An Excerpt from:
Judith McNaught's
WATER'S EDGE

The ancient room was drafty, damp, and cold, filled with the acrid scent of wood smoke and muted voices speaking in hostile tones about the woman lying on the bed beneath a pile of fur rugs.

They were talking about her, Leigh knew. Feigning sleep, she stole a quick glance at her surroundings from beneath her lashes, then she swallowed a cry of terrified protest as she beheld the same incredibly vision that had greeted her every time she surfaced to consciousness.

This was all just a dream, she told herself desperately--this drafty castle and velvet-draped bed, those serfs, that hearth, that shimmering gown on which seamstresses were sewing pearls by candlelight. All of it was imaginary, including that huge, forbidding man standing at the hearth, scowling into the flames with his hand on the end of a dagger. He detested her. He had told her so earlier in this waking nightmare; he had stood over her, his eyes filled with hate, and warned her that he was going to make her life a living hell. He seemed not to care that she was in a great deal of pain. No one seemed to care, and when they spoke of her, they all referred to her as "Lady Georgina."

Closing her eyes tightly, Leigh turned her face away and tried to calm herself by concentrating on reality. My name is Leigh Kendall, she recited silently. That name, my name, is lit up on the marquee above the Plaza Theatre on Broadway, where I'm starring in Jason Solomon's exciting new play. I hold these truths to be self-evident.

With her eyes closed, Leigh could imagine it all very clearly--the marquee, the stage, the footlights, the audience searching for their seats in the packed theatre. She could hear the orchestra turning up and feel the thunder of applause during each curtain call. She thought of the theatre and of New York, and she could hear the blare of taxi horns, see the rush and bustle of pedestrians, and smell the exhaust fumes that hung in the air. All these things are real, they are, she insisted in her desperate litany. I hold those truths to be self-evident.

That phrase from the Declaration of Independence ran through Leigh's mind like a chant, a chant from a faraway past that was now in the distant future. Her past was in the future. No, Leigh warned herself, she mustn't think of that. This was merely a nightmare, and soon she would wake up in her own bed.

Or perhaps she'd wake up in a hospital...Perhaps she was in a hospital right now, and she was hallucinating. That made sense. For one thing, her body hurt everywhere; for another, she remembered having been in an automobile accident. Although her pain seemed even worse than the other times she'd awakened in this grim fantasy castle, Leigh's mind felt clearer, and she concentrated all her thoughts on the accident, trying to bring the details into sharp focus.

She'd been driving up into the mountains to join Logan for a brief romantic interlude at their mountain hideaway. She'd had something wonderful to tell him, and she wanted to tell him there, where they'd spend their honeymoon, even though she had to be back in New York the following night for her evening performance.

Patchy fog and steady rain had made the driving difficult, but her spirits were so high that she scarcely minded the inconvenient weather. She was only an hour away from the mountain house, humming along with a Gershwin melody playing on the radio, when a paid of headlights on high beam leapt out of the darkness just ahead, blinding her on a sharp curve. The driver of the other car was either drunk of falling asleep because he was driving mostly on Leigh's side of the road. Leigh frantically honked the horn, trying to get his attention, then she clenched the steering wheel and uttered a prayer as he weaved back into his own lane, swerved suddenly, and then smashed into the side of her car, sending it out of control.

The memory of what had followed came back to Leigh, vivid and terrifying; the crash against the guardrail, the explosion of air bags, the sickening scream of tortured metal and shattering glass as the guardrail gave way and the Mercedes began cartwheeling down the steep embankment. Tree trunks rammed at the car, metal collapsed, and heavy objects tore at her flesh and slammed into her head. She remembered the explosive jolt as three tons of mangled metal finally rammed to a bone-breaking stop.

Suspended from her seat belt, she hung there, upside down, like a bat in a black cave. In a daze of pain and shock, she fumbled absently for the seat belt release while the light began exploding around her, banishing the terrifying darkness. Bright light. Colorful light. Yellow and orange and red. Fire!

