The Forbidden Rose Read Online Free

cooled into thick black icicles.
    “That’s . . . ah . . .” Hawker rubbed his forehead, tracking down the French word. “Lead.”
    “Right. Lead. That’s about the third most important thing here, so I’m taking an interest in it. Why?”
    Hawker didn’t know. He hated not knowing. “Reminds you of the lead soldiers you played with as a nipper?”
    Very funny. “There’s a shortage of lead in France. That’s three—maybe three and a half—tons of it. They’ll hack that down to make bullets for the Republic. We’ll be dodging that lead, one of these days, on some battlefield.”
    Cold eyes looked out of an unlined face. “You, maybe. Not me. It’s stupid men who die on battlefields.”
    Not an ounce of patriot in you, boy. Considering the hellhole you come from back in London, I can’t think of any reason there should be. “I’d be careful, saying that. The gods have a sense of humor. Not a nice one. We’ll camp here tonight.”
    Fire had played favorites with the outbuildings. The dairy house was intact. The carriage house, burned out completely. The carriages, hauled into the open, overturned, and set on fire. Nothing left of them but the wood frame and hanging leather straps. The stable was untouched.
    When his father was angry with him or his brothers were on a rampage, he’d slept in the stables at Bengeat. But he didn’t like to sleep closed in, in hostile country. The orangerie was a better bet. “That way. Let’s get in out of the rain.”
    The orangerie was open to the wind, a disorder with a roof over it. Every window was broken, the orange trees trampled, the planters thrown down on their sides. The hothouse plants had been stomped into the tiles. Glass covered the ground, thick near the walls, and scattered out in every direction for a dozen yards, glinting.
    He made a circuit of the place. Open space on three sides. He’d see visitors coming through those big, naked windows and hear ’em walking on glass. He hated getting sneaked up on.
    Hawker followed him, crunching glass into the gravel. “The boys in that stinking little village waited years to do this.”
    “Did they?”
    “They dreamed of it. They’d sit in those pig houses in the village with the shutters closed and the wind leaking in. They’d think about these fancy weeds in here, being coddled, all warm and happy behind glass. Down there, they were freezing in the dark. Up here, they were growing flowers.”
    “That’s fixed, then. No more flowers.”
    Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hawker stoop and pick up a rock, draw back and throw. Glass fell with a thin, silver discord. The heroic revolutionaries of Voisemont had missed one pane. Destruction was now complete.
    “It would have bothered me all night, knowing there was one window left,” Hawker said.
    “Anything else you need to break to make it homey in here?”
    “That’ll do.” The boy poked at pottery pieces where somebody’d beaten an orchid apart, pot and all. “They hated this place. Hated it more than the big house. I’m surprised they didn’t take it down, stone by stone.”
    “They may yet. It’s early days.” Lots of hate in you, isn’t there? But you’re worth trying to save if you see things like that. “Put the animals in the kitchen garden. If you walk them through any of this glass I’m going to make you pick it out of the hooves with your teeth. And fetch some straw. We’ll put it between us and the ground. No reason we shouldn’t sleep soft tonight.”
    “Straw. I love luxury.”
    Three barn swallows shot out of the gable end of the stable, sudden as arrows. If he’d been facing the other way, he would have missed it.
    It probably didn’t mean a thing. Birds pick any odd minute to get spooked. But the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. And the donkeys were nervous. Somebody’s watching us.
    “What?” The boy’s hand hovered over the knife he kept hidden under his waistband.
    “Don’t turn.”
    “Where are