She sat down across from his laptop.
This was Bram being romantic. Set a pretty table. Cook a great breakfast. Share the murder mechanism for the story he was working on. He moved his laptop aside and slid into the nook across from her, diving into his potatoes and onions.
“By the way, there’s no internet here.” He winked. “How did Amelia live like that?”
“Yeah,” she said. “The cell signal is sporadic too.”
“So I noticed. Seriously, I need to get on line to check my stats.”
“There’s wireless in the village. I know Peekie has it at The Book Beak, and people were using laptops at The Coffee Spot across the street. Watch out for Spot’s coffee though. It deserves its reputation.” She crossed her eyes and made a face.
“Sure thing.” Bram said. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I checked the mailbox before I came. Looks like you got a RIF notice after all.”
“Oh.”
“The envelope’s in your bag.”
“Well, crap.”
“What do you care now?” Bram said, scraping up the last of his omelet. Sheesh, he ate fast.
“I don’t know.”
Sara found the letter from the district and brought it back to the nook to open. Somewhere inside, she’d believed she was too good a teacher, too valued to RIF. She’d fantasized that when her name appeared on the list, some administrator would say. Oh, no! Not Ms. Blakemore. The parents will raise an outcry if we let her go.
“It still doesn’t feel good.”
Well, she could let her hair grow now. No need to blow-dry it at 5:30 every fricken freezing winter morning.