MIDNIGHT HEARTS

By

Celia Ashley

© copyright July 2005, Celia Ashley

Cover art by Amber Moon, © copyright July 2005

ISBN 1-58608-594-8

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

“Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,

And then thou must be damned perpetually,

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come.”

Christopher Marlowe 1564-93

Doctor Faustus (1604)

Prologue

Moving toward the fall of water, he stood facing the creek he could not see outside. It was from that direction that she would come to him, wading through water more than waist deep, her hair long and wet and unbound, clinging to her shoulders, her back, the curve of her breasts. Closing his eyes he took a step closer to the falls. Often she left her garments in the woods, safely hidden, so that her clothing would remain dry and questions would be averted. He liked best when she veered from that course of good sense and came to him in her shift with its multitude of tiny buttons, the fabric soaked and diaphanous, guarding from his gaze just barely the places of her body he had explored in intimate detail. One by one, fingers stumbling with cold and lust, he would unfasten those buttons, exposing the flesh he adored, feel her tremble in anticipation, hear the quickening of her breath, the tiny sounds low in her throat...

Summoning the return of courage that failed him in these moments, he pushed his way through the tumbling, gilded water onto the ledge beyond. The moon rode high in the sky, round and white, limning the landscape before him with the gentle strokes of spread bristles on stained canvas. He tipped his head on his neck, closing his eyes again. He called her name, sending the pair of syllables out into the woods, into the night, into the days, the months, the years that had lapsed between.

And when he opened his eyes, she was there.

Chapter 1

Ethan Taylor frowned down at his hands, grabbed a cloth from the bed of the pickup truck and wiped the grime from his palms. Utilizing a relatively clean forearm, he skimmed the tumble of damp, dark hair back from his sweating brow in annoyance. He was nearly an hour late for his appointment, thanks to a flat tire and a spare that needed inflating. Given the opportunity, he would have liked to have gone home to change out of the clothes he had worked in all day and shower, but he didn’t have the time. He was coming straight from another job where everything had sprinted behind.

Tossing the rag across the seat, Ethan angled his long frame behind the wheel. With a deep exhalation, he snatched his sunglasses from the dashboard and jammed them onto his tanned face with one hand, allowing his fingers to graze the stubble of a day’s growth of beard shadowing his skin. He made a face, then shrugged his shoulders, swiping at his dusty jeans. There was nothing he could do about it at this point. The best laid plans, and all that.

Ethan reached for the directions he’d jotted down, snapping them open across the steering wheel for a quick glance. As he thought, he was only a few minutes away. Even so, it was after six o’clock and his appointment had been for five-thirty.

He’d had the office call to explain the delay. It was a lot easier to leave that type of duty to his secretary than attempt to discuss a flat tire in detail with a new client while in the middle of trying to change one. There had obviously been no problem, because he hadn’t gotten a call back on his cell phone.

From the little he had heard about the woman he was about to meet, she could be a pain in the backside. Still, and contrarily, she had been recommended to him by the same business associate who had spoken of her in descriptors that were not entirely flattering and even less illuminating. Ethan’s sole conversation with her nearly three weeks ago had been brief and to the point, with no real opportunity for an evaluation of his own although she had seemed, on the surface, to be friendly enough. She apparently had the money to pay him and a house that intrigued him. For the moment that was all he needed.

With a quick glance in the side mirror, Ethan pulled the truck off the shoulder and back onto the rural roadway. Deftly he folded the directions in half and returned them to the seat by his thigh, noting the smear of black across the white paper from his fingers. He made a mental note to wipe his hands again before greeting Ms. Madison. Perry Madison. Interesting name. Made him think of old black and white television, and Raymond Burr in his commanding portrayal of the literary lawyer. He had been too young to have seen the show at the time it originally aired, but he remembered the occasional rerun many years ago.

“Alright, Ms. Madison,” he murmured to himself as he glanced through the trees lining the road and then at the watch on his wrist, “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt regarding your personality if you’ll give me another five minutes.”

