Please help me welcome Author Rachael Stapletan to my blog!
Curse
of the Purple Delhi Sapphire
Temple
of Indra Series
Book
Two
Rachael
Stapleton
Genre: Mystery, Adventure, Romance
Publisher: Solstice Publishing
Date of Publication: February 3rd,
2015
Cover Artist: Rebecca Boyd
Book Description:
As a librarian, Sophia Marcil loved
reading, especially books about ancient curses and reincarnation, but she never
imagined the legend of the Purple Delhi Sapphire was true until she inherited
it and was transported back to a past life where she was murdered. Now she
knows that not only is reincarnation real, but so is the devil’s magic locked
inside the precious gem. Just as she’s about to tell her boyfriend Cullen about
it, he proposes with an engagement ring made from a piece of the very sapphire
that’s cursed her. Reeling from the shock and surrounded by his family, she
allows him to place it on her ring finger. As soon as it touches her skin, she
feels herself being wrenched back in time.
Before she knows it, she’s
wandering the hallway of an old Victorian house in the body of her great aunt.
Unfortunately, her nemesis has also reincarnated in 1920—as one of her family
members. Sophia struggles to locate the Purple Delhi Sapphire in time to
prevent the deaths of those she loves, but she fails and returns to her present-day
life, to the precise moment she left, with a deep understanding that her
killer’s soul is also tied to the sapphire and every life she has, he is
resurrected as someone close to her.
Her stalker ex-boyfriend Nick seems
like a prime candidate this time but she’s convinced she’s a step ahead of him,
thanks to a tip from a medium, she knows that if she uses the magic of the
stone correctly she can trap Nick’s soul in the sapphire and save herself. But
when Nick is murdered, she finds evidence that has her questioning everything
she thought she knew.
Is Cullen husband material or is
history doomed to repeat itself?
Curse of the Purple
Delhi Sapphire
Excerpt
Chapter One
Dublin, Ireland
Today I would tell Cullen the truth. I swirled the champagne
in my glass in an agitated fashion. I would not allow myself to be distracted.
I looked down in early defeat and noticed the dark limp waves cascading past my
shoulders. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t even get ready for a dinner party
without being distracted. All that work curling it, and then Cullen had walked
in, glimpsing my lacy black bra, and poof, my hair was flat again. Twirling a
strand around my index finger, I attempted to bring it back to life. If only
the jewels could work their magic on my hair.
I spotted Cullen a couple of feet away, making his way over
to me. He looked handsome in his sport jacket and tailored shirt. His hair, a
coppery red with streaks of blond that looked almost golden in the sunlight,
was slicked back so the ends curled at his neck.
I should be over-the-moon happy right now. I was sipping Dom
Pérignon in an elegant restaurant surrounded by rustic stone walls, as a soft
and whimsical Irish fiddle played in the background in honor of our one-year
anniversary. It wasn’t technically our anniversary. He had playfully called it
that when he’d invited me out to dinner with his family, but what he’d meant
was that it had been one year since we’d met. Since that ill-fated day on the
Lerins Island, half a mile off shore from Cannes, when I’d rejected the
marriage proposal of that egotistical lunatic Nicholas Bexx and endured his
wrath. Lucky for me, Cullen had been looking up from the deck of his family’s
yacht and had seen Nick push me off the cliff. Cullen dove in and pulled me to
safety, and subsequently into his life.
It was hard to believe that in a full year I couldn’t bring
myself to tell him the truth: that the fall had sent me to another time and
place and into the body of a nineteenth-century princess. But what sane person
would believe what had been only seconds underwater to them had been another
lifetime to me? I was the owner of the Purple Delhi Sapphire. I had time
traveled into my past life and uncovered my destiny—had done so repeatedly—and
was always reborn, only to be murdered by the same obsessed spirit, again and
again.
“Sophia, ye all right?” Cullen asked, appearing suddenly at
my elbow.
“No,” I said automatically and pushed away the bothersome
thoughts.
“Gah. It’s the restaurant. It’s too fancy, isn’t it? I said
so, but ye know Móraí.”
“What? I love this place.” The room buzzed with mixed
conversation. “I just didn’t hear what you said.”
“Where the tongue slips, it speaks the truth. I asked if ye
were all right and ye said no.”
“I’m fine. I’m just soaking in the atmosphere. It’s so
romantic in here.”
