Dark Garden Part 1

Dark Garden.

BY JENNIFER FULTON.

Acknowledgments.

This story, like my earlier Gothic hybrid, Dark Dreamer, had its roots in my childhood. Among the novels and poetry I loved most growing up, Gothic works were disproportionately represented and I always wanted to draw some of those themes into my romances. It also helped that I lived for some years in a huge, creaking, isolated house without television and with rather poor electrics. This led to many evenings of solitude in my bedroom, overlooking a dark garden and creepy orchard, reading by candlelight, and listening to the stories of Edgar Allan Poe on a decrepit radio.

You'll find in the pages that follow, a recognizable homage to various authors of the Gothic persuasion: Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Ann Radcliffe, Elizabeth Gaskell, and of course Daphne du Maurier, whose novel Rebecca made me want not just to read, but to write something Gothic and creepy. My tip o' the nib to that author can be found in Dark Garden, in both the t.i.tle, and the last scene of Chapter Ten.

My family and friends, as always, gave me love and support. Connie Ward provided helpful encouragement and thoughtful comments for my early chapters, and my patient publisher, Len Barot, kindly allowed me to delay this work when the time to get it written was unavailable. Getting any book published is quite an undertaking when everyone involved cares a great deal about the final product, as the crew at Bold Strokes do. Once this book was finally in their hands, it got a lovely cover-thanks to Sheri, and Stacia Seaman took pains to make the text free of typos and other blunders, under pressure of time, for which I am thankful.

Lastly, I'd like to thank the many readers who've been writing to me over the almost twenty years in which I've been publis.h.i.+ng lesbian romances. It's been an honor and a pleasure to write stories for you. I hope this one brings pleasure, too.

Dedication.

For JD.

Chapter one.

The gun is loaded," said the woman with the rife aimed from her hip. She was tall and disheveled. Her lank coal-black hair fell heavily around her face. She locked the door behind her. "Move and I swear I'll blow your f.u.c.king head off."

Vienna Blake hit the security alarm under her desk. Not that anyone could have missed the fact that a crazy woman had invaded their building. A SWAT team was probably en route already. "What do you want?"

"You know why I'm here."

The intruder was sullen and suspicious, like a wild thing peering out from behind iron bars. Her clothes belonged on the set of a period movie, not in a downtown Boston office. Who wore a three-quarter length velvet coat and a white s.h.i.+rt with some kind of cravat at the throat? Only Mason Cavender. Vienna supposed the coat had provided camouflage so she could smuggle the rife. But the black breeches and riding boots?

"Can you lower your gun?" she requested. "It's making me nervous."

"A Blake with a sense of humor, whadaya know." Mason strode across the office and halted a few feet from the imposing cherrywood desk. Eyes dark with menace swept over Vienna. "You think this is funny?"

Vienna refused to allow her alarm to show. She'd be d.a.m.ned if a rife pointed at her gut would turn her into a crybaby. "You're only making things worse for yourself."

"Worse? Your family has destroyed mine. And now you've murdered my brother. Was that your finest moment? Or did you prefer seeing my father wet himself the day he had his stroke?"

Vienna a.s.sessed her chances of extracting the Smith & Wesson she kept in her top drawer before Mason could fire her weapon. Forcing herself to remain calm and think carefully, she said, "I'm truly sorry about your brother."

The long barrel inched toward her chest. "Sorry? My brother isn't cold in his grave and you have the nerve to send me that takeover offer?"

Mason looked like she hadn't slept since the funeral. Vienna recognized that the situation was dangerous, but she refused to allow herself the luxury of panic. People who panicked made mistakes. She belonged to a different ilk-people who made mistakes, survived them, and would never surrender their control again. She forced herself to breathe evenly as she a.n.a.lyzed her options. If she could get the revolver from her drawer, she would only need a single shot. Self-defense. Any competent attorney would ensure no charges were ever laid.

But shooting Mason could only be a last resort. Apart from anything else, Vienna would draw no satisfaction from such an end. She wanted Mason present to witness the final destruction of the Cavender legacy. She wanted her to take that offer because she had no other choice.

"With Lynden gone, there's only one of us left," Mason said hoa.r.s.ely. "And one of you. The last of the Cavenders takes out the last of the Blakes. Poetic justice, don't you think?"

Vienna sighed. "I had nothing to do with that accident, and if you'd bothered to research your facts you'd know it."

Mason's fist smashed down on the desk. A stack of files toppled sideways, spilling their contents on the floor. "Liar," she chanted tonelessly, as though talking in her sleep. "Murderer."

"The police will be here any minute." Vienna eased the drawer open a few more inches. "For G.o.d's sake, you're going to be hurt. They'll shoot you. Do you want to die for nothing?"

