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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Black Rose
AJove Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2005 byNora Roberts
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
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Electronic edition: June, 2005
Dear Reader:
When spring slides toward summer, and the flood of color from my azaleas has faded, the heavy heads of my peonies have given way to a dance of daylilies, my flower beds are approaching peak. I like mixed gardens, cottage gardens, shade gardens, herb gardens, sunny cutting gardens. I have nothing formal—formality wouldn’t work for me, or my land. I live on a rocky hillside, with rough, uneven ground, but love finds a way. And I love flowers.
I have a long, long stream of raised beds behind my house, and more lining the land down my long front slope. They’re a lot of work to maintain, and a great joy for me. In summer, I have purple floods of centaurea, feathery red heads of monarda, cheery yellow petals of coreopsis, pools of sage, and oceans of black-eyed Susans. The columbine and coralbells are done for the season, but there’s always something new budding up or bursting out. Veronica, coneflowers, verbena, garden phlox, nasturtium. At a recent trip to a garden center, my son commented that I probably had everything in the place already. Because I rarely see a plant I can resist, there’s always something spilling or spearing or spreading.
So are the weeds I hunt out and destroy like a soldier on an endless mission.
In the shade, my astilbes are fanning their soft plumes, and my hostas are islands of soothing green. The deer love the hostas, and I love the deer. But that doesn’t stop me from warding them off. I pour bags of dried blood and spray gallons of vile-smelling deer repellent annually. And have been known to run out of the house waving my arms like a madwoman if I spot a deer snacking on my dianthus or morning glories. I have dogs, but they don’t seem to be interested in guarding my flowers against Bambi.
Take a walk in the garden. Pull a weed, smell a flower. See if it doesn’t make you smile.
NORAROBERTS
Nora Roberts
HOT ICE
SACRED SINS
BRAZEN VIRTUE
SWEET REVENGE
PUBLIC SECRETS
GENUINE LIES
CARNAL INNOCENCE
DIVINE EVIL
HONEST ILLUSIONS
PRIVATE SCANDALS
HIDDEN RICHES
NORTHERN LIGHTS
TRUE BETRAYALS
MONTANA SKY
SANCTUARY
HOMEPORT
THE REEF
RIVER ’S END
CAROLINA MOON
THE VILLA
MIDNIGHT BAYOU
THREE FATES
BIRTHRIGHT
Anthologies
FROM THE HEART
A LITTLE MAGIC
A LITTLE FATE
MOON SHADOWS
(with Jill Gregory, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Marianne Willman)
The Once Upon Series
ONCE UPON A CASTLE
ONCE UPON A STAR
ONCE UPON A DREAM
ONCE UPON A ROSE
ONCE UPON A KISS
ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT
Series
The In the Garden Trilogy
BLUE DAHLIA
BLACK ROSE
The Key Trilogy
KEY OF LIGHT
KEY OF KNOWLEDGE
KEY OF VALOR
Three Sisters Island Trilogy
DANCE UPON THE AIR
HEAVEN AND EARTH
FACE THE FIRE
Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy
JEWELS OF THE SUN
TEARS OF THE MOON
HEART OF THE SEA
The Chesapeake Bay Saga
SEA SWEPT
RISING TIDES
INNER HARBOR
CHESAPEAKE BLUE
Born In Trilogy
BORN IN FIRE
BORN IN ICE
BORN IN SHAME
Dream Trilogy
DARING TO DREAM
HOLDING THE DREAM
FINDING THE DREAM
Nora Roberts & J. D. Robb
REMEMBER WHEN
J. D. Robb
(in order of publication)
NAKED IN DEATH
GLORY IN DEATH
IMMORTAL IN DEATH
RAPTURE IN DEATH
CEREMONY IN DEATH
VENGEANCE IN DEATH
HOLIDAY IN DEATH
CONSPIRACY IN DEATH
LOYALTY IN DEATH
WITNESS IN DEATH
JUDGMENT IN DEATH
BETRAYAL IN DEATH
SEDUCTION IN DEATH
REUNION IN DEATH
PURITY IN DEATH
PORTRAIT IN DEATH
IMITATION IN DEATH
DIVIDED IN DEATH
VISIONS IN DEATH
SILENT NIGHT
(with Susan Plunkett, Dee Holmes, and Claire Cross)
OUT OF THIS WORLD
(with Laurell K. Hamilton, Susan Krinard, and Maggie Shayne)
Also available . . .
THE OFFICIAL NORA ROBERTS COMPANION
(edited by Denise Little and Laura Hayden)
For Stacie
It’s wise for a mother to love the woman her son loves.
But it’s a lovely gift to like the woman who becomes your daughter.
Thanks for the gift.
A stock plant is grown purely to provide cutting material. It can be encouraged to produce the best type of growth for cuttings while plants that are grown for garden display can be left untouched.
AMERICANHORTICULTURESOCIETYPLANTPROPAGATION
If you would know secrets, look for them in grief or pleasure.
GEORGEHERBERT
PROLOGUE
Memphis, Tennessee
December 1892
SHE DRESSED CAREFULLY, attending to the details of her appearance as she hadn’t done for months. Her personal maid had run off weeks before, and she had neither the wit nor the will to hire another. So she spent an hour with the curling rods herself—as she had in the years before she’d been kept so lavishly—meticulously coiling and arranging her freshly rinsed hair.
It had lost its bright gold luster over the long, bleary autumn, but she knew what lotions and potions would bring back its shine, what pots of paint to select to put false color in her cheeks, on her lips.
She knew all the tricks of the trade. How else could she have caught the eye of a man like Reginald Harper? How else had she seduced him into making her his mistress?
She would use them again, all of them, Amelia thought, to seduce him once more, and to urge him to do everything that must be done.
He hadn’t come, in all this time, in all these months, he hadn’t come to her. So she’d been forced to send notes to his businesses, begging him to come, only to be ignored.
Ignoredafter all she had done, all she had been, all she had lost.
What choice had she had but to send more notes, and to his home? To the grand Harper House where his pale wife reigned. Where a mistress could never walk.
Hadn’t she given him all he could ask, all he could want? She’d traded her body for the comfort of this house, the convenience of servants, for the baubles, like the pearl drops she fixed on her ears now.
Small prices to pay for a man of his stature and wealth, and such had been the limits of her ambitions once. A man only, and what he could give her. But he’d given her more than either of them had bargained for. The loss of it was more than she could bear.
Why had he not come to comfort her? To grieve with her?
Had she complained, ever? Had she ever turned him from her bed? Or mentioned even once the other women he kept?
She had given him her youth, and her beauty. And, it seemed, her health.
And he would desert her now? Turn away from hernow ?
They said the baby had been dead at birth. Stillborn, they said. A stillborn girl child that had perished inside her.
But . . . but . . .
Hadn’t she felt it move? Felt it kick, and grow vital under her heart? In her heart. This child she hadn’t wante...
sinderella