20. Rosalie
Chapter 20
Rosalie
L ogically Rosalie knew she should feel afraid. But facing Jace and his men on her home turf, and with Dimitri by her side, was entirely different from facing Jace and his men alone in the woods. She was sick of feeling weak and pathetic where Jace was concerned. Even if he had already escaped, she was going to make sure she stripped him of his followers.
She waited for Dimitri to follow her through to her bedchamber and then carefully closed the door behind them, shutting off their view of the library. Once again she waited a few seconds, allowing the connection between her bedchamber and the library to be severed.
A scratching sound reached her ears, as if someone was in the corridor outside her room, attempting to pick the lock. She twisted the key to unlock the door from inside, seizing the handle and thrusting the door open with all the force she could muster.
It collided with something—or someone—on the other side with a satisfying thud. She pulled it closed and thrust it open a second time, once again whacking whatever was on the other side. Something heavy fell to the floor, and she realized her mistake. The heavy bulk she had just felled was now lying across the doorway, blocking the door from opening.
She stepped back and let Dimitri put his shoulder against it, heaving it open inch by inch. He stopped as soon as there was room for them to slip through, and they both looked down at the groaning man lying on the floor. Blood poured from his nose.
Dimitri hauled the man up and used the rope from her curtains to bind his wrists and feet. When he’d finished, he shoved the man into the closest storage cupboard.
His efforts didn’t go unnoticed, however. A second man was kneeling a short way down the corridor, making the same lock picking attempt on Dimitri’s door. As Dimitri wrestled the bound man into the cupboard, the second man advanced toward them, growling.
Before he reached them, yet another man arrived, running forward with a yell to join the lock-picker.
Rosalie looked from Dimitri to her bed chamber door. “The library?” she asked.
He grinned and nodded.
She closed the door, the required pause allowing time for the two men to approach closer. Just before they reached attack range, she whispered, “The library, please,” and pulled the door open.
She and Dimitri ran through, and the men barreled after them, not immediately noticing the strangeness of the room on the other side. But after they had sprinted several yards into the library, they slid to a stop, looking around in confusion.
Their trapped companion tried to call a warning, but the sight of him only dazed them further. As they stared at him, open-mouthed, Dimitri and Rosalie sprang forward in unison. Each of them shoved one of the men hard enough to send him staggering forward straight into one of the rose chairs. Within seconds, they had both been completely absorbed except for their heads.
“Thank you,” Rosalie said aloud.
“I thought you said the Legacy couldn’t hear us.” Dimitri gave an amused shake of his head.
Rosalie shrugged. “It can’t. But it still seems polite to say thank you.”
She quickly tallied in her head. “That’s five men down. Six if we count Jace.” She looked at the two closest men. “He abandoned you all, you know. Ran for it as soon as it got dangerous.”
The men shouted angrily at her, their voices overlapping, but she merely strode away. Dimitri followed her out of the library into the entryway, closing the door behind him and muffling the angry yells.
“They can shout at each other,” Rosalie said. “There’s no reason we have to listen to it.” She tapped her cheek. “Five men down means there are still three to go. Any guesses where we might find them?”
“We could try there.” Dimitri pointed across the entryway to the door that led into the sitting room. “I moved some of the furniture around when I first arrived, so it looks more lived in than most of the manor’s rooms. That might have attracted their attention.”
He led the way, and Rosalie was happy to follow behind, keeping his sword between her and anyone who might be in the room. At first it appeared to be empty, but neither of them let down their guard. They advanced several steps inside, and a man appeared from behind a sofa.
He must have been crouched down examining the wall because for a moment he looked as surprised by them as they were by his sudden appearance. He let out a loud yell, calling for back up, and Dimitri immediately started retreating.
Rosalie stayed behind him, the two of them backing slowly out of the room, their eyes on the man in front of them. But they had barely made it into the entryway when running footsteps pounded down the stairs. The remaining two men were answering their comrade’s call.
