Page 2 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)

Chapter One

I sabella Barrett woke to the sound of male voices, one low and calm, the other raised in anger.

“You…you blackguard… Get out!”

She jerked to a sitting position and swung her legs over the side of her bed, pulse flicking like a trapped bird.

The angry voice belonged to her father, and that was nigh impossible.

Malcolm Barrett was by nature calm and reserved; any display of strong emotion was limited to untrammeled joy when he discovered a rare manuscript or book or engaged in conversation about rare manuscripts or books.

Only once, in the icy hallway of St. Jude’s when he had coldly ordered that a door be unlocked, had she witnessed him step outside his norm.

Somewhere below, more words were exchanged, Papa’s voice and that of another man, the content of their discourse muted by the plaster walls and ceiling. But her father’s tone was unmistakable, and his voice, though lower now, still shook with the force of his wrath.

Then he shouted, “Get out. Leave this house and do not return. Do you hear me, you wretch?”

Never had she heard such insults cross Papa’s lips, not even in jest.

Fingers fumbling at the tie, Isabella pulled her wrapper around her, cinching the quilted flannel tight at her waist. Her bare toes peeked from beneath the hem, pale against the threadbare carpet, cold prickling up through the nap, a draft nipping at her feet and ankles.

She was by no means ready to be seen by a visitor, but etiquette lost value beneath the weight of her concern.

She opened the door and inched out onto the landing as footsteps pounded across the floor below.

The front door creaked open, then slammed.

Papa muttered under his breath. Then he fell silent, the sudden lack of sound more jarring than his tirade had been. As Isabella set her bare foot on the top stair, her father yanked the door open once more and stormed out. The door slammed behind him, rattling in its frame.

Intent on following him outside, Isabella rushed back to her room, grabbed her boot and tried to force it onto her bare foot, heel skidding along the lining.

Then Papa’s voice came again, this time carrying from the street below her window, loud and rough.

Kicking free of the half-donned boot, she then ran to the window and pulled aside the heavy gold brocade drapes.

The glass was cold against her fingertips, a stark contrast to the firestorm of her father’s fury.

Papa stood on the front walkway, hatless, coatless, his chest heaving with his rapid breaths. His right arm was extended, index finger pointing at a man Isabella did not recognize.

The stranger was tall, the fine fabric of his well-tailored black coat accenting the broad, powerful set of his shoulders.

His legs were encased in fawn-colored trousers, his shiny black boots planted firmly apart, a stance that suggested a refusal to yield.

He stood like someone accustomed to wielding control, someone to be viewed with caution.

Even the morning mist curled near but did not touch, as though it too was wary of his presence.

But Papa showed no such hesitancy.

“Begone!” he cried, his outstretched arm shaking with rage, head jutting forward, shoulders hunched with a fury never meant to be felt by a man of his normally mild disposition.

A pulse of fear throbbed in Isabella’s breast. Papa was not well.

His heart was fragile, his breathing often ragged.

She had never seen him so enraged. A whisper of dread coiled through her, and she gripped the window frame so hard that her nails ached.

What if this fury was the thing that ended him?

She undid the latch and opened the window just as her father snapped, “You are a trickster, a would-be thief. I will not part with?—”

Papa cut himself off, his face twisting with something more than anger.

Fear.

But the stranger did not move, did not speak. He simply existed, tall and solid, his stillness unnerving.

Papa’s hand went to his chest, fingers splaying wide. Isabella’s own heart lurched with concern.

“You do not understand what you are asking,” Papa rasped, the words wrenched from him, harsh and discordant. “It is not safe. You would open a gate that can never be closed. One that might well swallow her whole.”

“You speak of safety,” the stranger said, low and smooth. “But leaving her in ignorance is a danger of a different order.”

Isabella stiffened. Her.

Were they speaking of her?

The moment stretched, tight and brittle.

The man lifted his head and turned toward her window. From this angle, the brim of his hat concealed the upper part of his face. Though she could not see his eyes, she felt his gaze search her out, piercing through the crack in the curtains.

The breath left her lungs in a sharp exhale.

His attention was neither the polite glance of a gentleman nor the flickering assessment of a stranger. It was something deep and heavy and knowing, stripping away her layers, searching for something beneath her skin.

