Page 151 of Immortal Rose

Son has interest in perfumery school

That had to be Oliver. We’d discussed the possibility, and he told me he’d decided against it, feeling self-study was better. I looked for a date for the meeting, but there was none listed.

Encounter with hostile man—ask Lord F about placement—if man is related to DeForests—extended family Gallian?

I closed the book, letting it rest in my lap. Lord F, who made frequent appearances to request more King’s Blend, could only be the late Earl of Foxcourt. Hugh would find this interesting, wouldn’t he?

Donning my silk wrapper and slippers, I made my way downstairs before better sense could prevail. My braid swung determinedly behind me, my heart skipping steps along with my feet.

The shadows of the house seemed to urge me on until I found the first hint of the study’s light spilling onto the checkered marble tile of the entry. An enticing little mystery met me there, a curious perfume: the smell of coffee, fire smoke, old books, wood, and . . . glue?

I slowed, smoothing a hand back over my hair, waiting for my breathing to settle before padding forward.

I’d expected Hugh to have shut and locked himself away in his prison of tortured solitude, but, to my surprise, he’d left the door ajar. A tentative invitation, as if not daring to hope.

I drank in the sight of him in the firelight: his hair damp and gleaming in a nearby candle’s light. He wore only an emerald silk dressing gown over a clean shirt and knee breeches. He might have looked like a gentleman at ease, if not for the deep furrow of his brow.

He stood behind the room’s imposing desk again, a silver tray with a carafe of coffee to his left and the skeletal beginnings of what looked to be a large estate house to his right. The latter had been erected solely with wood toothpicks.

Like most of the old doors in the house, the study’s squeaked as I pushed it open. I wondered, absently, if they’d been left that way intentionally, to warn of anyone coming or going. As if to confirm the theory, Hugh’s gaze flicked up from the desk to meet mine.

His fingers tightened around the small tweezers in his hand, his throat bobbing as he swallowed.

“So you’re the artist responsible for the palace upstairs,” I said, shutting the door behind me.

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “My first.”

I looked at him, astonished. “That was your first?”

“Well,” he amended, setting the instrument down to pour himself a cup of coffee, “the first I finished and didn’t destroy in a fit of frustration—an excessively manly fit, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know how you can stand to do it. It seems more torturous than fun.”

“It gives my hands something to do while I think,” he insisted. “And tonight requires a fair bit of thinking.”

He didn’t need to specify about what. Glenmoor. The missing nectar. Eleanor. The King having only days left. There was a host of terrors to plague him.

“If you intend to work, I can bring your oils into the study,” he offered, then added a touch awkwardly, “Unless, of course, you prefer to work in the still room, which I’m sure you do. I can bring in some additional light—”

I held up a hand, quieting him. “There’s little work left to do until we have the nectar.”

He drew a hand back through his hair roughly. “Of course.”

I stepped closer, peering through the study’s relative darkness. “Is that the old temple? The Crown Court?”

He scratched at his jaw and seemed to admit, rather than explain, “Glenmoor Manor. I’m testing my memory . . . it’s been quite some time since I’ve seen it.”

Since you were a boy, I thought, and you vanished from it.

“No pitying looks or prying questions,” he ordered.

I pretended to lock my mouth and toss away the key, earning a wry look from him.

“There’s nothing sentimental about this,” he insisted. “It’s not as though I miss the old crumbling pile.”

But, of course, it was possible not to miss a place and still be haunted by it. To return to it in dreams and memory, as if there were a way to change what had happened there. As if it were possible to reclaim the version of yourself you’d been forced to leave behind.

Hugh gestured toward the second, empty cup on the tray. “Would you like some?”