The street sign came up so suddenly he passed it, but as the road was empty he merely pulled to the shoulder and backed up, then made a right onto the unpaved lane and followed it slowly. Somewhere, he had been told, there would be a driveway entrance marked by a white, oblong sign bearing the name of the place, Water on Stone.

He found it, but just barely. The sign had been knocked over, probably in the devastating winds of the latest thunderstorm, and was lying against the base of a tree. Braking, he swung the truck into a driveway of stone and dirt, mostly dirt. It was potholed and overgrown at its boundaries and still bearing a number of sky-reflecting puddles, forcing him to drive at a bumping snail’s pace. Tree branches scraped the fenders of the pickup. Branches that would have to be trimmed back if he took the job, he reflected in exasperation as he drove. Bigger trucks than his might have to get up the drive to the house.

Abruptly the woods peeled back from the ragged driveway and he found himself releasing his unconscious stranglehold on the wheel. He straightened his spine, his lips curved into a half-smile as his breath escaped his nostrils in a long, slow release of pent-up agitation.

This is it, he thought. This type of house was why he had started a restoration business— despite a degree in business law and his entrenchment in a family of restauranteurs, cops, and lawyers. He had always been enamored of history. Loved the research of it, the placing of his hands into it, restoring buildings to their original conception, leaving his own mark where once another man had left his.

He remembered explaining that to a woman he had dated for a short time, and she had wondered if there wasn’t some correlation to his relationships as well. He had not found her remark as amusing as she had.

Taking off his sunglasses he set them carefully on the dashboard, wiping his hands again with the rag until they were as clean as he could manage. With a glance in the rear view mirror he pressed his unruly thick hair back from his brow, ascertained he had left behind no telltale smudge of grease, then pushed open the door to step down onto the drive. The sound of his work boots on gravel was barely audible.

Ethan closed the truck door just as quietly, so that it hardly caught. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, he rocked back onto his heels. His eyes grazed the facade of the plastered fieldstone house with a warm appraisal. Commonly, and certainly not surprisingly, early Americans built from whatever source was close to hand and, in eastern Pennsylvania, it was river or fieldstone. A beautiful and sturdy building material. Hue, shape, the feel of it in one’s hand, as familiar as the texture of his own skin after all these years.

He noted with a professional eye where the structure had been added to in a later period. From ground level he could see that the chimneys were in relatively good condition, though far from perfect. The roofs were probably in need of repair. Slate. That would be expensive, although he had a supply stockpiled from dismantled buildings. The porch addition would have to come down, he mused, giving it a quick glance as his hand came up to scratch the stubble at his chin. Stone should be re-pointed; woodwork repaired and repainted; windows glazed; shutters replaced. For the latter, he knew where he could find original era replacements.

Stopping himself, he looked around. There was no use tallying up repairs or restoration possibilities without first speaking to the owner. He would have expected her to come out to talk with him, but perhaps she was involved with something inside and not aware of his arrival. Striding up onto the porch he rapped on the door. When there was no response, he knocked louder.

After a minute longer he discreetly tried the knob and found it locked.

“Well, Ms. Madison,” he said under his breath, “you couldn’t give me the five minutes, I suppose I should rescind the benefit of the doubt.”

He told himself he should just turn around and go home, given the type of day he’d had, but instead he hesitated on the porch, tipping his dark head to listen. From the distant road he had turned off of he could hear the hum of an engine as a well-tuned car sped past. Nearer he was aware of a faint chuckle of water, the breeze in the treetops, a few birds, and little else. Oddly, there wasn’t even the slightest sound of activity from within the house. Granted, the walls were likely a foot and a half thick, but the door was not. Ethan turned on his heel, shoving his hands once more into his pockets.

Taking a deep breath, Ethan began a full circuit of the house. He wrestled a small wire-bound notebook out of the back pocket of his jeans and began jotting down notes. At least he would be prepared when he finally met the dragon lady. No one could fault him for trying.

There were several outbuildings, one of which would be better off torn down. It was a recent addition, anyway, a wooden shed of little import that had weathered the fifty or so years of its existence poorly. Peering inside with an inbred caution for less than wholesome structures, Ethan noted it had been emptied, perhaps due to the gaping hole in its roof or the good sense of its owner, who might very well be planning its demolition. Finding nothing salvageable there, Ethan moved on.

