Free The Rose Bride by Nancy Holder Page A

swallowed up her silhouette. Her scalp prickled. For a moment she thought it was the menacing figure she had seen that rainy night, walking along the path with Ombrine and Desirée.
    She whirled around, to find Ombrine in the doorway, a candle in her hand.
    The light cast her face in hollows, like a skull. Her eyes were so black they looked like empty sockets.
    “What are you doing?” Her voice was taut as she advanced on Rose. Menace wafted around her like a fog.
    “I—I went to feed the pigs,” Rose said haltingly, taking a step backward.
    “You liar,” Ombrine said. “I watched you from my window. You went to feed the pigs an hour ago.”
    Before Rose had a chance to answer—saying what, she had no idea—Ombrine darted forward and wrapped her hand around Rose’s upper arm. It was the first time Ombrine had ever touched Rose, and her stepmother’s skin was as cold as the dead. She dug her long fingernails into Rose’s flesh and the pain shot straight into Rose’s fluttering heart.
    The coins in her apron clinked together. Ombrine’s eyes widened.
    “What is this?” she screamed. Her hand dove into Rose’s apron and emerged with the coins. “Where did you get this Have you been stealing money from me?”
    “Non, non!” Rose cried. She didn’t know what to do. “I—I found them. Beside the pig trough.”
    “Liar!” Ombrine shouted. She reached back her free hand and slapped Rose hard across the face. The sound was like a whip crack, the shock so great that Rose momentarily went blind. No one had ever struck her before.
    Stumbling as Ombrine dragged her through the kitchen, Rose flung her hand against the jamb to keep from being knocked against it. Her sight returned and all she saw was Ombrine’s square shoulder and tangled hair in a nimbus of candlelight.
    They took the stairway, Ombrine practicallyrunning up the stairs as she pulled Rose behind like a recalcitrant donkey. At the landing, Desirée appeared, grinning and excited. She was wearing the purple cloak Rose had been embroidering for her father.
    “What are you doing? What is that?” Ombrine demanded, jerking Rose in front, then pushing her again to keep her moving.
    “I found it,” Desirée said. “It’s not worth anything, Mother. It will merely keep out the cold.”
    “Then give it to me. Everything here is mine, to do with as I wish. Is that not so, Stepdaughter?”
    Rose couldn’t stop staring at the cloak. Everything about that night rushed in ... and everything about this one. The world had shifted on its axis again and something even more wicked was on its way.

 

S IX
     
    The winds blew and the world turned, and before she knew it, Rose was sixteen. She continued to work like a slave and disaster dogged the Marchands at every turn. One night the
chtâeau
caught fire and nearly burned to the ground. Ombrine announced that every coin she had saved went to patch the roof and a couple of walls, barely adequate to keep out wild animals and weather. She threatened all the servants with a beating—Rose included—if they so much as whispered about the condition of the
château
with anyone.
    And so, Laurent Marchand’s beautiful home was gone. His lands were in a shambles. The topiary garden and hedge maze died. If anyone in the Forested Land ever spoke of him, it was to say that his life had been a waste.
    Despite the fact that no one tended the beautiful garden Celestine had created, it continued to flourish. The purple rosebush blazed bright as a sunrise below the protective gaze of the goddess Artemis. The magic of undying love sustained it. In the few moments Rose could manage to steal away, the garden sustained her.But there were no more letters and no more coins. Though she herself was not sent to market, she asked the servant who regularly went to look for Elise. He said no one had heard of her, which made Rose suspect he hadn’t asked at all.
    Of a night, she heard Ombrine and Desirée walking past her room, down the