Page 58 of Immortal Rose

Foxcourt met my astonished gaze. “What is it?” he asked.

I cleared my throat. “Don’t . . . do that.”

His inky brows drew together. “Do what, precisely?”

“Be nice,” I said. “It doesn’t suit you.”

It was confusing. An act.

“Afraid you might start liking me, Lockwood?” he asked, warm and deep, like a bracing glass of whisky.

I strode past him. “No chance of that.”

Light pooled on the marble floor from the skylights, and I found myself instinctively seeking out their warmth to drive away that creeping chill. We were nearly to the study when I felt icy eyes fix upon me. I spun, coming face-to-face with a portrait—an entire hall of portraits positioned to gaze out through the windows opposite them to the gardens below.

I absorbed the Rosebourne ancestors the way one tracked the progress of the sun—with awareness, but never risking a direct look. As the bloodline stretched on, the portraits became more refined. Larger, too. The quality of their clothing noticeably improved, the surest marker of how the family had grown its fortune.

And yet each had that same look of reproach that said, You do not belong here. You are not one of us.

“My uncle was fond of saying that doubt is poison to dreams, and the deadliest is poured from our own hands,” Foxcourt said, again with that infallible reading of my thoughts. “So many people will try to force you to drink from its cup. You cannot do the work for them by lifting it to your lips.”

I turned to him, surprised. “I cannot imagine you ever doubting yourself, even for a moment, you’re such a boor.”

He flashed a grin. “I never said he gave the advice to me. But regardless, I’ve found spite to be a suitable antidote. It rather keeps one going, even after the poison has set in. You might consider trying it.”

I had spite enough to last me a dozen lifetimes. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

By the fifth portrait—a blond-haired woman who had the dead-eyed look of someone being held against her will—glittering jewels began to appear. That had to be George Rosebourne’s mother, Daphne. My . . . I almost couldn’t comprehend it. My great-great-grandmother.

George was depicted with his lovely wife in the next painting, standing at the window of one of the sitting rooms we had passed. Diamonds kissed the shadowed hollow of Henrietta’s throat, dangled from her delicate earlobes, and glittered like a scattering of stars in her upswept hair. Beside them, her face turned away to gaze at the garden around her, was Iris, my grandmother, who had died giving birth to Mama, younger than I was now.

The impressive line of portraits ended abruptly, the final two shrouded.

The tulle covering the first portrait still reeked of dye, so dark that it shadowed the man beneath it. He stared boldly at the viewer, his dark eyes furious, his strawberry-blond hair gleaming like a fox pelt. He leaned a hand against a table littered with crystal perfume flacons, dressed in a suit fit for the King himself.

Mama had always described her father as being as abrasive as the stench of pure alcohol, and even as a far younger man, I saw that in him. His posture was of someone braced for battle.

And to his right, the final portrait in the long succession was of a young raven-haired woman with hazel eyes, dressed serenely in a buttercup-yellow dress, holding a rose by the stem as she lounged on one of the many silk chaises we had passed by. A small pearl flower pendant rested at the base of her throat.

The shock of her beautiful face, as young and fresh as the rose in her lap, hit me like a fist to the throat.

Mama.

I had no image of her left to me, and it had been so very long since I’d seen her face that memory had begun to diminish the details of it. The precise way her eyes crinkled as she smiled, the long, delicate line of her neck, and how very dark her hair had been before the magic had stripped it of its color.

The phantom scent of her essence warmed the air around me as her arms once had, the sweetness of her love for me undercut by that sharp, wintry pain. My eyes burned as my throat worked painfully. The tulle that shadowed her was faded to a bleak gray and tattered, as if it had been draped there for decades.

Anger rose, tangling with that acute pain. As if her beautiful face had been too difficult to look upon.

“She was lovely,” Foxcourt said quietly behind me.

Good God, was there any escape from this man and his bloody incisive gaze? I spun on my heel, heading blindly for the closed door at our right. If he was so interested in making a study of me, he could bloody well carve open my chest and save us both the trouble by observing my trembling heart directly.

The familiar, comforting scent of old books enveloped me, doused with heady pinches of florals, herbs, whisky. It was the only expected thing about the room.

As I stepped inside, my feet came to an abrupt halt. The study looked as if it had weathered the worst of summer thunderstorms. Books had been tossed from the shelves and lay scattered over the floor.

“Lockwood,” Foxcourt began as he shut the door behind us.