A slow, suffocating sensation unfurled inside her, a certainty that he could see past her carefully constructed composure. Past her mask. Past the lie of normalcy she maintained.

She did not know this man. And yet, she felt as though his gaze had plundered her secrets, laid her bare . As though he knew her, and all she fought so hard to hide.

Her heart kicked hard against her ribs. She should look away. She should break the moment before it consumed her whole. But as the seconds ticked past, she did not move.

Then Papa twisted to look up at her, his skin gray as ash, slick with sweat.

She forced herself to step back, letting the drapery fall…

but not all the way. A thin sliver of space remained, just wide enough for her to see the stranger below.

He stood motionless in the street, tall and unwavering, his presence like a jagged rock just waiting to gouge the hull of any ship that drifted too close.

The tilt of his head revealed the hard angle of his jaw, the hollows beneath his cheekbones, the line of his mouth. His hat cast a shadow over his forehead and eyes but did little to obscure the severe handsomeness of his face, all sharp planes and unyielding strength.

There was no softness in him. Only calculated precision. Deliberate stillness.

She swallowed, disconcerted, his attention unfamiliar, unwanted. Unbearable.

And yet, she could not look away.

A thread of something flickered at the edge of her thoughts. A strange, inexplicable connection, like a memory or dream she could not quite grasp. It slipped away, vanishing, a reflection swallowed by rippling water.

Then a whisper came from behind her, soft and indistinct. Cold unrolled over the back of her neck, then pressed, pushing through cloth and skin.

The scent of damp earth and icy metal curled into her nostrils. She went rigid as the air around her grew heavy and dense, pressing against her lungs.

Words swirled through her thoughts, tangled and fragmented.

See me…I am here…

Not her words. Not her thoughts.

She clenched her jaw, ignoring it all, ignoring the way the air changed, the room changed, the way the very fabric of reality quivered around her. She refused to look, refused to let her mask slip.

The stranger still looked up at her window. He had not moved. Not an inch.

Chest heaving, Papa puffed himself up, squared his shoulders and took a step forward.

“Please, go,” she called down to the man through the open window, her voice just loud enough to carry.

“Isa!” Papa cried. His right hand clutched at his chest, knuckles white. His face was flushed, rivulets of sweat streaking his temple and brow. “Close…that…window,” he said through heavy, gasping breaths.

Isabella’s heartbeat turned sharp and frantic with worry.

“Please go,” she repeated, her tone tight and strained. “Leave now, sir.”

The stranger glanced at Papa then turned his gaze back up to her. He dipped his chin in the barest nod.

“As you wish.”

He offered a shallow bow and murmured something low, meant only for Papa’s ears. Whatever he said made Papa’s eyes narrow and his jaw tighten. The stranger turned and walked away, his measured gait marked by the almost imperceptible favoring of his left leg.

Pausing at the end of the street, he turned and looked up at her window once more. He was too far away for her to decipher his expression, but she knew he turned back for her.

Her stomach clenched. Her hands trembled. Deep inside, a feeling of apprehension and inevitability unfurled…a foreboding certainty.

She had not seen the last of him.

And when he returned, he would not be so easily sent away.

Rhys Caradoc did not look back until he reached the corner, and even then, he let himself have only a glimpse of the scene: the gold drape framing brown hair tumbling in dishevelled waves around a pale, oval face; a breath of fog; Barrett, bareheaded before the house, one hand to his chest as if to pin his heart in place.

It had not been his intent to stir the man so.

Isabella.

He had hunted her, and now he had found her.

The hum that lived at the edges of the world, the thin, maddening chorus of unquiet, had settled the moment she had opened the window.

Not silent. Never silent now. But even with him standing in the street and her a storey higher, the noise had ebbed as if the wind had changed direction and taken the keening with it.

A too-brief respite. A mercy that had allowed him to almost remember the sound of silence.

Madness, he had been told. And for a time, locked away behind a thick door with a wired window, he had believed it.

But what he had learned from the written notes of a dead man had suggested a different answer.

He had come today to buy what could be bought and to measure what could not, to make offers and cajole acquiescence. He had not come to frighten a scholar into apoplexy in his own street.