That was the truth. The place was intimate. A combination of
comfortable leather and floral high-backed chairs surrounded the long table,
and almost all of them were now full with Cullen’s family.
“It is getting loud in here. I thought this was just dinner,
but it looks like you rented out the whole restaurant. Will this place hold
your entire family?”
“Like that’d matter. Loud-mouthed arses. Let’s skedaddle and
we can celebrate alone.”
I laughed as Cullen pretended to boot one of his cousins in
the rear.
His eyes met mine, and it was just like that first day in
the hospital after I’d awoken from the fall. There was no denying the
attraction and it wasn’t just pheromones. It was as if my soul recognized his,
which was exactly why I needed to be honest about the curse. I was giving
myself an ulcer and all for what? I knew he felt the same way. For heaven’s
sake, I’d overheard him tell his brother of his dreams, and they sounded
suspiciously familiar. There were other clues. He shared a birthmark with Graf
Viktor Ferdinand of Württemberg, who’d rescued me on three separate occasions
when I was the princess, and of course his ancestor had been the one to sell
the Purple Delhi Sapphire to my family.
Cullen bent his head toward me, his lips brushing mine, but
at the last moment I turned my cheek.
“Cullen, your grandmother has arrived with your parents and
she’s staring at us. It’s probably this dress.”
“Well now, she can be after findin’ her own frock, can’t
she? ’Cause ye look bloody deadly in that one.”
He playfully tugged at the clasp centered between my
breasts. He’d been the one to choose this low-slung, emerald-green dress. He
said it reminded him of a shamrock, but I knew he really liked it because it
provided a pretty little peek-a-boo if I moved just the right way. Truthfully,
it was a little racy for this evening, but you only lived once. Well, maybe
some people did.
Curse of the Purple
Delhi Sapphire
Excerpt
Chapter One (Part of the end)
The laughter faded as Cullen pushed his chair back and
stood, pulling me gently to stand with him.
“Not sure how to follow that up, but how about: to
passionate people, beautiful futures, and lovely lasses who fall from the
heavens,” he said, knocking glasses with me. Clinks echoed all around, and I
smiled as he set his flute down.
Then he lowered to one knee.
He grinned up at me—so charming and gorgeous. His green
eyes, as always, were mesmerizing. They had flecks of gold in them that clung
to the edges and danced in the center, like they were on fire. My heart beat so
loudly in my ears that it almost drowned out the “awws” and “oohs.”
“Ye’re already mine, lass, in every way possible and I am
yers, but I want the world to know,” he said, taking my free hand. Someone took
the glass of champagne from the other one, as I was shaking so badly. The black
velvet box squeaked open, and his aunts gasped in unison, as if on cue.
“Will ye make me the happiest man in Ireland, Aevil, and
join our O’Kelley Clan?” He kissed my fingers as I stared down at him.
The marble-sized rock in the box swirled, and doubled in
front of my eyes. Deep purple amethyst with a thin frame of diamonds, set in
pink gold and accentuated with a slender shank and crescent details.
I looked past the ring, into his eyes, and found him still
staring directly at me. He’d removed the ring from the box and was holding it
out, ready to place it on my finger.
He cleared his throat. “It was my
great-great-great-grandmother’s and I thought ye might appreciate it, since ye
were so intrigued with her portrait.”
I nodded, trying to smile through the confusion, but my head
swam with random bursts of chatter, the fiddle, and all the thoughts flooding
me at once, mostly that Cullen had just proposed to me with the missing Purple
Delhi Sapphire ring. A bead of sweat ran down the side of my cheek as the ring
touched the tip of my finger.
Cullen’s face began to distort. A shimmery haze had fallen
over the room as if the desert were closing in. The vibration from the ring
traveled up my arm, and the room began to shift and blur at the edges. Another
room, a darker room, was coming into focus. I could still hear Cullen’s aunt
ordering someone to get me a glass of water.
There was something I should remember. Water. Rochus said
water was necessary to ease the pain of time travel. Maybe this was what it
felt like without. I tried to blink away the heat, tried to stop myself from
going, but I couldn’t. The edges of the room were burning away fast now, like a
Polaroid scorched by flames. I could hear the trickling of the fountain in the
corner. I ran for it, or at least I intended to, but it was too late.
