And there, at the foot of the bed, wearing only his trousers, stood Langston himself. “But I do mean them,” he said coldly. “This was never about anything but making George pay for killing Alice. He defiled the only woman I ever loved, so now I’ve defiled you. I only wish George could have heard you moaning like a whore.”
Irene’s face blushed crimson, but she didn’t look away. “I’m no man’s whore,” she said, a note of defiance coming into her voice.
Langston threw back his head and laughed. “You’re worse than that,” he said, reaching for his shirt. “You’re Mrs. Langston Lockwood and you will be until the day you die. You have nowhere to go, Irene. You’re penniless. Your people won’t have you. George won’t have you. You belong to me. Body and soul. Now, I suggest you get yourself dressed and come downstairs so everyone can see the nubile young bride having breakfast with her husband. I’ll be in the dining room. Don’t make me wait.”
When the door slammed behind him, the young woman in the bed turned her face into the pillow and sobbed.
The faded spirits of the former newlyweds stood mute witness to her tears until the shade of Irene said, “I lay in your arms that night while you read Lord Byron to me. You were gentle and loving. Why, Langston? Why did you turn on me and call me a whore when the sun came up?”
When Langston didn’t answer, Irene asked, “Do you want to see the other nights when you came to my bed? The nights our daughters were conceived? The nights when you were lonely and you came to me and I was weak enough and pitying enough to take you into my bed?”
At the word pity his eyes blazed. “Never one day in my life was I a man to be pitied," he thundered. "Take me away from this place.”
"As you wish," she said.
The melting of the world turned into a raging torrent that plunged Langston so deep into disorientation he lost all thought of securing a handhold. Words and voices swirled around him in the mad vortex through which he traveled. Direction had no meaning. Razor sharp perceptions of emotions sliced through his consciousness. Empty longing. Burning desire. Obsessive hunger. Aching need. Bottomless yearning. Each a new flavor of pain and desolation, mixing together in his tormented mind until his entire existence was a wordless scream for relief.
And then there was something solid beneath his fingers. Langston came back to his senses on his hands and knees in the cave in Baxter's Draw. Everything was precisely as he had left it, including the unfinished oil portrait of Alice Browning.
"Whatever light remained in your soul you hid in this place," Irene said.
Langston raised his head, the last vestiges of vertigo still making his stomach heave. "Get out," he gasped. "I don't want you in this place."
"It isn't about what you want," Irene said. "It's about what you deserve. It's about the consequences of your lust." As she spoke, she walked circles around him on the floor, forcing him to swing his head to follow her every motion.
"Damn you," he cried. "Stand still."
"Are you dizzy, Langston?" she asked, still walking round him. "Did you know that's how you left us? All of us who were touched by your lust? Reeling from your unfathomable cruelties?"
"I never touched you again after you got pregnant with Mandy," he snarled. "And you had to get me drunk that night so I could stand to touch you."
Irene paused and went down on one knee in front of him. She put her forefinger under his chin and lifted his head. "You were drunk alright, Langston, but not with whiskey. Do you think lust only applies to sexual appetites? Your whole existence was tainted by your intoxicating, self-centered desires."
He shook his head free of the light touch of her finger and immediately regretted the sudden motion. No hangover had ever felt like this. His head swam and his eyes refused to focus so that her voice came at him from the throes of the whirling deluge that held him suspended and trapped.
"Shall we explore the flavors of lust, Langston?" she purred.
"Damn you," he whispered. "Damn you, damn you, damn you."
Irene continued to kneel before him, reciting the stanzas of an unholy litany of his transgressions. "You were obsessed with winning the hand of a girl who never saw you as anything but a friend. And when she died, you became consumed by your lust for revenge. You killed Alice Browning, not George Fisk."
"Stop!" he screamed.
"And then in your lust for revenge, you took me away from George and ruined his life. But I wasn't enough, was I? As soon as George married Pauline, you found a way to get her into your bed and you degraded her the same way you degraded me."
"Enough!"
"Hardly," Irene said. "In your lust for solitude to nurse your wounded heart you made a mad man of yourself. In your lust for control you terrorized our children. In your lust for power you hid a fortune from me and from them. Was there ever one moment of one day when you thought about anything but your own desires, Langston? Did you live one minute without some form of lust coloring your choices?"
Her accusations swept him down a hot, relentless stream of memories until finally he crashed against a wall of shame and regret so intractable it left him crumpled on the floor of the cave. Unable to move, he could not escape the penetrating focus of Irene's voice piercing the maelstrom.
"You threw love away every day of your miserable life," she said. "And even in death, you continue to play the wronged man. Your miseries were your own choice, Langston. No one did anything to you. You were, dear husband, the architect of your own agony and oh, how brilliantly, how deliciously you built the edifice we all paid for with our heart's blood. Your damnation is our re-payment for the living hell you put us through and your hell is far from over, Langston. In fact, we've barely begun to explore its depths. Are you man enough to take it, or has one, minor level of damnation put you down for good?"
It was then that he raised his head. Even in the center of a searing storm, Langston Lockwood would not be taunted. He regarded her with blazing eyes, “You’re not so damned pure, Irene,” he snarled. “Or have you forgotten our conversation on your deathbed?”
“I’ve forgotten nothing, Langston,” she said. “Nailing your feet to the floor over the future of the Rocking L was my last and greatest triumph over you. Until now.”
Slowly, laboriously, Langston raised himself on his hands and knees. Then, pushing upward unsteadily, he stood facing her. “You may have me roped, Irene, but don’t think for one damn minute you’ve got me tied.”
“Bravo, Langston,” she said. “I would have been so disappointed not to visit the remaining circles of hell with you. Do you know where we’re going next?”
