Rebecca's Tale
Page 52
We were about to pass the Four Turnings entrance. I leaned forward to the driver. “Stop here, please,” I said, “Stop here for a moment.”
I climbed out and ran toward the gates. Suddenly the light was like diamonds and the air smelled of the future. My heart was beating fast, and my hands were shaking. The sea is inaudible from there, but that morning I could hear it. Had I made the right choice or the wrong one? I had made a beginning, I decided—and to begin felt perilous and joyful. For the first time in my life, I was answerable to no one. I was neither daughter nor wife; from now on, for better or worse, I alone would determine my future.
Beside me, Barker made a low whining sound. I felt the soft fur rise on his neck. I bent to reassure him, and then, as I straightened up, I saw—I’m almost sure I saw—someone moving through the trees toward me. She was very swift. I glimpsed only a passing brightness, a quick glitter of movement—but I felt the burn of her glance and it gave me courage.
I think a final salutation passed between us—I certainly felt it did, though I might have imagined it. I waited. When the air was ordinary again, I returned to the car, and told the driver to take me to the station.
About the Author
SALLY BEAUMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of Destiny. She lives in London, England.
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PRAISE FOR REBECCA’S TALE
“What a savory treat—a mixture of mystery and romance flavored with intelligence, compassion, and wit.”
—Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
“Sally Beauman’s companion to Rebecca is bold and clever…evocative.”
—The Times (London)
“Has more twists than a stick of barley sugar, enough shocks and surprises to keep you on your toes, and it will certainly have you dreaming that you went to Manderley again.”
—Daily Mail (London)
“I found it compelling, absorbing, captivating, haunting—Sally Beauman’s most ambitious and imaginative book so far.”
—Elaine Showalter
“Once you start reading a Beauman novel, you cannot put it down.”
—The Guardian (UK)
“A supremely stylish mystery that offers ingenious solutions to the enigmas posed by the original novel and a beautifully crafted sequel that is magical in its own right.”
—BookPage
“True to the original and enhances it.”
—Entertainment News
“Atmospheric and moody…vividly evocative of place, time, and character, Rebecca’s Tale is a page-turner in its own right.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
ALSO BY SALLY BEAUMAN
Novels
Destiny
Dark Angel
Lovers and Liars
Danger Zones
Sextet
The Sisters Mortland
Nonfiction
The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Two final stanzas, used as epigraph, from “Stings” from Ariel by Sylvia Plath. Copyright © 1963 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Encounter,” used as epigraph, from The Collected Poems, 1931–1987 by Czeslaw Milosz and translated by Robert Hass. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
REBECCA’S TALE. Copyright © 2001 by Sally Beauman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195577-8
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
1
2
3
4
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Sally Beauman
Copyright
About the Publisher