to drink in his maleness. In this very yard, she was to have raised beautiful babies from their union.
She gritted her teeth against the chill of the water and the rawness of her hands, chapped by wind. Gasping, crying in the rain, Marissa’s heart lurched when the sky lit up once more. He was still on the road! He was alive! Gallant, wearing the uniform she’d mended. Suddenly, a fireball whistled through the storm. Something splashed. A bullet? A cannonball?
She had to tell him she was safe. Their love was strong enough to conquer everything, even this war, but she watched in horror as the Yankee reined in his horse and turned, trotting the way he’d come, his eyes scanning the trees as if he’d heard Forrest in the brush. It was the wrong moment for her beloved to emerge in plain sight. The enemy leaned down, the night air rent by the sound of a sword drawn from his sheath. It rose high, glinting under the moon, arching as it bore down.
“Forrest!” she shrieked as the blade swung, the soldier bending. And then silence. Lightning and bullets ceased fire, plunging everything into darkness. He was dead. She knew that much. I curse this ground, she thought, rage swelling like the tides. Damn women who’ve lived and loved on this bloodstained ground without paying this price. I hope they never find you, love. Never! Never!
Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked.
And vaguely, Marissa realized she’d uttered the wrong curse—that the Yankees were to blame, and greedy people who would rather work the land with slaves than make do with less, but months of mere survival and feeling her heart shatter was too much! No one should enjoy Hartley House, or love, or the life Marissa was to have lived here, not until she and Forrest were reunited.
Envy—a kind of hate she’d never known—bubbled inside, so she barely noticed the next burst of fire. She felt as if she was floating above the water, no longer in her own body. She was aware of smoke, but she was numb, her skin frigid, then she realized warmth gushed from somewhere. From her shoulder, maybe? Was it blood? She wasn’t sure. All she knew for certain was that Lavinia was gone. Her mama and papa, the sisters she loved. And now Forrest.
Her mind stuttered with grief. Her fingers slipped, but she kept hold of the root. If she let go, she’d never make it, and she was going to stand and fight. Oh, damn it, she would stand! For Forrest! Her hand weakened. Wind whipped her hair, and she realized a bullet had found her. She was losing blood to a salty swamp where gators circled, drawn by the scissoring movements of her legs. Suddenly, she was pummeled by wind.
And then the swirling dark waters took her.
1
New York City,
a dark, stormy February night in the present…
“DON’T RUN OFF and get yourself into trouble, Mug,” Bridget Benning said, releasing her tawny, miniature pug to run on the floor of the hallway before using the point of a blue-painted fingernail to stab the doorbell of her best friend Dermott’s high-rise apartment in Battery Park City. “C’mon, Dermott,” she muttered, wondering why he’d been unavailable for weeks, and at a time when so much was happening!
Bridget wanted his input on family matters, as well as on which futon to buy, and she was hoping he’d take walks with her, since March was around the corner and without losing ten pounds, she’d never fit into spring clothes. Now she needed him to take a trip South with her to do some ghost-busting, something she hoped he’d take seriously, since she couldn’t go on this trip without his support. Her parents had been living in Hartley House when she was born, but since she’d been a baby, Bridget had never been south of Newark, and besides, only Dermott truly understood what Miss Marissa’s curse had done to Bridget’s love life.
When Mug yipped, Bridget leaned and petted his head, cooing, “As soon as we’re inside, I’ll get you a doggie treat.” Dermott kept a box handy for Mug. Bridget suddenly muttered, “Or not.” Why wasn’t her best buddy answering? “Hurry up,” she whispered.
Just this week, Bridget’s Granny Ginny, who lived in Florida, in Hartley House, had come to visit, reminding Bridget of Marissa’s curse and how it affected women connected to Hartley House. Bridget and her sisters had never known Granny Ginny’s son, who’d died young, but he was their biological father, even if Joe Benning had raised them. Because they were Hartleys by blood, the Benning girls hadn’t escaped being victims of the curse. Just like her sisters, Bridget had placed the blame for her romantic failures squarely on Miss Marissa, but now, during Granny Ginny’s visit, matters had taken a startling new twist.
As it turned out, this past month, Bridget had agreed to help her older sister, Edie, who owned a wedding planning business, Big Apple Brides, and who had luckily landed a celebrity client, hotel heiress, Julia Darden. Bridget, an aspiring jewelry designer who worked by day as a clerk at Tiffany’s, had agreed to fashion an engagement ring, which she and Edie had hoped Julia and her fiancé would like. When Julia rejected Bridget’s first design, Bridget had placed the sample ring, made with cubic zirconias, on her own finger.
When Granny Ginny arrived from Florida and saw the ring, she’d nearly swooned. According to Granny, the ring Bridget had designed was an exact replica of the Hartley diamond, the ring Forrest Hartley had given to Miss Marissa Jennings during the Civil War, a ring supposedly still hidden in Granny’s plantation house, which Granny claimed was haunted. And maybe it was. After all, without cosmic intervention, how could Bridget have designed a ring that was an exact replica of an already existing ring she’d never seen before?
Obviously, Bridget had some sort of deep psychic connection to Hartley House and the lost Hartley engagement diamond. That meant that maybe Bridget would have luck finding the original ring that was still hidden. She sucked in a sharp breath, barely able to believe any of this was happening. Just yesterday, she’d pulled Granny Ginny aside and questioned her at length. Oh, everybody in the family suspected Granny embellished the family legend; still, Bridget, Edie and Marley had suffered setbacks in love, and now Bridget wondered if something couldn’t be done to reverse the curse.
“I hadn’t thought so,” Granny had begun. “But now that you’ve produced the exact replica of the Hartley diamond, everything’s changed.” Granny conjectured that, once the original ring was found, the ghost of Forrest Hartley could slip it onto the finger of his ghost-bride, Marissa, and then Marissa’s curse on the Benning girls might be lifted. Bridget supposed that made sense, since Marissa’s dream to be reunited with her fiancé would be achieved. After all, how could a woman get married without a diamond? The way Granny figured it, Bridget would be the Benning most likely to find the ring, since she’d designed one like it, and thereby seemed to have a psychic connection to it.
“C’mon, Dermott,” Bridget whispered. Surely he’d help her. She didn’t want to go to her own grave without marrying at least once, and for the first time, it seemed as if it was in her power to do something to reverse her bad luck with men. While all the Benning sisters were no strangers to failed romance, Dermott understood that Bridget was the sister most affected. Edie ran a close second. Despite starting her own wedding planning business, Edie rarely dated. And Marley had gotten married, but then her husband had cleaned out their joint bank account, and she’d divorced him. Now, she was dating a man named Cash Champagne who’d previously been involved with Edie, but who knew how long that would last?
Bridget just hoped she could straighten out this mess and get her own love life on track. And who could be better than Dermott? Last year, he’d even helped her apply to the Guinness Book of World Records, since she was convinced she’d survived more bad dates than any other single woman in America; unfortunately, Guinness had no bad dates category and didn’t want to create one just for Bridget.
“Are
