Obsession (20 page)

She quickly looked around at the cottages surrounding her father’s house. Dark, too, were their homes, with little light shimmering beyond their windows. And there as well glowed the yellow crosses upon the doors, symbolizing advancing death.

Resistance roused inside her. She had hoped to never set eyes upon the vicar again. He had branded her a harlot long before she understood the term. She, as pure as a child could want to be, was branded a harlot simply because she had been born female.

Had he brought her here for one last soul-lashing sermon? Would he curse her soul to Hell with his dying breath?

Hell could not possibly be any more frightening or painful than Menson.

With a deep breath she ventured forth, her boots crunching into the snow as she moved to the old gate that swung and creaked with each biting gust of wind.

Along the eroding gray stone wall surrounding the cottage, the ravens lined up like black-suited soldiers, feathers fluffed against the freeze until a sudden billowing of her cloak made them take to the sky in a great cloud of cawing and thumping wings.

She watched as they circled the house, round and round, and the unpleasant realization shimmered up her spine that they were waiting…waiting for the Vicar of Huddersfield to die.

Waiting to escort his soul to perdition.

She did not knock, but shoved open the door and entered the room where a single lamp was lit upon a table, a meager flickering that did little to warm the air.

The cottage was just as she remembered it: a little room with whitewashed walls and a partially carpeted floor, several simple but comfortable chairs, two of which faced the fire, and two at the table where they had eaten their meals in total silence. Against the north wall stood a case clock, the hands indicating a few minutes past seven o’clock. Nearby was a cupboard, exhibiting the simple dishes that had been her mother’s most prized possessions—delicate white china that had been given to her by her mother upon her passing.

To the right of the little room in which Maria stood frozen motionless, more by dread than by cold, was a narrow staircase. The banisters had been removed once the vicar discovered that his children found pleasure in sliding down them. Up the stairs were three cramped, windowless chambers for sleep, each with a bedstead and chest of drawers.

The stench of death assaulted her, the odor of dust and decay. She quickly covered her nose with one hand and focused on the bed that had been moved close to the hearth.

Hateful emotions rose in her at the sight of her father, his pale, wasted body and hands so frail they appeared skeletal. And his eyes—pits of fear and despair—fixed upon her face with such emotion, she wanted to flee the cottage.

No true man of faith would appear so frightened of death!

With a wheezing breath, he clamped one cold hand around her wrist, and whispered, “Forgive me.”

19

T
HE DOOR CLOSED BEHIND HER, AND SHE WAS
alone with the man whom she had so loathed and feared for most of her life.

“Maria, you came,” he said, struggling for his next breath. “I prayed that you would.”

She twisted her arm free and backed away, clutching her cloak closely to her body, chilled by the cold and the apparition of death she could sense hovering near his emaciated body.

One gnarled hand lifted toward her, and she shrank away. He had never lifted a hand in kindness toward her, her mother, or Paul, and she felt overwhelmed by his hypocrisy. Her hands curled into fists and she fought the overwhelming need to turn and leave the house, to allow him to die alone in his misery.

“Closer, girl. You have no need to fear me any longer. Can you not see that I’m wasted?” He coughed and blood bubbled through his lips. “Closer. Near me. Stand near me. I haven’t long…”

“Why now?” she demanded, refusing to move nearer. “Why have you not given a moment’s thought of me the last years? Did you not realize that I—”

“Forgive me. ’Tis all I ask.”

He blinked at her, limp, wheezing, a bloodless cadaver with slack mouth and eyes grown dim of life.

“Forgive you?” She shook her head. “You cry out to me to come to you, knowing you would place my own life in jeopardy?”

“I could not die alone.”

“Where are your parishioners now?” she demanded. “Did they finally see you for the cruel bastard that you are?”

His eyes narrowed briefly, and he turned his head away from her. “Cruel child.”

“Child? I’m no longer a child, sir. Far from it.” Despite her resolve, she neared the bed. “Look at me.”

“Nay, I won’t. The hate in your eyes pains me. I ask for your forgiveness only. To die with a clear conscience.”

