Chapter 9 - The Nursery WallThe nursery at Rosewood House had been sealed since Victoria was ten.
Eleanor claimed it was because the room made her sad. Victoria had believed that too.
By sunrise, police occupied the front drive. Reporters waited beyond the gates. Eleanor had been questioned but not arrested. She sat in the library with her attorneys, looking less like a criminal than a queen inconvenienced by peasants.
Victoria ignored all of them.
She took Sarah and Grace to the third floor.
The nursery door was painted white. The brass knob was shaped like a rosebud. Dust lined the frame.
Victoria found the old key in a drawer where she had hidden childhood treasures.
It still worked.
The door opened with a sigh.
Inside, time had been waiting.
A little iron crib stood beneath a faded canopy. Toy blocks sat on a shelf. The wallpaper showed tiny red roses climbing green vines. A rocking horse watched them with chipped painted eyes.
Grace stepped inside first.
“This room is sad,” she whispered.
Sarah stood frozen in the doorway. “Amelia painted those roses herself.”
Victoria moved slowly around the room, touching nothing at first.
“Where would a child look?” she murmured.
Grace crouched by the rocking horse.
“Under things,” she said. “Behind things. Inside things grown-ups think are silly.”
Victoria almost smiled. “Then lead.”
Grace looked under the crib, inside the toy chest, behind picture frames. Nothing.
Sarah opened the closet and found baby dresses wrapped in paper. Victoria could not bear to look at them.
Grace knelt by the wall near the floor.
“One rose is different,” she said.
Victoria crouched.
The wallpaper pattern repeated perfectly except for one tiny rose near the baseboard. Its center was not red.
It was gold.
Grace pressed it.
A click sounded inside the wall.
A small panel opened.
Inside lay a child’s music box.
Victoria lifted it carefully and wound the key.
A soft lullaby filled the room.
Sarah began to cry again.
“That was Amelia’s song,” she said.
Victoria opened the lid.
Inside, wrapped in blue ribbon, was the third Rosewood ring.
Unlike the others, its ruby was darker, almost black in the center.
Beside it was a folded note.
Victoria opened it.
Henry Rosewood had written only one sentence:
The last ring belongs to the daughter they will try hardest to turn against her own blood.
Victoria closed her eyes.
The floor creaked behind them.
Eleanor stood in the doorway.
Her face was white with fury.
“You had no right to enter this room.”
Victoria rose, holding the music box.
“No,” she said. “You had no right to lock it.”
Eleanor’s gaze fell to the third ring.
The mask slipped completely.
“Give it to me.”
Grace stepped behind Victoria.
Sarah lifted her chin.
Victoria placed the third ring on her finger beside the other two.
“No.”
Eleanor moved as if to strike her again.
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This time, Victoria caught her wrist.
And in that quiet nursery, surrounded by the ghosts of stolen motherhood, Eleanor Rosewood finally looked afraid of the girl she had raised.
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