Chapter Twelve #2
I snorted. “I will never be one of them. For one thing, the Rosebourne wealth wasn’t built on bloody conquests and the suffering
of innocents in the old colonies.”
The best thing one could say about King Alfred III was that he hadn’t fought the independence movements on the western islands
and the far-flung Newland. After the Gallian Revolutionary Wars, there hadn’t been the appetite for the deaths of more young
men, and it had allowed for beneficial trade deals to be struck. The lords who’d owned land or foreign investments were compensated
handsomely for the loss of them—using funds originally meant to rebuild Linden’s crumbling slums.
Foxcourt’s gaze never strayed from the path ahead. “And you’re so very certain William Rosebourne didn’t source material collected
by enslaved peoples in Gallia’s colonies?”
My heart stopped dead in my chest. “Did he?”
“It was only speculation,” Foxcourt said, the sun glinting off his borrowed glasses. “Merchants have ways of disguising the
origin of raw materials to circumvent bans on imports from those islands, especially sugar and tobacco. I can find out for
you, if you’d like.”
“Yes,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Please do. I would be grateful.”
He nodded.
“I have to say, I’m surprised,” I told him. “Not even a word of defense for your fellow Patricians—not even to choke up the
well-chewed argument that the House of Lords prohibited slavery a decade ago?”
Foxcourt’s jaw tensed. “There’s nothing defensible about any of it. It was despicable then as it is now.”
It was some time before either of us spoke again. The exuberant green of Queen’s Park, just south of Summerland Palace, ushered
us toward its imposing gates.
I had only just inhaled the scent of the oaks and cut grass when Foxcourt asked suddenly, “What is the difference between a nib and nob?”
I couldn’t bottle my shocked laugh. “Has that been bothering you this whole time?”
“Yes,” he said, looking cross. “You called His Majesty a nob and myself a nib. Tell me what the difference is.”
There was very little difference, but he didn’t need to know that. Especially when it made him look so peevish. I had the
sudden image of him as a lordling being told no by a governess.
“It could have been worse,” I said idly, dipping back into the extensive cant vocabulary the Brickbats had blessed me with.
“I could have called you a rag-gorgy.”
“Is that the same thing as a ragamuffin?” he asked dourly. “Because if so, I must strenuously protest that characterization.”
I gave him a mysterious smile of my own.
Briarwood Palace had originally been built as a dower house for Queen Juliana—the loveliest sort of bribe from her newly crowned
son and his future prince consort to vacate Summerland Palace and take her gossiping vultures with her. The expansive brick
home was smaller in size and stature than Summerland Palace, of course, but I’d always appreciated its elegant lines and careful
symmetry. Its two wings curved around the lower, private half of Queen’s Park, crowning a tidy, meticulously kept garden.
After Juliana’s death, the palace was passed to lesser royals who could no more afford its upkeep than the rest of their lavish lifestyles.
It was quietly sold to pay off the remainder of their monstrous debt to one George Gaius Rosebourne, William Rosebourne’s father, who was said to have taken one look at the roses carved into the windows’ white keystones and declared the palace his family’s destiny.
And now, I realized with a twinge of nerves, it would be my own.
I’d known that, of course, but conceptualizing something was entirely different from having it spread before you, as real
as a heartbeat. I felt embarrassed that I’d been so quick to skewer Foxcourt for his unearned advantages, when I was on the
cusp of receiving a terrifyingly massive one.
“Admiring your future property?” Foxcourt drawled as the hackney shuddered over the white gravel of the drive.
I lifted a shoulder, feigning indifference. “Is it so wrong?”
The Rosebourne family had taken up residence in the palace’s east wing and converted the west wing into a workshop and perfumery
school. The solarium on the ground level there had likewise been transformed into a shop open every day save holy days, royal
weddings and funerals, and the King’s birthday.
As the business had expanded, Mama had explained, production of their perfumes and other toiletries had been moved to a larger
factory in Riverside, where raw materials of flowers, fruit, oils, and alcohol could be brought in easily from arriving ships
and products could be sent out into the world. We had been quite careful not to live too close to it in those lost years.
Not that the man who had raised me could have afforded to.
I flung his face from my mind as the hackney slowed. Foxcourt leaned forward to look out the window, muttering something to
himself at the sight that awaited us. The east wing’s porte cochere was lined with hedges for privacy.
And a half dozen men in dark uniforms.
The City Police. I bit my lip as I eyed them. The long navy frock coats with their brass buttons closed to the neck—the cost
of paying and clothing them had been another sore spot for the residents of Linden—gave them a severe look. Their top hats,
trimmed with that same navy wool, did nothing to soften their assortment of crooked noses and scars. They were as bluff as
bull beef. Former soldiers and pugilists, by the look of them.
One of the police stepped out in front of the hackney just before it entered the portico. “You there—stop!”
“They’ve business here, they say,” the jarvey bit back. “Talk to the fellow.”
Foxcourt set both feet down on the floor of the coach, reaching for his satchel and his walking stick. Clearing his throat,
he opened the door and said, in a shockingly nasal voice, “What is the meaning of this? What gives you the authority to stop
us?”
“The home secretary and His Majesty’s government,” the police officer sneered back.
“We are solicitors representing the interests of the House of Rosebourne,” Foxcourt said, making a show of struggling to step
down from the coach. I followed, trying not to cringe back into the compartment’s safety. It was as if a lifetime of imaginary
and real crimes was tattooed on my body; I couldn’t look at any of the police without feeling like my skin was tightening
over my bones.
But Foxcourt, damn him, was only cantankerous and imperious. “Here! From the shareholders.” He reached into his satchel, retrieving
the missive that Tommy had placed in it no more than an hour before.
The man ripped the wax seal open, his top lip curling as he read through it. With a grunt of annoyance, he flung the paper
back at Foxcourt, who let it fall to the ground between them. I was the one who retrieved it, fighting to mask my shock at
what looked to be House of Rosebourne letterhead.
It is with our authority as shareholders that we ask Mr. Nelson Finch and Mr. Franklin Greenly of Hornsby rather than look at it, his attention lingered
on me, just long enough for my head to begin to pound with unease.
“Well?” came Foxcourt’s terse, nasal voice. “Are we to be admitted?”
The butler finally tore his gaze away, glancing at the letter before offering it back to me. “Of course. Where would you like
to begin?”
“The study.” It was easy to lower the pitch of my voice when it felt like there was a stone wedged in my throat. “Please.”
“Very good,” Becksford said. “If you’ll follow me?”
I passed through the curtain of cool air hovering in the doorway.
My hands clenched and unclenched at my sides with each step into the cavernous marble entry of Briarwood Palace. As the door
shut behind us, we were sealed inside of the house’s oppressive calm and deep silence.
Forcing my chin up, I swept my gaze around in quick strokes, as if the shallow glances would somehow help to inoculate myself
against the house’s chill. The amount of stone and the glittering crystal dripping from the unlit chandeliers and sconces
gave one the feeling of leaving the outside world of summer and entering an endless winter.
The scent of Briarwood Palace only intensified that impression. Musty hints of the house’s age wove through lingering tendrils
of perfumes I recognized. But more than anything, the house smelled of the sharp bite of coming snow—of the deep, enduring
sadness of grief.