“A clear conscience? Have you prostrated your pitiful body upon the graves of your son and wife and begged their forgiveness? Have you ever given them a moment’s thought, offered a prayer since you lay their poor bodies in the ground? Have you recited even a solitary monody for their passing?”

“Cruel, cruel girl.”

“Aye.” Maria nodded as she stood over him. “I am cruel, sir. If I tell you of my own living hell the last years, would you shake your fist at me and declare my torment God’s judgment for my childhood disobedience? For placing my own young body between you and my mother to protect her from your beatings?”

She took his gaunt face in her trembling hand and forced it around so she could look into his eyes.

“Tell me, vicar. How did you come to know that I was at Thorn Rose?”

Silence, then…

“ ’Twas from where you last wrote your mother, girl.”

Salterdon’s words revived in her brain—that he had come to Huddersfield to search for her after she’d left the manor.

Lies? All lies?

She turned away and sank into the little ladder-back chair near the bed. Exhaustion and despair lay like lead weight upon her shoulders.

The memory of the Lady Edwina, swollen with His Grace’s child, rose before her mind’s eye, causing her throat to tighten.

Somewhere, she might never know where, the body of her own child lay buried with nary a single tear shed for her wee soul.

The minutes turned to hours. The cold intensified and the embers within the hearth grew gray with ash.

She listened to the terrible wheezing of her father’s lungs, cringed at his spasms each time he coughed.

At last, she wearily roused and moved to the bed.

How shrunken and pitiful he looked, and the anger that had gripped her so fiercely began to melt from her heart. She touched his hand, and did not shiver as his fingers curled around hers.

Closing her eyes, she reached out to Paul in her mind. Yet…there was nothing. No whisper of a response. No heralding of angels, as there had been for Salterdon’s soul.

“Maria?”

Opening her eyes, she turned to look into the familiar face of John Rees.

“Dear Merciful God in Heaven!” he exclaimed, his face white with shock.

John Rees—the man with whom she had once been infatuated. Adored with the naive purity of a virgin who wept into her pillow at night, knowing that his dedication to God and church would forever override his love for a mortal woman.

Once she would have done anything to win him away from his obsessive devotion to God, so she should have been overjoyed when he unexpectedly turned up at Thorn Rose, prostrating himself upon love’s altar, pleading with her to leave the manor to join him in matrimony, even though he knew her soul had been tainted by lust for His Grace. John Rees had loved her enough to forgive her transgressions, yet she had turned him away.

She had known then that the emotion she’d once believed was love for John Rees had not held the depth of passion that a woman feels for a man with whom she yearns to spend the remainder of her life.

Maria forced a smile and lifted her chin. “Aye, John. ’Tis I.”

He fell back heavily against the closed door, his eyes wide as he covered his mouth with one hand and murmured, “Oh my God. My dear God. I thought…where have you come from, lass?”

“Thorn Rose.”

His gaze raked her, and he shook his head. “Nay, I think not. ’Tis Maria’s ghost whom I see, come to spirit her father away. Yes? Yes!”

He fell to his knees and clasped his hands together, muttering rapid prayers as tears poured forth.

She rushed to him, dropped to her knees before him, and gently cupped her hands around his. “Hush now, John. Hush. I’m no ghost. Flesh and blood I am; I vow it!”

Again, he looked into her eyes, his body trembling. “It isn’t possible. I shan’t believe it. Yet…”

His fingers touched her face, traced the line of her cheek. She knew his thoughts; he needn’t speak them.

No longer was she the rosy-cheeked innocent whom he had once proclaimed the most beautiful woman to grace God’s earth. Aye, he must surely think her a wraith, gaunt and shorn as she was.

No longer a beauty.

No longer an innocent.

No longer the woman worthy of his adoration.

Her own tears rose at the gentleness of his touch. How long had it been since someone had so kindly stroked her? She pressed her cheek against his palm and savored its warmth, which rushed like fire to her heart.

“I cannot believe it,” he whispered. “I don’t understand—”

“I’ll tell you all, John. ’Tis a sordid and sorry tale, and I fear you shall despise me even more when I’m finished.”

