Angeline hated funerals. They reeked of finality and no more second chances. They spoke of an eternity hounded by memories one could never escape, mistakes one could never rectify. The last funeral she’d attended had been her father’s. She could still see Reverend Grayson in his long black robes, Holy Book in hand, his words dribbling on the fresh mound of dirt, empty and meaningless as the drizzle of rain that had battered her face. She could still see the crush of people—black specters hovering beneath billowing umbrellas—come to pay their respects to a beloved member of their community, a pillar of Norfolk society, businessman, scholar, man of God. Pushed through a window to an early death by a misguided man inflamed in anger. She could still see Uncle John and Aunt Louise standing on either side of her. Her aunt wearing an impatient scowl, her uncle a look of interest. Though that interest was not on the funeral or the reverend or the crowd. But on her—a devastated seventeen-year-old girl. She hadn’t known at that time just how far his interest would take him.
Or how far it would take her.
“Mr. Graves made few friends among us.” James’s voice drew her gaze to where he stood before a fresh heap of dirt, much like Reverend Grayson had done that dreary day three years ago. Only this time, the sun was shining and they weren’t in a graveyard in Virginia but in the middle of a lush jungle in Brazil.
Tall, thin trees surrounded the clearing, their vine-laden branches bowed as if paying respect to the dead. Colorful orchids and ferns twirled up their mighty trunks. Luxuriant lichens swayed in the breeze. Birds of every color flitted through the canopy, providing music for the ceremony—albeit a bit too cheerful for a funeral. But not many of the colonists mourned the loss of Mr. Graves. Stowy shifted in her arms, and Angeline caressed the cat who’d been her dear companion since the ship voyage to their new land.
“He spent his time in Brazil deep beneath the earth on a quest for power that made little sense to most of us,” James continued. The preacher-doctor looked nothing like Reverend Grayson either. Where the reverend had dark short-cropped hair, James’s light hair hung in waves to his collar. Where the reverend was a thin, gaunt man, James was tall and built like a ship—like one of her father’s ships. Where the reverend had an angular face, James had a round, sturdy face with a jaw like flint and eyes of bronze that reached to her now across the fresh grave.
She lowered her gaze. That was another way the two men were different. With just one glance, one brush of his skin against hers, James could evoke a warmth that sizzled from her head to her toes. She’d never felt such a thing from a man’s touch. And a preacher, at that. Sweet saints, the shame!
“Perhaps we failed Mr. Graves somehow by not trying harder to befriend him. If so, may God forgive us.”
Angeline knew the remorse in James’s tone was genuine. He truly cared for each and every colonist. Yet she still could not reconcile this man before her with the one she’d met a year ago in Knoxville, Tennessee.
“May God forgive Mr. Graves for sins that would keep him from entering heaven’s gates.”
Forgiveness. Bah! Angeline well knew there was a limit to God’s forgiveness. And from what she knew of Graves, he, like her, had far exceeded that boundary. A breeze, ripe with the scent of orange blossoms and vanilla, wafted through the clearing, fluttering ferns and spinning dry leaves across the ground. A butterfly, its wings resplendent with purple and pink, landed atop Eliza’s bonnet as if she were the only worthy subject in the crowd. Beside her, her husband, Colonel Blake, hat in hand, stared at the ground with his usual austere, determined expression.
The butterfly took flight and settled on Sarah’s shoulder. Ah yes, another worthy soul, Sarah Jorden, Angeline’s hut mate, and one of the sweetest, most godly women she knew. Her baby Lydia, now five months old, was strapped to her chest and thankfully asleep at the moment. Being the resident teacher, children flocked to Sarah as they were doing now, tugging on her skirts, vying for her attention. Delia grabbed her two wayward lambs and ushered them away, casting apologetic looks at Sarah. Angeline wondered if the freed slave woman was happy here in New Hope, where she endured much of the same racial aversion she would have experienced back in the States. Delia took her spot beside her brother, Moses, at the back of the crowd.
“Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?” James spoke with enthusiasm as if he actually believed the poetic hogwash.
The shifting canopy scattered golden snowflake patterns over the crowd. A sunbeam set the butterfly’s wings aglitter as it danced through the air, skipping over Mr. and Mrs. Scott. The wealthy plantation owners were under the impression they still lived on their Georgia plantation and the colonists were their slaves. Yet no one paid them much mind. Angeline smiled. Especially their daughter, Magnolia, the object of Mr. Scott’s glower at the moment.
But Magnolia didn’t seem to notice as she stood hand in hand with her new husband, Hayden, at the foot of the grave. The butterfly landed on their intertwined hands, bringing another smile to Angeline’s lips. Despite the somber occasion, the couple couldn’t hide their happiness, nor the loving glances they shared—glances that held such promise. A promise of intimacy and love Angeline would never know.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life….”
Wiley Dodd’s eyes locked upon hers as the butterfly passed him by. She tore her gaze from the hungry look on his face. The ex-lawman remembered her. She was sure of it. She could see the mischievous twinkle in his eyes, the knowing glances when he passed her in town. Why didn’t he simply tell everyone her secret? What was he waiting for? Despite the heat of the day, her fingers and toes turned to ice.
The butterfly landed on her arm, instantly warming her. She hadn’t time to ponder the implications when the crackle of flames sounded in her ears. Glancing up, she expected to see a lit torch, but none was in sight. Neither did anyone else seem to hear the sizzle that grew louder and louder. Wind wisped through the clearing, fluttering black feathers atop a hat that drifted at the outskirts of the crowd. No, not just any hat.
Heart slamming against her ribs, Angeline peered across the grave and through the assembled colonists, trying to make out the woman’s face, but the lady wove through the back of the mob, her hat bobbing in and out of view. A hat of ruby velvet, trimmed in a black ribbon with a tuft of black feathers blowing in the wind. Angeline knew that hat.
“I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live,” James droned on.
The lady stopped. The crowd parted slightly, and the woman tilted her head toward Angeline.
Aunt Louise!
The butterfly took flight. And so did Aunt Louise. But not before Angeline saw a devious smile curl her lips. Setting down Stowy, Angeline clutched her skirts, barreled through the colonists, and plunged into the jungle after her.
“Aunt Louise!” Greenery swallowed a flash of ruby red in the distance. Thrusting leaves aside, Angeline headed in that direction, ignoring the scratch and pull of vines and branches on her gown. “Come back!” Why was the woman even here in Brazil?
Batting aside a tangle of yellow ferns, Angeline burst into a clearing and stopped, gasping for air. She scanned the mélange of leaves in every shade of green for a glimpse of ruby or flutter of black feathers. The caw, caw of a toucan echoed from the canopy, drawing her gaze to a golden-haired monkey scolding her for interrupting his mango lunch.
“Aunt Louise!”
There. A flash of red. Lifting her skirts, Angeline plowed through the greenery, her eyes locked on one target: the insolent smirk on her aunt’s face. The red grew larger in her vision. The smirk wider. Until finally Angeline stopped before the lady. She caught her breath while studying every inch of her father’s sister, wondering how two siblings could be so different, wondering why the woman had despised Angeline more than any relative should. Despised her from the feathers atop her promenade hat to the tiny lines strung tight at the corners of her mouth, to the pearls on her high-necked bodice, the black velvet bows on her pannier skirts, and down to the tassels on her patent leather boots. Boots that tapped impatiently on the dirt as they used to do on the wooden floor back in her Norfolk home.
“What are you doing here?” Angeline asked when her breath returned.
Louise cocked her head. “I could ask you the same. Aren’t you supposed to be polishing the silverware like I ordered?”
Angeline stared at her. That was the last chore her aunt had assigned her to do before…well, before her life disintegrated. “What are you talking about? I no longer live in your house.”
