The Haunting of Brier Rose (14 page)

"Rose?" Bea called from the other side. "Are you
in there?"

Taylor saw the color drain from Rose's face.

"Oh, no!" Rose cried, clutching the towel at her
breasts. "It's Bea!"

"So?"

"She'll see me like this!"

"Don't worry." He limped to the door and opened it.
"What's up, Mrs. Jacoby?"

Rose looked around his shoulder and saw Bea standing in the hall,
her gray hair wild around her face and her dress wrinkled. She held up a huge
green gem in one hand and a pistol in the other. Rose was surprised not only by
her disorderly appearance but by the very fact that she was standing
there
at all. When Bea had a migraine she usually got so
sick she couldn't function. To be on her feet and talking must have taken all
the willpower she possessed.

Bea took one glance at Rose's own disheveled hair and the towel
and pointed the gun at Taylor's chest.

"All right, Mr. Wolfe!" Bea declared. "I've had
enough!"

"You're going to shoot me, Mrs. Jacoby?" he drawled.

"Don't think I won't, young man!" Bea waved the gun and
leaned forward, trying to clutch Rose's hand, even though she still held the
emerald. "Come out of there this instant, Rose."

Rose hung back, abashed. "It's not how it appears."

"And how is it?" Bea retorted. "You tell me you'll
take in his breakfast. Fine. My head is pounding so hard I can barely stand up.
Then I notice the time and wonder why you've taken half an hour to hand Mr.
Wolfe his tray!"

"Mrs. Jacoby, I can explain—" Taylor interjected.

"Oh, I'm sure you could, Mr. Wolfe. You probably have a
million slick explanations. But I don't want to hear a single one. Come along,
Rose!" She grabbed Rose's wrist.

"Bea, please!" Rose yanked free, mortified.

"I've done nothing but pull out her briers."

"Pull out her what?"

"Her briers." Taylor motioned toward Rose's shoulder.
"A pack of wild dogs forced her into some brambles yesterday. She couldn't
reach the stickers in her back, so I talked her into letting me help her remove
a few."

"Wild dogs? Here at Brierwood? A likely story."

"It's true, Bea! There were four of them. Rottweilers!"

Bea stared at Rose's shoulder and then returned her glare to
Taylor. "Be that as it may, I don't want you touching my Rose. Do you
hear? I don't want you near her!"

"Bea!" Rose exclaimed, shocked by the vehemence in
Bea's voice. "He was only trying to help me."

"Help you, my foot!" She clutched Rose by the arm.
"You're going to get some clothes on, girl, right now!"

Rose let Bea pull her down the hall toward the room only because
she was too embarrassed to remain in Mr. Wolfe's presence.

At her bedroom door, she broke free of Bea's grip and stormed to
the closet, her embarrassment flooding to anger. Bea followed her.

"Thanks so much, Bea, for treating me like a child!"
Rose exclaimed, throwing the towel in the laundry hamper. "I've never been
so humiliated!"

"I was only trying to protect you."

"With a gun and an emerald?"

"I had the gun in case he was who he said he was—a
Wolfe. I had the emerald in case he was who he pretended not to be—a
Bastyr."

"Oh, Bea, not that again!" Rose grabbed the sides of
her unfastened bra. "I'm a grown woman, Bea. And I'm perfectly able to
protect myself and make my own decisions."

"You think undressing in the bedroom of a strange man is a
wise decision?"

"Yes! Mr. Wolfe is a gentleman."

"You have no idea what Mr. Wolfe is." Bea stepped
closer "Listen to me, Rose. We must leave this place, at least until your
birthday on Saturday."

"Why? What is it about my twenty-first birthday that makes
you so nervous?"

"On your twenty-first birthday," Bea replied, lowering
her voice, "should the Bastyr family find you—and I believe they
have—they will do anything in their power to make you a ritual bride.''

"A what?" Rose cried, pausing with a dress in her
hands.

"A ritual bride. Please, Rose, you must let me explain about
the box and the letter."