“Despise you?” John swallowed and clutched her hands in his. “Maria, there is no sin you might have committed that I and God would not forgive.”

“Very well, then. Come near while I see to my father.”

A
S HER FATHER SLEPT, SHE CONFESSED ALL TO
John, once her father’s prized curate—a young man with kindness and dreams of saving the soul of every poor, sinful wretch in England. As he had all of their lives, he regarded her with compassion and love. And desire.

Aye, it was there yet in his brown eyes. A lingering demon that he had fought to vanquish since he’d grown old enough to experience the sensation of lust and desire. Alas, her father had skewed his mind regarding the love between a man and woman.

Too often she had heard the vicar’s terms of deprivation and sins of the flesh echoed in John’s comments, and she had shivered at the thought of ending up like her mother. Mary Ashton had once been a vibrant, beautiful lass, full of love and desire for a husband who had ultimately crucified her—deemed her a harlot, and their own children seeds of the demon lust.

They huddled close to the meager fire as Maria finished her confession—all of it.

How she had surrendered so immorally to His Grace.

How the dowager duchess had entombed her in the asylum.

How she had given birth to Sarah and lapsed into total madness when the child was taken from her—and ultimately died.

He listened without speaking, the tears as she informed him that her precious child had died striking him like a blow. He shuddered, groaned, and buried his handsome face in his hands.

“My God, my God,” he repeated, his body shaking with the sobs he tried desperately to contain. “My darling Maria. How you’ve suffered. I would give up my own life to remove the horror you’ve suffered from your mind and heart.”

She cradled his head upon her shoulder and stroked his hair. “ ’Tis done, John. Aye, I suffered, but ’twas nothing more than I deserved, succumbing as I did to His Grace.”

“I should have tried harder to make you love me.”

“Sweet, gentle John. It would never have worked between us. I am what I am, and you—”

“Stop. Stop! I won’t allow you to berate yourself. Not before me or before God. And not in your father’s house.”

He stood abruptly and paced around the room like one caged, thrusting his hands through his hair one moment, then fisting them at his sides as he moved to her father’s bed and looked down into the wasted man’s still face.

“Don’t dare give the son of a bitch that satisfaction,” he said through his teeth as he turned his dark gaze back on Maria.

She did not know John Rees in that moment. Nay, she did not recognize him, the gentle and Godly man whose face was now flushed, his mouth a sneer.

For an instant, a mere instant, she saw a flash of madness in his eyes. Tumult and turmoil.

Jumping to her feet, she cried, “Please! I’ve forgiven him, John. And so must you.”

“Forgiveness? Ha!” He spun away. “There have been times over the last years, Maria, that I aspired to kill him myself.”

“John!”

“God forgive me.”

He stared at the ceiling, tears coursing down his cheeks. “I have prostrated myself at His altar more times than I care to recall, begging Him to forgive the horrible thoughts regarding your father that have gnawed away at my brain and conscience.

“Aye, I cursed him.

“I cursed him for ruining me as a man, and driving you into the arms of His Grace.

“I cursed him for the torment he heaped upon your pitiful mother, even as she took her last breath.

“I cursed him for his hypocrisy.

“I cursed him for his cruelty toward his flock, who believed his twisted opinions of God meant condemnation of their souls.”

His voice was a tremulous whisper as he slowly approached her.

“Aye, I even questioned my beliefs, my calling. In my misery, I questioned my decision to remain in the ministry. Had I been a different man, with the thoughts and emotions of normal men, mayhap I would never have lost you. Mayhap you would have loved me, had I been a man who burned with ambition for something other than God. A farmer, perhaps. A soldier. A merchant. A man you would have respected.”

He shuddered, and his eyes became dark. “But I realized…aye, I realized that a farmer, soldier, or merchant could never fulfill your desires and expectations. Not any longer. The lass who once prized the most humble possessions would crave the opulence of the aristocracy.”

Maria glanced around the simple room, then back to John’s face. “ ’Tisn’t so, John.”

John pointed toward her father.

“He told me you were dead, Maria. Aye. He did. ‘Dead,’ he said, and uttered a curse upon your soul.”

She winced and turned back to the fire.