Reflection

By Penelope Middleton

Duncan Macfarlane reflects on his life and his almost deadly argument with his daughter, Chloe. He reflects on the rash decision that killed his wife, Elizabeth, and vows not to have the same happen to his daughter.
Suddenly, his housekeeper, Julia, shrieks that Elizabeth's ghost has returned for her revenge. He says it was only an illusion caused by the storm. A glass moved by unseen hands eradicates any trace of doubt.
Flashback: Elizabeth, married to Duncan, goes swimming in the cove below the chateau, and has an affair with Enrique, who watched unseen as she changed clothes. Enrique ignites passions and desires Elizabeth never knew she had.
Duncan, lonely and neglected, has an affair with their housekeeper, Julia. They use the myriad guest rooms within the chateau, finally moving their dalliances to an outbuilding's loft.
Elizabeth in a fit of rage, leaves the chateau in a blinding snowstorm and is killed by the ice covered mountain road. Four years after the incident, Elizabeth's ghost visits and tells Duncan that she knows that while he was not directly responsible for her death, he has incurred the wrath of the Supreme Being for his inability to convince her not to go. Duncan is given a chance to redeem himself by saving Chloe from the same fate, but at a price.
Chloe meets a boater, Leonardo, and falls heavily. Leonardo is more than he seems.
Leonardo and Chloe have dinner at a unique restaurant and spend time exploring each other's background. Chloe has a fantasy that night about Leonardo. Leonardo makes the first move and invites Chloe up to his hotel room where they make love and spend the night together. They spend the next three days sailing to an ancient whaling village and back, making love and eating in new restaurants. A couple of weeks later, they spend another sailing weekend. Chloe drives the boat, and Leonardo is there to lend a hand. They stop at inlets and make love, and spend the night at a bed and breakfast at an out of the way village. Just before Thanksgiving, Leonardo proposes at the Inn. Chloe rushes up the mountain to tell Duncan. An early winter storm buries the chateau, but Chloe is determined to get back to her fiancée. Duncan objects. Chloe goes ballistic, just like her mother. However, this time reason prevails and she agrees to stay in the chateau, phone Leonardo and have him wait for her at the Inn.
Leonardo's parents and family come to a December Italian wedding at the Inn. Chloe and Leonardo leave for Italy on their honeymoon the next day.
With Duncan's help, Cameron, Chloe’s brother, starts a very successful virtual engineering company. Duncan turns the chateau over to him and his new wife. In return, Cameron gives Duncan grandchildren.
Flash forward: Elizabeth’s ghost reappears in the Library on that snow-whipped, banshee-filled night. Is he finally released, or is Duncan consigned to another seven years in his own private Hell?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penelope Middleton
• Release date: Oct 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311488695

Penelope Middleton

Penelope Middleton (“Penny” to her friends and acquaintances) loves the East Coast. She has always been fascinated with the rugged sensuality of the mountains while her mind is captivated by the tales from the sea. An early childhood in Massachusetts, coupled with a love of reading has given her the aspiration to explore the old legends and myths of New England. She enjoys day sailing, but is mindful of rough Atlantic currents and treacherous waters up and around Maine’s rugged coastline. Cooking is her “other hobby” and she prowls out-of-the-way eateries all along the Eastern Seaboard, searching out old variations on modern cuisine.

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Reflection

Copyright 2014 Penelope Middleton

Published by Penelope Middleton at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, 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.

ISBN: 9781311488695

Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/FrinaArt

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

About the Author

Other books by this Author

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Chapter One

It was late in the evening.

A typical winter’s night in the Laguna Mountains, the gale was a banshee as legions of snowflakes crushed themselves unmercifully against the triple-paned windows of the chateau.

In the Library, lit only by the radiance of the dying fire, a solitary figure sat in a high wingback chair before the fieldstone mantled fireplace, observed by ranks of dusty tomes looming overhead in the semidarkness.

Duncan MacFarlane was neatly dressed in grey striped pants, a belted, satin maroon smoking jacket, and had on oversized beaver-pelt lined slippers.