Curse of the Purple
Delhi Sapphire
Excerpt
Fog descended, eerily beautiful despite the dingy residue it
seemed to be composed of—producing an unwelcome metallic taste in my mouth. I
lagged behind, pulling my scarf tight around my shoulders and taking in the
outline of the buildings, which now looked even more Gothic and ghostly. They
gave me a chill, or maybe it was just the weather. I had snowmobiled and skied
on the frostiest of Canadian mornings and hardly ever felt the cold; I even
slept with the windows open at times. But this cold was different from anything
I had experienced. It cut to the core.
Of course I’d read about the smog of old London, when a
million coal fires polluted the atmosphere, but the sound of the fog horn now
blaring from the river made it real.
“Maggie,” Emily said with a cough. “We should duck into one
of these places. We’ve got a pea-souper rolling in.”
Maggie’s soon-to-be mother-in-law gave a gasp. “A tavern is
not a suitable place for a group of women and children.”
“Yes, I realize that but it’s bloody—sorry, it’s terribly
bad weather out here—” Emily stopped. “It’s going to get worse and—”
“Mama, I’m cold,” Gigi whined. I gave her arms and shoulders
a little rub to increase the circulation.
“What is this?” Marjorie asked through a muffled hand.
“Pollution from the—” I began and then clamped my hand over
my mouth.
“No use chit-chatting. We should be there already. Let’s
pick up our feet, shall we?”
Maggie, who was clearly uncomfortable, made a vague gesture
with her hands and followed the formidable woman down the sidewalk.
As the ladies turned a corner, a man in a trench coat caught
my eye. He’d been right behind us four blocks ago, and earlier in the day he’d
loitered outside the dress shop. His fedora rode low over his eyes at all times
and he looked to be about 5’11", coincidentally the same build as Eugene.
I kept my eye on him for the next several blocks before he slipped behind a
great stone church. I looked up and began to feel uneasy as I realized I’d now
lost sight of the gang. In the growing fog, the iron fence surrounding it
looked like rows of jagged black teeth. Don’t panic, I said to myself.
Eventually I would catch up to them or come to a place I recognized and
everything would be all right. I knew the name of the hotel we were staying in.
The problem was that I was rapidly being swallowed up into the murk, and it was
impossible to read the street signs which had now vanished into the fog above
my head.
That’s when I noticed the slow, steady rhythm of footsteps
behind me—keeping pace with mine. I turned but couldn’t see anyone. Probably
just someone else out lost in this godforsaken weather, I told myself. Or the
footsteps could only be a strange echo produced by the fog. I started walking
again, stopped suddenly, and heard the footsteps continue another couple of
beats before they too stopped. I had no choice but to keep going, so I
increased my pace. Thankfully I glimpsed Marjorie’s skirt disappearing behind a
building and took off on a terror in an effort to catch up, my mind conjuring
the sort of thing that happened in the fog in some of Gigi’s old mystery
novels. I rounded the corner onto a cobblestone side street and ran smack into
something hard.
Palming my forehead, I realized the smog didn’t hang quite
as low here, or maybe the cool breeze off the Thames River pushed it away. The
bad news was, aside from the offending lamp post, the street lay empty. I
looked up and noticed a sign that hung atop an old storefront, advertising rare
books. Maggie must have reasoned with her mother-in-law and pulled the gang
indoors. No better place than one filled with books.
Wandering into the shop through a brass-studded wooden door,
I smiled to myself, taken in by the familiar smell of grass mixed with a hint
of vanilla, my happy place. Books were a constant in my life, and this
unmistakable smell always made me feel at home. The bell over the door jingled
and a slender man of sixty with large brown eyes, a long nose, and a full gray
mustache appeared, climbing down from the rolling ladder behind the counter.
He smiled at me as if he recognized a fellow bibliophile.
“Good afternoon, miss. May I help you?”
I looked around the quaint little shop. A polished table sat
empty in the corner, offering up only a delicate brass lamp. Shelves lined the
room and were packed with books at every turn but the store was also empty,
unless Marjorie and the gang were hiding in an alcove. “Did a group of women
come in here?”
“No, dear,” he replied and wrinkled his brow.
Turning to go back out the door, panic slammed into my chest.
The man in the navy blue trench coat had followed me. He stood at the corner of
the street, leaning against the wall, casually smoking and efficiently blocking
my only way out. Half expecting him to turn around and spot me, my mouth went
dry.
“Is everything all right, miss?”
Swiping a hand over my forehead, I brushed back a clump of
sweaty hair. “I’m fine. I’m waiting for someone, that’s all.”
