Tender (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Time Travel Romance Book 1) Read online

  But he only smiled at Rachel. “Well, life’s just full of surprises, isn’t it?”

  Then Camisha recognized it, as anyone abused by Max Sheppard would—the tightening in his mouth, the white line that encircled his lips as he reined in his temper.

  A mass of nerves clenched in her stomach, and she thought that where this man was concerned, she might never be more than that girl he’d terrorized so long ago.

  He reached into his pocket and tapped out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, felt around in one pocket, then another.

  “Well, Jesus,” he said between his teeth. “Forgot my damned lighter.” He fished a bill out of his wallet and handed it to Rachel. “Run down to the gift shop and get me one, will you?”

  It wasn’t a request.

  “Dad, you know you can’t smoke in here.”

  “Rachel, I’ve had a hell of a day. Just go.”

  She sighed and left. And Camisha understood what he was doing.

  His gaze shifted to her. White-hot cold.

  After several moments, he shook his head. His breath hissed in through his teeth.

  “Funny, how you think you know a person. Give her an easy life, right alongside your own goddamned daughter, spend a quarter-million dollars sending her to school …”

  He reached for the locket and stared at it thoughtfully, then dropped it back onto the table. The newspaper was fragile in his large, strong hands.

  For twenty-two years, it had forged a balance of distrust between these two people.

  “I take it she hasn’t seen this yet,” he said. “What fortunate timing.”

  He slid his hand into his pocket and withdrew a silver lighter. The lid clinked as he flipped it open; the flick of the flint was crisp; the smell of butane, faint.

  As he dangled the edge of the parched paper just above the flame, as a wisp of smoke promised fire, rage ignited in Camisha. It was the only link between Rachel and the mysteries of her past.

  She snatched it away.

  He grabbed her arm, all traces of feigned civility gone. “I swear, if you breathe one word—”

  “What?” Her voice trembled with anger and fear. “What’ll you do? Hurt my mother? Send me away? Your threats don’t scare me anymore. You can’t hurt me.”

  But she backed away, making a lie of her bravado. At last she was against the open window and, with one hard fist, he bashed out the screen.

  Camisha’s breath caught in her lungs as she felt nothing but the cool evening air behind her. Frantically she grabbed at the window to keep from falling the three floors down.

  “Go ahead and push.” She taunted him with her final thread of courage. “You know there’s only one person who really has any power against you.”

  “And you’ve lied to her about it for twenty years.”

  “Like I’m afraid of what you’ll tell her. It’s time she knows the truth.”

  “Like you said. Only one person knows anything.”

  Camisha shuddered. “You wouldn’t hurt Rachel.”

  “Try me.”

  

  Rachel found a lighter in the gift shop, and on her way through the lobby, she saw Malcolm and Mary. They were ready and waiting to escort her and Camisha to dinner at the old plantation. She would’ve preferred a good night’s sleep, but if dinner at a creepy mansion was what Camisha wanted, then that’s what she was going to get.

  “Just five minutes. We’ll be right down.”

  But when she opened the door to the suite, her mind wouldn’t quite process what she saw. Camisha was falling out the window—and Max was catching her.

  No—Max was pushing her.

  “Dad!”

  When he turned, Rachel stopped short. His hair was disheveled, his eyes wild with rage. In a moment it struck her. This man was a stranger. She didn’t know the first thing about him.

  “What are you doing?”

  He stared at her, his breath coming hard. “You’re coming home with me, Rachel.”

  She glanced at Camisha, whose eyes glistened with the aftershock of fear. “Don’t go with him. Something’ll happen to you, Rae. He knows you can—”

  “Now.”

  “Rachel, you want to know why this place looks so familiar to you? Smells so familiar to you?” Camisha’s eyes shone with emotion. “Because you were born here. You grew up here. Your parents weren’t drug addicts. They didn’t abuse you, and they didn’t abandon you. They were murdered.”

  Rachel felt the foundation of her very world shatter.

