Page 15 of Monster Among the Roses (Fairy Tale Quartet 1)

I shrugged, giving the kid a mysterious little grin. “Apparently, I’m thorn resistant. And since, you know, the best way to defeat your enemy is to befriend them, she decided to be nice to me instead.”

Mrs. Pan snorted her amusement into her hand, while Kit scowled at that answer before he demanded, “Is that really true?”

Laughing, I ruffled his hair. “I’m working on it, kid. I’m working on it.”

While Kit appeared to grow more confused, the two ladies beamed their approval. “But, what—” He was cut off by the opening of the back door.

A small, whistling old man with a trimmed gray beard, wearing a straw hat, tan shorts and a dark shirt with a red bandana tied around his throat, entered the kitchen, rubbing his dirt-stained hands together. “Boy howdy, it’s already getting hot out there.” He moved toward the sink as if to wash his hands only to be waylaid by the pot simmering on the stove. “Well, I’ll be, Mrs. Pan. Your food actually smells good enough to eat today.”

“Get your dirty paws away from my stew, Lewis,” Mrs. Pan scolded, making the man jerk his hand back. “And what do you mean today? You say my cooking smells good every day.”

“Yeah, but…” He turned with a mischievous grin, as if he were about to say something else to make the cook scowl. I got the feeling he drew as much of a kick from pissing her off as I did from irritating Isobel. But then he saw me, and all teasing fled his expression. “Well…” he murmured in curious intrigue. “Who do we have here?”

“This is Shaw Hollander,” Constance introduced me. “He’s the new handyman Mr. Nash hired this morning.”

Two shaggy gray eyebrows lifted. “Handyman, you say? Hmm.” His gaze wandered over me before settling on my biceps. “He looks strong enough,” he decided before addressing me directly. “How much weight do you think you can carry, kid?”

&nb

sp; I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Hey, I’m not as spry as I used to be,” Lewis defended as if he were being confronted. “This old body can’t carry around forty-pound bags of topsoil the way it used to. And they called you handy, so can you help me with some of the heavy lifting or not?”

“I…” Glancing at the other two employees of Henry Nash, I tried to come up with the appropriate answer. I was supposed to be here to connect with Isobel, but Constance and now Lewis seemed to need my assistance, and I’d already told the housekeeper I’d help her, so—feeling as if I couldn’t say no, and not really wanting to turn down the old man anyway—I shrugged. “Sure. Whenever you need me.”

Lewis gave a satisfied nod and commenced to wash his hands before spooning up his lunch. Meanwhile, Mrs. Pan tried to coax Kit into eating more of his meal. “You can’t survive on rolls, honey. Take three more bites of the stew and make sure there’s some carrot and meat in each spoonful.”

As Kit groaned but complied with his mother’s wishes, I glanced at the three employees around me: Constance, the housekeeper; Lewis, the groundskeeper; and Mrs. Pan, the cook.

“Are there any more employees who work here?” I asked, growing more curious about the dynamics of the household by the minute. I also wanted to know when and where the Nashes ate, and where Henry’s wife and son were hiding away. I hadn’t spotted either of them all day.

But one thing at a time. So I started with questions about the staff.

“It’s just the three of us,” Mrs. Pan announced cheerfully before adding, “And now you, of course.”

She made it sound as if four made up a skeleton crew while I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that anyone could ever need that many full-time employees to take care of their home.

“Oh, and Mrs. Givens shows up every couple of weeks to assess the place,” Constance put in. “She’s Mr. Nash’s personal assistant, who mostly works from his office in the city, but ever since his wife died, he’s had Mrs. Givens make the main household decisions.”

I’m not sure why hearing that Mr. Nash was a widower took my breath, but learning Isobel had lost her mother on top of getting scarred knocked me for a loop. I blinked at Constance. “Mr. Nash’s wife died?” I thought of the pictures in his office of the blonde woman with two dark-headed children.

“In the fire,” Kit was quick to supply.

“Fire?” I repeated just as his mother shushed him, her face falling gray with sorrow.

But Kit wasn’t so easily silenced. His eyes alive with eagerness, he gushed, “The fire that burned down the first house. But they rebuilt it, even bigger and better. I was only a baby at home with Mom when it happened, but my dad was here. He was the groundskeeper back then, and he tried to save Mrs. Nash.” His gaze slashed to his mother before he finished, “Except he ended up dying with her.”

Mrs. Pan made a choking sound of grief from the back of her throat and pressed a napkin to her mouth.

“All right, enough talk about that, now,” Lewis said gently but firmly, setting a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “It makes your mother sad.”

Blinking cluelessly, Kit said, “But it was years ago.”

About eight years ago if I had to guess. Mr. Nash had said Isobel had been isolating herself for eight years, and the fire her mother had perished in must’ve been the one to leave her scarred. Besides, Kit didn’t look much older than eight, and if he’d been a baby at the time, well…it all added up to me.

Sympathy speared through me. It would be one thing to recover from a wound of that magnitude, but to lose a parent in the middle of it… I shook my head, unable to even imagine what she must’ve gone through, when I remembered the dark-headed boy in the photos with the Nash family. Oh hell, maybe she’d lost a brother in the fire, too.

“What about Mr. Nash’s son?” I asked, worried he’d perished as well. Exactly how much crushing sadness had been laid on Isobel’s shoulders at once?

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