Tuesday - First Chapter - First Paragraph - Touch Not The Cat

Each Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea shares the first part of a book that she is reading or thinking about reading.  This week, I'm reading an old favorite, Touch Not The Cat by Mary Stewart.  Here's a few paragraphs to set the scene at the beginning of a well-loved (by me) story:

     My lover came to me on the last night in April, with a message and a warning that sent me home to him.
     Put like that, it sounds strange, though it is exactly what happened.  When I try to explain it will no doubt sound stranger still....
     Bryony?
     Yes, I'm awake.  What is it?  But the trouble was there already, in the room.  It settled over me in a formless way, like fog; no colour, neither dark nor light, no smell, no sound; just a clenching tension of pain and the fear of death.  The sweat sprang hot on my skin, and the sheet scraped under my nails.  I sat up.
     I've got it, I think.  It's Daddy.....He must have been taken ill again.
     Yes.  There's something wrong.  I can't tell more than that, but you ought to go.
     I didn't stop to wonder how he knew...it had got to him.  It had reached him, and now it had reached me.
     Can you read me, Bryony?  You're a long way off.
     Yes, I can read you.  I'll go...I'll go straight away, tomorrow--today?  There was a flight at eight; they would surely take me...Then urgently, projecting it with everything I had:  Love?
     It was fading.  Yes?
     Will you be there?
     Again, denial printed on the dark; denial, regret, fading...
     Oh God, I said soundlessly.  When?
     Something else came through then, strongly through the fading death cloud, shouldering it aside; comfort and love, as old fashioned as potpourri and as sweet and sane and haunting.  It was as if the rose shadows on the ceiling were showering their scent down into the empty room.  Then there was nothing left but the shadows.  I was alone.
     I threw the sheet off and knotted a robe round me, and ran for the telephone.
     As I put a hand on it, it began to ring.



And here's a publisher's summary of the book:

After the tragic death of her father, Bryony Ashley returns from abroad to find that his estate is to become the responsibility of her cousin Emory.  Ashley Court with its load of debt is no longer her worry.  But there is something odd about her father's sudden death ...Bryony has inherited the Ashley 'Sight' and so has one of the Ashleys.  Since childhood the two have communicated through thought patterns, though Bryony has no idea of his identity.  Now she is determined to find him.  But danger as well as romance wait for her in the old moated house, with its tragic memories ...


So, what do you think?  Would you keep reading or is this a little too "far out" for you?