Garden of the Moon (26 page)

“How?”

“First I was Maddy with Jonathan, but then I was myself, and I overheard Phillip and Katherine talking about…”

“About what?”

“About killing Jonathan to release Katherine from the betrothal.”

Julie gasped, and then frowned. “But didn’t you tell me that Maddy had asked Katherine, and she refused?”

“Yes, Maddy asked her, and Jonathan asked her.”

“She must have some feelings for him if she’s going to marry him. So why would she want to kill him?”

Sara scoffed. “She has feelings for no one but herself. She wants him dead because she saw Maddy and Jonathan kissing, and if Jonathan lives, Maddy wins. If he’s dead, then Katherine wins. Through his death, she will make sure that Maddy never has him.”

“So she got Phillip to do it for her. The woman really is evil. Not to mention conniving and cowardly.”

A ceramic statue on the mantel suddenly flew through the air, barely missing Julie’s head. Both women turned and followed its flight. Then it smashed against the wall, shards of glass spraying all over the floor.

Though a bit pale and visibly shaken, Julie smiled weakly. “Add to that that she has a temper, too.”

A high pitched scream rent the air and a white misty figure sailed across the room and through the wall behind the bed. It was only the second time Sara had actually seen Katherine’s ghost. She shivered.

Julie, her complexion snow white, her eyes as large as dinner plates, stared in frozen awe at the wall. “Was that—”

“Katherine,” Sara finished for her. “She doesn’t normally appear in full apparition. Gran told me it takes a great deal of energy for a ghost to materialize. Katherine’s rage at what you said must have made it possible.”

Throwing a wary glance at the wall where Katherine had vanished, Julie sighed. “So what are you going to do?”

Sara looked at Julie. She couldn’t believe her friend would have to ask. “Stop him.”

“You’ll be playing with history, Sara. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

She picked up the diary and ran her hand over the cover. This book had connected her to a love she had never hoped to find. She could not turn away from him. “I can’t let Phillip kill him again. I can’t.” Anguish filled her voice and the melancholy finally came.

“But he’s already—”

“Dead,” she snapped. Then more softly said, “I know.” She laid the book aside and went to sit beside Julie on the bed. “You don’t understand. When I go back there and become Maddy, Jonathan is as real as you are. I can feel his touch, his kiss, hear his voice telling me he loves me, and caress his dear face. I can’t just stand by, knowing what I know now, and do nothing to stop it.”

True to her word, Julie laid her hand on Sara’s. “What can I do to help you?”

Sara stood and began pacing the floor. “I need time to think, to plan. If you can just see to Harrogate, as you’ve been doing, that would be a big help.”

“How long do you have?”

Sara stopped and faced her friend. Her heart pounded against her chest. “The wedding will take place in a few days. I have until the night before.”

“Very well.” Suddenly, Julie’s face changed. Her expression became heartbreakingly sad. But she said nothing.

Sara didn’t need to ask what Julie was thinking. If Sara was successful and saved Jonathan’s life…

Suddenly, the same high pitched wail that had preceded Katherine’s appearance before filled the room. Her specter floated through the wall, passed both women as though they weren’t there, and then grabbed the diary, and vanished.

***

The diary, her means to returning to Jonathan, was gone
.

During the next days, which seem to stretch out far beyond their twenty-four hour time frame and at others seemed to pass by far too swiftly, Sara lived in constant fear of not being able to go back to save Jonathan without the diary. Where could Katherine have put the diary? Had she taken it back into the past with her? If she had, there would be no way for Sara to go back again.

By the end of the second day, her nerves were so raw, she was hardly able to concentrate or hold a conversation with anyone. Every time a board creaked or a shutter banged, she jumped. Her appetite diminished in direct contrast to her rising anxiety. Sleep eluded her. It was a miracle that the rug in her room didn’t have a path running through it from the many hours she’d spent pacing the floor, thinking. Over and over she checked the trunk, just in case Katherine’s twisted sense of humor had prompted her to replace it in the last place Sara would look, but it was always empty.

