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The Bride Finder: A Novel (St. Leger, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: St. Leger Series

Carroll, Susan

 
9780449003886: The Bride Finder: A Novel (St. Leger, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0449003884 ISBN 13: 9780449003886
Verlag: Ivy Books, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Chosen by the Bride Finder, a man blessed with amazing insight, Madeline Breton has come to Cornwall to meet her new husband, the enigmatic Anatole St. Leger. But her dream of happiness soon diffuses in his overpowering shadow. Anatole knows only too well the legacies that to him have been more curses than gifts. But as Madeline embarks on an odyssey both otherworldly and undeniably real, she and her husband fall hopelessly in love--until she sees a haunting vision of murder and a terrifying enemy emerges to threaten both their lives. . . .

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Carroll is an award-winning romance author whose books include The Painted Veil, Winterbourne, The Bride Finder, and the forthcoming The Night Drifter. She lives in Rock Island, Illinois.

Aus dem Klappentext

Chosen by the Bride Finder, a man blessed with amazing insight, Madeline Breton has come to Cornwall to meet her new husband, the enigmatic Anatole St. Leger. But her dream of happiness soon diffuses in his overpowering shadow. Anatole knows only too well the legacies that to him have been more curses than gifts. But as Madeline embarks on an odyssey both otherworldly and undeniably real, she and her husband fall hopelessly in love--until she sees a haunting vision of murder and a terrifying enemy emerges to threaten both their lives. . . .

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Prologue

Few men dared enter the old part of the Castle Leger. The light of a thousand candles would not have been enough to dispel the darkness of the great medieval hall with its lurking shadows and ancient secrets that had gathered for centuries, thick as dust on the rough, uneven floor.

The present master of Castle Leger did not fear the old hall as much as he despised it, the cold stone walls littered with portraits of ancestors that no sane man would ever claim as his own. But it was a good place to come if a man desired to be alone, to conduct business of a most private nature. That is, if one didn't mind the sensation of being watched by a dozen pairs of painted eyes, the feeling that a specter might glide out from a portrait as soon as one's back was turned.

Anatole St. Leger was accustomed to it. Sometimes he felt as though he had been haunted from the hour of his birth. Stripped down to the white linen of his shirt, the leather breeches that clung to his powerful thighs and his heavy country boots, he inched the carved armchair closer to the oak banqueting table.

Beyond the narrow arched windows, the gray evening of another winter's day faded into night. The fire that blazed on the hearth cast an almost demonic glow over Anatole's angular cheekbones and sent the shadow of his muscular frame looming up the vast stone wall.

He appeared like some warrior king as he contemplated the medieval sword placed before him, the weapon that he had sworn never to touch again. His mouth twisted into an expression of self-contempt.

Anatole resisted temptation for a moment more, then drew the sword closer. The wrought gold hilt gleamed even in the soft light, but it was the sparkling stone embedded in the pommel that caught and held the eye. A crystal of remarkable beauty and clarity, it was all that remained of the sorcery of some long-dead ancestor, Lord Prospero. But it was enough, even that small piece of crystal providing a window to the future as much as if all of Castle Leger had been made entirely of glass.

Anatole cradled the pommel in his hands, annoyed by the way his leather-toughened fingers trembled. Staring into the crystal, at first all he could see was his own image reflected back to him, the high forehead, square jaw, and hawklike nose he'd inherited from his English ancestors. His midnight eyes, swarthy skin, and mane of ebony hair that flowed wild to his shoulders came from his Spanish blood, along with stranger, darker gifts.

But the scar that slashed across one temple, that was all his own, Anatole often thought bitterly, a recent legacy of hate and fear.

Gripping the sword in one hand, he pressed the fingertips of the other to his brow, attempting to delve deeper into the crystal, past his own image.

"Concentrate. Damn you, concentrate," he chanted to himself. He felt the familiar tingling sensation begin, painful at first as though a hundred white-hot needles pricked at the back of his eyes. His body seemed to be dwindling, telescoping into the crystal.