For a moment all Rose could do was stare at Bea and wonder if the
old woman had lost her mind. Who had ever heard of such a thing as a ritual
bride? A fantastic image of white robes and goat entrails popped into her mind.
Yet Bea seemed deadly serious. In fact, she seemed truly frightened. Rose
lowered her arms, allowing the hem of the dress to puddle on the floor at her
feet. She decided she would have to hear what Bea had to say about Mr. Wolfe,
her mother and the Bastyr family before she did anything else, just to assuage
Bea's fears. The poor woman had probably suffered the migraine because of it.

"All right, Bea," she sighed. "I'll read the
letter."

Relieved, Bea put her hands to her mouth and nodded.

Rose pulled on the dress. "Meet me up in the ballroom in
about five minutes, okay?"

Bea nodded again and hurried out of the bedroom.

In the salon off the ballroom, Bea leaned forward. "First
read the letter. Then we'll talk about our options."

Hoping she wasn't doing the wrong thing, Rose took the papers and
broke the seal. She had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she
were launching into territory best left unexplored. But Bea's distraught
behavior forced her to continue.

Rose took a deep breath and plunged ahead, carefully deciphering
the small handwriting of her mother.

My dearest Roselyn,

When you read this letter,
you will be nearing your twenty-first birthday. How I wish I could have seen
you grow into a woman. I'm sure you must be an accomplished lady by now, and a
lovely young woman, as well, knowing what a precocious little beauty you were
at the age of five. It may come as a shock to you to learn about your father
and mother, since I have sworn to secrecy any and all people who had a hand in
abducting you from the Bastyrs. They were instructed to raise you as an
orphan, so that you would have no ties to the past, and so the Bastyrs would have
difficulty in discovering your whereabouts.

Do you remember your
mother, my dear Roselyn? I hope you remember me with fondness and love, for I
had only loving motives in mind when I sent you away from me. It was a terrible
decision to make, but I made it hoping to break the chain that has imprisoned
Bastyr women for centuries. I did not want that prison for you, Roselyn. I
would rather have killed you myself than subject you to the life of a Bastyr
bride.

By getting you away from
the Bastyr family, I had hoped to keep you from the life that I endured and
from the knowledge that tainted my heart. They are a dangerous group of people
whom you must avoid at all costs. Their practices and appetites have brought my
disease upon me and driven to madness many other members of the family. I could
not let you be doomed to such a future, and that is why I gambled everything to
get you away from them when you were a child.

On your twenty-first
birthday you are destined to become a ritual bride, just as I became one when I
was twenty-one. The Bastyrs rarely produce female offspring. But when they do,
these females are bound to the patriarch of the family—Seth Bastyr.
Therefore, my father became my husband when I was twenty-one. This does not
seem heinous to the Bastyrs. It has been a family practice for countless
centuries, and it is designed to keep the bloodline pure. As a result, the Bastyr
family is riddled with geniuses and idiots, supermen and monsters. The monsters
and idiots are not suffered. They are put to death. Such was the fate of the
two children who came before you.

Once a Bastyr woman becomes
a bride, she is supposed to forget her former self. She is charmed into
forgetting what has happened to her, to overlook the heinous practice of
intermingling with one's own kin. At first I did forget, but as time passed and
I lost one child and then another, I remembered bits and pieces of my life
before I became a bride. I realized that my marriage was unconscionable, but by
then it was too late. I was in the first stages of my illness. I wasn't strong
enough to get away. All I could manage was to smuggle you out when you were
five, before the same thing could happen to you, before the Bastyr curse could
damn you as it has damned me.

The Bastyrs have strange
powers of which you must be wary, Roselyn. I am not certain they will be able
to find you, but in the event that they do, I have prepared certain devices to
protect you. One is an emerald, imbued with special powers, a discovery I found
hidden in the Bastyr library. The other is a list of instructions that you must
follow on Midsummer's Eve when you will turn twenty-one—the day you are
destined to become a Bastyr bride. Bea Jacoby alone knows the location of these
items, and she has promised to look after them until you need them.

