Rites of Passion

By Kristina Cook

From nationally bestselling author Kristina Cook (writing as Kristi Astor) comes the third and final steamy Edwardian-era novella in the Celtic Heat series, featuring a mystical garden, some Green Man lore, and a little bit of magic.

EMMALINE: War widow Emmaline Gage has inherited a bleak old house and garden that matches her spirits, but a chance meeting across a Beltane fire stokes a passion inside her that can no longer be denied.

JACK: The horrors of war have all but destroyed Jack Wainscott until he falls ill and meets the one woman who can heal him, body and soul.

As their feelings for one another take root and flourish, so does the mystical garden that calls to them both. Will they take the second chance at love they've been offered, or will their fears--and the garden's haunts--send them scurrying away forever?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kristina Cook
• Release date: Oct 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005858759

Kristina Cook

Kristina Cook is the author of more than a dozen books for adults and teens, ranging from historical and NASCAR romance to paranormal and contemporary young adult fiction (also writing as Kristi Astor and Kristi Cook). Since the publication of her first novel in 2004, her books (with Kensington/Zebra Books, Harlequin Books, and Simon & Schuster) have hit national bestseller lists, landed on bookseller association lists, and won awards, including the National Reader's Choice Award.When she’s not writing a book or reading a book, she’s probably online somewhere, talking about a book. Kristina lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters, but in the summer months escapes with them to sunny Miami, where she lounges on the beach and teaches creative writing classes at Miami-Dade College.

Book preview

Chapter 1

April 1919

It’s the garden they say is haunted, not the house itself. Those words echoed in Emmaline Gage’s mind as she approached the walled garden in question, one trembling hand reaching toward the latch on the wooden gate. Pausing, she glanced over at the copse of trees just beyond the garden gate, toward the woods in the distance.

I can do this, she assured herself. After all, Emmaline was a woman of science; she didn’t believe in haunts. Such nonsense didn’t frighten her, wouldn’t send her scurrying away. Not after everything she’d been through, the horrors she’d witnessed over the past several years.

Festering wounds and rotted, burnt flesh. Amputations performed without adequate anesthesia. The cries of the suffering, followed by the silence of death.

Indeed, what were restless spirits, compared to the horrors of war?

Emmaline pushed away the memories, refusing to walk that path in her mind. Instead, she took a deep breath and forced herself to reach for the latch and slowly, cautiously, ease open the gate and take a step forward.

As soon as the gate closed behind her, a breeze stirred. The hem of her skirt flapped against her calves; a lock of hair blew across one cheek. The leaves rustled noisily while Emmaline scanned the garden, looking for the source of the voice she heard carried on the wind.

Come, sit beside me, it seemed to say. She’d felt the pull toward the garden every day since her arrival at Orchard House a fortnight ago. Until now, she’d ignored it.

Feeling suddenly courageous, she took several steps down the uneven cobbled path that wended through the overgrown shrubs and wild plantings, more brown than green. Hastily, she scanned the rectangular space, but saw no one. Of course not. It was only her imagination—there was no voice, no intruder. There was nothing but the wind passing through the crumbling stone walls, through the nearby treetops.

It was an eerie sound, to be sure, but not a supernatural one. She let out her breath in a rush, relief coursing through her veins. And then she allowed herself to look around, walking the full perimeter, her heels clicking against the flagstones beneath her feet.

Despite its current state of neglect, something about the garden filled her with a sense of peace. There was something comforting, almost familiar about the space. Still, the garden needed a skilled hand, and she wasn’t certain she was up to the task.

Anticipating this, she’d tried to hire a gardener when she’d first arrived at Orchard House, but everyone in the village of Haverham had sworn that there was no point, that in all the years that Mathilde Collins had lived there, no one had been able to make a go of it. The garden was beyond help, they said, and haunted, besides—which was all stuff and nonsense. Emmaline shook her head in frustration, hurrying toward a stone bench in a shady corner. She slipped to the seat with a sigh, running her fingers along the face of the Green Man etched into the rough, uneven stone on the bench’s back.

The garden was spacious, with high stone walls traced in vine uninterrupted on all sides save the one with the green wooden gate from which she’d passed through. Though she could still discern the garden’s original design, most everything was overgrown and wilted, with several square-shaped fallow beds scattered about. Near the center of the garden stood a stone well, a tin watering pail perched on the rim.

On the far side of the well, what looked like neat rows of rose bushes stood wilting in the sun, not a bloom in sight, despite the season. Or was there? Squinting against the glare, she raised one hand to shield her eyes as she attempted to make out a spot of color there at the end of the second row. Rising, she hurried toward it, taking care as she picked her way across the path.