Breathing hard, Mason snarled, "Do you think I care? I held my brother in my arms while he took his last breath. I promised him revenge."

"Then at least select the right person for your retribution," Vienna said with disdain. "I suggest you start with the aircraft mechanic."

"Why? Is that who you hired? So it would look like an accident?"

Vienna could almost get her hand into the drawer. She kept her shoulders still to disguise her intentions. Softening her voice, she said, "Mason, I had nothing to do with the crash. I swear it, on my mother's life."

Mason studied her closely for a long while, then lowered the rife. Her eyelids drooped with exhaustion, but those black, savage eyes still gleamed vengefully from beneath long, dense lashes. "Why is it that when beautiful women lie, it's so easy to believe every poisonous word?"

"Wow, you must knock 'em dead with flattery like that."

The heavy eyelashes swept up and a very different Mason suddenly stared out. Vienna's stomach dived and her pulse climbed sharply. A p.r.i.c.kling chill spread its feelers beneath her skin, as though she were being delicately licked all over. Her nipples reacted, pressing against the thin lace of her bra. Vienna bit her lip so she wouldn't gasp, but Mason must have glimpsed the reaction. An insolent heat invaded her gaze and she gave a sensual, cynical smile that bothered Vienna more than the gun.

There was something raw and untamed about Mason that always unsettled her. That hadn't changed since the last time their paths had crossed and, maddeningly, Mason had become even more physically attractive as the years pa.s.sed. Her coltishness had given way to a long-bodied muscularity unsoftened by feminine curves. The lingering traces of childhood had fed her face, leaving the lean planes and hard jawline more sharply defined. Vienna took in the strange, sinewy beauty of the hand clamped around the rife stock, the odd combination of elegance and artisan practicality. She knew how those hands felt. Sometimes it seemed she'd spent her whole life trying to stamp out that particular memory. She still couldn't make sense of Mason's effect on her.

Their first disturbing encounter flashed through her mind. The Blakes had held a wedding that day at Penwraithe, their home in the Berks.h.i.+res. After the formalities the guests were enjoying a tea dance and picnic, hoping an impending summer storm would come to nothing. Everyone fell back in disarray when a huge black horse thundered through the proceedings and halted in front of the picnic blanket where seven-year-old Vienna sat with her dolls. From the frozen faces of her aunts and cousins, Vienna understood she was in danger and slid slowly backward on her b.u.t.t away from the restless hooves.

Once she was at a safe distance, she scrambled up and brushed off her fancy flower-girl dress. A spatter of rain landed on her top lip as she looked up into the darkest eyes she'd ever seen. Licking the water away, she asked, "Can I have a ride?"

The rider looked surprised. "Do you know who I am?"

When Vienna shook her head, the dark-eyed girl leaned down and offered her hand. Ignoring the protests of those around her, Vienna allowed herself to be pulled up onto the front of the saddle. The strange older child wrapped an arm around her waist, doubled the reins in her free hand, and kicked the horse into a gallop.

As Vienna laughed into the wind, the girl said in her ear, "I'm Mason Cavender. Your family wants me and my brother dead."

Vienna recognized the name instantly and her heart skittered, but even at seven years of age she knew exactly what was expected of her. A Blake never backed down in front of a Cavender. Leaning back to make herself heard, she replied carelessly, "So what?"

Mason's laughter warmed her cheek. "Hold on tight," she warned. And then they were airborne, jumping a stream and racing down a slope toward a pair of towering wrought iron gates.

For a few terrifying seconds Vienna thought they were going to attempt the impossible jump over the obstacle, but Mason slowed to a trot and a man emerged from the gatehouse. As he opened the gates Vienna studied the design on each: a lion, twin crescents, and a serpent.

Mason flourished an arm. "This is where I live. It's called Laudes Absalom."

Huge oaks overshadowed the broad avenue they followed. On the right lay a dark belt of unkempt woods from which drifted the scent of decay and fungus. On the left, beyond the stalwart oaks, a small white temple stood on the brow of a gra.s.sy slope just in sight of a lake bordered by pines. Ahead loomed a house unlike any Vienna had ever seen, a baleful fortress rising against the leaden sky. Stone towers loomed, angels propped up archways, demons lurked beneath the eaves. One wing of the monstrous residence was falling down, the roof gutted and the masonry crumbling. Slabs of stone and broken statuary were piled up at the base of a wall jutting from the damaged building. Rambling roses made their way over this barrier like fugitives from the other side, spilling across the rubble in a riot of crimson and pink blooms.

Mason paused on the rise of a bridge halfway along the drive and guided her horse in a semicircle so they could look toward the shadowed lake and the temple. A gust of wind blew the rosebud wreath from Vienna's head and caught at her hair. Mason plucked a long coppery wisp away from her face and smoothed it back behind Vienna's ear. For a few seconds her hand rested on Vienna's cheek.