The man inside called out again, and the other two advanced, herding Dimitri and Rosalie back toward the door they’d just exited. Dimitri tried to step sideways, out of their trap, but Rosalie stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.
Instead, she closed the sitting room door, her eyes on the advancing men as she counted out the seconds in her mind. They had approached close enough that Dimitri and Rosalie appeared trapped when she feigned a terrified squeak and opened the door again.
The two men grinned, clearly thinking Dimitri and Rosalie were about to retreat into the arms of their companion. But when the four of them spilled through the doorway, they weren’t inside the sitting room, and there was no sign of the third man.
Jace’s men frowned, staring at the empty room lined with closed curtains. Their confusion gave Rosalie and Dimitri the chance to dart around them and back out the door. They slammed it closed behind them, and Dimitri seized the handle. Leaning back with his weight, he held it closed and looked at Rosalie.
“What now?”
She pulled out a large metal ring, lined with keys. “Just hold them long enough for me to find the right one.”
It took her several tries, but she managed to locate the right key and lock the men inside. Dimitri relaxed, letting go of the handle and retrieving his sword.
“At least they’ll be well entertained while they’re stuck there,” he said, making Rosalie giggle. “But where did you get those?” He frowned at the keys.
“I found them on the floor of the kitchen.”
They appeared to be the housekeeper’s master set, so she had stuck them in her pocket, thinking they might come in useful. At the very least, she hadn’t wanted Jace to end up with them.
“Good thinking,” Dimitri said approvingly, and warmth filled her.
“One left to go,” he added, and she turned for the main stairs. She had nearly forgotten about the man still inside the sitting room. He must have been confused when all the people and voices on the other side of his door suddenly disappeared.
They ran down the stairs together, catching sight of the man as he cautiously stepped out of the sitting room. He looked up at them, hurrying down the stairs alone, and his eyes widened. For a second he hesitated. But before either of them could reach him, he turned and sprinted out the open front door. Dimitri ran after him, but he stopped at the door, watching the man’s flight.
“Straight down the drive,” he said. “So I guess Jace will be getting one report after all.”
Rosalie smiled with satisfaction. She had wanted to catch all Jace’s men, but seven out of eight was a good result.
The silence around them deepened, and her satisfaction slowly faded. In the heat of their battle, she hadn’t considered what came next.
“What do we do with them now?” she asked. “We can’t leave them where they are, but if we free them, there will be too many for us to control.”
“Two locked in the theater room,” Dimitri said thoughtfully, giving an inventory aloud. “Three in the rose chairs. One upstairs in the storage closet with a broken nose. Plus the man in the kitchen.”
Rosalie’s eyes widened. “I’d forgotten about him. We should check what state he’s in. He needs medical attention, but he wasn’t actually secured. He might have woken up and moved elsewhere.”
Dimitri stepped in front of her protectively, the move seeming to be an instinctive response to her words. A secret thrill ran through her. She liked having someone to take care of her. Ever since Jace, she’d been working tirelessly to make up to her family for her mistake. Her parents often protested that she worked too much, but the truth was that they needed her to help the family make ends meet. She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was until she came to the manor and finally stopped.
They walked to the kitchen together, and as she had feared, they found no sign of the burned man there. They both scanned the littered debris on the kitchen floor with concern.
Rosalie caught sight of a glistening trail, as if something large and wet had been dragged along it. “Is that…”
She pointed to it, following it with her eyes to where it ended at the closed pantry door. Dimitri strode over and tried to pull the door open. It was locked.
He placed his ear against the door and was silent for a moment, listening. When he straightened and looked at her, his expression was amazed.
“I can hear quiet groaning. He must be locked inside.”
Rosalie frowned. The Legacy had helped them in their moment of need, but dragging a man into a pantry and locking him in seemed beyond its capabilities.
“So they’re all secured,” she said slowly, unable to think how else the man could have gotten there. “But what next? Should I go into Thebarton to report them? I can say that a group of men broke into the manor, attacked us, and attempted to rob you. I’m sure the guards will agree to come back with me and arrest them.”