And there it was—one pale pink bloom nestled between the spindly, thorny branches. Her heart swelled with hope at the sight of it, tears stinging her eyes. She retrieved the pair of shears she’d slipped into her pocket and clipped the bloom, bringing it to her nose to inhale its scent. A single tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it away as she made her way back to the bench.

It was a sign. Surely it must be. However else could she explain it? A single bloom, no more, and so very familiar.

Her legs trembling, she sank back onto the bench, holding the delicate rose by its stem. She ran one fingertip along the bloom’s velvety petals as she allowed the memories to come flooding back.

Oh, Christopher! Why did you leave me all alone? Come August, he would have been gone a year, killed at Amiens. Emmaline had been on the front herself at the time, assigned to a casualty clearing station at Allonville. They’d been celebrating the news that the Allied forces had broken through the German lines and advanced nearly twenty kilometers when she’d received word of her husband’s death from Christopher’s field commander.

Their marriage had been brief, yet glorious. Emmaline had never expected to fall in love, to marry. She’d been twenty-three—a spinster—when she’d enrolled in the nursing program at Pennsylvania Hospital. When the war broke out in 1917, she’d volunteered to go to Europe, to join the Army Nurse Corps. After all, what was there to keep her in Pennsylvania?

Nothing. No one. Her parents had died of Influenza, one right after the other, and her brother—a drunken lout, by all accounts—had long since moved to New York where he was no doubt getting himself into all kinds of mischief. And so she’d gone to Europe. She’d been stationed in Liverpool, working in an Army hospital, when she’d first met Christopher Gage, a dashing young captain in Rawlinson’s Fourth Army who was recuperating from a broken femur sustained in battle.

Captain Gage had long since been released from the hospital but remained there at the base on administrative duty while his leg continued to heal. He’d come to her ward one day to visit an old school chum who’d lost an arm to a German grenade, and it was love at first sight as far as Emmaline was concerned. He’d asked her to dinner that very same day and began to court her in earnest.

He’d swept her entirely off her feet—figuratively speaking, of course—and they’d married in a quiet ceremony at the base chapel not two months after they’d met, with her wearing her dark blue serge street uniform in lieu of a wedding gown, and Christopher as dashing as ever in his khaki uniform. She’d carried a bouquet of pink roses identical to the one she now held, and was attended by Christopher’s sister Maria, who’d traveled up from London for the wedding.

Soon afterward, they’d each managed to secure a week’s furlough—seven glorious days—and enjoyed a brief holiday at a nearby inn before Christopher was sent back to the front, fully healed in both spirit and body. She’d gone back to her nursing duties with a renewed zeal. Despite their separation, she’d been deliriously happy. She had hope. A future. And then, with one telegram, she’d lost everything.

Emmaline blinked away the tears that threatened to blur her vision. The past was immutable, entirely unchangeable. There was no point in dwelling on it, in reopening the wound and poking at it with a stick.

Glancing around the garden, at the house looming off in the distance, she reminded herself that this was her future—the future that Christopher had given her. Orchard House, a grand but somewhat crumbling Cotswold estate, Christopher’s sister Maria had called it when she’d written to offer it to Emmaline. Apparently, Christopher’s great-aunt Mathilde had lived there most of her life and had left it to him—her favorite nephew—upon her death. Which meant it was Emmaline’s now, and Maria had insisted that she should have it.

Had she any other alternative, she might have refused to take ownership. But she had no family save her wastrel of a brother, no home, and she could not bear to go back to nursing. Not now. She had some money saved—all of her earnings, tucked safely away—but even living frugally in London, she was sure to run through it far too quickly, and then where would she be? Back on the wards, she guessed, as she had no other skills and no prospects.

No, Orchard House was home now. Only, when Maria had called it ‘crumbling,’ she had not been exaggerating. Emmaline had spent her first fortnight there tidying up, and the house still wasn’t cleaned to her satisfaction. Perhaps it was a result of all those years living in hospital dormitories, but she could not countenance a spot of dust on any surface, linens that weren’t pristine and crisp, or an untidily made bed.

Thank goodness Mrs. Babbitt—Mathilde’s long-time housekeeper—had agreed to stay on, if only a few days a week. Beyond that, Emmaline would have to manage on her own. It wasn’t that she was incapable of keeping house—Emmaline and her mother had managed well enough during her youth in Pennsylvania. It was just that Orchard House was so very big. At one