"You shouldn't be here," she said.

Vienna smiled, thrilled by that wicked truth. She never got to have any fun. Her nanny or some bossy female relative was always tagging along, reminding her of her duty as her parents' only child. "I don't care. Anyway, you shouldn't have crossed the boundary."

"That land where you were having your picnic," Mason said with a note of satisfaction. "It's Cavender land. Your family has to give it back to us next year."

"Why?"

"Because the judge said so."

Vienna had no reply to this unfathomable fact. It came to her in that moment that she was on a dark, fast horse with the very child she'd been warned never to talk to, and they were inside the towering gates she'd been told never to enter. Her father always slowed the car when they drove past Laudes Absalom so he could deliver various lines from a litany of condemnation for their neighbors. A curse upon their vile hearts and craven souls. One day, we'll see that house reduced to dust. Never trust a Cavender.

Mason jumped down, telling Vienna to hold the cantle. She took the reins and led the horse the rest of the way toward the house, where she yelled, "Mr. Pettibone," and a man ducked his head to pa.s.s through one of several small archways along the front of the house. He lifted Vienna down and led the horse away.

"Don't say anything till we get to my room," Mason instructed as they climbed the steps to the main doors. "That's if you aren't too sissy to come inside."

Vienna paused to stare up at a statue, a sorrowful marble angel with a strange-looking dog at her side. A phantom wind buffeted her, molding her filmy robes to her sleek thighs and firm b.r.e.a.s.t.s. One hand clutched at the dog's scruff, the other trailed behind her, the fingers barely brus.h.i.+ng the door pillar. She was not so much guarding the entrance as stealing away, looking back as though afraid of being followed.

Mason trailed her fingertips over the statue's hand. "This is my great-great-grandmother, Estelle."

"Was she an angel?"

"No, they gave her wings because she's in heaven. She drowned in the lake."

"Did the dog drown, too?"

Mason gave her an odd look. "You're asking baby questions. Come on."

She took Vienna's hand and escorted her indoors, into a huge wood-paneled hall crisscrossed with fragments of light from rows of high leaded windows on either side. Swords, axes, stag heads, and paintings cluttered the walls, and long, dusty red drapes were tied with fraying golden cords. A gigantic staircase rose in the center, leading to a gallery walkway high above. The floor creaked as they walked and Mason kept tugging at Vienna's hand to make her hurry.

Before they could reach a far-off door, a man's voice ordered them to stop. Vienna heard a cuss from Mason, and they turned around. The man was big and his face seemed to be etched from stone, just like the house. His eyes burned into Vienna.

"What's your name, girl?" he asked.

"Vienna Blake."

"Take her back," he told Mason.

"But I don't have anyone to play with. Why couldn't I go to camp with Lynden?"

He came closer. The smell of alcohol clung to him. The hand at his side formed a fist. "I said get her out of here."

Mason stepped in front of Vienna. "No."

He cuffed her so hard across the face that she staggered and fell. Standing over her, he said, "Take that sp.a.w.n back where she belongs and don't ever bring her here again."

Vienna s.h.i.+vered at the memory of his rage. She wondered if Laudes Absalom was really as morbid and intimidating as it had seemed that day. Perhaps, with Mason's father gone, it was a just a big old house that needed renovations. a.s.suming she won the next skirmish in their ongoing battle, she would soon be in a position to decide its fate. Laudes Absalom would finally belong to the Blakes.

She sighed. A hundred and forty years had pa.s.sed since their families first began tearing at each other's throats, and she was the one who would finally make the Cavenders pay their debt in full. For as long as she could remember, this moment had obsessed her family. Sitting on her father's knee, she had recited the promise every Blake learned along with the first words they could speak: While Cavenders breathe and prosper, the Blakes cannot rest in their graves.

The last of the Cavenders was now in front of her, breaking the law, threatening her life, and soon to be led off in handcuffs, or possibly shot by the police. Vienna searched for pleasure in the prospect of her enemy's humiliation and defeat, but she could only find hollow pity and a sense of dismay.

Astounding herself, she said, "Go home, Mason. Just walk out of here. I guarantee you will be unmolested."

"Do I look like a coward? Do you think I would dishonor myself by running away?"

Vienna caught a flash of herself standing at the gates of Laudes Absalom two days after that horse ride, face-to-face with Mason, the heavy bars between them. Mason, with her ten-year-old dignity, had informed her they could never be friends. She kept her head down as if she could hide her bruised face and b.l.o.o.d.y upper lip.

Vienna had been chastised for their exploit, too. No dessert for a week and her dolls confiscated until she laboriously penned a letter explaining why Blakes did not play with Cavenders. As soon as she'd completed her punishment and apologized to everyone who seemed offended, she'd evaded her nanny and returned to the scene of her disgrace, worried about Mason. The man at the gatehouse had made her promise not to come by again, causing trouble, then he summoned Mason.