“No,” Dimitri said quickly and firmly. “Jace and one of his men escaped. They could be waiting for you on the road.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll have to go. But you should lock yourself in your room while I’m gone.”
“You’ll go?” Rosalie looked at him doubtfully.
Turning into a Beast didn’t mean you’d done anything wrong, so it should evoke pity in the townsfolk, not suspicion. But they would be shocked. And they might blame him for bringing so much Legacy power to their town.
“I’m sure they’ll be surprised to see me like this,” Dimitri said, “but don’t forget the fireworks. I’m sure many of them have guessed something is going on out here.” He hesitated. “I’ll return as quickly as I can, and I’ll check all the outside doors are locked before I go. But please do consider locking yourself in your room.” He looked at her pleadingly, and she capitulated.
“Fine,” she said. “If you insist. I suppose I can wait in my room as easily as anywhere else.”
She didn’t want to admit how unnerved she was at the prospect of being left alone in a building full of captive men. But neither did she like the idea of abandoning it entirely and going with Dimitri. Who knew what might happen in their absence?
She waved him off from the front door before climbing the stairs to her room. Her ears strained for any untoward sound, but the manor remained silent. Whatever protests or struggles the captives were making, they didn’t reach her on the main stairs.
“The rose chairs are really going to surprise the guards,” she muttered to herself, her chuckle echoing down the corridor.
She slipped inside her room and tried to pull the door closed behind her. It caught, but with several more tugs, she got it closed. Once she had locked it, she collapsed onto her bed with a sigh.
Would Jace attack Dimitri as he walked into town? Would the townsfolk attack him before they realized who he was? Now that he was gone, she wished she’d gone with him after all. He might need her protection.
“Don’t worry so much. Dimitri is going to be fine,” Daphne’s voice said into the silence.
Rosalie started so violently she nearly fell off the bed. Peering around, she tried to see where Daphne’s voice was coming from, but she could see no one.
“Daph?” she called cautiously, hoping the day’s events hadn’t caused her to start hearing things. “Where are you?”
“Right here,” Daphne said, sounding as if she really was standing in the middle of the room. “I’m just invisible.”
“You’re what?” Rosalie leaped to her feet.
“Invisible,” Daphne repeated calmly. “You can’t possibly think the Legacy dragged a man into the pantry and locked him in, can you?”
Rosalie’s mouth fell open. “That was you? But what…why…what were you doing there?”
“I’ve been here the whole time.”
“The whole time?” Rosalie stared around the room, still half-wondering if her mind was playing tricks on her.
“Who do you think has been serving your meals and lighting your fires?” Daphne asked.
“I thought the Legacy…” Rosalie’s voice trailed off as she finally absorbed the enormity of what Daphne was saying. “Have you really been here ever since I arrived?”
“Well, a few hours after. I had to take the coins to the triplets and make sure they paid their debt.”
Rosalie swallowed hard, her cheeks warming as she thought of some of her interactions with Dimitri. How many times had they had an invisible audience?
“Don’t worry,” Daphne said. “I haven’t been trailing you everywhere. I’ve been taking a lot of naps.”
“Naps?” Rosalie said faintly. She picked up the cold cup of tea still sitting half-drunk on her breakfast tray and took a swig, trying to calm herself.
“I can’t say the same for your brothers, though,” Daphne said thoughtfully.
Rosalie choked on her mouthful and succumbed to a violent fit of coughing. “The triplets ?! Please tell me my brothers haven’t been lurking around the castle invisible!”
“Who do you think cooked those vegetables the first day?” Rosalie could almost hear Daphne’s nose wrinkling. “Oscar assured me they knew how to cook without assistance, but…”
“But why?” Rosalie wailed before a further thought occurred to her. “Wait! So you’re saying the Legacy can’t cook and light fires and send trays floating through the air? So that means it was you and the boys in the kitchen earlier? You were the ones to flick the coals and wave all those knives around?”
