Page 1 of Immortal Rose

Prologue

Days from now, when his mind dredged up the moment for the hundredth time in excruciating detail, he’d realize he’d failed before ever stepping foot in Fenwick’s gleaming marble hall. Certainly before he’d clapped eyes on the old man in his leather chair beside the grand fireplace, besieged by lordlings who had flocked to him like cosseted lambs in search of a shepherd. Before, even, the man had downed his final gulp of whisky.

And damn it all if Hugh wasn’t desperate for the smooth embrace of Fenwick’s best after the day he’d had, stalking William Rosebourne’s gleaming atrocity of a coach—the white lacquer speckled with enough carved roses to look poxed—all over town.

Hugh lifted his tumbler once more, resisting the gnawing urge to throw the drink back and be done with it. He’d been wetting his top lip with the same two fingers of whisky for the better part of an hour, each kiss of burning liquor a temptation.

But he never drank while working. That had been Uncle Giles’s most sacred rule, the first of a thousand gleaming bits of wisdom dropped like polished coins into Hugh’s palm: a clear mind for a clear end.

A thorned feeling swelled in his chest before he ruthlessly shoved it back down.

He leaned a shoulder against the emerald silk paper covering the walls, comfortably at home in the shadows fraying the edges of the cardroom. Boisterous laughter erupted from a nearby game of whist, the men deep in their play. Through the swirl of cheroot and pipe smoke, cards fluttered between hands like plumed birds, inviting memories best forgotten.

None of it felt real to him. Not anymore. Not the games without real stakes, not the shallow discussions of politics, not the smirking portrait of the current home secretary gloating from the mantel in a room he’d paid lavishly to restore.

It had been an age since Hugh had been back here, and now he remembered why. Fenwick’s had the misfortune of being infested with Albion’s most prized idiots.

The lot of them, it seemed, had decided to while away their evening groveling before the old perfumer. As if being blessed with a bespoke scent from the man might grant them some importance or assign greater meaning to their useless, privileged lives.

Take young Lord Freeham, newly sent down from Rexford University for paying a man from the nearby village to attend classes in his stead. The boneheaded scheme had lasted all of one lesson, so blatant that not even a bribe could shield him from the blade of the school’s honor code. Now the boy—decades yet from inheriting his father’s ducal title—was nearly prostrate at Rosebourne’s feet, embarrassing himself once more.

“Won’t you consider it?” he wheedled. “Just the one bottle . . .”

The din of conversation hushed, eager to lap up the reply. In the corner of the room, someone opened the wager book where hopeful bets had been placed on who’d be the next lucky soul to receive a bespoke perfume—magic or otherwise—from the master perfumer.

“No,” came Rosebourne’s terse reply. “You wouldn’t be willing to pay the price for it.”

And with that, conversation spun up again. The wager book was quietly shut and restored to its shelf.

Hugh ran the edge of his thumbnail over his top lip, exasperated.

In a rather elegant display of pettiness, Rosebourne, of the renowned House of Rosebourne Perfumery, had decided to make it as difficult for the Patricians to obtain a bespoke perfume as it had been for him to obtain membership at Fenwick’s. The old curmudgeon had learned the simple axis upon which a peer’s mind teetered: deny them what they desire, and they’ll desire it all the more.

And here was the cold triumph of years of blending frivolous perfumes for lords and ladies, hosting glittering balls, and throwing his vast, ever-increasing affluence at charities: to have the privilege of paying the club’s outrageous fee so that he might be harassed by those who had inherited their own right to membership along with their fortunes.

Such was the misery of having an old name, but not a noble-blooded one. Of having money, but not the right, ancestral sort. To have been forced to make his way in the world, while others merely fell into the well-worn grooves of their families’ legacies. The difference, as the society patronesses put it, between money and Quality.

If not for the traces of fairy magic in the House of Rosebourne perfumes, William Rosebourne’s mortal remains would have withered to dust before he ever made it off the club’s hallowed waiting list.

There was a movement at his left. Hugh tensed inwardly. Not now, damn it.

“Say, Foxcourt, do you mean to stand around and glower, or can I interest you in a game?”

“No cards for me tonight.” Hugh gave the slurring lord a lazy grin. “A man needs to brood alone in the shadows now and then to cultivate an air of mystery.”

Lord Menzies chuckled, the flush beneath his prodigious whiskers speaking to just how foxed he already was. “Right, yes, of course. Better if you don’t play, in fact. My wife still hasn’t forgiven me for losing the curricle to you, ha ha!”

Hugh’s smile sharpened to a smirk. Conversation with Patricians was an exercise in patience, and as ruthlessly choreographed as any ballroom dance. Which, Hugh suspected, was why so many of them inevitably led back to horses.

As the man beside him droned on, extolling his fair daughter’s virtues with the unsettling enthusiasm of a matchmaking mama, Hugh cut a quick glance toward Rosebourne, who had risen suddenly from his seat and summoned his hat, gloves, and cloak.

Finally, Hugh thought. Blessed mercy.

“. . . we’d hoped that she might catch the eye of someone such as yourself, ha ha!”

“Don’t let me keep you from your game, Menzies,” Hugh interrupted, pushing away from the wall. “The hour’s late, and I’m for home.”

Menzies blinked, his soused mind slow to process that the conversation had ended and that he’d been dismissed in short order.