He loved me… At least he loved me…

For God’s sake, the bastard took your father’s money and left. Are you so insane you’ve forgotten that… He didn’t love you, bitch, he used you…

I could have loved you…

I never wanted your love, whore… But her father’s voice had been bitter, furious…hurt.

Her bedroom. Her refuge. The one room her father had never stepped foot in. Her bed was still there. The wide, white-canopied confection of lace. It was a room made for a princess.

Remember, Kimmie, you’ll be free… Be free for both of us, Kimmie…

Each night her mother had whispered those words to her until her teen years, until her father had put a stop to it. He had sent Kimberly away to school. An exclusive girls’ school that had effectively placed a distance between her and the mother who had nurtured her. Who had nurtured a hatred for the father.

Why had she not remembered that?

She moved from her room, down the long hall, and to the room her mother had taken her last breath.

I was wrong… So many things…her mother had wheezed that last day. Don’t make my mistakes, Kimmie, swear to me, you won’t make my mistakes… I wanted you free, Kimmie… I wanted you free…

Free of what? Free of her father or free of Briar Cliff?

Each room she visited was more of the same. An unending collage of memories flooding her mind, her heart.

In the library, the walls were lined with the portraits of all those who had their time to possess Briar Cliff. From the first, Horace and Catherine St. Montrose. The first Briar Cliff family. It was said Catherine had been a creature of sexuality, a woman as comfortable with her body and her female desires as she was with the wealth she had inherited from her father, a Lord of the English realm. She and her husband had built Briar Cliff.

Her oldest daughter, Elizabeth St. Montrose Michaels and her husband, Hugh, wore the same happy, contented expressions of the first two. The portraits ranged around the room, a gleam of laughter, of satisfaction in the eyes of those inhabitants until she reached Tabitha Elizabeth Montageau and her husband, Diego Santiago. There was bitterness there, in Tabitha’s deep brown eyes, in the pinched contours of her lips. There was a sadness in her face only emphasized by the self-righteous arrogance of her husband.

It had been Tabitha who had established the Trust. Who had broken with willing the entire estate to the first-born daughter and set the restrictive and soul-destroying provisions on the inheritance. It was she, most likely at the direction of her husband, who decided that the desires the women of her line possessed were depraved and perverted and needed to be extinguished.

She had condemned her daughter and all those who came after her to a life of restriction and pain. And Kimberly had been her mother’s last hope of breaking the cycle. The Trust terminated in only five more years. But in waiting, in turning her back on what she had seen in Jared’s eyes, what would she be gaining? And what would she be losing?

Love endured. If Jared loved her, truly loved her, he would wait. He would wait. She had seen it in his eyes, heard it in his voice. He would make that sacrifice for her. But to what end?

She wandered over to the oaken locked shelf that she had been given the key to six years before. She knew what it contained, but she had never had the courage to open it. Five generations of journals and diaries. Accounts of the lives, the loves, and she knew, the pain the women of Briar Cliff had endured.

Slowly, she drew the key from her pocket and opened the door on a past she had sworn she would never visit.

Chapter Eighteen

Father has sworn Matthew Timmons will save me from the demons of lust that are the curse of my birth. I will do as he bids, but my heart breaks, for I know I will never again see my beloved Daniel… Sarah Santiago. She had been Tabitha and Diego’s first-born daughter.

Father was right. I am cursed. My female needs torment me both sleeping and awake. James is disgusted by my very presence, of course. I cannot blame him for this. I am a blight upon my family… Samantha Fieldings. Her husband had been James Fieldings, a religious and righteous leader of the community at the time.

God save me. I have wed Davis Eldon as Father ordered. What have I done? I have refused the demand of the one I love for this life. A life of ease, of all I knew should have been mine, for what? For the suffering I now endure. What have I done? My heart breaks for my one true love. My soul aches… Elissa Fieldings Eldon.

They can make me marry as they please, to satisfy the terms of this insane Trust. But they cannot make me suffer. Grayson may be the choice of my father, but it is his brother, Lawrence, to whom my heart and body belongs. I will not suffer the fate of those before me. I will know love, if only in the darkness of the night and the sheltering arms of deception… Karen Eldon Marshal

If only I were as strong as my parents. They loved, they laughed, and they knew at least a small measure of happiness. The man I loved, precious Kimmie, I won’t say his name. He was not your father, he was never my lover, and as your father was prone to remind me, he preferred the money. I am too weak, and I know I will not survive this illness. Should I die, then Briar Cliff and its protection falls to you. All that the women of our line have dreamed of falls upon your shoulders, my precious daughter. You can have it all. It can all be yours, just as it was meant to be. But for what? You are inheriting generations of pain, anger, deception and tears. It is truly a curse, and one I pray you deny. Love, Kimmie. Laugh. Let your heart be free and your body be your own. A house, no matter how beautiful, or how priceless, will ever take the place of those things.

I hope you are reading this diary, that you have read those who have gone before, now that I myself have passed on. I hope that the years you have spent away from this house, from me, have given you a chance to grow strong, to break away from the curse this house brings.