Alongside the barn, which was in remarkably good condition, he discovered a clear track worn into the earth running close to the wall, then out behind the large building and into the woods. There was no evidence of recent habitation by livestock in the structure, but it made sense that years of animal husbandry by the owners of the home had caused the ground to be worn away as domestic herds passed to and from the barn to some pasturage unseen, or perhaps even overgrown now by the stand of young trees.

Glancing back at the house for some sign of his would-be client, Ethan gave a quick call for courtesy’s sake, then willingly permitted curiosity to get the best of him and set his booted feet to the path. Shoving the notebook into his jeans, he tucked the pen in the pocket of his shirt, then ran his fingers through his hair as he headed toward the woods.

The brief expanse of meadow was starred with wild flowers, some tall, feathery variety with tiny, white blooms. For all that he enjoyed working out-of-doors he knew very little about flowers and the like. Still, it was a pleasant sight and Ethan found himself smiling at the pastoral quality of the scene. Unable to hear the road traffic, he could almost imagine what it must have been like when the homestead was first established, free of modern intrusion.

Losing himself in a light drift of fancy, Ethan entered the band of trees. Although most of the trees were young, there was some old growth coverage, trunks hoary with moss and towering toward the blue sky. Picking his way over the twisted roots jutting from the earth, he rolled up the sleeves he had re-buttoned after changing the tire.

A light breeze blew through the woods, stirring the hair on his forearms and at the nape of his neck. With it came the scent of water, a fresh, damp curl of air, redolent with the peculiar fragrance of wet stone and soil. A minute later he heard the sound of it tumbling through a streambed somewhere nearby.

Pausing to get his bearings, Ethan glanced back over his shoulder, certain he had heard a footfall behind him, but the path was empty. He had been considering what excuse to give Ms. Madison should she find him wandering on her property, but there proved, as yet, to be no need.

Shrugging his shoulders, he started walking again. Still, he could sense eyes on him, hear the sound of soft soles on the packed earth of the pathway. Stopping short, he spun about. His greeting died unspoken on his lips. The path, which had opened up in the past dozen yards or so, was devoid of anything but midges and the occasional sparrow.

For a moment longer he stared back in the direction he had walked, scanning the forest to either side. What he had heard was likely a trick of the terrain and no more than branches rubbing together in the breeze or an echo of his own footfalls off the occasional boulder to either side of the path. With a last look around, he started back toward the noise of water, louder now, and nearer, and seeming to have picked up volume in terms of flow as well as sound.

The path began to climb in an easy but stony ascent. Curiosity now had him firmly in its spell and he bounded up between the rocks, his stride long and renewed perspiration breaking out between his shoulders blades. At the crest he hesitated, a fortuitous pause, because there the trail ended at the edge of a steep drop. On the opposite side of a swiftly running creek a fall of water tumbled out of the rocky face of the hillside into the stream below. The spray was luminous, a colorful mist shimmering in the sun.

The falls were not large, dropping no more than half again his height, perhaps nine feet or so, but the effect in the glade of trees was breathtaking. He stared, mesmerized, for several minutes before looking about for a way to descend. The path was gone, but the rocks themselves provided sufficient handhold and he clambered down to the bank of the stream, his work boots skidding in the mud.

Water on Stone, he thought. The property was aptly named.

Shifting the notepad about in his pocket, he sat down on a boulder jutting out over the water and closed his eyes, permitting his senses to feel the vibration of the plummeting water, smell the scent of it, revel in the cool moisture hanging in the air about his dark head. The noise of the waterfall prevented him hearing any other, drowning out the call of birds, the breeze that still moved in the trees on the crest, any other sound of human habitation nearby. The effect was wonderful. It was what he sometimes imagined heaven might be like, natural and wondrous, and mystifying in its solitude.

After a few moments in which his breathing and his heart rate steadied, Ethan opened his eyes again, a slow lifting of his thick, black lashes. Shifting his feet, he felt his boots brush against something in the moss and bent to see what it was. He stared, and blinked, and stared again, feeling a frown form on his brow.