  “The police found you a month after it happened, hiding in an abandoned farmhouse. And Rachel…” Tears ran down her dark face. “There were two other little girls with you. A three-year-old, and a baby. You—you have two sisters, Rae. And you took care of them, all by yourself, for a month. When you were just six years old.”

  This couldn’t be happening. It was a horrible dream. It couldn’t be happening. The man before her had raised her and given her everything any girl ever dreamed of—except a father’s love.

  Why? Why had he adopted her, in the first place, if he didn’t want her? And—even worse—why had he lied to her for twenty years?

  For only one reason: Because the truth would destroy him.

  “Call the police, Camisha.”

  Max reached for the phone and held it out. “Go ahead.”

  A chill stole over Rachel as he spoke, almost pleasantly. “Matter of fact, I phoned an old friend down here before I came. Warned him my daughter had stopped seeing the therapist some time ago…and that the doctor warned me she was suffering from acute delusions.”

  Defeat closed around Rachel. How well he knew her. The therapist she’d seen since she’d known Max—who’d never taken her an inch closer to recalling her lost memories—held more power over her than anyone, except Max. At least in her mind. When she’d stopped seeing him during her freshman year in college, at the urging of Camisha, she’d felt free.

  Freed from Max.

  “No call?” Max queried. “Then I have one to make.”

  He pressed one button.

  “Yes, operator. This is Max Sheppard, and I’m in my daughter’s room. It seems there’s been an unfortunate accident. She hasn’t been feeling well lately, and…I’m afraid she’s made quite a mess of the place. Of course, I’ll be responsible for the damages, long as we can keep things quiet. And I’d appreciate it if you’d get Doctor Patrick Malone on the phone. He’s in Dallas … Yes. I’ll wait.”

  Camisha’s pain had given way to anger, and she grabbed her purse. Grabbed the locket off the coffee table. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Max covered the mouthpiece. “I warned you before, and I’m warning you now: There’s no place you can hide.”

  Lazily, Max reached for the bottle of champagne. Rachel flinched as it crashed into the antique mirror above the fireplace.

  As the two young women fled the room, Rachel glanced back over her shoulder.

  She saw her splintered image reflected in the shattered mirror.

  Chapter Five

  Rachel was numb.

  She sat beside Camisha in the back seat of a perfectly preserved old Buick. Malcolm Henderson was at the wheel.

  They’d turned to the old couple because, quite honestly, they’d had nowhere else to turn. Now, they were making their way down a narrow, serpentine road through the woods. She didn’t expect to be much of a dinner guest, but neither Mary nor Malcolm cared. Well aware of the threat presented by her father—how she loathed still granting him that tender name—she’d explained it to them, haltingly, uncomfortable at accepting sanctuary from these two she’d belittled. They’d welcomed her without question.

  In her palm, she clutched the necklace Camisha had given her. It was a silver, heart-shaped locket, perhaps an inch and a half square. Camisha might have told her it was a photograph of her unknown mother; it was real, and she held it, but it raised no emotion in her. She pressed the tiny clasp and leaned forward, squinting to see in the panel
lights.

  Where she should have seen two photographs, she saw only the empty shell of the locket: twin silver hearts. She found an engraving on the back: As time is, so beats our hearts—tender, immortal, forever.

  “Do you remember it?” Camisha’s question was quick, urgent.

  “No.”

  “Your daddy was raising holy hell when he couldn’t find it the next day. Mama tore that house apart looking for it.” Somberly, she went on, “She said you cried so much when you first came to live there that nothing could make you go to sleep. I thought you wanted your locket. I’d sneak into your room and put it in your hands, then sneak in in the next morning and get it again.”

  Rachel waited, spellbound, remembering those endless nights when nothing would soothe her fearful grief. When she knew she’d lost something—but didn’t know what.

  “I found the clipping when I found the locket.” Camisha gulped. “When I saw your daddy, I told him I saw your picture in the newspaper, and I asked him where your sisters were. When I said that, he grabbed me and told me that if I ever breathed a word of it to anyone…” She hesitated, and her gaze was blank. “He said he’d kill my mother.”

