A Lover For Rachel

A Lover For Rachel

By

Lynn Crain

This book is a work of fiction and therefore a product of the author’s imagination, including but not limited to names, characters, places, and incidents. Any similarity is entirely coincidental. Unauthorized
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A Lover For Rachel

Copyright
2011 Lynn Crain

ISBN
978-1-62052-000-0

Cover Art  by Su Kopil, Earthly Charms

All rights reserved.

Published by Shooting Star Books

www.shootingstarbooks.com

Author’s Foreword

When re-editing this story for publication, the question of dice was brought up. To be honest, I wasn’t sure when there use actually came into play. One of the first indications where I knew dice had existed was in the Bible when they talk about “casting lots” in the Old Testament. As a child, I’d been required to learn many of those verses and that concept must have stuck with me. However, I did not know the true history about dice and my research surprised even me. Apparently, dice have been used throughout Asia before recorded history and makes one wonder just how they knew. In an archeological site in southeastern Iran one was found in a 5000-year-old backgammon set at a place known as the Burnt City. It was also big in India, commonplace during King David’s reign and in more ancient kingdoms than we’ll ever know about. It was also known in Rome and in Greece with both upper and lower classes. Amazingly, twenty-sided dice dated to the gambling houses of Rome have been found.

The first known game where sides of an object indicated something was called “knucklebones” because the dice were made from the talus of hoofed animals and colloquially known as the knucklebone. Besides bone, materials like ivory and various woods were used. One can only assume what types of stone may have been worked when producing dice for utilization in games of chance. It is truly hard to know what games were played as ancient writers confused the two, dicing and knucklebones, but both were done in prehistoric times.

In more recent history, dice was the favorite pastime of knights in the Middle Ages, and dicing schools and guilds arose. After the fall of feudalism, landsknechts, or German mercenary pikemen or foot soldiers, established reputations as the most notorious dicing gamblers of their time. Curiously enough, the dice then were carved in the images of men and beasts. In France during this same period, despite regulations against their use, dicing was done by both knights and ladies. And in another curious twist, Chinese dominoes evolved from the original markings on dice.

There are many people I want to thank in bringing this story to life again after its brief previous run: first, Sarah Hansen, my editor extraordinaire and whose guidance makes my writing better and questions me to learn even more; Su Kopil for the wonderful cover; Jim Brown for the formatting and document conversion; my friend Brenda, who supports me through thick and thin and it’s mostly been thick recently; my critique partners, Debbie Fritter, Diane Clough, Kristina Mull and Ginger Duran—you are the best ever and help me every day to write more and be the best I can be; and my family, Gordon, Kyle, Thomas, Kimberly, Joseph, and Michael—you all mean more to me than you’ll ever know, including my littlest addition—a Parson Russell terrier pup called Harry Potter, taking the place of my dog Jasper who is still in Nevada as he couldn’t come to Vienna with us. Thank you, Harry, for entertaining me when I needed it most.

A Lover For Rachel

“Come on, we’re going to be late! You’re the one who wanted to go to this thing. Besides, it’s the dead of night, so who’s going to see us?”

Rachel frowned at her best friend, Samantha Andrews, again. Yes, she was the one who wanted to go to the summer solstice celebration at Stonehenge. Who wouldn’t if their birthday fell on June twenty-first and they happened to be in the area? Last time they’d come to England in June, they avoided the place because of the massive crowds attending the event. This time there was no way she would miss the opportunity.

“I’m almost done.” She sighed. This was the best it would get. She glanced at herself in the mirror of the bathroom in the luxurious bed-and-breakfast that had been their home for the past week. Everyone told her she’d gone from frumpy to svelte in the last year, but she couldn’t see what they meant.

“You’d think you’re meeting a lover or something.” Samantha stood in the doorway and tapped her foot impatiently. “Come on, Rach, you look beautiful. I envy your curves.”

Rachel smiled at her in the mirror. “You’re only saying that because you love me.” She wiggled her eyebrows and the women burst into laughter.

“No really, you are. You’ve changed so much this past year. Still, we need to leave if we’re ever going to get there and through the gates before the sun rises. Do you have the tickets?”

They had applied to get special passes to participate with the group performing ancient celebrations at the site. The members of the large group were as close to Druids as anyone could be, considering that not much was left in the way of their history. And from everything she’d read about the ceremony, it was a very special and personal event.

She nodded, straightened her shoulders, and brushed her hair away from her face, determined not to worry about her appearance. “I do, and I know what you’re talking about. I have changed. I just feel weird about it, that’s all. Especially when someone calls me beautiful. I’ve just never seen myself that way.”

Samantha clutched her arm, smiling at her reflection. “Come on, how many people can say their birthday is on summer solstice? So what? You have baggage. I do too, now let’s get going before we miss the whole celebration.”

