This final excerpt is from the fifth and last book of Before the Blood, scheduled for release in September 2019.
Tossing her haughty statement to the winds, Bryony accepted
John's hand with the acceptance of a trusting child and descended the great polished
staircase with him to Jenkins, the carriage waiting in the cold ivory morning, and
the start of a new life, for her, for John, for them.
She took
her first real look at the gleaming heavy door , which Jenkins swung open from
the outside at their approach; she took her second look at the carriage as a
married woman, a carriage that would take her away from everything and everyone
she knew except John, and she scarcely knew him.
Jenkins
opened the door. Folded blankets were piled on the cushions. A basket sat on
the floor. The promised breakfast?
A pair of
hands grabbed her shoulders and yanked her around. A pair of lips pressed into
hers with bruising might, and his pencil-thin mustache scratched her.
It ended as quickly as it
started.
"Next time," was all
he said, the suggestion of a smile on his lips.
She
trembled in fear and with an emotion she could not identify, one that had
nothing to do with fear.
Bur she
willingly placed her hand in Jenkins' larger one and stepped into the carriage
as the coachman asked, "Jenson, sir?"
"Yes. Mrs.
Simons should see her world first."
Her own
world. What could John mean? Weren't they leaving her world?
Inside,
John tucked the blankets around her, opened the basket, removed a bowl of
thickened milk and small loaf of puffed bread glistening with sugar. He tore
off a small chunk, scooped up some milk, and hand-fed it to Bryony as the
carriage slowly descended the snowy hill, and the frosted trees rolled past.
She and
Susan had stood at the bottom just last May, trying to envision the upward view
while heeding John's admonition to keep off the property.
Now this
mansion and its entire estate was hers because she was now a Simons, Bryony
Simons, Mrs. John Simons.
She
belonged to John, and he belonged to her. If the church ceremony didn't prove
it, last night did because John went inside her and left something of him
behind.
That's why
she was going to see the world, because John owned the world, and all that he
owned, she owned.
But what
was the world beyond Munsonville and stories in books? And what would she do
once she arrived?
John tapped
her cheek. Bryony turned obediently and opened her mouth, John's fingers
brushing her lips. Through bare branches heavy with snow, the sun glinted on the frozen lake as the
carriage turned right and crunched toward Main Street.
The horses
clip-clopped down the snowy path. The trees sparkled with Christmas morning
light. Beneath its icy crust, the lake moaned, "Woooooo...wooooo...."
It paused
and then clattered objections.
He's not just
any man, Bryony assured the icy waters.
But they
didn't warm to her; the deep wouldn't be appeased.
Beneath the sepia top hat, John's
fair hair swarmed over his shoulders and down the Inverness as he prepared
another bite. Bryony, warm and safe beneath her blankets and beside the husband
she had withstood, never felt more alive.
He tapped
her cheek. Obediently, she opened her mouth. Grown-up milk toast for a grown-up
girl, fed to her by a grown-up man.
They passed
from white woods to white village. She shaded her eyes against the lake's glare.
Snow spread across the road and cloaked the trees and rooftops of the closed-up
buildings.
When she
was a child, Bryony fancied angels tucked the village into a blanket of snow to
keep it warm and safe through winter.
She wondered
at the bright, silent calm. Not a creature stirred, not even a mouse. A sharp memory
of reading the old familiar story aloud to Mr. and Mrs. Parks all those years
ago pricked her eyes and hurt her throat, because she missed the book, because
she left the book by its forlorn self on the shelves of her old toy room,
because she lost the book.
Her father
would spend the day, alone, the way he spent every holiday. The Parks would
muddle through Christmas Day without little Bryony, and her eyes swam with
their desolation.
John tapped
her cheek. Bryony obediently opened her mouth; her tears soaked John's
fingertips.
The hardest part was passing from
world to wilderness. She strained through the window for a glimpse as the
carriage rolled her away to a great unknown with a man who could plunge his
stake into her at will.
John
stroked her cheek, and she turned to him, panic-stricken.
"Don't
look back," he said. "You are not Munsonville."
"The whole of it." Mr. Munson stretched
out his arms as wide as they would go. "The woods, the water, the hills,
the land: it's all mine."
She wasn't his; she would never
be his. She could not be Munsonville. Ever.
But she was the lake: tempestuous and intense,
limpid and serene, turbulent waves over deep, full of mystery, even to herself.
She tried
not to think that she, John, and Jenkins were the only human breaths in this winter
wasteland as John fed her an orange, slice by slice by slice by slice, by
slice...
Photo by Timothy Baran
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