“Was that what they did?” Daphne asked interestedly. “The mess was impressive, but I thought their claims of heroism sounded a bit outlandish. I was in the library.”
“Throwing the books,” Rosalie said weakly, sinking back down onto the bed. So the Legacy had helped with the rose chairs, but it couldn’t do nearly as much as they had thought.
“What about the fresh supplies?” she asked. “Was the Legacy producing the food?”
“That was us, too,” Daphne said. “I think edible items might be beyond its capability. One of the boys has been walking into town every couple of days to buy fresh supplies.”
“The door!” Rosalie sat bolt upright. “And the keys.” She drew the master key ring from her pocket and Daphne sighed.
“I knew I shouldn’t have given that to Ralph. He’s too distracted to do things properly. Did he drop it?”
“Yes!” Rosalie cried indignantly. “And he also left the front door unlocked. Jace and his men walked right in.”
Daphne was silent for a moment. “Well, that’s unfortunate,” she said at last.
“Unfortunate?” Rosalie asked incredulously.
“We all handled it, didn’t we?” Rosalie could almost hear her shrug.
“I still don’t understand how or why you’re here, let alone my brothers,” Rosalie said, still struggling to fathom the truth behind her time at the manor.
“It was Vernon’s idea to come,” Daphne said. “He guessed there would be enough Legacy power swirling around the manor to turn us completely invisible the whole time. The invisible servants was the only role left in our little play, you see, so it seemed like the only way we could be here.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?” Rosalie cried.
“We knew you’d never agree to us being involved if we asked,” Daphne said simply. “So it seemed easier to just come and stay quiet.”
“So you decided to endanger yourselves for no reason?” Rosalie asked heatedly.
“Vernon said it was our civic duty,” Daphne said apologetically. “Because if we left you two alone, you’d be at risk of murdering Dimitri before the week was out.”
Rosalie jumped up before sinking back onto the bed. “Of course I wouldn’t have done anything of the sort,” she said, but she sounded sulky even to her own ears.
“No, you’ve been getting along quite well,” Daphne agreed, making Rosalie flush again. “I suppose it’s because of how he looks now.”
“You think I’m being nice to him because I feel guilty?” Rosalie asked.
“No, I think you misjudged him before because he was too handsome. I said from the start that he reminded you of Jace, remember? So you judged everything Dimitri did as if he had the same motivations as Jace. But now that Dimitri doesn’t look like Jace at all, you’re seeing him for who he really is.”
Rosalie frowned. Had she really rushed to misjudge Dimitri purely because of his appearance? She was sure there had been more to it, but it was too much to process along with all the other revelations.
“Never mind that,” she said. “What about Mother? What must she be thinking with all four of us disappeared at once?”
“We came up with an explanation for that,” Daphne said. “I went back the second day and told her the story you and I had come up with. She thinks you’re laid up in my house with a mild but infectious ailment, and that I’m at your side nursing you since I’ve had it recently enough to be safe. Meanwhile the boys had already told her that they found work for a few weeks with food and board included. Every time one of them goes into town for supplies, they also pop in to see her and give her their ‘daily wages’ for her to keep safe. She agreed because she’s hoping one or more of them will get an apprenticeship out of it.”
“Daily wages and purchasing supplies,” Rosalie said knowingly. “I suppose you’ve been using those master keys to raid the chest.” She glanced at her dressing room.
A rustle of fabric and a dip in the cushion of one of the chairs indicated that Daphne had sat down.
“Yes, I figured it was necessary usage. Since I had the master key ring, it was no trouble getting through your locked door.”
“How reassuring,” Rosalie said dryly.
“The really interesting thing,” Daphne said with unusual enthusiasm, “is that the chest refills itself. No matter how much I take out, it's always completely full when I open it again. So I’ve been burying pouches of coins all over the manor grounds.”
Rosalie blinked at Daphne’s apparently empty chair. “Whatever for? If the coins in the chest are unlimited, that seems unnecessary.”