 “I know you’re right. I’m just not going to participate in the getting naked part. Okay?” She was relieved when her friend nodded her agreement. One more glance in the mirror and she pulled the steely reserve around herself that she normally used in the courtroom. Today was the day to have fun and no worries. Today was her day; she wasn’t going to let the past cloud it in any way. Smiling, she grabbed her backpack from the bed and headed for the door. “Let’s go.”

Their drive through the English countryside was always an adventure from start to finish. First, they had to drive on the wrong side of the road. The narrow roads barely managed two compact cars, let alone anything bigger. Rachel and Samantha dodged the predawn traffic racing along the Salisbury Plains to get to their destination. Thank God, they only had a short distance to go through the darkness of the night. The only thing piercing the shadows were the stars that shone bright in the night sky.

That was one of the amazing things about the English countryside. There were people everywhere. Very few places allowed one to be totally alone in this country. Yet, she and Sam could see the stars. Rachel glanced at the velvet sky and wondered what brought the people here to this place.
How did they know this would be special in a forever kind of way?
She didn’t know, but she was glad that over four thousand years ago, whoever they were decided to build the second phase of “the henge” as it was called. Not all uses were known, but experts agreed sun worship was involved.

As they turned onto the road to Stonehenge, Rachel happily discovered they’d made it before the really big crowd. In about an hour, this place would be crawling with people. Getting up at two a.m. certainly paid off in this case, even though it was very hard for her to go to sleep the evening before. Excitement for this once-in-a-lifetime experience thrilled her to the core. Samantha parked in one of the last open places in the small paved lot. The air practically hummed with anticipation and Rachel turned to Samantha.

“I am just so excited about this. Do you know that people have worshiped the sun here for thousands of years?” She could barely contain herself.

Sam’s good-humored grin made her face almost glow in the predawn light. “Yeah…you made me read everything we brought home last time. I can’t believe it’s been ten years since we were here. Everything has changed so much.”

They’d come the summer they graduated law school because they wanted one last taste of freedom before the realities of life set in. Samantha soon decided she didn’t like the rigors of court, so she worked behind the scenes, helping lawyers prepare their cases. There’d only been a few times Samantha had seen the inside of a courtroom since the day she won a case for a man who swore he would change and not beat his wife. The woman ended up dead the very next week and Sam was done defending just anyone the firm wanted her to defend.

Even before Sam had that case, Rachel came to a decision to go into the more mundane side of law. She wished to deal only with contracts and property and avoid shady customers. Not that those cases couldn’t be boring. Still, they had their moments when she defended people against the government and eminent domain issues. She once had a case in which murder played a part in a property line dispute, but the victim was a person’s dog that had wandered from the ranch house. Overall though, she could say she didn’t have the same problems Sam had had when she had been working the court system defending less-than-honorable people.

So this vacation was for both of them. Sam, because her long-term relationship finally ended when they couldn’t come to terms over marriage, children, or anything else. Rachel failed to snag the attention of the average man and never went beyond three dates with any of them. She supposed her size scared off any potential suitor, even though her weight was at a healthy level now. Then again, maybe her attitude that she wasn’t quite perfect had a lot to do with her inexperience on the dating scene. Yet with all the improvements she made, men still didn’t seem interested. Maybe it was because she’d finally reached the ripe old age of thirty-five, or something else that she just didn’t understand.

While she had some practical experience with men—a boyfriend in high school whom she’d dearly loved, another in college that rocked her world—she knew exactly what she wanted in a lover. Definitely someone more mature than the college guy, she thought to herself. Definitely someone who could accept her inside and out and overlook her less-than-admirable traits.

Thinking about the last ten years made her stop a moment. All in all, it had been a good ten years but certainly not everything she’d wanted. There was more to life than work. This experience would cross the boundary between living life and just participating.

The sounds of happy people around her brought her out of her reverie. “I know what you mean. There’s definitely more people.” Rachel snugged her coat around herself and opened the car door. Even though it was the height of summer in the British Isles, there was a nip to the morning air. Pulling her pack out of the back of the car, she fished out their tickets and waited for Sam.

Once Sam joined Rachel, they took off on the trail that led to the henge. Handing their tickets to the guide at the gate, they entered the tunnel that descended under the road, coming out on the other side. Rachel had watched the stones for miles as they approached the site by car and continued to do so as they now approached the ancient site on foot. At first, the stones were just a shadowy bump on the hills, but as they got closer, the monoliths cast their shadows in the moonlight in strange and beautiful ways. The celebrations were going on all day and throughout the evening because the full moon fell on the solstice this year. The timing couldn’t be more perfect as it offered her a once-in-a-lifetime experience. She couldn’t avoid the opportunity to live as she wished on this day.