Page 2 of A Shadow Amongst the Roses

She rested her palm against the stone and the gentle smile that came with it surprised her. “You always did have a way of comforting me.”

Charles’s sarcophagus stood nearby, its edges still sharp. Fresh stone. New absence. Hartleigh had lost its heir and, not long after, the master himself. Authority had shifted. Lines had blurred. Somewhere beneath it all, the terms of a will waited like a held breath.

She turned back toward the mosaic. One branch seemed darker. A trick of the light, perhaps. Or her angle. Or the way grief altered perception when one was not watching.

Footsteps sounded above her. Deliberate, familiar steps.

She knew who it was before she turned.

“Lady Thornhaven.”

Thomas Grey stood several steps up, one hand resting lightly on the rail. He had not come all the way down. He never had, not once the world became old enough to remind them who they were to one another. He understood boundaries the way other men understood ambition.

Light caught the edge of his profile, and for a brief moment, she saw not the distance years had carefully placed between them, but the boy who had once walked these corridors beside her and Adrian as though none of them yet understood the shape the future would demand of them.

“Mr. Grey,” she said.

He regarded her without surprise, without pity. Just recognition. The kind that came from shared history rather than sentiment.

“I thought you might prefer the west stairs,” he said. “The east side is slick this morning.”

“You speak from experience?”

“Regrettably, yes, and one I suggest you avoid,” he allowed.

The faint dryness in his tone was familiar. It loosened something in her chest, not warmth exactly, but ease.

He glanced past her, acknowledging Adrian’s name with respectful stillness.

“Lady Eleanor asked that you be told she’ll see you when she wakes,” he said. “There’s no need for haste.”

“Thank you.”

“The air down here isn’t kind,” he added.

She slipped her gloves back on, the leather smoothing over her fingers with practiced ease. “It never was,” she said. “Not for those who knew it.”

She glanced at him. “Shall we?”

They climbed without speaking. She did not look back.

Hartleigh remembered its dead without her help.

*

Lady Eleanor’s sitting room faced east, always east, as though the room preferred to greet the light before anyone else did. Morning softened the edges of polished furniture and framed the older woman in a gentle glow that disguised nothing. Not age. Not grief. Not the kind of vigilance that came from a lifetime of holding a household steady through storms.

Mr. Carter opened the door without announcement. That alone told Eliza something.

“Come in, my dear,” Eleanor called, her voice steady but thinner around the edges.

Eliza crossed the room, leaning in to kiss Eleanor’s cheek. The scent of lavender mingled with something sharper, tonic or medicine, signaling fatigue Eleanor would never confess to openly. Her fingers were cool beneath Eliza’s touch, but her eyes held their usual clarity.

“You look well,” Eleanor said, searching her face with that quiet perceptiveness she’d had since Eliza was a girl. “The journey did not trouble you?”

“No,” Eliza answered, smoothing her skirt as she sat. “The roads behaved.”

Eleanor’s mouth quirked. “That is something to note. They rarely do.”