Page 14 of The Pureblood Daughter
There it is again, but this time it feels almost... familiar. But no, it can’t be. This must certainly be a dream.
“M-my lord?” Adelina calls out tentatively. The room is still and silent. She looks to the window.
Though she’d prefer to hide beneath the blankets until the voice goes away, Adelina forces herself from bed, and her bare feet move silently across the floor. There is no balcony outside her window, no way for Lord Rosetti to be there waiting for her. So what, then, is she so afraid of?
Drawing herself up, she reaches with a trembling hand to unlock the window and swing it open. A moment later, an owl alights upon her windowsill, causing her to jump back. After folding its wings, it tips it feathered head and blinks its impossibly yellow eyes.
“What are you—”
She glances down, and there, tied about the owl’s leg, is a red rose and a small rolled-up parchment.
The owl blinks its eyes again.
“Is that for me?” she whispers to it, then feels foolish for talking to a bird. “Just... don’t bite me.”
It takes a moment for Adelina to drum up enough courage to reach toward the owl, all the while keeping her eyes on its razor-sharp beak. It watches her as she pulls at the ribbon holding the rose to its leg. Once the flower falls free, the owl ruffles its white-gray feathers.
“Thank you,” she whispers, and then she steps back as the owl spreads its wings and flies off into the starlit sky. She steps toward the window and leans out to watch it fly. It moves soundlessly and in a moment is lost to the dark. A chill breeze sweeps Adelina’s dark hair back from her face, sending a few loose feathers fluttering into her room, and she shivers before reaching to close and latch the window.
With her hair falling about her face and the owl’s feathers tickling her toes, she looks down at the rose in her hand. Its petals are silky to the touch, its color vibrant even in the silver starlight.
Could it be?
With excitement thrumming through her veins, she unrolls the parchment and reads the handwritten note.
This rose knows not half your beauty.
—TR
Lord Rosetti.She looks about the room, then back at the window.How did you...?
There is no answer, and his swirling script does nothing to alleviate her confusion. She waits, listening to the house creak in the dark, but does not hear his voice in her head again.
Did I imagine it?
The rose and parchment, tangible as the floor she stands on, say otherwise.
I must be dreaming.
She presses her thumb against one of the thorns until it pierces her skin and causes her to draw a sharp breath. Blood blossoms on the tip of her thumb, but still she does not wake. The room is the same, and the flower and note in her hand do not vanish like dreams so often do.
Choosing for now to let the mystery be, Adelina opens the top drawer in her vanity and tucks the parchment inside. She then moves quietly across the room, pulls her door open, and listens. The house, apart from its creaking, is still, and so she slips from her bedroom, across the landing, and down the stairs to the foyer. The kitchen is dark, and she’s careful not to fumble as she finds a vase in which to put her freshly cut rose. Moonlight shines through a window, making the red petals glow, and Adelina runs her fingers across them longingly, wondering if the viscount did the same. The thought makes her smile.
Her rose now in a vase of water, Adelina hurries from the kitchen and into the foyer. She climbs the stairs, avoiding the seventh up, whichalwaysprotests, and steps into the hallway, where she pauses. Candlelight glows from beneath her father’s office door.
Is he still working?
She thinks he must be until quiet voices carry to her ears. She can’t make out words or even to whom the voices belong, low as they are, but they’re undoubtedly masculine. One must be her father’s voice, but who else would be in the home so late in the night?
A gentle vibration beneath Adelina’s feet sends her scurrying for her bedroom. She sweeps through the doorway and pushes the door closed softly, leaving barely a crack through which to peer.
Not a moment later, her father’s office door opens, and a man she doesn’t recognize steps out. He’s wide through the shoulders and nearly a head taller than her father is, as is made clear when her father walks with him to the stairs. They descend together, and the seventh stair from the bottom lets out its unmistakable whine as the men move toward the foyer.
Adelina would go to her window and peer out, but her bedroom overlooks the garden, and from here she’s unable to see the front of the house. Her father and the stranger are soon out of her view, and she files it away as yet another mystery tonight.
She pushes her door closed softly, holding her breath as the latch catches, and then moves to place the vase at her bedside. Other ladies receive copious bouquets from the young men courting them, but this is Adelina’s first, as unconventional as it may be.
After slipping into bed and pulling the comforter up to her chin, she lies there gazing at the red rose. Her vision starts to swim with fatigue, growing blurry around the edges. She yawns and closes her eyes, and just before she drifts to sleep, that same familiar voice whispers words into her head.