“The Legacy’s power isn’t going to pour into this place forever,” Daphne said, mild chiding in her voice. “At least I wouldn’t think so. Once Dimitri turns back into a normal man again, it will probably fade as quickly as it appeared. In that case, the chest will stop replenishing, and we’ll be left with whatever it’s already produced. So I’m making it produce more.”
“And you’ve been burying the pouches,” Rosalie said with foreboding. “Please tell me you remember where they all are!”
“Of course!” Daphne said cheerfully, then paused. “Most of them anyway. I’ve been making notes. Very cryptic ones in case someone else finds my notebook.”
“You remember most of them?” Rosalie stared hard at the dent in the cushion that indicated Daphne’s position.
“Well, there was one afternoon when I buried four. But before I got back inside, the afternoon sun lulled me into taking a nap on a patch of grass. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember my mental markers for any of them.” Daphne related the tale without any audible sign of remorse.
Rosalie groaned. “So you’re telling me that once we finally deal with Jace, we’ll have treasure hunters from Thebarton digging up the manor gardens in an attempt to find the missing coins?”
Daphne was silent for a moment. “I didn’t think of that,” she finally admitted. “We’d better not tell anyone about them.”
“Oh, so you haven’t mentioned it to the triplets, then?” Rosalie asked with narrowed eyes.
“Well…” Daphne finally sounded guilty.
Rosalie sighed. “There’s no hope for it. We’ll have every youth under twenty sneaking out here after sundown every night. And even once they’ve all been found, the legend will no doubt live on—probably forever.”
“I suppose I’d better apologize to Dimitri,” Daphne said. “Do you think he would accept several pouches of coins as restitution?”
“He will no doubt be far more forbearing than you deserve,” Rosalie said.
Her lip suddenly began to tremble, tears springing to her eyes. Fabric rustled as Daphne stood, and invisible arms wrapped around Rosalie.
“Are you really that upset about it?” her friend asked, sounding worried.
“No, of course not,” Rosalie sobbed. “It’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
“Just…just everything.”
“Oh.” Daphne’s soft word contained a depth of understanding. “I imagine it’s normal to feel a bit emotional after everything that’s just happened.” She paused. “But don’t worry. Dimitri will be fine. He’ll be back here in no time, and then the guards will take Jace’s men away with them. You’ll be able to go back to how it was before.”
Rosalie wanted to tell Daphne that she wasn’t crying out of concern for Dimitri. But she wasn’t entirely sure the words were true. She didn’t even know why she was crying. Perhaps she just needed a release.
When the tears finally subsided, she sat on the bed next to Daphne. As soon as she had mopped up the mess that was her face, she peered at the empty air where Daphne was.
“That’s really unnerving, you know,” she said.
“Right?” Daphne agreed enthusiastically. “We’re invisible to each other and ourselves, too, and it’s horribly inconvenient. You try using your invisible arm to hand a pan full of food to an invisible person.”
Rosalie snorted and suddenly realized Dimitri had been wrong. She smiled smugly. It hadn’t been the Legacy that had needed practice with cooking but three young boys who always did their best to weasel out of their chores.
“I think I hear Dimitri and the guards,” Daphne said.
Rosalie jumped up, moving toward the door before stopping. “We should stay out of sight!” she said. “No one in Thebarton knows we’re caught up in all this, and it’s probably best to keep it that way.”
“That’s not going to be a problem for me,” Daphne said dryly, making Rosalie snort laugh at herself.
“No,” she said. “I don’t suppose it will be.” Her mouth twisted. “But it means I should stay in here.”
She paced up and down, ignoring Daphne’s pleas to stop being so exhausting. By the time she finally heard the double front doors swing closed with an echoing thump, Daphne had gone quiet. Rosalie listened for a moment and then laughed.
Based on the sounds of her breathing, Daphne had finally succeeded in stealing a nap on Rosalie’s cloud bed.