HartsLove by K.M. Grant Page B

don’t really have a cook,’ Charles said. ‘We only—’
    â€˜No need to go into all that, Pa,’ said Rose, with a meaningful glance at the agent. ‘You can tell them everything once the money’s on the table.’
    The agent took his mistress’s arm and chivvied her out of the door. She objected. He whispered in her ear. Once in the courtyard, she laughed. ‘What a lot of nonsense,’ she began to say. A raven flew from the top of the keep and landed on the ground right in front of her.
    â€˜Good Lord!’ cried Charles.
    Rose curtsied deeply and pulled the widow down too. ‘You must curtsey. You see, there’s a myth – just a myth, I’m sure –’ The widow ended up on her knees. She looked in vain to Charles to help her up. Charles was transfixed by the raven. ‘I’ve never seen a raven here before,’ he said.
    â€˜Raven, raven, no safe haven,’ intoned Rose. ‘And the person it touches will not last very, er, very muches.’ She winced at the rhyme.
    The raven squawked and hopped over to the widow. The widow, loudly declaring that she was not superstitious, nevertheless hopped away. The raven rose and tried to land on her shoulder. She shrieked and scrambled back into the trap. It was really very easy to frighten people, Rose realised with some surprise as the agent whipped their horses into a smart trot. Rose herself thought nothing of the appearance of the raven – or only that Daisy was right: Hartslove really did know how to help when help was needed.
    High above, Snipe hoisted a cage over his shoulder, crossed the roof and slithered down the back ivy. He would have smiled if smiling had been in his nature.
    Once the carriage had gone, Rose and Charles stood awkwardly together. Rose spoke first. ‘We should never have gone into Ma’s room,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, and about Gryffed –’ She could not go on.
    Charles shuffled his narrow feet. He wished the slug that had killed Gryffed had lodged in his own heart. He felt it there anyway. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the pistol slowly revolving, killing each of his children. Brandy was the only thing that dulled the pain. Rose took his arm and walked him back up the steps. He knew she was trying to comfort him, but though Rose could not know it, she actually made him feel worse than Garth, worse than Daisywith her crippled legs, worse even than Lily, who, to him, looked even more like his wife than Rose did. It was not that Rose said hurtful things; Garth said far more hurtful things than Rose. Rose hurt him without words. She hurt him without even meaning to. She hurt him by being dressed in brown serge and in love with Arthur Rose when she should have been dressed in silk and in love with a curly-headed duke. She hurt him when she sat at dinner and tried to make everything normal. When he was with Rose, Charles needed a drink most of all.
    Rose was aware that her father wanted to get away from her, but now she had started to speak she would finish. ‘Pa,’ she said, her heart hammering, for she had never before spoken to her father as though they were equals, ‘we can’t undo what’s done, but couldn’t we make a new start?’
    â€˜Rose,’ he said. ‘Rose, Rose, Rose.’ For a moment, he allowed himself to see this new start. He saw the ‘for sale’ sign torn down. He sensed the bustle of happy servants. He heard his wife’s gentle voice calling him in for lunch. But even as he saw and sensed and heard, the hole in his heart broadened and widened and darkened. It was too late, much too late. ‘All over,’ he said, and turned away.
    His tone frightened Rose. It was the tone of a dead man, and for all his shortcomings, she – they – needed their father alive. She seized his arm more firmly. ‘Not while we have The One,’ she insisted. ‘We drank a