  “He what?”

  “I told Mama, but she said it wasn’t any of our business. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to find a job if she made him mad. His threats changed over the years, but he knew what he was doing. By the time I was old enough not to be afraid of him, I was ashamed to admit to you that I’d known it for so long.”

  Rachel stroked her shoulders as she cried. “Oh, Camisha. You know it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  The day had been a nightmare, and she wanted nothing more than sleep—if sleep was to be found. For the moment, she welcomed the refuge of a night in the Virginia countryside. In the morning, maybe things would look clearer.

  They turned down a dirt lane, and visibility dropped almost to nothing as a torrent of rain slashed through the night.

  Suddenly, black iron gates loomed before them. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and as they drove through the gate, lightning flashed, riveting her gaze on a striking sight no more than a hundred feet from the driveway.

  A whispered word sprang reflexively from her heart but remained unspoken; unforgettable silence held the word captive, as if the shrine before her were a castle rather than ruins.

  Rosalie.

  A mere reminder of what once had been an immense Palladian mansion remained in its place, rain pounding its naked interior. Frightening and majestic, grand and pathetic, menacing and tender. Three massive chimneys stood along the single remaining back wall, which rose three stories from the Virginia soil where it had been built—how long ago?

  The hollows of fireplaces—nine of them, she counted in a glance—were arranged on the wall below the three chimneys. For all the flawlessly created beauty of the governor’s palace in Williamsburg, it couldn’t compare with the emotion that rose up within her as she beheld the remains of what she knew, in the depths of her heart, was once a home that had known love. Though no one had lived here for years—perhaps centuries—the stark, primitive vigor of the home was a palpable thing, rising against the turbulent sky as if in silent praise.

  Rosalie.

  She recalled the gardener at the old house in town.

  Emily died in a fire at Rosalie, back in the middle of the eighteenth century.

  “Uh,” Camisha said, “looks like no one’s home.”

  Rachel’s breath left her in a relieved chuckle.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mary said, unamused. “Lottie’s house is up ahead.”

  They continued down the winding path, arriving at the front of another old house. The Federal style home was inevitably modest by comparison—a two-story home with black shutters flanking the eight windows on its face.

  The cold rain pelted them as they hurried to the front door and knocked. A maid admitted them and they were ushered through a high-ceilinged entryway.

  The hall was perfectly appointed with period antiques. Ancient portraits lined the long gallery above a wide staircase. In the drawing room, candles lit a massive chandelier, and an old woman sat beside a crackling fire. She rose with some effort, leaning on a polished hickory walking stick as she hobbled forward. She was small; her dress was pale rose, covered with a white lace shawl. The wig she wore was slightly askew, and compassion stirred in Rachel as the woman focused alert blue eyes on her.

  “So. You’re here at last.” Her voice was a solemn rustle, like a page from an old hymnbook. “Welcome to Rosalie.”

  Mary and Malcolm joined them in the dining hall, and Rachel was distracted from the nightmare they’d left in Williamsburg, as that nagging familiarity she had come to welcome returned.

  The aromas of the food reminded Rachel they hadn’t eaten since that morning. Dish after dish was uncovered, an array of the gourmet and the everyday; okra and stewed tomatoes, home-grown string beans, scalloped corn, oyster casserole, baked ham, and a memorable crab soup.

  For a moment, Rachel was distracted even from the feast spread before her. Something about the meal roused an uncomfortable awareness in her. A familiarity, as if it were something she’d known long ago. The sensation disturbed her, and she dismissed it with some effort. Afterward, they retired to a drawing room for tea.

  Rachel sat on a loveseat beside the fragile old woman who owned Rosalie. She sipped her tea. “Mrs. Chesterfield, we caught a glimpse of some ruins when we came in.”

  “That’s what remains of the original house, built in 1741 by Grey Trelawney. I’m the oldest living Trelawney. My brother’s widow lives in Williamsburg.”