Finely trimmed brows rose. “And why is that, Clarissa?”
Angeline cringed at a name she hadn’t heard in years.
“Ah, yes. Now I remember.” Her aunt strolled about the clearing, the swish of her skirts an odd accompaniment to the drone of insects. She spun to face Angeline, spite pouring from eyes as dark as the feathers atop her hat. “Because you’re a vulgar strumpet who stole my husband’s affections!”
Blood surged to Angeline’s heart, filling it with shock and fury. “I did nothing of the kind.” She couldn’t tell the lady what had truly happened. It would be far too cruel. Even for a woman who had done nothing but mistreat her.
“I curse the day you entered our home,” her aunt hissed. “I knew you were wanton refuse just like your mother.”
The woman might as well have forced a bag of rocks down Angeline’s throat for the way it made her stomach plummet. Her mother had died giving birth to her, leaving a hole within Angeline, deep and vacant. Yet as the years passed, she couldn’t help but hear the whispers floating through town behind raised fans and smug looks. When she questioned her father, he told her that her mother was the most kind, loving, compassionate person who ever lived and to ignore any rumors to the contrary. So she had. Until she moved in with Uncle John and Aunt Louise and their constant degradation of her mother’s character eroded the memory implanted by her father.
“I was only seventeen,” Angeline said. “I wanted you to care for me. I needed you to care for me—like a mother cares for her own daughter.” She hung her head. “But instead you worked me to death.”
“I wanted no children. Nothing to steal John’s attention from me.” She fingered the emerald weighing down her finger then stretched out her hand to examine it in the sunlight. With a snort, she snapped her hand to her waist. “But there you came, young and beautiful, a bouquet of lace and curls no man could resist.”
“I had no choice. I had nowhere to go.”
“Humph.” Aunt Louise gazed out over the jungle as if she stood on Granby Street in Norfolk.
Angeline took a step toward her, the longing for a mother’s love shoving aside her misgivings, her memories, giving her a spark of hope that it might still be possible. “Did you ever love me, even just a little?”
Aunt Louise swept eyes as cold and dark as an empty cave toward Angeline. “No one will ever love you.” Then, spinning on her fancy heels, she shoved through the foliage and disappeared.
Batting away tears, Angeline darted after her. She had to tell the woman what had really happened. No matter the pain. No matter the cost. She had to make her understand. She had to beg her forgiveness.
After Angeline had sped off in a frenzy, James could barely concentrate on the rest of the funeral. What would cause the woman to dash away in the middle of a ceremony? Certainly not her grief over Graves’s death. As it was, her departure caused quite a stir in the otherwise solemn occasion, so he hurried through the remainder of his eulogy before closing his Bible, handing it to Blake, and dismissing the gathering. Now, as he shoved through the leafy jungle, he could think of only one thing that would cause her to run. And that one thing sent an icicle down his spine. That and the fact that whoever or whatever had beheaded Graves might still be on the loose.
Destruction. The name etched above the empty alcove. The name of the third being described in the ancient Hebrew book Graves had found in the caves and given James to translate. A being that, it appeared, Graves had somehow freed from its prison. Having seen firsthand what the first two beings, Deception and Delusion, could do, James feared more than anything the power of this third beast. That was, if he hadn’t gone completely mad and all this nonsense about a fierce battle, the judgment of the four, a molten lake, and invisible angelic beings was just that. Pure nonsense.
But for now, he was more concerned with Angeline’s safety. Shoving aside a tangle of hanging vines, he caught a glimpse of her standing in the middle of a clearing talking to the air. His chest tightened. Suspicions confirmed, he sprinted toward her, but she took off again. He lengthened his stride, ignoring the scrape and jab of branches on his arms as he kept his eyes on her blue skirts flickering in and out of view through the maze of leaves. She stopped again. James rushed toward her, calling her name, but she didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, she stood near the brink of a tall precipice. What he saw next made his blood freeze. Gathering her skirts, Angeline started for the edge.