Emily's Secret

by Jill Jones

  Incredibly, she still didn’t move. If anything, her body felt even more solid against his. Alex continued his finger dance along her back with one hand, while employing the other in similar strokes alongside her cheek and down the inside of her arm, coming to rest at last at the roundness of her breast. He held his breath, feeling need surging painfully in his groin.

  Knowing he had to stop this.

  Now.

  Her breathing was light and even. Her head rested against his shoulder. The nipple that had stood erect so invitingly earlier beneath the wet sweater was now soft beneath his inquiring touch. It was as if she felt none of his ministrations.

  Which she didn’t, he realized with dismay.

  Selena, innocent as a schoolgirl in the white muslin smock, was sound asleep.

  January 21, 1848

  Today Charlotte has told Papa about our books. We decided it must be done, for last week Charlotte saw an old clergyman she knows reading Jane Eyre, and in it he recognized Cowan Bridge School and that infamous Mr. Brocklehurst. It would have been only a matter of time until Papa heard about the books, we supposed, and we decided it would be better for us to tell him than for him to find out we had been hiding our endeavors from him. At any rate, he seems pleased. Branwell remains uninformed about our work, and it is our desire for it to continue as such.

  February 18, 1848

  I have written Mr. Newby about this new novel which I am struggling with. He seems eager to see it and has written that he would indeed be interested in publishing it. Charlotte upbraids me for my loyalty to the man, for he has not done for Anne’s and my books what Smith Elder has for Charlotte’s. What she doesn’t understand is that at times I find her domineering attitude overbearing, and I would rather remain with my own publisher, independent from her, for then she is less likely to attempt to impose her will upon me.

  The sun edged steadily up over the distant moors, streaming golden morning light through the windows of the loft studio and directly into the eyes of the man asleep on the sofa. Alex awoke, dazed and disoriented. The fire had died and the room was chilly. He was dressed in a ridiculous sort of nightshirt. On the table nearby stood an empty brandy snifter, a half-empty wineglass, and the remains of last night’s supper. Two cats napped on the windowsill. The dog was nowhere in sight.

  And neither was Selena.

  It all came back to Alex in a hangover-filtered haze. He groaned and rubbed his eyes and made his way into the bathroom. A splash of cold water on his face only slightly diluted the fuzziness of his consciousness. He wished he had a toothbrush.

  He found his clothes still draped on the back of the chair where he’d hung them to dry. They were a little stiff and less than clean, but he was happy to put them on again, and he dressed quickly. Where was Selena? he wondered, running her brush through his own thick dark hair. He felt suddenly as if he were an intruder.

  Alex went to the window and looked out onto the drive below. There was no hint of last night’s tempest other than beaded drops on the two automobiles parked there. He couldn’t see into the house, but he surmised Selena had gone to dress.

  Selena. He felt the stirrings of arousal just thinking about the night before, how Selena’s feminine form had felt beneath his caress. Thank God she’d fallen asleep, he thought. He was certain he would have done a really stupid thing if she hadn’t. Hightower, he admonished himself, for a smart guy, you sure are making some asinine moves.

  With a sigh, he turned and tried to decide what to do next. Collecting his socks from the back of the chair, he was in the middle of donning one of them when he looked up at the wall of paintings. It was full daylight now, and the room was the brightest he’d ever seen it illuminated. Each scrap of the painted note seemed to flutter at him in invitation from the canvases.

  Hastily, he finished putting on his socks and shoes and went over to where the earliest painting hung. He read the clearly printed lettering on the canvas, and his heart started to beat a little faster. He glanced over his shoulder, as if what he was doing was somehow clandestine. He remembered how Selena had suddenly clammed up when he’d asked her about the source of these images, and he guessed she’d not welcome his snooping this morning. But the tiny words called to him anyway. He read the second and third notes, and hastily moved on to read the others while he had the chance. Suddenly, one of the messages claimed his total concentration, and he stopped in his tracks, adrenaline screaming through his body.

  One word jumped out at him and chased his imagination like the large yellow wolf dog that had pursued him in a dream he only vaguely remembered.

  Keeper!

  Keeper was the name of Emily’s faithful dog, which, according to Brontë legend, had howled for weeks after she died. A large yellow mastiff.

  Keeper.

  Capitalized.

  Of course, it could be the beginning of a sentence, but what kind of sentence would start with Keeper? Keeper of the keys? Keeper of the kingdom? Or was it Keeper, a dog, in mid-sentence? Alex stared at the handwriting, knowing at gut level he had stumbled onto something far more important than a word game. That was Emily’s handwriting. Keeper was Emily’s dog. This was Emily’s territory.

  And something that Selena kept painting over and over had to do with Emily Jane Brontë.

  Alex looked around, desperate for something to write on and with. He found a ballpoint pen and a small notepad on the counter in the kitchenette. He raced back to the painting and copied what he saw, exactly as the words fell together:

  Keeper

  Time. I kn

  opening

  gazing

  for tha

  bor

  De

  His ears were ringing with the aftereffects of the brandy, and his pulse pounded in acknowledgment that he shouldn’t be doing this without Selena’s permission. Why didn’t he just wait until she returned? he asked himself from the small corner of his mind that seemed to still retain reason.

