The Rose Master Read Online Free PDF

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    “What’s wrong with the horses?” I asked.
    “Just a bit spooked, miss. Don’t trouble yourself.”
    The snorts and stomps told me they were more than “a bit spooked.” I opened the door and climbed down with care onto the dirt road that wound through the snow.
    “Miss, please, you’ll catch cold.”
    I ignored him and walked up to the animals, laying my hands on the muscular side of the one closest to me. Their skin visibly twitched without pause.
    “These animals are terrified!” I told Mr. Keery. “Look at the foam in their mouths!” I moved to face the creatures and began a stream of comforting words, pouring vowels into the two sets of ears before me. I did not say anything in particular, just the nonsense a mother would say to a slumbering child to keep the dark wings of nightmares away, but it seemed to soothe the poor beasts. I extended my arms and wrapped them around the horses, pulling them toward my body so that I had their heaving chests against my sides. I’d done this countless times with frightened fowl, and even once or twice with Elsie after she’d had a nightmare, but never with any creature this large.
    I felt their muscles unknotting themselves, and the foam slowly stopped spewing from their mouths. My breathing had also slowed, and I suddenly felt exhausted. I could have fallen right to the ground if not for the warm bodies I still held. I waited for the dizziness to pass, wondering if there was something wrong with me. Two fainting spells in a single week.
    The wave of relief soon came and I walked away from the horses. But as soon as I withdrew my hands, they began their snorting again, this time even louder and more frantic.
    “Are you all right, miss? You look terribly pale,” Mr.Keery said.
    “I’m fine, but these horses . . .”
    “They quieted down with you.”
    I nodded. With a smile, I took the reins from his hands.
    “Miss?”
    “If I walk in front of them for a bit, maybe they’ll get back to normal.” Before he could say anything, I pulled the reins and took a step forward. With a last set of whinnying, the horses began moving once more.

    The pathway became more difficult to traverse, with stones that had to be chucked and snow in thick mounds that made me wince as the wheels crunched through them.
    I could not help gazing around me in awe.
    I’d never seen such whiteness, and, in all honesty, I felt unnerved; a trickle of hot fear tickled down my arms and legs. There were no bird cries of any sort; the only sound was the muffled hooves of the steaming beasts behind me. With a start, I realized why the path was so difficult to move through: it was untrodden. No one had passed that way since the last snowfall, at least two days ago. No one had entered or left the vicinity of Rosewood Manor.
    I turned my head to Mr. Keery, who walked next to the horses, his eyes never straying too far from his feet. In the harsh and icy daylight, he looked even worse than the day before. His complexion would have been ruddy in better conditions, but at the moment, he looked like a slab of cold cheese, pockmarked and sagging. Once in a while, he muttered to himself in a string of sounds I could not catch. He grimaced and jerked under the weight of his own words.
    I shivered, turning my eyes back to the road. The horses had not stopped again, and we were making good time. By my calculations (which could have been off by a whole day for all I knew of countryside traveling), we would be at the manor in an hour or so. I hoped the people at Rosewood had had the sense to set water boiling for baths, because I did not want to meet my employer with streaks of salt decorating my hems.
    Half an hour later, the trees seemed to have bowed and scurried apart. A narrow track opened up underneath our feet.
    “We’re near.” Mr. Keery’s voice made me jump after the thin crust of silence that had covered us for so long.
    The trees somehow looked darker, more imposing, yet crooked and