Terror clawed at her and sharpened her senses. She found the seat belt release, landed hard on the roof of the overturned car, and, whimpering, she clawed her way through the narrow, jagged hole that had once been the passenger window. She staggered forward, trying to run as fast as she could. Blood, sticky and wet, dripped into her eyes, blinding her, then spread down her arms and legs. She stumbled over a rock in the darkness, fell forward, stretched out her arms for something to grab, and found nothing. Thin air. Screaming, she pitched forward and began to fall, rolling and sliding downward for what seemed like an eternity.

Lying in bed with her eyes closed, Leigh relived that plunge down the rocky incline in sickening slow-motion, but when the memory came to an end, she couldn't immediately recall what had finally stopped her fall. Trying to jog her mind, she considered the possibilities. Trees? A boulder? The bottom of the hill? No....

Water! Her fall had not ended until the water closer over her. Water--icy and deep and dark.

The memories swirled through her mind, and her heart began to hammer in remembered terror. She remembered choking, her lungs bursting as she used all her remaining strength, trying to break the surface; she remembered feeling angry that she had survived a car crash and escaped a fire only to drown. She hadn't wanted to accept such a fate, refused to accept it. As she relived the ordeal in her mind, Leigh suddenly thought of stories about other people who had faced imminent, certain death. According to what she'd read and heard, those people had all experienced a calmness and acceptance, but Leigh hadn't. Fatalism and meek acceptance of the inevitable had never been personality traits of hers. Even as a child, Leigh had possessed what her mother had called a stubborn streak.

Choking and flailing, Leigh swam and dog-paddled in the darkness, uncertain whether she was moving toward the edge of the water or toward the middle of it or simply moving in circles. All she knew for certain was that she wanted to live. She had so much to live for--a husband, a career, her unborn babies! She was not, not willing to die yet, and not like that. Leigh kept swimming, but neither her panic nor her stubbornness could give her renewed strength. Her mother's gentle voice seemed to whisper in the darkness, "Honey, everyone has to accept defeat, even you. Don't be so stubborn."

Leigh tried to ignore her mother's admonition as she had often done when her mother was alive, but her limbs felt leaden, and her mother's reassuring voice seemed to beckon her. "Don't fight fate, darling. Accept defeat. It's all right so give in..."

Rolling onto her back, Leigh tried to float, but she was so tired, so weak, that she couldn't keep her body straight in the water. The pain in her head was unbearable, and her mother's suggestion began to appeal to her. Water closed over her and she fought feebly for the surface again, coughing and choking. She was dizzy, sinking, her head sliding under the surface again when she saw it--a light! A white light, small but growing bigger and brighter, coming closer.

A surge of joy obliterated Leigh's pain. She flailed at the water, too weak to call out, then she stretched her hands in the direction of the light and tried to kick her legs to propel herself forward. The light came toward her. She reached for it, touched it with both hands, and then embraced it with numb arms. It wrapped around her, comforting and warm, and pulled her effortlessly out of the water.

Leigh concentrated with every fiber of her being, trying to remember what had happened next, but all her memories ended there, at the water's edge.

Fear closed in on her and Leigh fought it back, determined to come up with a rational explanation for what was happening to her. After reaching the water's edge, her next memory was waking up in this bed, surrounded by antagonistic people whose English seemed strangely accented. She knew the car accident was real, and she knew her pain was real because she couldn't possibly have conjured up so much physical agony. Her ribs felt as if they were puncturing her lungs with each breath she took, her head felt as if her skull was splitting open, and her arms and legs felt as if they'd been torn from their ligaments on a medieval torture rack.

It occurred to her to wonder why no one had given her any painkillers, and in the next moment she remembered her reaction to the anesthesia and morphine she'd been given when she had her miscarriage last year. She'd had wild hallucinations. Hallucinations!!

Leigh was so relieved, she nearly laughed despite the pain she was in. She was halluncinating! Of course, that explained everything and made perfect sense! She was undoubtedly in a hospital, recovering from surgery after the car wreck, and they were undoubtedly giving her morphine now to ease the pain.

