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In a spooky antebellum mansion along River Road, two anguished souls are drawn together across time. Both Sarah and Damien have lost a brother to war, only the wars are a century apart! Out of their grief and despair come love and healing . . . but is their love strong enough to overcome the barrier of time itself? A breathtaking Victorian Old South romance from a master of the genre.
Excerpt:
Haunted in time . . .
The man haunted
Sarah now, every time she meditated. She called him her “dark
cavalier.” He spoke to her often, and in his voice was both pain
and healing. Always, there was music—sad, beautiful music. And
images of the house—sometimes beautiful and whole again, sometimes
old and abandoned. She sensed she was becoming a part of the house,
that she was being drawn into its very soul. Pain dwelled in that
soul, along with need and grief. She wanted to understand the house,
to embrace its very aura. She knew it was becoming her obsession.
And on the eighth
morning of meditation, Sarah awoke consumed with a desire to paint
the house . . .
She stirred awake
in the old parlor, with Casper the cat in her arms. For the first
time in a number of months, she knew she was ready to take up her
brushes once more. Like one possessed, she rushed back to Miss
Erica’s house to gather her paintbox, a canvas and easel, and a
light lunch.
Sarah went back to
the old house and set up her easel on the bare ground before it. The
late September morning was lovely, an invigorating coolness lacing
the air. The light was perfect as it hit the time-washed house. Sarah
knew she would paint it just as it was, in its gray, antebellum
majesty.
Sarah was normally
a very controlled, precise painter, drawing many sketches before she
ever put brush to canvas. But in painting the house, everything was
different. She mixed vivid hues on her palette—cerulean blue,
viridian green, yellow ocher, and raw umber—and splashed them on
the canvas boldly with her sable brushes and palette knife. Her
strokes were powerful, unrestrained, more expressionistic than they’d
ever been before.
She worked all
day, praying the light would not fail her. She captured the house
awash in light and shadow, the vivid curtain of green branches
entwined above it, mixed in with the ghostly splendor of Spanish
moss, the silvery Mississippi off in the distance.
Casper hovered
nearby as she worked. At noon, she stopped to nibble on her lunch and
shared half of her tuna sandwich with the cat.
By sundown, the
painting was finished. Sarah marveled at her own speed as she
gathered up her supplies. Most of her paintings took several weeks to
complete.
She went home in
the scant light, holding the wet painting carefully so as not to
smear it. When she arrived back at the house, it was dark and locked,
so she let herself in with the keys she now kept under the mat.
In the den, she
set the painting on an easel to dry and turned on all the lights so
she could get a better look at it.
Studying her work,
Sarah was stunned. Never before had she done anything so energetic
and passionate. The painting literally vibrated with bright colors
and vivid contrasts. The boldness of her brushstrokes amazed her. The
house was so real it seemed to jump out at her from the canvas.
Sarah backed off
to take in the effect as a whole, and that’s when she saw the
face—its lines superimposed on the lines of the house itself, a
perfect study in counterpoint. Sarah gasped, for she had no conscious
memory of putting the face there.
It was a man’s
face, a poignantly smiling face. But the eyes were dark, haunted,
filled with pain.
“Damien,” she
whispered. Then Sarah fell to her knees on the rug, staring at the
face as if hypnotized.
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