Page 56 of Immortal Rose

“It could have been worse,” I said idly, dipping back into the extensive cant vocabulary the Brickbats had blessed me with. “I could have called you a rag-gorgy.”

“Is that the same thing as a ragamuffin?” he asked dourly. “Because if so, I must strenuously protest that characterization.”

I gave him a mysterious smile of my own.

Briarwood Palace had originally been built as a dower house for Queen Juliana—the loveliest sort of bribe from her newly crowned son and his future prince consort to vacate Summerland Palace and take her gossiping vultures with her. The expansive brick home was smaller in size and stature than Summerland Palace, of course, but I’d always appreciated its elegant lines and careful symmetry. Its two wings curved around the lower, private half of Queen’s Park, crowning a tidy, meticulously kept garden.

After Juliana’s death, the palace was passed to lesser royals who could no more afford its upkeep than the rest of their lavish lifestyles. It was quietly sold to pay off the remainder of their monstrous debt to one George Gaius Rosebourne, William Rosebourne’s father, who was said to have taken one look at the roses carved into the windows’ white keystones and declared the palace his family’s destiny.

And now, I realized with a twinge of nerves, it would be my own.

I’d known that, of course, but conceptualizing something was entirely different from having it spread before you, as real as a heartbeat. I felt embarrassed that I’d been so quick to skewer Foxcourt for his unearned advantages, when I was on the cusp of receiving a terrifyingly massive one.

“Admiring your future property?” Foxcourt drawled as the hackney shuddered over the white gravel of the drive.

I lifted a shoulder, feigning indifference. “Is it so wrong?”

The Rosebourne family had taken up residence in the palace’s east wing and converted the west wing into a workshop and perfumery school. The solarium on the ground level there had likewise been transformed into a shop open every day save holy days, royal weddings and funerals, and the King’s birthday.

As the business had expanded, Mama had explained, production of their perfumes and other toiletries had been moved to a larger factory in Riverside, where raw materials of flowers, fruit, oils, and alcohol could be brought in easily from arriving ships and products could be sent out into the world. We had been quite careful not to live too close to it in those lost years. Not that the man who had raised me could have afforded to.

I flung his face from my mind as the hackney slowed. Foxcourt leaned forward to look out the window, muttering something to himself at the sight that awaited us. The east wing’s porte cochere was lined with hedges for privacy.

And a half dozen men in dark uniforms.

The City Police. I bit my lip as I eyed them. The long navy frock coats with their brass buttons closed to the neck—the cost of paying and clothing them had been another sore spot for the residents of Linden—gave them a severe look. Their top hats, trimmed with that same navy wool, did nothing to soften their assortment of crooked noses and scars. They were as bluff as bull beef. Former soldiers and pugilists, by the look of them.

One of the police stepped out in front of the hackney just before it entered the portico. “You there—stop!”

“They’ve business here, they say,” the jarvey bit back. “Talk to the fellow.”

Foxcourt set both feet down on the floor of the coach, reaching for his satchel and his walking stick. Clearing his throat, he opened the door and said, in a shockingly nasal voice, “What is the meaning of this? What gives you the authority to stop us?”

“The home secretary and His Majesty’s government,” the police officer sneered back.

“We are solicitors representing the interests of the House of Rosebourne,” Foxcourt said, making a show of struggling to step down from the coach. I followed, trying not to cringe back into the compartment’s safety. It was as if a lifetime of imaginary and real crimes was tattooed on my body; I couldn’t look at any of the police without feeling like my skin was tightening over my bones.

But Foxcourt, damn him, was only cantankerous and imperious. “Here! From the shareholders.” He reached into his satchel, retrieving the missive that Tommy had placed in it no more than an hour before.

The man ripped the wax seal open, his top lip curling as he read through it. With a grunt of annoyance, he flung the paper back at Foxcourt, who let it fall to the ground between them. I was the one who retrieved it, fighting to mask my shock at what looked to be House of Rosebourne letterhead.

It is with our authority as shareholders that we ask Mr. Nelson Finch and Mr. Franklin Greenly of Hornsby & Featherson to be admitted to Briarwood Palace to take inventory of the late William Rosebourne’s holdings, as well as to remove necessary documents . . .

How in God’s name had Foxcourt arranged for this?

“Becksford!” the policeman barked at the door. The other uniforms fell away like a pack of street dogs, disappointed there were no scraps left for them.

An elderly butler wearing full mourning attire and a haunted expression appeared in the doorway as summoned.

“Solicitors,” the policeman said. “Said they’ve business here.”

“I see” was the butler’s terse reply. He stepped back, holding the door open.

As Foxcourt spoke quietly to the jarvey and handed over his coins, my gaze remained fixed on that open doorway. A cool, wintry breath escaped the house, filling my lungs. The portico, the policemen, the hackney—all of it faded to a blur of color as I started toward the entrance.

I had, of course, seen Briarwood Palace from across the park. Once or twice, I had even allowed myself to pass by the storefront, breathing in the heady fragrances as customers came and went. Each time, it had felt like a dare to Rosebourne himself—to see me, to recognize me. But I had never seen him, and now I never would.

Foxcourt’s labored gait and the scrape of his walking stick on the gravel were the only indications he was behind me. The butler glanced at my face as I offered him the letter stating our purpose; rather than look at it, his attention lingered on me, just long enough for my head to begin to pound with unease.