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Chapter One
Rose
To a stranger, Hallowell Manor would have looked like the kind of place where dark deeds happened. You know: skeletons bricked up behind the tall foreboding walls. A madman prowling in the attic beneath the steeply sloped roof. Cheating lovers pushed from the turrets’ arched windows to their death. Although as far as I knew none of those things had actually happenedthere.
Let’s just say the house had a lot ofcharacter.
My father pushed the control on the Bentley’s dash, and the automated gate whirred shut behind us. The car turned along the drive through the falling twilight. As the house loomed over us, my heart lifted withanticipation.
Iwasn’t a stranger, and to me this place was home. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t set foot on our country estate in more than eleven years. The manor and the massive property around it had set the stage for my fondest childhood memories. Through all that time in Portland, through my studies and the dinner parties and the strolls through fenced back gardens, part of me had always been waiting for the moment when I’d returnhere.
“That is an eyeful and a half, now isn’t it?” Philomena said in her lilting British accent. She craned her neck as she peered out the window. “Just ripe foradventure.”
“I’m supposed to be settling back in, not stirring up trouble,” Isaid.
“Oh, I’m sure we can find time enough for both, Rose.” She shot me the classic Phil expression: lips curved, brows lightly arched, brown eyes sparkling withmischief.
Dad parked by the garage. A couple of the staff were already hustling over to retrieve the few pieces of luggage we’d brought with us instead of sending it ahead. My stepmother let out a slow breath, her pale blue gaze fixed on thehouse.
“Well, here we are,” she said. Her tone was so dry I couldn’t tell whether she was expressing relief ortrepidation.
I found it safest to care about Celestine’s feelings about as little as she cared about mine—which was essentially not at all. Ignoring her comment, I pushed open the door and stepped out onto the pavement. The cool breeze of the early spring evening teased through my hair. I pushed the black tumble of those locks back over my shoulders and drank in the lush green scents ofhome.
The tang of fresh paint reached my nose. The staff must have been touching up the outer buildings to prepare for our arrival. The once-green slats of the garage walls now glowered a deepmaroon.
Something deep in my chest twisted. The change jarred with my memories. But it couldn’t stop the image from rising up in my head of the last time I’d seen the boys, standing just a few paces from where I stood now, watching a car very much like this one carry meaway.
I jerked my gaze away before Dad or Celestine could notice me looking. It was the company I’d been keeping all those years ago that had prompted our move to the city. Better if neither my father nor my stepmother suspected how much those memories still meant tome.
Dad typed a quick message into his phone and tucked it into his slacks pocket. Probably letting one of the many people he did business with know he’d be available for conversation and negotiations within the hour. Celestine smoothed her hand over her sleek silver-blond bob and wrapped her slender fingers around his. He directed a quick but warm smile over his shoulder at me, and we started toward thehouse.
“Good Lord, it looks even bigger from out here,” Philomena said, clutching her expansive skirts with one gloved hand while she braced the back of the other against her forehead. She stared up at the manor. “Are you absolutely sure you didn’t forget to tell me you’re a duchess or a marchioness or somesuch?”
I swallowed a laugh. “I promise, I’m nothing by regular standards. In witching society, I guess we’re about on the level of aviscount?”
“Hmm.” She glanced at Dad. “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying Ihavealways thought your father would look rather tempting in a proper tailcoat andcravat.”
“Ugh. I’ll forgive you if you promise to never mention finding him ‘tempting’ everagain.”
Philomena just smirked at me. It really was a good thing she was only a figment of my imagination and not someone Dad could actuallyoverhear.
Phil’s insatiable exuberance had practically made her leap out of the book she starred in during the gazillion times I’d read it in the last seven years. I hugely admired her habit of speaking her mind unfiltered. But it wouldn’t have gone over any better in my society than it should have in hers, if her regency romance had been particularly true-to-reality.
Trust me, if you’d met the company I’d had in Portland, you wouldn’t blame me for plucking my best friend out of the pages of my favorite novel instead. The girls from the witching families around the city had all been as alternately judgmental and fawning as my older stepsisters. As far as they’d been concerned, I was either a country rube to look down on or a Hallowell they should suck up to. Sometimes both at the same time, which had thrown more than one of them for aloop.
But they didn’t matter now. I washome.
The staff had opened up the manor’s broad front door. Golden light spilled down over the front steps. My gaze caught on the tiny crack that ran through the second from thebottom.
How many times, long ago, had I sat there and traced my finger along that spidery line? A voice that wasn’t Philomena’s swam up in my head from the past.Are those stairs a lot more fascinating than they look, or do you figure you’d like to come have some realfun?
My fingers curled toward the sleeve of my sweater. I had one of my ribbons wrapped around my left wrist, like always. “Rose’s little fashion trend,” my stepsisters had liked to comment with agiggle.
We stepped into the grand front hall. The porters hefted our luggage up the wide, velvet-carpeted staircase to the second floor. The cherry wood of the banisters and the wall panelinggleamed.
“I hope the journey was smooth, Master and Lady Hallowell,” our estate manager, Meredith, said, welcoming us in. She’d come ahead with the rest of the key staff that moved with the family when we relocated from one property to another. They’d have spent all day setting the house in order for ourarrival.
“And for Rosalind as well,” she added with a quick wink. Now with only a few streaks of gray left in her white, braided hair, Meredith had been with the Hallowells for generations. You could say she’d raised me alongside myfather.