After her last surgery, she'd thought her doctor was her grim-faced school principal; the private duty nurse was her loathsome sixth-grade teacher, and her hospital room was her classroom. She'd imagined she was flunking math and was going to have to repeat sixth grade. Her father had been summoned to the school, and when he was told that Leigh wasn't going to be promoted to seventh grade, he'd had a heart attack right in the principal's office and died. The halluncination had lasted so long and had been so vivid that Leigh actually imagined attending his funeral, viewing him in the coffin, and standing by the grave, along with her despised sixth-grade teacher, the principal, and her school friends. Afterward, she'd helped her mother write notes to everyone who attended the funeral in which Leigh thanked the person for their sympathy and apologized profusely for having been the cause of her father's early and sudden demise.

It had all seemed to realistic that for weeks afterward, Leigh had to remind herself it hadn't happened. But that hallucinogenic experience couldn't compare to this one. This time, her imagination had truly outdone itself. This time, she'd hallucinated herself right into the Middle Ages, complete with eerie, threatening occupants. Cautiously, Leigh opened her eyes and looked at the room, her gaze moving apprehensively toward the dark, predatory man standing by the fireplace with a dagger at his hip. In reality, he was probably a surgeon looking out the window of her hospital room, she thought with as much humor as she could muster under the circumstances. He needed a shave. He needed a haircut even more. But what an amazing face: iron jaw, square and tough; high cheekbones, dark tawny brows like a straight, thick slash over fierce amber eyes. He was definitely not a plastic surgeon, or he wouldn't be caught dead with that scar on his left cheek or the one on his temple.

He looked up suddenly and caught her watching him, then he turned and walked slowly, purposefully, toward the bed, his face twisting into a mask of menacing rage. Refusing to be frightened by what was only a figment of her imagination, Leigh breathed a little deeper, then stifled a moan as her ribs seemed to rub against each other. She needed to pull enough air into her lungs to speak, to tell him to stop giving her whatever drugs she was being given. She couldn't merely think it, she had to say it aloud. Focusing her gaze on the man's icy eyes, she watched him advance toward the bed where she lay.

The closer he came the mor forbidding a specter he seemed to be, despite his absurd costume of sleeveless leather jerkin and thick woolen hose. He was at least six feet three, with massive shoulders and heavy muscles that made his biceps bulge and his legs look like tree trunks. There was a fresh, evil-looking scar that ran from his left shoulder to his elbow, and it looked as primitive and angry as the expression in his glittering amber eyes.

Marveling that she could have dreamed this man up, Leigh cleared her raw throat. "Drugs...." she managed in a rasping whisper. "No...drugs."

"Drugs to help ease your suffering?" His contemptuous voice was as deep and heavy as his chest. "Nay, madam, you'll have no drugs to dull your pain. I want you to experience every bit of it." Leigh was so startled by the sound og his voice that it took a moment before she realized that he thought she was complaining about not being given enough drugs to kill the pain.

The cruelty emanating from him was so tangible that she had to forcibly remind herself that he was merely a hallucination. "Where?" she managed, then paused, waiting for the pain to subside before she attempted to draw another shallow breath. "Where--" The rest of her question was cut off by a sudden, prolonged uproar that seemed to take place outside, almost directly below the room where she lay. It began with a loud, rhythmic clanking sound that was punctuated with the shouts of many men and the thunder of horses' hooves that lasted for several minutes. Leigh found the commotion unnerving and vaguely familiar. Since she couldn't draw enough air into her lungs to speak above the noise, she waited for it to subside before she asked about it. "What...is happening?" she managed to whisper.

"Can you not guess what is happening?" he taunted.

Trying to avoid the pain of speaking, Leigh shook her head in the negative and then gasped at the blinding pain in her skull.

"Then allow me to satisfy your curiosity," he sneered. "The drawbridge has been lowered and the first hunting party has left the keep."