A pair of women’s sandals lay on the mossy soil. One was upside down, the well-worn sole muddied. The other showed the outline of a small, narrow foot in its wear and the leather was lightly discolored by mildew, as if the shoe had been lying for some time in the elements. For how long he could not be sure, but the past few days had been humid indeed and could account for the article’s condition.

Hooking the pointer finger of his left hand through the strap, he lifted the sandal and set it beside him on the rock. Who, he wondered, would leave a pair of shoes in the woods, and why? He did not like it. It seemed ominous, somehow, finding such a thing in this place.

He glanced cautiously around and shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun beginning its descent toward the horizon.

“Hello?” he called. There was no response. He glanced over his shoulder, to the ridge, then back toward the creek and the falls.

“Hello?”

Something moved behind the tumbling water with upright locomotion, shielded from full view by the green-gray curtain of liquid. The falls rushed from an opening in the hillside, the exodus of an underground spring, and beneath in the dark cleft someone had appeared, swaying unsteadily from side to side and barely distinguishable, like a watercolor painting washing away. Slowly, Ethan stood up. The sandal fell unnoticed from his hand, tumbling over the moss-covered bank.

As he watched, an arm sliced through the water, pale and undeniably feminine. A short time later it withdrew and the figure moved to one side of the falls, forcing its way out through the thunderous cascade onto the ledge.

The woman steadied herself in the sun, one slender hand on the rock face. Her head lifted to the light, her hair a tangled mass, her eyes blinking. She seemed disoriented, unaware of her surroundings, definitely unaware of his presence across the creek.

Ethan’s breath caught and then rushed from his lungs. A single, meaningless syllable escaped his lips in slow execution, nearly silent in the roar of water. It was a fairly juvenile exclamation, but no other seemed to cover the enormity of his reaction.

Clothed in a sleeveless white shift that ended mid-calf, the garment was soaked and clinging the length of her body, revealing more to his eye than simple nakedness might have done. He could see the curve of her hip, the musculature of her thighs, the gentle mound of the place where they met. Her waist was narrow, her rib cage of a diameter that he could encompass with one arm, the cloth clinging to a roundness of breast above that made his heart squeeze in his chest. Her slender neck arched with the tilt of her head, and her hair, a deep cinnamon in color, wrapped wetly about her arms and throat and clung with greedy intent to her breasts. Her nipples stood taut in the chill of her damp state against a fabric made transparent by saturation. Ethan shifted where he stood, tugging at the sudden, involuntary restriction of his jeans.

Though he could have sworn he had scarcely moved in his discomfort, her head snapped down and she looked across the expanse of water directly at him, her eyes large and still somewhat unfocused. Her age, at that brief distance, was difficult to discern. She could have been anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, her countenance a semblance of startled confusion.

“Hi,” he said loudly, lifting his hand in an embarrassed wave. He lowered the other to shield the evidence of his unanticipated arousal. “I’m sorry,” he added. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”

For an entire ten seconds she said nothing, but stood with her hands out a little from her body at her sides, affording him a frontal view that did nothing to ease his awkward state. He tried to keep his eyes focused on her face, but his gaze kept slipping back to her nipples straining the wet cloth of her summer dress.

Eventually, he strode closer to the water, pausing at the brink of the steep bank. “Are you alright?” he shouted.

She looked alright. She looked more than alright. She actually looked like a woman thoroughly sated, sleepy-eyed and flushed. He could not imagine why. She appeared to be alone.

Recovering, Ethan turned his head away, studiously observing the tree line on the ridge. “My name is Ethan. Ethan Taylor. I--”

“What?”

Abruptly he turned back and was instantly sorry he had. She had the hem of her garment in her hands now, twisting it fiercely and exposing the length of her legs from her toes to a place well above her knees. Bent to her task, the neck of her simple gown hung slack, revealing the pink tinge of her chilled flesh. She lifted her head to look at him, her hair trailing out and over the water, swinging in the breeze.

“Ethan Taylor,” he repeated, shouting, dragging his gaze away from the further revelation of a form that was moving him to imprudent thought. “I came to see a Ms. Madison and I, uh, I...” His voice trailed off at the expression on her face.