  Her words reminded Rachel of the little girl she’d seen. “I saw the Trelawney home. I saw…”

  “You saw Emily. She’s Grey’s daughter.”

  Rachel noted her present tense, but she was too charmed by the woman to correct her. Lottie gestured toward the wall. “The gentleman in that portrait is Emily’s grandfather. Clara gave it to me some years ago.”

  Rachel gazed at the life-sized portrait; a perfect eighteenth-century Virginia gentleman. A white wig brushed an elegant black coat. A snowy cravat was knotted at his neck, and in one hand he poised a pearl-handled walking stick. Oyster-colored breeches were buttoned just below the knee, and stockings were stitched with silver threads that matched the shade of his eyes. He was an attractive and arrogant man. And he wasn’t very happy.

  “That portrait was commissioned around 1760. Thomas Trelawney was a remarkable man. He lived into his eighties, a long life enjoyed by only the wealthy of those days. He was born the son of a barrister, of a fine Welsh family, in 1699, the year Williamsburg became the capital of Virginia. He arrived on the shores of Virginia not yet twenty years old and studied law at William and Mary.

  “Over the years he prospered and built the home you saw in town. Later in life he was a successful planter as well as a member of the House of Burgesses.

  “Grey, the man who built Rosalie, held a bitter hatred for his father. Both Grey and Emily died in the fire that destroyed Rosalie.”

  “That’s terrible,” Camisha said.

  “Yes. We believe Emily remains behind at her grandfather’s house now because she was never allowed to visit him during her short life.”

  She felt an odd kinship with the son of the planter who’d lived so long ago; in the portrait of Thomas Trelawney, she saw the arrogance of Max Sheppard.

  “I understand you’ve had an unpleasant afternoon,” Lottie said. “I hope you’ll stay the night with us. We’d love to have you. Rosalie has a way of making you forget the trivialities and trials of the modern day.”

  “You’re right there, Lottie,” Malcolm said. “Sometimes I think I’m allergic to the twenty-first century. Prefer the nineteenth, myself, but the air’s clearer in the eighteenth. Go back much farther than that, and things get a little bloody for my taste.”

  Camisha and Rachel laughed out loud at his dry humor, but he only stared back at them—as if not get
ting his own joke.

  “Thank you, Lottie,” Rachel said. “I have to admit, there’s something about this place—so remote, so quiet. So peaceful.”

  “That it is,” Camisha said.

  Rachel spent most of her life fighting traffic to get here and there, and the rest of it being places she didn’t care that much about to begin with.

  “We live very simply. It’s good for the soul.”

  “I think I could spend weeks here without missing the outside world,” Rachel said.

  “What did you put in this tea?” Camisha teased Lottie. “This isn’t the Rachel I know.”

  It was true. Maybe it was the revelation of finding a thread of her own roots. Maybe it was the warm coziness of the house, while the storm raged outside. But for the first time in her life, she felt as if she belonged.

  “Do you mean that, Rachel?”

  She glanced at Mary. “Yes. It’s a wonderful, charming old place.”

  Camisha said, “You’d be bored in three hours without a to-do list.”

  “But she would be safe. In fact, it’s the only place she can be safe. The past. Don’t you agree, dear?”

  “The past,” Malcolm repeated thoughtfully. “A place that existed long before you were ever born. Long before the events that are buried within your memory ever took place.”

  Well, it was a bit of a melodramatic description of the remote old plantation, but Malcolm had shown himself to be a little passionate when he was stirred up.

  “You mean, stay here at Rosalie? What about the press conference?”

  “The press conference? Let’s review the facts, shall we?” Mary set her cup and saucer aside. “Your father is convinced that you pose a threat to him, personally and professionally.”

  “Miss van Kirk, I can’t remember a thing. I have no idea what he’s afraid of.”

  “Fact number two. For all these years, he’s told you that your parents abandoned you. But he lied, counting on your lost memory and Camisha’s compassion to protect him.”

  Rachel couldn’t speak at that reminder.