So many years I refused your father the truth he often pleaded for. He wanted only to know that you were his true daughter, and I, in my selfishness, refused him that. I realize now, as the end draws near, that I leave you alone, where before I had thought I would be here to see you triumph. I leave you alone. Without the father who perhaps would have treated you with kindness had I not driven the wedge between you.

I suffer now for my selfishness. No, not I, for I will pass on. But I go, knowing I will never rest, because you shall now suffer.

Briar Cliff is the curse, Kimmie, not your desires or your femininity or your gentle heart. It is this estate, and the past that has cursed us all… Claire Marshal Madison. It was dated the week of her death.

When Kimberly looked up from the final diary it was to see that night had overtaken the house. The light beside her glowed eerily, a single point of illumination within to emphasize the darkness that surrounded not just the estate, but her soul as well.

She had been away at school when her mother had become ill, and she hadn’t been called home until the last moment. She had believed for so many years that it had been her father’s decision to keep her unaware of her mother’s health. But now she knew the truth. It had been her mother’s.

They had both deceived her, had used her as weapon, one against the other until nothing had been left of the child in their eyes. She had been a sword and she had been the one to suffer.

She wanted to scream, to rage, to destroy the house brick by brick until nothing remained of the agony that resonated through her body. She wanted nothing more than to wipe away the memories of a past that should have never been.

She was crying. She wiped at her cheeks as she closed the diary and laid it beside those she had glanced through before. She stared around the library. Centuries of books graced the shelves and Kimberly knew that many more were in storage. Books that museums would salivate over. In five years, they would have been hers. It would have all been hers.

She shook her head tiredly as she rose from the chair, staring around her as the tears continued to dampen her cheeks. She had been denied her mother as well as her father because of this place. The scars on her soul that her parents had placed there through her younger years would never completely fade. She would never forget that her father’s hatred of what her mother had done had extended to her. She would never forget that the mother she had loved, had trusted and believed in, had used her as well.

But was she any better?

She had sacrificed her life, six long years to the battle lines that had been drawn six generations before.

She had walked away from Jared.

A sob racked her body, shuddering through her as pain sliced through her chest. An agonizing burst of never-ending regret shook her, causing her breath to catch as a low, racking moan escaped her. She curled into herself, her arms wrapped around her stomach as she whispered his name.

God, it hurt. It tore through her, echoing through her soul and ripping wide the door she had closed on her heart so long ago. Even before she had learned the terms of the Trust. Before her father had demanded the exams. She had closed herself off from any chance of heartache or pain to ensure that what had happened to her mother could never happen to her.

She had been determined to never love. But Jared has sneaked into her heart with his crooked smile and his stormy eyes. His determination and sheer male presence had stolen past her safeguards and marked her forever.

There had been no jealousy when he had caught her at The Club. There had been only fiery heat and overwhelming hunger. He had catered to her every desire on the ranch, giving her the gift of his touch, his desire…his unspoken love. And he had never demanded more from her than she had thought she could give.

“Kimberly, you’re breaking my heart.” His voice washed over her senses, a figment of her imagination, a condemnation for walking away from him?

“Baby, you can’t cry like this, you’ll make yourself sick.”

She jerked in shock when she felt his hands grip her shoulders and draw her forward. Her eyes flew open and there he was. His gaze a million shades of gray, lines bracketing his mouth, sorrow in his expression as he drew her to his chest.

“Jared…” She cried out his name, her hands reaching for him, clutching at him as his arms tightened around her, pulling her into his arms as he rose so he could lift her before taking her place in the chair.

She was cradled on his lap, her head buried in his neck as he soothed her. Soft, broken words in a voice ragged with emotion.

“Baby, it’s okay,” he whispered at her ear before he placed gentle kisses along her brow. “It’s okay, Kimber. You’re not alone anymore.”

He had promised he would always be there, and now, when she needed him the most, he was there. He was holding her, his arms sheltering her, his kisses soothing the gaping wound that had grown in her soul.

“Why are you here?” She tried to stem the tears, but they refused to be held at bay.

Jared sighed roughly. “Mother called when you came for the key last night. She was worried about you.”

Kimberly nodded jerkily. Carolyn had watched her too closely and Kimberly had known there was no hiding the proof of the tear-filled nights she had spent since leaving the farm.

She was raw from the inside out. She couldn’t sleep for dreams of Jared, couldn’t get through the day without his name coming to her lips. Without crying for all she had walked away from.

“I don’t want it,” she finally whispered. “This place. This legacy, Jared. I can’t…I don’t want it.”

She felt him tense, felt his arms tighten around her.

“Five years isn’t so long…” She heard the pain in his voice, heard all the needs that she felt in his soul.

Raising her head, she lifted her hand and placed her fingers against his lips. He stared back at her silently, though his eyes raged with emotion.

“I won’t ask for promises,” she whispered. “I don’t want them. Yet. But I need this, I need you now. Just like this.”