Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection) by Blake Jennifer

Author:Blake, Jennifer [Blake, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Steel Magnolia Press
Published: 2013-08-20T21:00:00+00:00

7

“WILL YOU COME with me?”

The question, put so abruptly, caught Claire by surprise. “Come with you?”

“To the ceremony in the swamp. If the Voodooienne put the spell on Bast, she can take it off. She ‘crossed’ him, she can ‘uncross’ him, as they say. And she will, I’m sure, for a price.”

“But—but couldn’t you send for her?” Claire asked. The thought of the meeting, so primitive, and far beyond her experience, deep in the swamp, was not by any means attractive to her. She could not imagine herself setting out to find it among the moss-draped trees, along the damp trails.

“It may be too late. I must hurry,” Octavia said, removing her shawl and carefully wrapping it around her pet before picking him up in her arms.

“Wait! Let’s ask Justin.”

“No! He would never give us his escort, not for something like this. And he would try to keep me from going. He thinks it all nonsense, and he thinks me a foolish old woman for crediting them with any kind of power. He would let Bast die! For the love of God, Claire. Don’t stand there. Come on.”

Claire did not like the edge of tightly controlled hysteria that she caught in the older woman’s voice. “Octavia, are you certain?”

“Don’t come then. I will go alone.”

With her face hard, she pushed past Claire toward the door. Claire stared after her. She could not let her go alone, not into the black dangers of the swamp. She did not want to go, but her conscience would not allow her to stay.

“Just a minute,” she called, and snatching up a spencer to cover her arms against the mosquitoes, she hurried after Octavia.

The house and the clear stretch of lawn around it were soon left behind. For a few yards they followed the road curving around the plantation, but when the house was no longer visible behind them, they plunged into the woods, following a small animal trail through the high weeds. Octavia seemed to know where she was going, for she took the lead with a fine unconcern for the possibility of snakes lurking on the path. Briars clawed at their skirts and ankles, and the branches of saplings whipped at their shoulders. Claire developed a stitch in her side, and her breathing grew ragged as her ribs began to throb with a dull ache.

They came to the deep woods where the virgin oaks and gums and ashes over their heads closed out the starlight. In that echoing space the sound of the drums was louder, and mingling with it they could hear sharp cries and the rising crescendo of voices chanting.

By now Octavia was almost running. Claire followed, paying more attention now to where she was putting her feet than to what lay ahead of them. A feeling of deep fatalism gripped her. Committed now to this escapade, there was no use looking back. She pushed her apprehension from her mind, stopped probing the darkness around them, and concentrated on keeping up with Octavia.

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