The shopkeeper stood still, watching me, his face creased
with concern. Hastily I retreated, circling the room, studying the shelves and
looking for a back door.
He followed me to where I stood browsing an older collection
of Shakespeare. He pulled out a nineteenth-century edition of Twelfth Night and
handed it to me. I flipped through the pages, to be polite, before handing it
back.
“Something specific you fancy?”
“I’ll just take a look around on my own,” I said, then
noticed for the first time the book in his possession.
“What’s that?” I asked, squinting; his hand covered the
spine.
“Oh, this?”
I followed him and he laid the book open on the counter,
turning it sideways so we could both look at it. The scent of dust and pages
that time had long since begun to degrade drifted out of it. It was the smell
of the book I’d found in the library in my own time and seen prior to that in
the alchemist’s study.
“It’s a collection of spells I acquired at an estate sale in
Prague a few years ago.” He flipped the thin pages until he came to a poem
printed neatly in the center of the leaf. “It looks to me like a book of
magic,” he added, grinning.
A familiar feeling twisted within me.
Could it be?
Curse of the Purple
Delhi Sapphire
Excerpt
Chapter Seventeen
Lightning lit the sky, revealing the outline of tree limbs
through the kitchen window. It was followed so closely by a crack of thunder,
which shook the house, that I thought the storm must be directly overhead.
Leslie cleaned off her plate and placed it in the dishwasher. “Wow, it’s
getting bad out there.”
My stomach tightened. Another thunderclap rattled the house
as if on cue and I shivered. “Was it supposed to rain?”
Leslie smiled. “This is Dublin—it always rains, although
when I lived here there wasn’t a lot of thunder. Let’s go watch the movie. I’ll
protect you.”
“Yeah, you’d put the fear of God into a burglar.” I laughed,
draining my wineglass for emphasis while staring at her petite five-foot frame.
“Hey! I’m tough! Although I do plan to be pretty inebriated
tonight, so scratch that. You’re on your own, sister.”
I rolled my eyes and grinned. “Why did I let you talk me
into a supernatural thriller?”
“It’s not that scary. I promise.”
“Yeah, well, now with the storm, it will be.”
“It’s just a little rain.”
“I know—I’m just jumpy ’cause of the Betty thing.”
Leslie’s eyes were shining. “You mean the fact that the poor
woman was killed by your ex who is now stalking you?”
“Honestly, Leslie, you’re not helping.”
“What? I’m just trying to make you laugh. Where’s your sense
of humor tonight?”
“It’s gone…much like Betty.”
Curse of the Purple Delhi Sapphire
“There you go,” she
said, laughing.
I grabbed the bottle off the counter and double-checked the
bolt on the door as I followed her into Cullen’s living room. A huge fireplace
took up most of one wall. Cullen’s house was small but cozy. Once upon a time,
it had been his family’s cottage. Most of the properties the O’Kelley family
owned had been passed down through the generations.
My eyes focused on Leslie as she sat on the couch and pulled
a book from her purse.
“If you don’t want to watch the movie, we could always use
this?” She held it in front of her with both hands.
“Oh, you brought the book, that’s right. I need to put it in
some sort of safe.”
“Why don’t you try using it—using the magic?”
“No way.”
“Come on, Sophia, it’s not like you to pass on a challenge.
Throw yourself into it. Read through it at least, and see if there’s anything
that can help you.”
“Last time I looked in it, I wound up with killer nightmares
and I mean that quite literally. I dreamt about the crimes that my uncle Velte
committed and, unfortunately, at times from his sick and twisted perspective.
And I do not ever want to go back inside that pycho’s head.”
“That sucks. But what if there was a different spell that
could help.” She gave me a look that oozed guilt. “Don’t be mad, but I had a
look through it on my way here, and there’s a way to contact Rochus.”
“Leslie, what were you thinking?” I snapped, grabbing it out
of her arms and setting it down.
Her face was guarded and careful. “What? Nothing happened.”
Curse of the Purple Delhi Sapphire
“Lucky for you. Who
knows what happens when that book is opened? You could have wound up cursed
like me.”
“Why do you see this as a curse, Sophia?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t you?”
“No. You’re living every librarian’s dream. Experiencing the
past when the rest of us can only read about it.”
“Yes, but as you so lovingly reminded me, Nick is trying to
kill me.”
She reached out to touch the faded leather cover and I
looked up, startled, frightened by her curiosity.
