Tiffany Reisz - The Night Mark

From the bestselling author of The Bourbon Thief comes a sweeping tale of loss and courage, where one woman discovers that her destiny is written in sand, not carved in stone.

Faye Barlow is drowning.

After the death of her beloved husband, Will, she cannot escape her grief and most days can barely get out of bed. But when she’s offered a job photographing South Carolina’s storied coast, she accepts. Photography, after all, is the only passion she has left.

In the quaint beach town, Faye falls in love again when she sees the crumbling yet beautiful Bride Island lighthouse and becomes obsessed with the legend surrounding The Lady of the Light—the keeper’s daughter who died in a mysterious drowning in 1921. Like a moth to a flame, Faye is drawn to the lighthouse for reasons she can’t explain. While visiting it one night, she is struck by a rogue wave and a force impossible to resist drags Faye into the past—and into a love story that is not her own.

Fate is changeable. Broken hearts can mend. But can she love two men separated by a lifetime?

Praise for Tiffany Reisz’s The Bourbon Thief

“A dark, twisty tale of love, lust, betrayal, and murder...this novel is not one to be missed.”

—Bustle

“I loved [Reisz’s] Original Sinners series, and this book looks like an epic to delve into on a long, lazy afternoon. Her prose is quite beautiful, and she can weave a wonderful tight story.”

—New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Jennifer Probst

“The Bourbon Thief isn’t just good, it’s exceptional. The story captured my imagination; the characters captured my heart.”

—Literati Literature Lovers

“Reisz fills the narrative with rich historic details; memorable, if vile, characters; and enough surprises to keep the plot moving and readers hooked until the final drop of bourbon is spilled.”

—Booklist

“Beautifully written and delightfully insane...Reisz vividly captures the American South with a brutal honesty that only enhances the dark material.”

—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick

“Impossible to stop reading.”

—Heroes and Heartbreakers

“The Bourbon Thief is the sort of book that knocks you off your feet, steals your sanity and keeps you up all night reading! Fair warning—this is definitely a nontraditional love story... Not for the faint of heart!”

—RT Book Reviews

“Prepare yourself for soap-operatic level twists, and also to ignore everything else in your life as you race to the end of this eyebrow-raising tale.”

—RT Book Reviews

The Night Mark

Tiffany Reisz

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To the men and women who tended the world’s lighthouses and to everyone who ever kept a light shining in the dark...

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Author’s Note

Extract

Copyright

1

Faye closed her eyes and thought of Casablanca.

Easy to do since she’d been watching it earlier that day. She’d also watched it the week before and the month before that. In the past four years, she’d watched it at least ten times, definitely more, but ten was all she would admit to if asked. And her husband had asked when he’d come home from work and found her watching it.

“Again?” Hagen had asked.

“It’s a classic” was all Faye had said.

Now, hours later, as Hagen kissed the back of her neck, her thoughts returned to Casablanca. It was nine o’clock on Friday night, the one hour of the week they usually made the effort to show up for their marriage. But she hadn’t felt well all day—tired, aching—and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and go to sleep. Since she couldn’t sleep, she dreamed of Rick and Ilsa and Morocco while Hagen did his best to pretend theirs was a real marriage.

Faye was far more concerned about Bogie’s Rick than Hagen. Had Rick ever found someone else to love or had he made a monk of himself, living in celibate devotion to his beloved Ilsa for the rest of his life? Or maybe he’d died shortly after Ilsa got on that plane, killed by fascists or Nazis on his way to Brazzaville with Louis. Faye hoped he had died. Better that than live for decades still in love with a woman he could never have again.

Whoever first said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all had neither loved nor ever lost.

But Faye had. She’d loved and she’d lost and as she lay in the bed of a man who didn’t love her any more than she loved him, she would have sold her soul to not have done either.

“Faye?” Hagen said in her ear. He’d been nice to her today, so she opened her eyes.

“Yes?”

“Your phone’s beeping.”

She reached for the phone on the bedside table and saw she had a text message.

Check your email asap

It was from Richard, her friend who owned the only decent camera store in Columbia, South Carolina. There was no good reason he would be emailing or texting her on a Friday night that she could think of and many bad reasons.

“Emergency text. I’ll be right back,” she told Hagen who immediately rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, silently seething—as usual. Why did she even bother lying? He was always angry at her these days. She looked at him, looked at him longer than she meant to, longer than she had in a very long time. Wives of her husband’s coworkers called Hagen a “catch.” That he was handsome—brown hair, brown eyes, good body—was merely the smallest part of the equation. He was a good provider. That was what one of her neighbor ladies had called him, and here in the South, where men were still expected to be breadwinners, patriarchs and kings of the castle, that was the trump card. It didn’t matter that Hagen spent every free moment outside work golfing with his buddies, that he rarely spoke to her except to criticize how she’d spent her days and that the sole reason he was trying to have sex with her was so they could pretend they were happy together when they both knew better.

Faye shut the bathroom door and read her email.

Hey, Faye—I just had to cancel some work. Got too busy with weddings. If you’re interested, I’ll give them your name. The ladies of the Lowcountry Preservation Society need a photographer for their annual “Journey through Time” fund-raising calendar: $10,000 for 100 exclusives. Landscapes, beach scenes, historical houses, ladies in dresses, the usual old-timey tourist shit. Due date August 1. Yes or no?

Work.

A job offer.

She hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t taken on a professional photography assignment in almost four years. Last week she’d stopped by Richard’s camera shop to buy a replacement lens cap for her Nikon. It had fallen off during a walk two weeks ago and rolled into a gutter. She’d mentioned to Richard she missed going out on assignments. He’d told her to help him with his summer wedding load, and she’d simply smiled at him and said, “No, thanks. I don’t do weddings.”