Leigh preferred the pain in her chest to the pain of moving her head. "Drawbridge?" If she didn't hurt so badly and if she weren't so helpless, she would have been amused by her own wild imagination. Drawbridges, hunting parties, horses. It was utterly, comically, bizarre. Fortified by that, Leigh decided to try to confront and explore her hallucination. Perhaps she could even befriend the apparition standing beside her and thus neutralize her fear. She drew a measured breath, "What do they hunt? Foxes?" she ventured with an effort. "Food?"

"Nay, bitch," he said in an awful voice. "We're hunting for a dog."

He saw her eyes widen in horro, and misinterpreted the reason for it. "You don't like to hear your lover called a dog? Good. Then you will like it even less when you see Kerringham brought back here in irons and flogged in the village square while all my people feast and watch. You will have to watch, too, of course. I want you to hear the sound of the whip tearing into his flesh and hear his screams for mercy. He will suffer great torment before he is executed, and you shall not miss even one moment of it. After that, I'll deal with you."

Reminding herself that hallucinations weren't fatal, Leigh dared to ask, "How?"

He raked her with a glance of undiluted malice. "How do you think I will?"

Leigh closed her eyes, recoiling from the sight of his face, refusing to look at him or allow him the satisfaction of knowing he increased her alarm. Considering the manner in which he was dressed and the way he spoke, she'd obviously hallucinated herself right into medieval England. Two years ago, she'd won a Tony for her starring role as Joan of Arc, and early in her career, she'd also starred in an off-Broadway revival of Camelot. Based on Leigh's limited knowledge of medieval history, and in view of the fact that this grim feudal lord seemed to think she'd cheated on him, Leigh was reasonably sure the penalty would be to be burned at the stake. Her desire to pull free of her drug-induced, hallucinogenic state tripled.

Refusing to let Leigh ignore him by closing her eyes, the man beside the bed bent down and caught her jaw in an iron grip that snapped Leigh's eyes open. "Because of your insatiable lust, men will die in battle," he said, his voice hissing with rage. "Kerringham's people will have to avenge his death or suffer dishonor, your family must join them or suffer the disgrace you've brought to them." His grip tightened unbearably and Leigh glared at him through eyes glazed with pain and fury. "Within the month, the fields outside this castle will run red with the blood of innocent men who will attack me in order to defend the honor of a bitch who has no honor."

He let go of her face and lifted his hand in a gesture that made Leigh flinch with the expectation of being slapped by a hand the size of a platter. "Why Kerringham?" he demanded wrathfully instead. "Why do you lust after that spineless milksop?"

In a complete rebellion against her fear, Leigh decided to fight back in her own hallucination. Ignoring the grating of her ribs, she whispered fiercely, "Do you think I should prefer a coarse, cruel bully, like you?"

He leaned close, his teeth bared, his voice filled with vicious mockery. "What? Did I just witness a glimmer of courage, of honesty, from you? Surely not! Tell me again," he whispered, clearly trying to intimidate her into denying what she'd just said. "Do you find me a cruel man, madam?"

Leigh reminded herself sternly that this wasn't reality and refused to back down. "You are only a dream I'm having. However...in my dream, you are a cruel--"

Over his shoulder she saw a sudden movement as one of the seamstresses jumped to her feet and covered her mouth with her hands in a gesture of fear, but it was too late for Leigh to choke off the rest of her sentence even if she'd wanted to, "--repugnant, bloodthirsty...bastard!"

His open hand struck her face, her head jerked sideward, and everything began to whirl, but very slowly, so slowly that Leigh had time to turn her face to his. "Don't ever touch me again," she warned him in a fading whisper, "or I will stab you in your sleep with your own knife!"

He stared at her as if she had turned into a snake on the bed. "Do you threaten me?" he demanded fiercely.

"Warn you..." Leigh managed. "Not threaten..." She slid into oblivion, murmuring the rest in an unintelligible babble, I'll charge you with assault and battery when I'm well again. My name is Leigh Kendall, and I live in New York. It is a crime to physically abuse a woman.

I hold these truths to be self-evident....

Copyright � 2000 by Eagle Syndication Inc

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Russian translation of this book does not exist for the moment (2001, January). So I have no data about this book in Russian.

Thank you for understanding.

Design � 2000-2001 Galina Phedonina