The shard of glass clouded. Then through the swirling haze, the vision began to take shape.... The shape of a woman. It was her again, the woman with the flowing mass of hair, blown into a witchlike tangle by the wind, hair so red-gold, it appeared to be on fire.

"The woman of flame," Anatole murmured. He strained harder to make out the lines of her face, all but crushing his fingers against his temple, the pain behind his eyes waxing more intense. As in the previous times he'd     consulted the glass, her features continued to elude him. And yet he had the inexplicable sensation that she was drawing closer.

The hairs at the nape of his neck prickled, and he was seized with foreboding, a premonition of impending disaster, that whoever and whatever this creature was, she was going to prove the undoing of Anatole St. Leger.

"Beware the woman of flame. She comes...."

Anatole was scarce aware of murmuring the words aloud. The vision began to fade. He was losing it, no matter how he struggled, until he felt as though his skull would split in twain. The fiery-haired woman vanished into mist, and Anatole was left staring at nothing more than an elegant wrought sword.

He exhaled deeply, closing his eyes until the searing pain in his head began to subside. Only then was he able to think, to consider what he'd just seen.

Beware the woman of flame. Exactly what the devil did it mean? Anatole's heavy dark brows knit together in a scowl. It was a fine premonition to keep having when he'd recently made up his mind to take a wife. Visions of some witch-woman, dark, disturbing, promising nothing but trouble. But then, when had his future held promise of anything else?

Replacing the sword back in its scabbard, he rose and returned the weapon to its mounting upon the wall. Of course, there was one simple solution to the whole thing.

Continue to live behind the walls of his fortresslike home, as he'd done these past twenty-nine years, barring entrance to all members of the fair sex. Forget about taking a bride.

Simple, but quite impossible, for the decision to marry was not exactly of his choosing. In fact, he had no real choice in the matter at all. It was but another facet of the family curse. St. Leger men always knew when the time had come to mate.

It was a hunger that went bone deep, far beyond mere lusts of the flesh.     An instinct ages old, a longing as wild and powerful as the sea crashing below the cliffs of his castle, a desperate loneliness that made Anatole want to range out onto the moors at night, like some great black wolf, baying out his soul to the moon.

To resist was agony. Anatole had tried hard enough these past months to deny the stirring in his blood, but like all St. Legers before him, he'd been forced to yield. Curse and rail though he might, he'd finally done the unthinkable. He'd sent for the Bride Finder.

The old man was likely on his way to the castle even now. Anatole awaited the Reverend Septimus Fitzleger's arrival with a mixture of sullen resignation and impatience. Impatience that had led him into the mischief of consulting that damned crystal again.

Shoving back from the table, Anatole rose to his feet. He paced to one of the windows as though by staring outward he could hasten Fitzleger, have this unpleasant business over and done with.

The old hall was built away from the seaward side of the castle, the narrow window facing toward the night-darkened hills. A hunter's moon shimmered over the wild and barren landscape, making it a place of legend. Cornwall,     the land of King Arthur, of the star-crossed Tristan and Isolde, of ancient priestesses buried beneath mounds of earth, of mysterious rings of stone. A land of magic.

Anatole loved the land, but he could have done without the magic. He had too damned much of that in his life. A weariness stole over him, and he wished he could live out his days as other men did. No crystal-adorned swords, no women of flame, no parts of his ancestral home lost in shadow, and most of all no Bride Finder. He longed for the freedom to choose his own bride as it took his fancy, to breed fine sons noted for their horsemanship not their strangeness, to die a contented old man, not broken and embittered as his own father had done before him.

Futile wishes, indeed, if your name was St. Leger.

He could already feel himself tensing, his senses coming more fully alert. Fitzleger had arrived at the castle. Anatole would have liked to have believed his hearing was just unusually acute, but he knew better.

He was sensing Fitzleger shuffling through the cloisters that joined the new part of the castle with the old. Turning from the window,...

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Verlag
Ivy Books
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0449003884
ISBN 13 
9780449003886
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
416
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Verantwortliche Person
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