The Awakening Read online

  Critical acclaim for the marvelous romances of

  Jude Deveraux

  THE SUMMERHOUSE

  “Deveraux is at the top of her game here as she uses the time-travel motif that was so popular in A Knight in Shining Armor, successfully updating it with a female buddy twist that will make fans smile.”

  —Booklist

  “Entertaining summer reading.”

  —The Port St. Lucie News (FL)

  “Leslie, Madison, and Ellie wiggle quickly into readers’ hearts as their tales are unfolded…. [A] wonderful, heartwarming tale of friendship and love.”

  —America Online Romance Fiction Forum

  TEMPTATION

  “Deveraux[’s] lively pace and happy endings…will keep readers turning pages.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  HIGH TIDE

  A Romatic Times Top Pick

  “High Tide is packed full of warmth, humor, sensual tension, and exciting adventure. What more could you ask of a book?”

  —Romantic Times

  Books by Jude Deveraux

  The Velvet Promise

  Highland Velvet

  Velvet Song

  Velvet Angel

  Sweetbriar

  Counterfeit Lady

  Lost Lady

  Riverlady

  Twin of Fire

  Twin of Ice

  The Temptress

  The Raider

  The Princess

  The Awakening

  The Maiden

  The Taming

  The Conquest

  A Knight in Shining Armor

  Wishes

  Mountain Laurel

  The Duchess

  Eternity

  Sweet Liar

  The Invitation

  Remembrance

  The Heiress

  Legend

  An Angel for Emily

  The Blessing

  High Tide

  Temptation

  The Summerhouse

  Forever…A Novel of Good and Evil, Love and Hope

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

  This book is a work of historical fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents relating to nonhistorical figures are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of such nonhistorical incidents, places or figures to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  Copyright © 1988 by Deveraux Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-5443-X

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  Chapter One

  Kingman, California

  July, 1913

  A gentle breeze stirred the grasses on the flat, rich farmland of the fifteen hundred acres of the Caulden Ranch. The leaves on the fruit and nut trees moved; there were peaches, figs, walnuts and almonds. Cornstalks dried in the scorching heat. As usual, it hadn’t rained a drop in two months now and everyone in the Kingman area was hoping the rains would hold off another few weeks until the hops were in.

  The hops, the major crop of the Caulden Ranch, were close to peak ripeness, hanging off fifteen-foot-tall poles, beginning to turn yellow and bursting with their wet succulence. In another few weeks the pickers would arrive and the hop vines would be torn from their strings and taken to the kilns to dry.

  It was very early morning, with the many permanent farm workers just beginning to rise and start about their chores. Already, the day was hot and most of the workers would be in the fields, long flat acres with no relief from the sun. Some luckier workers would be spending the day in the shaded hop fields, the vines overhead forming a canopy of shelter from the blazing sun.

  Through the middle of the ranch ran a well-used dirt road with other roads branching off it, all roads leading past enormous barns, barracks for the workers and the huge, chimneyed hop kilns.

  In the middle of the ranch, facing north, stood the big Caulden house, constructed of local red brick, with a painted white verandah around two sides, balconies protruding from the second story. Tall palm trees and an old magnolia sheltered the house from the sun and kept the darkened interior cool.

  Inside, in the west bedroom on the second floor, Amanda Caulden was still sleeping, her thick chestnut hair pulled back into a respectable braid. Her sedate, characterless nightgown was buttoned to her chin, the cuffs carefully covering her wrists. She lay on her back, the sheet folded perfectly across her breasts, her hands clasped across her rib cage. The bedclothes were only barely disturbed, the bed looked as if it had just been turned down—yet a twenty-two-year-old woman had spent the night here.

  The room was as tidy as the bed. Apart from the young woman lying so utterly still, there were very few signs of life. There was the bed, expensive and of good quality—as was the woman—and two chairs, a table here and there, a closet door, curtains on the three windows. There were no lace doilies on the tables, no prizes won by a male admirer at a fair, no satin dancing slipper hastily kicked under the bed. There was no powder on the dresser, no hairpins left out. Inside the drawers and the closet, everything was perfectly neat. There were no dresses shoved to the back that had been bought on the spur of the moment then never worn. There were eighteen books in a case under one window, all leather bound, all of great intellectual importance. There were no novels about some pretty young thing’s seduction by some handsome young thing.

  Up the back stairs, bustling, straightening her impeccably neat blue dress, came Mrs. Gunston. She straightened her spine and calmed herself outside Amanda’s door before giving one quick, sharp knock then opening the door.

  “Good morning,” she said in a loud, commanding tone that actually meant, Get out of that bed immediately, I don’t have time to waste pampering you. She rushed across the room to thrust aside the curtains as if they were her enemy. She was a big woman: big-boned, big-faced, big-footed, hands like gardening plows.

  Amanda woke as neatly as she slept. One second she was asleep, the next she was awake, the next she was standing quietly by the bed looking at Mrs. Gunston.

  Mrs. Gunston frowned, as she always did, at the slender delicacy of Amanda. It was amazing to think that these two people were of the same species, for, just as Mrs. Gunston was heavy and thick, Amanda was tall, slim and fragile-looking. But Mrs. Gunston only felt a kind of exasperation in Amanda’s femininity because she equated her delicacy with weakness.

  “Here’s your schedule,” Mrs. Gunston said, slapping a piece of paper on the table under the west window, “and you are to wear the”—she checked another piece of paper she’d taken from one of her numerous pockets—“the vieux rose dress with the lace yoke. Do you know which one it is?”

  “Yes,” Amanda answered softly. “I know.”

  “Good,” Mrs. Gunston said curtly, as if this were a big accomplishment for Amanda. “Breakfast is promptly at eight and Mr. Driscoll will be waiting for you.” With that, she left the room.

  As soon as the door closed, Amanda yawned and stretched—then cut off both halfway and looked about guiltily as if expecting someone to have seen her. Neither her father nor her fiancé, Taylor Driscoll, approved of yawns.

  But Amanda didn’t have much time to contemplate whether or not a yawn and stretch would merit disapproval, for she had no time to waste.

  With unconsciously graceful movements, she hurried across the room to look at her schedule. Every night Taylor made out a new schedule of courses for