“But she can’t be gone!”Lady Rose of Wentworth shook her head in denial. The deep red rose Gilbert had tucked in her braid that morning echoed the violent movement but held fast.
An abandoned cart without wheels was all that remained of the encampment. That and the cold, dead ashes of a cooking fire. The strangely garbed folk who practiced the old ways had vanished and with them, the woman with knowing eyes.
With a sniff of disapproval, her maid, Sybil scolded, “I told you, mistress, but you would not listen.”
Rose reached into the neck of her kirtle and withdrew a silver chain hung with a sparkling crystal. The sleek, curved bodies of two sylkies held the crystal in place. Though she’d grown accustomed to its warm presence next to her heart, the talisman now lay heavy in her palm, a guilty reminder of her failure to keep a promise.
Sybil peered over her shoulder and whispered, “Mayhap the curse has begun.” Her fingers flew as she made the sign of the cross.
At Sybil’s words, Rose was stricken with a sense of foreboding so intense it stole the breath from her body. She gazed with horror at the sylkies—enchanted creatures, the pagan woman had told her—who shed their seal bodies and crept from the sea to mate with mortals. Had it not been for the sylkies bewitching her father, Rose would now be wed to the foul old man he’d chosen for her instead of her beloved Gilbert. But at what price? Had she traded her soul to achieve her heart’s desire?
Rose closed her fingers around the pendant, shivering as she remembered the woman’s warning: Before a man leaves this earth, he desires one thing above all else—a son to carry his name forward throughout time—a son to bring fruition to hopes and dreams yet unfulfilled. Without a son, it’s as if he never lived. Heed me well, child. You must return the pendant within a fortnight The sylkies become disturbed when separated from the others. If you forget….
Rose pressed one hand to her belly. She and Gilbert had scarcely left the bedchamber since the day they were wed. It was possible, indeed likely that a babe now grew within her.
A girl child, if the warning was true, followed by countless generations of women unable to bear sons because Rose could not rouse herself from the soul-stealing pleasures of the marriage bed.
“Mistress, look! An omen.”
Sybil’s cry broke into Rose’s reverie. She followed the girl’s gaze upward. A single black cloud raced across the sky to the sun, its amorphous shape casting an eerie shadow upon the green hills below.
Rose opened her hand. As she looked at the crystal, its brilliant light blinked and went out. Like the eye of an approaching storm, a black shape formed and reformed in its center.
A sudden gust tore the rose from her hair. As it struck the ground, scarlet petals exploded into the air, swirling and dancing, leaving naught behind but a bare stem as a reminder of its former glory.
Rose dropped to her knees and sobbed, “Dear God in heaven, what have I done?”
Allegra Thome, a karaoke-singing, ex-military wife and teacher of behavior-disordered teens, isn't ready to give up on men. Though her home town offers slim pickins' man-wise, Allegra has managed to land its most eligible bachelor. A chain of seemingly unrelated events is about to turn her life topsy-turvy. And why doesn't anyone care that one of her students has gone missing?
Fourteen-year-old Alfrieda Carlotta Emerson, Alf, just wants to be a normal kid - not easy when she lives in a twenty-four foot travel trailer with a mother who's Retired from Life. When she suddenly acquires telekinetic power and receives a magic moonstone, she soon finds out normal is something she'll never be.
