Read Perilous Pleasures Online
Authors: Jenny Brown
Perilous Pleasures (29 page)
He buried his lips in her hair and stroked the rough skin of her beloved features. “I don't know when it was I started to love you. Perhaps it was in my dream that first night when you came to meâI had lived so much of my life in other realms. But you brought me to earth and taught me how to face reality. By the time MacMinn told me we must wed, I was wild with love for you. How could I not have been, when you gave me so much comfort and understanding, despite the way I treated you.”
“Never had I seen a mortal so in need of comfort. I would have had to have a heart of stone not to care for you.” She bit her lip. “But I didn't expect you to love me, simply because I was kind to you. It was only at Strathrimmon that I dared hope you might return my love, after we truly became man and wife.”
A delicate blush had stolen across her cheeks, making her so beautiful he longed to stop her words with a kiss, but she wasn't done. “Even then, I didn't dare trust that you really loved me. What you had chosen to give me, you could take back, so I still fought against admitting how much I needed you. I made myself believe I loved you because of the spell, not because I'd chosen to. It was only when the Dark Lord enchanted me and attempted to transfer my affections to him with the selfsame spell that I had to admit that a spell couldn't create love unless it was already there.”
Her mention of the Dark Lord brought him back to earth. “But that's the hell of it, Zoe. Even if you loved me then, how can you love me now, when I led you to the Dark Lord's lair and did nothing to save you?”
She drew herself up to her full height. “How could I love you? With all my heart and soul. You offered your
life
for mine. But, you know, Adam, it was probably for the best that you didn't save me just now. You've spent too much of your life trying to be a hero and if you'd been one today, you might still think I'd only love you when you were strong and successful. Now you can be certain that I'll love you no matter what happens.”
“Can you really love me even when I fail?”
“Of course. That's when you need my love the most.”
He drew her closer. “What could I ever give you, in return for so great a gift?”
“You've already given it. You made me believe in magic.”
She opened her lips for a kiss. He pressed her close and nuzzled her ear, and the wonderful scent of her hair filled him with joy as he bent down to take what she so freely offered.
Across the way, her mother shook her head. “She'll never learn,” she observed to MacMinn. “But then, she always was a stubborn child. It's a mystery how she managed to marry a lord, when she went about it so clumsily. I ask you, can there be anything more absurd than her falling in love with her own husband? No good can come of it. I've told her that a million times, but the foolish girl, she never listens.”
F
or those of you who would like to consult his chart, Adam was born on March 17, 1773, at 12:51
P.M
. at Selkirk, Scotland. Though he was trained in astrology, which was taught as part of the medical curriculum well into the eighteenth century, he wouldn't have known of the grand trine that forms such a striking feature of his chart, as it involves the three new planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, the last two of which had not yet been discovered.
Discovered or not, these transpersonal planets clearly played a strong role in Adam's life, as they aspected his Moon and various other personal planets. They go a long way to explaining why he was so dominated by survivor guilt, and why he sought comfort, as so many Pisces do, in renunciation and in losing himself in erroneous beliefs about supernatural powers.
Those planetary configurations also explain why Adam had such a need to purify himself and undergo a life-threatening initiatory ordeal. As you probably noticed, Adam did, in fact, receive the Final Teaching that his years of pilgrimage had prepared him for. His purity of heart allowed him to learn wisdom, even from a flawed teacher. The compassion he'd learned through his sufferings kept him from risking Isabelle's life at the barrow. Had he been willing to sacrifice her, he would have died at the hands of the guards. But because he did what was right, he survived his ordeal and lived on to spend the rest of his life with the woman who really did turn out to be his gateway to enlightenment.
The opposition between Pluto and the Moon conjunct in the Sixth House and his Twelfth House Mars also explains why Adam made such a good surgeon, a profession you might not otherwise find a Pisces pursuing.
Zoe, whose down-to-earth practicality made her such a good foil for him, was, as you have probably guessed, a Virgo. She was born August 29, 1782, at 6:51
P.M.
at Nanterre, France. Her concentration of Virgo planets in the Sixth House with its emphasis on service made her the perfect mate for Adam, as it gave her the ability to ground him and make it possible for him to learn to appreciate the things of this world rather than lose himself in the hidden mysteries so intoxicating to his Pisces nature.
Zoe's challenge was to avoid becoming
too
grounded. Adam taught her to see past her limitations and discover the faith she needed if she were to express her Pisces Ascendant through action, rather than suffering.
As they grew older, the two of them would have become a powerful team of healers. Together they would have used their practical skills to heal those patients whose ailments could be cured while letting their mystical compassion ease the way of patients whose illnesses could not be healed by the limited medicine of their day.
Like all those living on the cusp of the scientific age, Adam and Zoe would have found it difficult to distinguish magic from science. The hypnotism that the Dark Lord taught Adamâwhich is, of course, what he was using when he cast the “healing spell”âwould have seemed like magic to anyone of his era, and indeed, hypnotic techniques had long been used by holy men in India and elsewhere, and were considered forms of magic.
The historical record reports that hypnotic trance was indeed used as anesthesia by several surgical practitioners throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, until it was replaced by the newly discovered anesthetic gasses. But it wasn't until the 1840s that hypnotism came to be understood as a concrete, repeatable physiological phenomenon, through the work of another Scottish surgeon, James Braid.
Though Mesmer is often thought of as having used hypnosis, and even gave his name to the practice, his healing practice involved the use of imaginary electrical fluids and did not employ actual hypnotic techniques.
The Dark Lord is fictional, but I based his character on those of charlatans like Cagliostro and the legendary Count of Saint-Germain, who were active near the time of the French Revolution and were believed to have mystical powers. The way the Dark Lord exploited a wealthy young man whose emotional wounds were so close to the surface is all too typical of how religious cult leaders behave, even today. They win followers by blending a powerful mixture of real truths, psychic ability, and charisma with appealing lies that offer hope to friendless people like Adam, who are struggling with difficult emotional conflicts.
Should you ever find yourself falling under the spell of any religious teacher, examine closely the direction that energyâand moneyâflow between that teacher and his followers. Real adepts give, they don't take. If they have psychic powers, they use them reluctantly and without calling attention to themselves. They don't ever ask for money. They give to the poor and heal those in pain without asking for anything in return. Most importantly, they don't create a cloud of awe or fear around themselves.
When people leave the presence of a truly illuminated being, their hearts are filled with peace and understanding. Such people walk the earth today as they always have. They show up when you are ready to receive their teaching, give you what you require, and then quietly disappear.
J
ENNY
B
ROWN
earned a graduate degree in 19th-century history. Her very first professional
sale as a writer was a biographical piece about Louisa May Alcott's childhood.
Years later, her favorite hobby continues to be reading biographies of people
who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. She has earned her living in many
different ways: performing as a singer-songwriter in western Massachusetts and
Nashville, writing nonfiction, and, for the past fifteen years, running a
successful small press.
Jenny has been a student of
astrology since her teens. This ancient art helps her make sense of her life and
accept that the way she is, with all her oddities, is the way she's supposed to
be. Though she has always loved reading love stories set in the past, what got
her writing them was finding, at last, the Hero of Her Own Romance.
To learn more, visit Jenny's web
site and blog at
www.jennybrown.net
.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PERILOUS PLEASURES
. Copyright © 2012 by Janet Ruhl. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition APRIL 2012 ISBN: 9780062121684
Print Edition ISBN: 9780061976070
FIRST EDITION
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