She opened her mouth, but if she spoke, her words did not reach him. Her bare foot extended, quite as if she expected to be stepping onto something more substantial than air. Subsequent to her imprudent move she tumbled forward and down into the creek in an ungainly arabesque.

Head jerking in surprise, Ethan leaped from the bank and waded out to where she had gone under, reaching for her shoulder just as she began to surface. Hauling the coughing woman to her feet, he stood with his hands wrapped around her upper arms to keep her from sinking to her knees. Her pallor was alarming.

“Did you hurt yourself?” he asked, his gaze trailing along her soaked gown for signs of injury and finding none.

Her lashes were clumped together in wet spikes that dripped water down her pale cheeks. Feeling the chill of the creek through his soaked jeans, he scooped the woman into his arms and carried her to the bank, lowering her to the warm stone he had just vacated.

“Are you alright?” he asked again as she bent over her knees, hugging herself for warmth. He noted that a little color was beginning to return to her cheeks and lips when she glanced up at him through the tangle of her hair. She pushed the wet locks from her brow with a trembling hand.

“I—I think so,” she said, her voice hoarse, teeth chattering.

Wordlessly Ethan stripped off his shirt and wrapped it around the woman. She glanced at him again in grateful acknowledgment. He nodded, saying nothing, his eyes narrowed as he waited for her to speak again. The sun was warm on his back, his arms, but his legs were still chilled. He knew she must be freezing.

“Thank you,” she murmured after a moment.

“You’re welcome,” he said, and crouched down beside her, folding his hands together between his damp knees. Dipping his head, he studied her face. “What were you doing in there?”

“In the creek? Not swimming,” she whispered. Her eyes were on the falls.

He followed her gaze. “That can’t be the safest place. It looks rather slick.”

A small shudder took her so that her shoulders jerked beneath his shirt. She looked down, away from the tumbling water. Unwrapping her arms from her waist she grabbed the fabric of her skirt and twisted it again, fiercely. The tendons stood out along the backs of her hands. Water puddled the mossy soil at her feet. Bending forward, Ethan retrieved the sandals from harm’s way, holding them up by the narrow straps.

“Are these yours?”

The woman stared at the shoes for a long moment, then her gaze slid from his hand to his face. Her eyes, he noted for the first time, were the gray of a winter sky, eerily pale but strangely pretty. There was something unnerving in the way they regarded him now.

“Who did you say you were?” she asked.

It was a belated inquiry, though appropriate. Ethan wiped his free hand uselessly on his thigh as the damp was seeping inexorably up the legs of his jeans, and held it out.

“Ethan Taylor,” he said. “And you?”

She grasped his hand tentatively, as if uncertain. “Perry Madison,” she said. “And you’re early.”

“Actually,” he answered, releasing her fingers, “I’m late.”

“What?”

“I had my secretary call you to explain my tardiness. Didn’t you get the message? I had a flat tire.”

She definitely did not look at all as he had expected. His mental image of Perry Madison had been somewhat fuzzy, although since his ruminations in the truck it had been closer to Raymond Burr than to this petite, lightly freckled, shivering, oddly sexy woman sitting on the rock beside him. And although he was waiting for an explanation, less as to what she had been doing—which was none of his business after all--than as to the reason for the disorientation of her state when she had first appeared, she seemed recovered now. Her face had a focused aspect, despite the bewildered frown creasing her brow.

“What day is it?” she asked.

“I—Thursday, the fifth. I’m sorry,” he said in sudden understanding, “I suppose I should have called you this morning to confirm. And to remind you. I—”

“I didn’t forget,” she said, reaching for her sandals. Bending, she studied them for a moment, scraping at the mildew with a flick of her fingernail before putting them on. “I have the appointment marked on the calendar.”

She spoke slowly, almost as if to herself. When she stood, her eyes went again to the falls in mute consideration. Ethan watched as she sucked in her lower lip, sinking her teeth into the soft flesh. He looked away, following the direction of her gaze.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

He could hear the inhalation of her breath through her nose. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides and then released.

“I don’t know,” she answered and said no more, dropping like a stone.