Rose in the Dark - Logan Fox Page 0,9
nothing, I scream.
His lank brown hair bobs for a second as his shoulders stoop even further. He lifts both hands as if trying to soothe me. Long, slender hands, like the hands of a pianist, but scarred and calloused. His mouth moves furiously, but nothing comes out. Behind me, the door bursts open. Boots thump across flagstone before quietening on the thick bedroom carpet.
“What is it?” Sir Brandon barks out. He moves past me, and then glares first at me, then at the strange man standing a little ways off. For the first time, I notice a pile of logs at the man’s feet. Was that what had made that horrible racket?
I gulp at the air. “I…uh…”
“Norm, I thought Mrs. Potter made it clear you’re not to—“
“Christ!” comes Mrs. Potter’s voice behind me. I turn, tracking her as she hurries across to the young boy. He falls to his knees, hands going over his head as if expecting a blow. My heart — still thundering from my earlier fright — starts galloping like a runaway horse. I’m gripping Rose so tight, I’m losing feeling in my fingers. “What I gone and tol’ you then? Shame on you, Norm. Shame!” Mrs. Potter lifts a hand, but then stops as if suddenly aware of the eyes on her. She grabs hold of the young man’s ear and drags him to his feet. “Ya dumb ingrate,” she mutters. Then she glares around at me as if I’m somehow at fault for all of this, and they disappear through a narrow, partially obscured doorway in the far back corner of the baron’s bedroom.
So that’s how he entered without me noticing. A shiver pulses through me. How long had he been there, watching?
The baron clears his throat. I look over at him, still mortified at the thought of a stranger watching me breastfeed, and then realize the man has his back averted. I realize why when I look down, and hurriedly button my bodice with a shaking hand. Sir Brandon turns a little as if to make sure I’m decent again, and then faces me. “Don’t pay him any mind,” he says, although his eyes are on Rose, not me. “That’s Mrs. Potter’s boy. He keeps the boiler stoked and the fireplaces lit.”
I nod a few times, and then lift Rose to burp her, my eyes darting away from the baron’s as soon as they touch. “It’s fine, I just caught a fright.” I look at the back of the room, where the partially hidden doorway is. “I didn’t know there were two entrances.”
“The manor is old,” he says, and there’s a faint, perhaps sentimental curve to his mouth. “It was built in an age when servants weren’t to be heard or seen.” He gestures with a gloved hand, turning a little as if he can see through the manor’s thick, stone walls. “The whole place is riddled with passages. Ghastly places — narrow and dank. Surprised no one’s broken a leg in the centuries we’ve been here.” The baron’s eyes narrow. “What is it?”
I blink, blush, look away. Lost in his reverie, for once the frustration and anger had left his face. A snarling beast had become a handsome gentleman. “I didn’t know the estate was so old.”
He bellows out a laugh and then tampers it down with a hand as if he can’t bear the sound. “We have no electricity, no telephone, and the roads are impassable when it snows. This isn’t exactly a townhouse in the city.”
I shake my head, my cheeks growing hotter. What is the matter with me? Yes, I should be ashamed for squealing like a little girl, but I’d honestly not heard the young man — Norm? — until he’d dropped those logs. “He could have said something, you know.” I shift my shoulders, and bob Rose about a little harder, hoping she’ll burp and get it over with so I can be out of this room and away from the baron’s intense blue-eyed stare.
The baron laughs again, and this time he doesn’t cut the sound short. I smile, and then press my lips into a line. “What’s so funny?” I demand, scowling even though my face wants to crinkle up with mirth. Sir Brandon has the most infectious laugh I’ve ever heard — perhaps because he uses it so seldom. Even Rose gives a surprised hiccup, and I turn her around to face her father so she can see who it is making the sound.
Father and daughter