Standing on either side of the gate, they'd solemnly shaken hands, forswearing the possibility of friends.h.i.+p and avowing their status as enemies. Vienna could still see Mason's black eye and the grimace of pain as she tried to smile when they said good-bye. She'd stopped once as she walked away, looking back for the longest time. Vienna waved, but Mason didn't respond. It was eight years before they spoke again.

"I think you've suffered a terrible loss," Vienna said coolly. "You're not fully in command of yourself."

"I see. And you think this temporary softness in the head would induce me to accept pity from a Blake?"

"Don't mistake self-interest for pity." Vienna finally opened the drawer far enough to admit her hand. "Do you seriously imagine defeating you in this condition would give me any satisfaction? It's hardly a fair fight."

Mason barked a harsh laugh. "When did that ever stop you or any of your family?"

"Don't judge me by Cavender standards," Vienna said haughtily. She closed her fingers around her revolver. "There are some things I won't stoop to, including cold-blooded murder and taking advantage of a person unhinged by grief."

"How did you come by these newfound scruples? Obviously they're not genetic."

Vienna contemplated the best way to defuse the present threat from her old foe. Liberating the .38 from the drawer, she lifted it into view. As Mason's eyes registered the revolver, Vienna said softly, "Yes, we're both armed. And I could have shot you right then, but I chose not to."

"Proving what? You're a lousy shot and would have missed? Or you don't want a mess on your carpet?"

"For the record, I could take you down at a hundred yards, but I don't have to kill you to destroy you," Vienna replied sweetly. "Let me explain what I have planned. I'm going to buy the last pieces of the Cavender Corporation, and then I'm going to bankrupt you and buy that ramshackle castle of yours and the land that rightfully belongs to the Blakes. Then I'm going to raze your family's edifices to the ground, cut down your trees, and sell every animal on that property for slaughter."

She got no further with her dangerous taunts. Mason lifted the rife, her knuckles white, and for a split second it seemed that she would pull the trigger. Then she let the weapon fall.

Extending her arms, she invited, "Why waste time plotting and scheming? Just shoot me." When Vienna didn't react, she ripped open the front of her s.h.i.+rt and exposed her naked, heaving chest. "Get it over with. Come on, lay waste to another Cavender heart."

Vienna didn't know when she'd ever seen a body more beautiful.

Mason's b.r.e.a.s.t.s were like the rest of her, the muscles sheathed in smooth, pale olive skin. Her small, hard nipples were an unlikely shade of Merlot, a deeper hue than her mouth. Her toned torso flinched visibly beneath Vienna's gaze and her breathing grew more rapid. Vienna fixed her attention on the belt loosely fastened above the rise of her hips. The buckle was silver and ornately carved, a lion and two crescents within the loose coil of a serpent. The Cavender emblem, the same one that decorated the wrought iron gates at Laudes Absalom, supposedly created from an ancient family crest.

There was talk that a Cavender bride had Romany ancestry, accounting for the dark-haired, dark-eyed look of the entire family and for their unruliness, reckless pa.s.sions, and legendary superst.i.tions. A penchant for gambling, drinking, brawling, and womanizing had ended the lives of a succession of Cavender males over the past two centuries. The women were no strangers to vice, either. Vienna had heard the stories; the Blakes circulated every sordid detail as evidence of their superior gene pool. If Cavender women didn't die in childbirth, they took their own lives or vanished in peculiar circ.u.mstances, littering the family tree with motherless children. The men were handsome and charming, and known for their violent rages.

The Blakes were diametric opposites, with their blond or red hair, pale skin, cool nature, and dogged self-discipline. Blakes were conservative, logical, and dispa.s.sionate, except for their desire to vanquish the family that had wronged them. But even their quest for revenge was cold and ruthless, tempered by a determination to win by the rules of civilized society. Vienna could not imagine how the two families had ever started out in business together, let alone that their enterprise had thrived and that relations had been so cordial, they'd built their homes on adjoining land. They jointly ran a farm and orchard to provide both households with food. Their children were schooled together. There was even a Blake-Cavender marriage, cementing the alliance.

Taking in the woman breathing hard in front of her, Vienna suffered a pang of deep regret for the divide between them. Neither could cross that treacherous chasm without reaching out to the other, but their mutual mistrust was too great for either to make the first move. For a brief, crazy instant, Vienna wanted to step around her desk and take Mason in her arms. If anyone needed a hug, her sworn enemy did.

She drew a sharp breath and caught a whiff of soap and spice blended with another scent. Mason's. She hated that she recognized it, that it was imprinted in her sense memory just as indelibly as Mason's touch.