  Because, the much larger, madder mind replied, what if she denied him access to the message? This was no ordinary missive. He was certain of it. And she had clearly been hesitant to talk about it before. He felt compelled to snatch as much as he could at the moment and explain later.

  He went back to the first painting and scribbled its contents hastily onto the notepad:

  and

  s o’er, I weary

  ere we were

  all meet our

  ffering

  to

  “Sounds like part of a poem,” he’d remarked to Selena when he’d first seen it. A part of one of Emily’s poems? Without remorse, he moved on to the next painting and captured the contents of the letter fragment painted there:

  fully, sh

  wish only

  put an end

  brought upon

  use pay for

  y foolish and

  ear not death

  in death I shal

  put an end. His mind began playing a theme it already knew well.

  ear not death. Fear not death? Alex was certain Emily had no fear of death.

  in death I shal. Shall what? What!? Alex’s breath came in short, harsh gasps. He felt as if electricity coursed through his veins.

  Where in hell did Selena come up with these images?

  Torn between continuing his theft of the words on her canvases and calling to her and demanding to know what this was all about, Alex turned around to find himself facing the image of fury itself.

  Selena stood in the doorway, a cup of steaming coffee in each hand. Her face was white with rage, and he knew she’d seen him scribbling her words as fast and furiously as possible. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  Alex stared at her, hardly seeing the woman for the potential literary discovery she stood for. “What are these…these messages?” He spoke in a low voice, straining to control his excitement, his frustration.

  “Get away from my paintings. Nobody gave you permission to trespass there.”

 
; “Trespass! I could have sworn I was an invited guest here last night.”

  Selena stormed into the room, fully clothed now in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She banged the cups down on the counter, slopping coffee onto the laminated plastic. “My mistake, I can assure you, if this is the way you show your gratitude.”

  Alex stared at her, not believing her vitriolic response. Where was the softly welcoming woman of the night before?

  “What is it that’s eating you about these paintings?” he demanded. “These messages? Every time I ask you about them, you go ballistic.”

  “What I paint is none of your business,” she hissed, glaring at him, then added, “unless you’ve come up with a buyer for them.”

  Alex grimaced and replied in a low but steady voice, “No, I haven’t come up with a buyer, but—”

  “Then it’s time for you to go.” Her voice was sharp and cold and brooked no argument. Alex clenched his fists, crumpling the note paper. Yeah, he agreed silently. It’s time to go.

  Chapter 20

  Selena watched from the high north windows as the handsome, dark-haired man in rather rumpled clothing climbed into the antique Jaguar and slammed the door behind him. Her entire body quaked, but she wasn’t sure whether it was from anger, fear, or something even darker, something that lay buried at the depths of her soul. She picked up Peaches and went to the couch, hurting clear down to her fingertips.

  She was angry with herself, and mortified at what apparently had happened the night before. She’d awakened sometime around five o’clock, just as the first faint rays of dawn began to prove to the world that the storm had subsided. Her head was splitting, and she was lying half naked next to Alex, her smock barely covering the essentials. His arm was thrown protectively over her, but the shawl that had served as a coverlet earlier in the night had crawled down their entwined legs, leaving them both exposed.

  She had remained still for a moment, suppressing her first inclination, which was to jump up and run. Slowly, she’d regained her composure, and with extreme care not to awaken him, she’d disengaged herself from his unconscious embrace and moved a cautious few feet toward the door. The room was cold, and since she hadn’t had the good sense to dry her own clothes by the fire, she’d decided to make a dash for the house. Domino was at her side, awiggle to escape to the out-of-doors, and she’d petted him, praying he would remain silent. Turning to make sure Alex was asleep, her mouth had fallen open.

  He lay on one side, fully stretched out, and the open-fronted smock was gaping in a rather major strategic area, leaving nothing concerning his masculinity to her imagination.

  Selena had turned and, with Domino ahead of her, fled down the stairs. What had she done last night? What had they done? Surely she hadn’t had that much to drink. Surely she would have known if he’d tried anything with her body. She’d run into the house and slammed the door behind her, dropping the bolt into place. Leaning against the door, she’d fought to catch her breath.

  And her wits.

  Hugging herself in the chill morning air, Selena had dropped her head to her chest and closed her eyes. Nothing she could remember indicated that Alex had violated her trust in any way. They had been sitting together, he wanting to talk about something. And then the full day and the fresh air and sunshine and the run home in the rain, and the red wine…especially the wine, had taken their toll on her energy.

  The last she could remember, she was leaning against his side, relishing his warmth and the strength of his arm around her.

  That was all. That had to be all that had happened.

  On weak knees, Selena had gone into the kitchen and swallowed two aspirin. In the bedroom, she found her long flannel nightgown on a hook inside the armoire. She’d pulled it on over the smock and dug for socks in a drawer. Thus fortified against her headache and the cool morning, she had pulled back the covers on the bed and climbed between the icy sheets, huddling knees to chest for warmth.