Once again, worried concern reflected from Raina’s and Julie’s faces. Of course, Julie knew why, but Raina didn’t and compensated by fussing over Sara until she thought she’d go crazy.

“Yo’s gonna make yourself sick again, Miss Sara. Yo gots to eat somethin’.”

Every meal was the same ritual. Julie watched her shove food around her plate and Raina hung off to the side frowning at her. Once the meal ended the two of them fussed over her and tried to get her to go to bed early. Little did they realize that going to bed early served no purpose. She would either lie there staring at the ceiling trying to think where the diary could be or she’d pace the floor trying to think where the diary could be. Either way, sleep remained elusive.

This night was no different. As she paced the confined space between the window and her bed, Sara’s fear that she would not be able to get back to save Jonathan increased. By now, she’d become convinced that Katherine had taken the diary back in time and Sara would never find it. Without it, she would not be able to travel back to Maddy’s time, Jonathan would die again and Maddy would die a desolate, sorrowful old maid.

Despondent she threw herself on the bed. “There has to be a way I can do this without the diary.” Tossing and turning, she wracked her brain for an answer.

Finally she settled on her side and stared out the window at the full moon hanging in the sky. It reminded her of the ball of light that had accompanied Gran her on her first visit to Sara.

Then it came to her. Gran’s words.

Be careful, my darling girl, and be happy. Above all else trust in the power of love
.

Trust in the power of love.

Why had she had to be reminded of how strong her love for Jonathan was? If there was anything in this world that would take her to him it was her love.

She lay on her back and stared at his portrait above the mantel. From deep inside she summoned her love.

It began as a small warm ball in the pit of her stomach. Slowly it grew and blossomed with an intensity that nearly stole her breath away. Still it kept growing, expanding, sending a need through Sara that defied description.

Need became longing.

Longing turned to devotion.

Devotion turned to love.

The love swelled inside her like a rising tide, growing and filling every part of her being with a fiery warmth and a peace that left her limp. Closing her eyes, she allowed the love to take over her body and fill it with purpose.

Then the spinning began, swirling and twirling Sara through the rainbow vortex to Jonathan. But it was different this time. This time it was frantic and more violent than ever before, as though it had to get her there faster.

***

Maddy finished putting the last of her clothes in the satchel. She shoved it under her bed. Later, when everyone was asleep, she’d take it back to the attic where it would stay until tomorrow night.

“Why are you still awake?”

Maddy spun guiltily toward the voice.

Marie Grayson stood in the bedroom door smiling at her daughter. “You should be in bed. You have to look your best for the wedding tomorrow.”

“I was just going to ring for Floree to help me get ready for bed,” Maddy said, hoping she sounded convincing, but sure that her guilt was written clearly on her face for her mother to see.

“No need to call Floree. I’m sure she’s retired for the night. I’ll help you.” Her mother caressed her cheek, then went to her dresser and withdrew a night dress. She laid the nightgown on the bed, and then she turned Maddy so she could undo the buttons down the back of her dress.

Maddy stepped out of her dress, and then stood still while her mother helped her remove her undergarments. Her mother slipped the night dress over her head and tied the ribbons that held the front closed. Maddy allowed her mother’s ministration, knowing this would be the last time in a very long time that she would be able to be this close to her mother.

Leaving her mother would break her heart. But not leaving her would crush her soul.

“I haven’t helped you dress in a very long time.” Marie’s voice caught. When she looked at Maddy, her eyes were moist with unshed tears. Quickly, she pulled a lacy handkerchief from beneath her cuff and dabbed at her eyes. “Look at me getting all weepy over helping you get ready for bed.”

“Momma, I love you.”

Marie cupped Maddy’s cheeks in both hands. “I love you, too, Maddy.” For a long moment, her mother stared into her eyes, and then she brushed a hair from her forehead. “Come sit and I’ll brush your hair.”

Maddy sat with her back to her mother. Very slowly, her mother ran the brush through her daughter’s loosened hair. Neither of them said anything. Maddy wasn’t sure how much time had slipped by before her mother spoke again.

“It should have been you, you know.”

Puzzled, Maddy turned to face her. “What should have been me?”