Roselyn, you do not belong
to the Bastyrs. Your father was not Seth Bastyr. Your father was a man I met
after I became a bride. I loved your father very much, but he lost his life in
an effort to save you. Bea Jacoby is your father's mother—your
grandmother. Donald is your grandfather. They have changed their names to
protect you all these years. And I trust that since you are reading this, they
are both still alive.

When you were a newborn,
you were branded with a mark to prove your identity to the Bastyrs. They didn't
know at the time that you were not a true daughter. Perhaps they still do not
know. I looked everywhere for the brand, hoping to obliterate it and save you.
But I was unable to find it. I am afraid that the mark is there nevertheless,
and that they will come for you and know who you are.

I did not want to ruin your
childhood with fear, Roselyn. That is why I left instructions to keep all this
knowledge from you unless the Bastyrs found you. I wanted you to remain forever
separated from that heinous family. But since you are reading this, you must be
in danger from them. Have heart, however, Roselyn. We Bastyr women are not as
weak as they think we are. With the emerald and my instructions, I trust that
you will be free of the fate I had to endure. Like the Bastyr males, I had my
own powers during my life on earth, and I hope that my legacy to you, my dear
child, was to pass some of that power on to you.

Keep in mind that it is
imperative for you to remain a virgin until you are twenty-one. I am sure that
Bea has told you this already. Do not take a lover before that time. In fact,
do not fall in love with a man until you are past your birthday. Seth will use
your love. He will feed on it and kill your lover. Should you lose your
virginity before you are twenty-one, he will assuredly kill you.

I know this will seem odd
to you, perhaps even frightening. But I have done everything in my power to
safeguard you and break the chain. I pray that you will escape with your life
and your soul.

Just remember that I love
you, Roselyn, with all my heart. You meant the world to me. And should it be in
my power after death, I will be looking down on you from above and sending my
love and protection to you in every way that I can.

Be strong, my dear child.
Be brave. And know that we will see each other again, I am sure.

Your loving mother, Deborah

Rose refolded the letter and looked down at her hands, which
didn't seem to be part of her own body. She felt disassociated from reality,
split down the middle by the truths she had just learned—that her mother
had loved her beyond her wildest dreams, that her father had given his life for
her, and that she came from a family with a history of incest and madness. Her
vision blurred, and her throat felt as if a huge lump were lodged there. She
heard Bea say something to her, but she couldn't focus on the words. She clung
to the thought that her mother had loved her after all. She had sent her away
to save her life. Her name was Deborah—just like in the dream—and
she had loved her. She had loved her so much that she had given her up, never
to see her child again. Rose felt Bea's arms come around her. And for the
longest time she wept, encircled in the warm embrace of her grandmother, while
she held the yellowed papers, the only link to the mother she had never really
known.

"How did she die?" Rose finally murmured.

"She was a troubled woman, Rose. A troubled woman."

"How did she die?" Rose looked up, her eyes hot.
"Tell me!"

"She killed herself. When she heard about your father's
accident, she lost the will to live."

Rose swallowed. She could feel the blood surging in her temples
and in her neck. "My father was in an accident?"

"Ostensibly. One night near the Bastyr place, it seems he
fell and broke his leg. He bled to death out there."

"But you don't think it was an accident."

"No." Bea shook her head. Her gray eyes were like chips
of flint. "Seth Bastyr killed him. I know he did."

"Oh, Bea!" Rose felt new tears pooling in her eyes.

Bea gently patted her back. "That's why we've worn emerald
rings all these years, given to us by your mother to protect us from the
Bastyrs. That's why I've always insisted that you wear yours."

"I'm sorry, Bea," Rose declared, wiping her eyes.
"I'm sorry I doubted you. I—"

"There's no need to apologize, Rose dear. No need." Bea
gave her a smile of encouragement and understanding, seeming much closer to her
old self again, and then she stood up. "But you do realize that we must
leave as soon as possible. We can't let the Bastyrs get you."

"And you think Taylor is connected to the Bastyrs."

"He told you about them, didn't he?"

"Well, yes." Rose pressed her lips together in doubt
and wiped the tears from her cheeks.