  The last thought she’d had before falling asleep again was of the long, mostly naked masculine body whose warmth had sheltered her for most of the night.

  Now, Selena stroked the cat and gazed absently into the ashes of the long-dead fire. Behind her, thrown casually over the back of the sofa, was the smock that Alex had worn so good-naturedly. Selena reached for it and brought it to her face, inhaling the scent of the man she had spent the night with. The man who had come to her rescue for Matka’s party. The man she had just railed at like a madwoman.

  Why?

  Holding the smock in a bundle next to her heart, Selena stood up again and went to where he had been studying her paintings. He’d seen something in them he hadn’t seen before, something that put a hard gleam in his eye. It was the letter, she was certain of it. He’d asked her point-blank about the messages, as he called them. “What are these messages?”

  Selena stared at one of the painted fragments. What were they, indeed? Parts of an ancient letter. Remnants of a curse. Obviously, something Alex wanted badly enough to attempt to copy them behind her back. Selena shivered. Was that his only interest in her? Was he just using her to get access to the letter?

  It didn’t make sense, but the thought sent a searing pain through her heart.

  The alien sound of a telephone ringing jangled Selena out of her dark thoughts. She jumped, unaccustomed to the instrument’s intrusion. It rang again, but she did not hurry to answer. Only one person knew her number, and she was in no mood at the moment to speak to Tom Perkins. He was insistent, however, and on the eighth ring she finally picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “A phone won’t do you any good unless you use it, you know.” Tom’s voice grated in her ear.

  “What do you want, Tom?” Selena hoped she didn’t sound rude, but since the debacle at the inn the night of the Harrington gala, she found it increasingly difficult to be civil to him.

  “I’ve been doing some checking on that Hightower fellow. The client he claims to represent is not anyone known to my contacts in the States.”

  Selena frowned. “So?”

  “So nothing. It may just be some obscure collector out in the boondocks. You never know about the Yanks. I wouldn’t hold out much hope that anything will develop on that front, but in case it does, you know to—”

  “Yes, Tom,” Selena said, disgusted at his greedy possessiveness. “I know to call you right away. Don’t worry, I won’t go behind your back. You’ll get your commission,” she added dryly.

  “Now, Selena, don’t get upset with me. It’s just that you…all artists, rather, can be rather naive when it comes to sales and promoting your work. That’s why I am so insistent that you work only through me. It is in your best interest.”

  My best interest? Selena doubted her agent gave a damn about her interests. He was a user, and she the usee.

  Unfortunately, he was right about one thing. She was naive. And she knew she needed him. At least for a while longer.

  “Thanks for the call, Tom. I have to go now.”

  “Wait, wait before you ring off, love, and do tell me how those commissions are coming along?”

  “They’re coming, Tom. They’re coming. I’ll let you know when I’m finished.” Selena hung up on Tom unceremoniously before he could inquire further. She didn’t want to give him any hint that she hadn’t been able to finish even one of the four.

  Leaning back against the sofa, Selena felt her thoughts spiraling downward. She didn’t like Tom, and she liked even less what he’d just told her, perhaps because his insinuations only amplified the doubts that were beginning to throw shadows across her mind. Going to the table in front of the fireplace, she picked up the dishes and glasses that loitered there from the indoor picnic of the night before.

  A night that seemed almost as if it never happened. Should never have happened.

  She carried the dishes to the sink and washed them absently, her thoughts on the well-built American with the hint of a grin ever-present in his deep gray eyes. Who
was he and what was he up to? And why in God’s name had she let him get so dangerously close?

  She stuffed the cork back into the second bottle of wine, distressed to note that it was more than half empty. But on second thought, Selena decided that maybe it had been for the best that she’d had too much to drink and dozed off. Her face grew warm as she recalled the intimacy of their bodies when she’d disentangled herself in the cold, predawn hours. What would have happened last night, she wondered, if she hadn’t nodded off?

  She swallowed hard. She would have made the Major Mistake. Her skin tingled at the thought, and Selena knew she could no longer trust herself when she was with Alexander Hightower.

  And after his strange behavior this morning, she felt she couldn’t trust him, either. With any luck, she thought with a deep sigh, her tirade had sent him off for good, and she wouldn’t have to worry about Alex Hightower again. Why, she questioned herself over and over again, had she so overreacted when she saw what he was doing? Was it because he seemed so “caught in the act”? What act? Writing down the words from her paintings wasn’t exactly grand theft. And why did she give a flip if he wanted those words? Was it because she feared that somehow he would learn about the curse? That it would affect him? Them?

  Damn it all, Selena thought, throwing the smock onto the sofa. For once, she wished she had a best friend, someone she could call and talk to about all of this. Someone with whom she could share her concerns about Alexander Hightower. Her concerns, and her dangerous attraction.

  But she had no one she could confide in, except her grandmother, and she wasn’t sure she could tell Matka about her mixed feelings for Alex. Even though Gran loved her and would understand, still, she was…Gran.

  And besides, the old woman always related matters of the heart to the curse, and Selena simply didn’t want to hear it.