Abigail Jones (Chronicles of Abigail Jones #1) Read Free Page A

in this one regard: it seemed Ginny could snore through the screams of hell.
    Closing my eyes, I tried to regain sleep. My efforts proved futile. The energy humming through me was too urgent to ignore. Rising, I slipped on my thick woolen robe and slippers and exited the room. In the kitchen, Cook had left a low fire on the hearth; its glow reflected off the cast-iron cooking stove and the pots and pans neatly stacked on the kitchen dresser. I contemplated a visit to the larder. Such a thing was allowed, Mrs. Beecher had informed me, the master being generous with his servants.
    At the thought of the earl, I felt my stomach quiver. Not out of hunger for food; no, this was a gluttony yet more sinful. The images from the vision returned. The pitiless blue gaze, the large, elegant hands at play. Touching, taking, setting me afire ... Feeling light-headed, I gripped the edge of the servants' dining table. My limbs shook, and my skin misted with feverish sweat. Never before had I experienced a trance as visceral and intense as the one tonight in the master's chambers. Even now, his clean, spicy scent lingered over my senses.
    Did I imagine it all? Or did what I see actually happen between Lady Priscilla and the earl? And, if it did, why is it that I alone can see such things? Nay, more than see: why do such depraved and lustful feelings possess me?
    The familiar, futile questions skirled in my mind. At times like this, I yearned ever more for Aunt Agnes. For the calm refuge of her arms, the steadiness of her wisdom. She alone had known of the visions, the curse that visited one female in every generation of my family. My mother, whom I had never known, had been thus afflicted. According to my aunt, she had died mere hours after giving birth to me; my first cries had echoed within the walls of her cell at Westhaven Sanitarium.
    Mad , the doctors had declared. An imbalance of the blood that had taken over her weak female faculties. What else could explain a decent, God-fearing woman turning into a whore and one capable of producing a bastard at that?
    Stuff and nonsense , my mother's sister had told me. Aunt Agnes had not believed in madness, only in moral discipline. A schoolmistress, she'd raised me according to her principles of intellectual improvement and self-restraint. From the onset of my monthly flux, when the startling specters of the senses had first begun, she'd trained me to use rational means to control the visions.
    I will not lose you as I did your mother . Remember this always, Abby: while we do not know what causes these spells, we do know they are not real. They are illusions, nothing more. Therefore, logic dictates that you must never give into them. A disciplined mind — that is your salvation.
    So she'd practiced the techniques with me again and again. Drilled them into me the way other parents might teach their female offspring proper manners and etiquette. Instead of acquiring the skill of polite conversation, I learned to distract myself by reading. In place of dancing, I became expert at willfully shifting my attention, at deepening my concentration. In lieu of having friends, I created mental pictures and practiced using those images to block the sudden hallucinations.
    For without rhyme or reason the touch of an ordinary object could spring upon me trances of the most vile and licentious nature. There was no portent of disaster: my first spell had been triggered by an unassuming kettle purchased from a passing tinker. As I'd picked up the copper handle, my world had morphed in a stupefying flash. My aunt's parlor disappeared, the cheerful clutter smoothing into opulent marble, a bathing room the likes I'd never seen before. Dazed, I'd found myself reclined in a sea of bubbles, in a body not my own ... and in the tub with me ... two footmen, doing unspeakable things ...
    A sound slap had brought me back. To the parlor, to Aunt Agnes' stricken grey eyes.
    The next vision occurred a few months later at the