“No one can stop destiny. Maybe you were just meant to
experience all of this and maybe, instead of fighting it, you should try
embracing it. If he always finds you anyway, then hiding is only prolonging the
inevitable, isn’t it? Why don’t you use the magic and call on Rochus for help?”
I took a deep breath. “You have a point,” I said, feeling
torn. The adventurous, knowledge-seeking librarian half of me wanted to do it;
it was the other rational half of me that was still afraid. I looked past
Leslie, out the windows…toward the darkened sky. “I’ll think about it. But
let’s just watch this movie for now.”
I shoved the book under the coffee table.
“Is that where you plan to keep it?”
“I don’t know. Where’s a good spot to keep explosives?
Because that’s what this book is.”
She took the movie out of the case and smiled mischievously
at me just as thunder exploded, rumbling and echoing off the walls.
The opening scene began with a man creeping through the
woods, flashlight in hand.
Curse of the Purple Delhi Sapphire
I tugged the blanket off the back of the couch, hastily
pulling it over me before I picked up my wine.
“Feeling the need for fortification?” Leslie smirked.
“This is already unnerving. I don’t like it.”
“It gets better,” Leslie assured, reaching out to pet Daphne
who was now curled up beside her.
“Mmm-hmm. I have my doubts.”
Another thunderclap crashed and reverberated through the
house and the room went dark and silent. Cursing, I got to my feet, chucking
the blanket aside.
“Glad I lit that candle.” I strode to the other room to grab
it. The lightning lit up the kitchen, and outside the wind blew the trees about
wildly.
“It’ll blow over soon. We should light some more candles,
though,” Les called from the living room.
Three drawers later I found some votives and a box of
matches.
I set the cinnamon candles aglow on the coffee table and sat
back down. “Sorry ’bout this.”
“What, like you knew the electricity would go out?” She
laughed. “Or was this all part of your master plan to get out of watching a
scary movie? Did Rochus give you a spell for just such an occasion?”
I snickered, but my eyes immediately shot down to the coffee
table. There was a Kleenex box and remote. “No. No. That he did not.”
“What are you thinking about? The book?”
“No. Maybe. Yes.”
“Come on, Sophia. Let’s call on him for help.”
“I don’t know.”
“What—why not? You’re super-freaked out that Nick’s after
you, and we can’t watch the movie anyway.”
“Yeah, well anything’s better than watching that stupid
movie.”
Curse of the Purple Delhi Sapphire
I paused, then reached under the coffee table and pulled the
book out, running my hands over the familiar design embossed on the spine and
stamped in gold.
The room’s dim lighting made the faint shimmer that danced
from within more prominent, as if to once again alert me to just the right
spot.
“Quit stalling and open it.”
“Okay, okay. I’m just kind of nervous about playing with
magic. It hasn’t exactly gone off without a hitch in the past, in case you
hadn’t noticed.”
Thumbing through the pages, I searched for a spell. “Here’s
one, but it says we need to create an incense portal for summoning ancestor
spirits from the otherworld.”
Leslie peeked over my shoulder. “And we will need a picture,
lavender, cinnamon, and wormwood.”
“Great. Like I just have all that stuff lying around.”
I flipped to the next page that was emanating a faint glow.
“What about that one—it’s a summoning spell, too, but you
don’t need the picture and you do already have lavender and cinnamon candles
burning.”
“I don’t know. It says it will take me ‘there.’ That sounds
creepy. What if I get stuck in the nineteenth century again?”
Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/VCeG9eA09Fg
About
the Author:
Rachel Stapleton spent her youth
cultivating a vivid imagination inside the book lined walls of an old Victorian
library where she consumed everything from mystery to biography, creating
magical worlds, hidden elevators, and secret spiral staircases. At sixteen, she
penned a column for the local newspaper and in 2006, wrote her first book
featuring an adventurous librarian.
She lives in a Second Empire
Victorian with her husband and two children in Ontario and enjoys writing in
the comforts of aged wood and arched dormers. She is the author of The Temple
of Indra’s Jewel and is currently working on a third book in the Temple of
Indra series.
Visit her website and follow her on
social media or sign up at www.rachaelstapleton.com
to receive email updates.
Tour
giveaway
10 E-Copies of The Temple of
Indra’s Jewel. (The first book in the series.)
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Please thank Rachael for joining us today! Check out her links and book!
Keep Writing!
Jodie Pierce
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