Near his right hand was a smallish, round, ornately carved teak Indian table. A century-old bottle of Lochan Ora liqueur and a single silver-rimmed crystal shot glass sat half full on a small silver service tray.

His strangely unlined face was framed with a pair of thick, ponderous mutton-chop whiskers, and his piercingly blue eyes, shrouded by brushy unruly eyebrows, stared hungrily into the fireplace as if they could read the Chinese-like ideograph characters that seemed to appear on, and then just as fast, vanish from the ember-covered surface of the crackling oak logs.

Adjusting the monocle on his left eye, he seemed lost in thought.

Thirty-one years ago, on a night like tonight, he had stood in front of this very selfsame fireplace while a raging fire tried desperately to dispel the room’s chill.

Younger, less bulk than he wore today, a wickedly lean youngish man had entreated his only daughter to forego her obviously insanity-laden plans to leave the safety of the fire, drive down the mountain, and join her as-yet unannounced fiancée in the Inn at the foot of the bridge spanning the chasm to the mainland.

As an alternative, Duncan had pleaded with her, invite her young man up to the chateau. He told her to call her young lover and extend to him the invitation to come up the mountain. However, he reiterated his request to have the young man wait at the Inn until the storm abated. He told Chloe to have the Inn bill any expenses directly to them.

Duncan knew of her young lover only through the whispers of the help, who murmured behind his back when they thought he wasn’t listening.

There’s benefits in playing the part of a doddering old fool, he thought to himself.

Not yet hampered by age in his ability to persuade, he urgently pressed the point home. She was adamant about her desire to be with her lover.

In his mind’s eye, he could see with remarkable clarity, the absolutely relentless march of a series of cruel, unfolding, deadly events, and the fate that awaited the beautiful young maiden on that treacherous, ice shrouded mountain switchback-punctuated road.

His was not the supposed vision of the psychic, but a more practical and penetrating insight, borne of long hours of observation and of actual miscalculations negotiating that baleful passage.

Worn down, she finally relented, realizing that she was a neophyte in driving icy roads studded with frozen rocks.

Chloe reluctantly agreed to wait.

His Great Grandfather, Angus MacFarlane, had called the home, Silverstone, after the mica-filled granite outcropping upon which the chateau stood. At this end of the Laguna Range, a stony finger dipped towards the sea, spreading out into a flattened miniature plateau that had on one side an almost sheer drop of over one thousand feet to the rocky peninsula at the water’s edge. The mountain side of the plateau grudgingly yielded a setback large enough for the chateau and three outbuildings, largest of which was a seven bay, detached garage and workshop.

The chateau’s foundation and basement had been hewn out of the solid granite of the plateau. Block by massive block, the miniature mesa had yielded the building materials for the first of three floors. The stone bulwarks of the first floor’s walls were an incredible four feet thick. No storm had yet been able to penetrate those defenses.

As he recalled the words of his Father, an inner warmth softened his demeanor.

Lad, Stewart Macfarlane had said, in time you will be the proud possessor of this unique residence. When your Great Grandfather Angus, my Grandfather, built Silverstone, I was told that the trucks came up the road from the causeway below only one-half full, the road was that steep. Over time, we gradually enlarged the road to its present width of just over twenty feet, and hacked three spots out of the living rock where vehicles could safely pass.

His Father went on to say, Nevertheless, this road is still extremely steep and treacherous in places. You must continue to pay skillful attention to drive even on a sunny day. So mind your wits when you drive this road. If you can at all avoid it, never drive the mountain when the weather is inclement or snowy. This section of cliff face with its frozen road will have you sliding like a young colt on a sheet of ice. It will kill you dead for sure.

The old man knew that there had been some bad accidents on that mountain road, and that some of the rusting wreckage still remained tightly wedged into the rock at the water’s edge. No less than seven large trucks, whose drivers should have known better, lay broken and bent on the teeth of the rocks below. At least three of the drivers’ bodies were never found. Some said the sharks had gotten them, but the old man knew that in these waters, no sharks ever came close the cliff face.

At the base of the cliff, was