“Gluttony,” he responded without hesitation. “The third circle of hell is gluttony and you can’t do a damned thing to me there. I was many things in life, but a glutton wasn’t one of them.”
Irene spread her arms wide and regarded him with innocent eyes. “Really, Langston?” she asked. “Here we stand in the great temple of your sensual self-indulgence and you actually have the nerve to tell me you’re not a glutton? As usual, you strike for the lowest common denominator.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You assume gluttony means an over-indulgence in food,” she said. “But there are many forms of addiction. You spent decades in this cave indulging in your gluttonous longing for Alice Browning. A cold wind from the north swept you into this cave and here you built an icy prison of obsession. Everything that followed was born of your inability to let go of your preoccupation -- your addiction -- to what you erected to bolster your lustful fantasies. For you, Langston Lockwood, the circles of hell follow one another in almost lyrical progression. I doubt Lucifer ever dealt with a more accomplished sinner.”
“I’m not afraid of Lucifer,” Langston said, “any more than I’m afraid of you.”
“But you should be afraid,” Irene said, stepping forward until their faces were only inches apart. “Lucifer was the most beautiful of the angels who was cast out of heaven because he would not bow
to the man that God created.”
“I’m too damned old for Sunday school lessons, Irene. Get to the point.”
“Lucifer would not bow to man because he claimed he loved God too much,” Irene said. “Hell isn’t some pit filled with fire, Langson. It’s the absence of your beloved. The absence of Alice Browning, which you denied in this place for more than 50 years. But what if I were to tell you that you were wrong?”
For the first time a glint of real fear flickered through his eyes. Irene saw it. “I see that got your attention,” she said.
“Tell me what you’re talking about,” Langston demanded.
“I will,” Irene answered, “but not until we’ve descended together through every circle of hell.”
To be continued . . .
Also by Juliette Harper
Juliette Harper is also the author of The Jinx Hamilton Mystery Series.
Three books are currently available in that series including:
Witch at Heart
Witch at Odds
Witch at Last
Other works in Juliette Harper’s catalog include
the Selby Jensen Paranormal Mysteries,
the Study Club Mysteries,
the Fermata Post-Apocalyptic Series,
and the Before Series of short-story romances.
Selby Jensen Paranormal Mysteries
Descendants of the Rose
The Study Club Mysteries
You Can’t Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet
About the Author
Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson. As a writer, Juliette's goal is to create strong female characters facing interesting, challenging, painful, and at times comical situations. Refusing to be bound by genre, her primary interest lies in telling good stories.
Six of Juliette's series are currently available. The best-selling Lockwood Legacy, is a nine-book chronicle of the lives of three sisters who inherit a ranch in Central Texas following their father's suicide. The first six novels appeared in 2015: Langston's Daughters, Baxter's Draw, Alice's Portrait, Mandy's Father, Irene’s Gift, and Jenny’s Choice. The seventh, Kate’s Journey, will be available later in 2016.
Descendants of the Rose is the first installment of the Selby Jensen Paranormal Mysteries. The second book, Lost in Room 636, will also be available in 2016. Selby's business card reads "Private Investigator," but to say the least, that downplays her real occupation where business as usual is anything but normal.
And don't miss the hilariously funny "cozy" Study Club Mysteries, a light-hearted spin off of The Lockwood Legacy. Set in the 1960s, this series takes on the often-absurd eccentricities of small town life with good-natured, droll humor. The first book, You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet, is already listed in the Amazon store with You Can't Put a Corpse in a Parade coming soon.
Juliette has also made forays into the arena of short fiction arena with Before Marriage, a light, sweet romance and Langston’s Ghost, a short-story companion to The Lockwood Legacy books.
Fermata: The Winter is the first in a four-novella post-apocalyptic survival series. Five years after an unknown virus divided the world into the living and the dead, four survivors stumble into a winter sanctuary. Brought together by circumstance, but bound by the will to stay alive, a concert pianist and a girl from South Boston forge a friendship and a purpose to cope with their new reality.
Juliette’s newest series, The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries opens with Witch at Heart, a lighter paranormal tale featuring a heroine who possesses powers she never dreamed existed. Jinx has been minding her own business working as a waitress at Tom’s Cafe and keeping up with her four cats. Then she inherits her Aunt Fiona’s store in neighboring Briar Hollow, North Carolina and learns that her aunt has willed her special “powers” to Jinx as well. They say admitting you have a problem is the first step and Jinx has a major problem. She’s a new witch and she has no earthly clue what that means — until she’s given the opportunity to use her magic to do a good thing.
In Book 2, Witch at Odds, Jinx accepts her new life as a witch and is determined to make a success of both that and her new business. However, she has a great deal to learn. As the story unfolds, Jinx sets out to both study her craft and to get a real direction for her aunt’s haphazard approach to inventory. Although Jinx can call on Aunt Fiona’s ghost for help, the old lady is far too busy living a jet set afterlife to be worried about her niece’s learning curve. That sets Jinx up to make a major mistake and to figure out how to set things right again.
By Book 3, Witch at Last, A lot has changed for Jinx in just a few months. After the mishaps that befell her in Witch At Odds, she just wants to enjoy the rest of the summer, but she’s not going to be that lucky. As she’s poised to tell her friends she’s a witch, secrets start popping out all over the place. Between old foes and new locations, Jinx isn’t going to get her peaceful summer, but she may just get an entirely different world.
For more information . . .
@jharperbooks
www.JulietteHarper.com
[email protected]
By Juliette Harper
Copyright 2016, Juliette Harper
Skye House Publishing
License Notes
eBooks are not transferable. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-943516-71-1
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The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories Page 96