done such a thing. It wasn’t like he needed money or would owe somebody a favor so large he could only pay it with his daughter’s body.
But mom had insisted what she did was for the best. She never told me the man’s name or why he was so dangerous, just kept shuttling me around from place to place until there was nothing left for us to live on. She pointed to the death of so many people at the party as proof that the man to whom my father sold me was a psychopath. She claimed he’d lost his mind to learn that I was gone.
I didn’t know how she’d managed to pull me from the party. In one minute, I was talking with Eleanor about her plans for school, and in the next, I was waking up in a room I didn’t recognize with my mother pacing near a window.
And then, after ten years of hiding me away, mom had died and left me to manage her mess on my own.
If not for my uncle, I would be on the streets tonight. The hotel manager had been kind when he came to my room. He hadn’t laughed or smiled to tell me he could no longer allow me to stay here without some form of payment. He’d looked embarrassed, if anything, for me, for himself, for having to explain that businesses weren’t run on acts of kindness.
When I called Franklin, I’d been desperate for a loan. He’d insisted on coming out to meet me, had gone on and on about how worried the surviving members of my family had been.
It surprised me to learn he knew nothing of my whereabouts, that he didn’t know of the accounts my mother used to fund our escape, he only knew that my debutant ball had turned into a slaughter and I was presumed dead when they couldn’t find me.
For ten years, my mother swore that Franklin would turn around and give me to that man. She’d refused to contact him, had lost her mind every time I mentioned it. My fingers shook when I dialed his number, but after meeting with him, I was beginning to believe that something had been wrong with my mother.
Maybe she’d lost her mind, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was Franklin had swept in here as fast as he could to invite me back to the Rose estate, practically begging me to return. The man was falling all over himself, and I couldn’t tell him no.
Not that I was in a position to have declined his invitation. It was that or the streets. My decision was easy.
I couldn’t deny I was looking forward to returning home. Despite the accounts my mother had kept, our lives hadn’t been lived in the lap of luxury. Not like my childhood had been where I’d wanted for nothing and had everything at my fingertips.
Including him...a boy that drove me crazy at all times because he refused to look at me and refused to speak. Callan always did everything I demanded without fighting back, and it drove me mad that he wouldn’t argue or complain. I’d hated him by the time I turned seventeen, but I’d still cried when I learned that he was dead. Mom told me that not even the servants had survived the slaughter.
I don’t know why I’d reacted to his silence by abusing him over and over. I simply couldn’t stand the way he behaved. But then that night, he finally met my eyes, he held them in such a bold stare while he finished my drink that I’d felt a knot in my throat, a flutter in my gut, and I’d walked away as fast as I could after the things I’d said to him. I’d wanted him to hurt.
And it was the last thing he’d ever heard from me.
“Miss Rose.”
My head snapped up from the last bag I was packing. I didn’t have much; I’d sold most of it already to get where I was.
In the doorway, a woman stood in a hotel uniform. A simple tan skirt that fell to her knees and a white blouse that flowed over her arms. Her hair was pinned up in a prim knot, and she smiled down at me with eyes that were much older than mine, the skin beneath them stained with dark circles as if she worked too much.
“Your car is here. Mr. Thornston asked that I come up to escort you out.”