“You should have—” Suddenly her mother dropped the brush and rushed sobbing from the room.

Puzzled, Maddy consigned her mother’s strange outburst to nerves. After all, it wasn’t everyday one’s daughter got married. The time leading up to the wedding had been a hectic whirl of arranging the wedding, ordering flowers cut from Brentwood’s gardens, choosing a menu for the party afterward, sending invitations and more. Since Maddy had been preoccupied with her plans to run off with Jonathan, she had been little or no help to her mother and Katherine had simply sat back and let everyone else do all the work.

Was it any wonder then that her mother’s nerves had caught up with her?

As she did every night, Maddy prepared to make her daily entry into her diary. When she went to her dresser to get it, it wasn’t there. With panic licking at her nerves, she searched everywhere: in her dresser, under her bed, in the armoire, behind the books she kept on her shelves and even on the balcony outside her room. But it was nowhere to be found.

Where could she have left it? She was always careful to put it somewhere where no one could read it. If it fell into Katherine’s hands…

Katherine
!

Maddy slipped from her room and tiptoed down the hall to her sister’s room. Making as little noise as possible, she turned the knob, opened the door and stepped inside. A shaft of moonlight fell across the bed, illuminating the sleeping form of her sister. From the peaceful expression and the hint of a smile on her sleeping face, Maddy would never have guessed that true evil resided inside this woman. But Maddy wasn’t fooled. She knew what Katherine was capable of.

Shifting her gaze from her sister’s face, she scanned the room. Then she gasped. On the table beside the bed lay the diary. Though she’d hoped to find it here, she’d also dreaded it.

If Katherine had read it, she’d know of the elopement she and Jonathan planned to carry out tomorrow night. She could not believe that her sister had such a treasure and had not read what Maddy had written with relish. Was that why she smiled even in her sleep? Had she already hatched a plan to stop them?

Paralyzing fear took hold of Maddy’s limbs. The sickening knowledge that Katherine knew everything forced her to move. Along with it came the surety that she would do everything in her power to make sure that the elopement never took place.

Limbs quaking and nerves as tight as a bow string, Maddy crept to the side of the bed and picked up her diary. Cradling it against her pounding heart, she quietly backed from the room and closed the door.

Back in her own room, she sat on the bed, opened the diary to read her last entry and, even though she already knew that she had, prayed she hadn’t said too much. But it was all there, every detail, and after reading it, she knew that if Katherine had read it, and Maddy had little hope of that eventuality, her sister also knew every detail.

Worst yet, she couldn’t even warn Jonathan. He’d gone to New Orleans to make the final plans for the voyage to England. She’d just have to hope that they could make their getaway before Katherine could stop them.

Maddy leaned back on her bed, held the diary against her heart, and allowed the tears to fall. Had they gotten their hopes up for naught? Would Katherine win again? Would she ever have a life with her beloved Jonathan or were they destined never to be together?

Before she could form any answers, the room tilted off center and then began to spin crazily.

***

Sara stared down at the diary lying on the bed beside her. Hopelessness overwhelmed her. Katherine’s ghost had stolen the diary and delivered it in to the hands of the one person who could use it to her advantage. The person who would kill Jonathan. And she could do nothing about it except wait for the next night and try to get to the garden before Katherine and Phillip.

Chapter 23

Julie fanned herself with a copy of Harper’s New Monthly magazine, from which she’d been reading aloud to Sara from a poem entitled
Ode To The Sun
by Leigh Hunt. As she tried to stir the heavy air, she gazed languidly out over the manicured lawn of Harrogate.

Julie said the poem fit the sweltering July day perfectly. For Sara it only underlined the way her damp clothes stuck to her skin and the perspiration beaded on her forehead and upper lip, all things of which she needed no reminder, even in lyrical poetry.

She sighed and leaned her head back against the rocking chair, impatient for the sunset to hurry on so the heat of the day would dissipate and relief would come in the form of the inevitable night-cooling evening breezes off the river. Even more urgent was, as the night deepened, it would be time for her to go back to Maddy’s time to stop Phillip.