Attraction
ATTRACTION
Rebecca’s Dreams are the Key…
Rebecca’s Dreams are the Key.
Old family trauma connects the living with the dead in a house of secrets, ghosts, and wrath.
Rebecca Cox loathes teaching but has run out of options. She cannot return home. When an opportunity to be the companion to a duke’s daughter arises, she takes it. The offer comes from the handsome Lord Paul Rowntree; the two have sparred before.
Paul prefers not to use his title. He desires recognition for his actions, as a soldier fighting against Napoleon and his work as a spy, but not the connection to his family of birth. When his brother’s ghost informs him that the next heir is coming to claim the title, Paul’s life is upended. Rebecca is his only solace from interfering relatives who scheme to enrich themselves from the coffers of the underage duke.
Past social disappointments haunt Rebecca. She doesn’t trust her attraction to Paul and dreams of running away. She most definitely doesn’t want to marry him. However, since she cannot return home, she remains at the Rowanwood estate, where long-buried secrets, carefully guarded by a ghost, threaten to ruin the lives of everyone staying in the Hall.
CW: child abuse off-page
Rebecca wrestled with herself; the bed was uncomfortable. She was aware that the room was unfamiliar. However, her unconscious mind dominated as much as pushed back on its control.
She was a child; some of the furniture at the vicarage was too tall to see over. The rooms didn’t smell right as she wandered through the parlor and into the drawing room. Little Becca came to the staircase and stopped. The flight was so ridiculously narrow that her baby arms could reach across its width. The maids kept the wood polished, but the wear on the treads was visible.
However, an unfathomable blackness swirled at the top of the stairs in her dream. A sharp scent made her nose crinkle, biting the inside of her nostrils. Noise crackled; one she couldn’t identify. Frightened, she began to step backward, though she couldn’t risk turning her back on that horrible darkness.
The scene morphed, and she was holding the lantern in that inn room again. It swayed wildly back and forth; the light threw shadows around her, distorting her view. When she tried to put down the light, Rebecca found it stuck fast to her hand. She flicked her hand open over and over to rid herself of the lantern, but the handle stuck fast. An increasing sense of dread crept over her, as though something hunted the light.
She couldn’t help screaming and woke to find herself in her bed in the inn. It was morning; sunlight streamed in through a crack in the curtains.