Barbara Hancock - Darkening Around Me

Seized by a dark genius, Miles O’Keefe has shut himself away in his ancestral mansion for more than decade. Driven by an unquiet spirit called The Thornleigh Bride, he sculpts masterpiece after masterpiece—and edges ever closer to madness.

His decadent prison is finally breached by Samantha Knox—a woman who has been to the brink of hell and back. She wants— needs —Miles to sculpt her scarred yet strong and beautiful body, to prove she has survived. She sits for him. His hands shape every curve of her body, indulging passion by proxy. Every glance, every word that passes between them brims with desire. With a single touch, it spills over.

But their ecstasy inflames Miles’s ghostly muse, as well. The Bride will neither share her house nor relinquish its heir, whom she has possessed for so long. Not without revealing her deadly secret. Before the end, Samantha will stand once more at the edge of the abyss….

Darkening Around Me

Barbara J. Hancock

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me,

And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow;

The storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing drear can move me:

I will not, cannot go.

—Emily Brontë, “The Night Is Darkening Round Me”

Chapter One

I rented a convertible as tourists do, though probably not as often in this part of the world. It’s not that I wanted the wind whipping around me and the fresh air following a long flight. It’s that I thought I should. What I got was more frigid than fresh. It was late summer, but September in the Pacific Northwest obviously didn’t mean the same as September in Virginia. My visions of driving along the 101 with big sunglasses and a scarf trailing behind me like the confident woman I pretended to be were put to rest.

Oh, it was sunny enough at first, but as I traveled it grew darker.

This was wilderness. I’d seen it called “old growth forests” and now I understood why. There was age in the air, a taste of primordial moss and fern blended with surf-dwelling things I couldn’t name. I knew my destination was a piece of privately owned land adjacent to Olympic State Park. Other than that, I followed the GPS directions in completely unfamiliar territory. Even the jagged coastline, while beautiful, set my teeth on edge because it was so alien compared to the sandy shore back home. I closed the convertible’s roof as if I was battening down the hatches.

But I drove on.

Just as I was beginning to think I should have brought a tent and an adventure guide, the roof of the house came into view. High above the ocean and several roads off the main coastal highway, my destination was so covered by greenery I couldn’t get a good look at it. The car climbed the driveway, but not without a few wheezes that made me wish for a four-wheel drive and that feeling in the pit of my stomach that I used to get as a child on a Ferris wheel.

Pacific sea breezes feathered my hair with cold fingers as I stepped from my car to the garden of Thornleigh—three paces, maybe four—and then the wild tangle enveloped me. Just like that I was shut off from the world. At one time it must have been a masterpiece, hundreds of rose bushes laid out in a carefully trimmed maze of an English garden. Now one blossom-heavy bush had grown into another and twined overhead to create a true labyrinth. Its shadowy confines reached out to me with verdant tendrils seeking to draw me in and pull me close. All at once, it was far too much nature to feel usual.

Claustrophobia threatened.

My heartbeat sped up and my breath quickened even though I could make out the stepping-stones that would— please, God —lead me to the side door I’d been told to enter. I hurried forward from stone to halfway-buried stone, praying for a shaft of sunlight or a hint of air that wasn’t petal sweet.

I was tired, worn down by travel and lack of normal routine. The nerves I normally kept in check were coming out to play in the dark.

I had taken an early morning flight from Abingdon, Virginia, and I’d flown all day with only one brief stop in Denver. A sleepy little town in spite of its cultural renaissance of the past couple of decades, Abingdon was everyday and normal. There we had orderly fields and apple orchards, the Barter Theatre and a quaint effort to spruce up historic midtown for tourists. Here was all untrimmed and untamed.

Of course, “quaint” doesn’t necessarily mean safe and “wild” doesn’t necessarily mean dangerous, does it?

A ghostly white face materialized out of thorny shadows and I instinctively held up my hands in defense. It took seconds to realize the face belonged to a life-size statue. It took longer before that seemed to matter to the instinctive fear that raised the hair on the back of my neck and kicked my pulse into rapid overdrive.

Even as I forced my hands down at my sides, the vine-covered marble unnerved me. It was a woman. The patina of age and the effects of weather didn’t hide her expression of grief and fear. The wear made her tears seem ancient and ageless and never ending.

I swallowed and stepped closer. I didn’t want to. For some reason, I couldn’t experience the slightly embarrassed relief a person usually feels when they’ve been startled or frightened by something that turns out to be ordinary or mundane.

The statue still scared me.

Her eyes were moisture-filled and wide. Her mouth was slightly open, as if at any second she might beg for help or scream.

A step on the path behind me caused me to spin. My breathing hadn’t recovered. Now it hitched in a sudden intake that hurt my chest.

Nothing.

Only the stirring wilderness of leaves all around and the occasional gasping sigh of a wilted petal as it fell.

My eyes, though, had adjusted to the artificial night created by the overgrown and neglected garden. Now I saw them. Face after face after face slowly revealing themselves to my wide peering eyes.

There were dozens of statues. All of women. All with horrible expressions—pain, fear, shock, grief—forever frozen and on display. The garden seemed to hold a perpetual funeral in its leafy embrace.

I closed my eyes and swallowed against the too-rapid breaths that threatened hyperventilation.

Only statues.

And in the garden of a sculptor, for heaven’s sake.

No reason for panic.

No reason for the fight-or-flight instinct that had my fists clenched and my legs poised for takeoff.

Sweet, rose-scented air caressed my face and the rustling of leaves teased my ears. But it wasn’t soothing no matter how I tried to make it for long seconds with my eyes closed and my nerve failing. Finally, my eyes popped open and there they were. All still exactly as before, silently harmless, while the sheen of sweat down my back said otherwise.

I went back to my car to retrieve my bag from the passenger seat with slow, purposeful strides, refusing to hurry and definitely refusing to run. Not because it was silly—though, of course, it was. Absolutely ridiculous.

Carefully, I leaned over and picked up my satchel. It was packed with a week’s worth of belongings. No more. No less. A week at Thornleigh was all I’d been allowed by the reclusive artist who was to capture my likeness in clay.