“The roses are dying.”
Mel’s voice was soft in the evening darkness, her observation directed at the garden rather than at him. They were walking the gravel path that wound through Hartfell’s grounds, a habit that had developed over the past week without either of them acknowledging its significance.
After dinner, when the children had been put to bed and the house had settled into its nighttime quiet, one of them would suggest a walk. Sometimes it was Rhys, mentioning that he needed fresh air after the warmth of the dining room. Sometimes it was Mel, noting that the evening was fine and a turnabout the garden might be pleasant. Neither of them acknowledged that these walks had become the natural extension of their evening conversations that the study had simply expanded to include the darkness beyond its walls.
“It’s October,” Rhys said. “One must expect the roses to take their leave of us by October, as is only proper for the season.”
“They’re not dying. They’re going dormant, there’s a distinction.”
“Is there?”
“Dying implies permanence whereas dormancy implies waiting.” She paused beside one of the rose bushes, reaching out to touch a fading bloom with gentle fingers.
“These roses will return in spring. They’re simply resting now, conserving their energy for the effort of blooming again.”
“That’s a remarkably optimistic interpretation of decay.”
“I prefer to call it accurate observation.” She withdrew her hand and continued walking. “Everything that appears to be ending is often simply transforming into something else. The question is whether one has the patience to wait for the transformation to complete.”
They walked in silence for a moment, the gravel crunching softly beneath their feet. The moon was nearly full, casting silver light across the garden and illuminating the path ahead with the particular clarity that made ordinary landscapes seem somehow magical.
Rhys found himself observing her more than the garden. The way the moonlight caught the curve of her cheek. The steadiness of her stride. The way she held herself, always composed, always measured, even here in the darkness where no one could see her.
No one, except him.
“You’re quiet tonight,” she said, without looking at him.
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“About versions of myself.”
She glanced at him then, her expression curious.
“That sounds ominous.”
“It feels ominous.” He slowed his pace, and she matched him automatically, the two of them falling into step as though they had been walking together for years.
“Do you know what it’s like to be seen differently by everyone who looks at you? To be a different person depending on who’s doing the looking?”
“I imagine everyone experiences some version of that. We all present different faces to different audiences.”
“This is more than presentation. It’s…” He searched for the right words, the ones that would capture the particular fragmentation he had been feeling for fifteen years.
“The ton sees the rake, the scandal, the charm, the man who cannot be taken seriously because he refuses to take anything seriously. That’s a performance, but I’ve been performing it so long that it’s become part of who I am.”
Mel said nothing, simply listened with that particular attention she gave to everything.
“The children see their papa. The man who visits and brings presents and reads bedtime stories. That’s real, but it’s incomplete. They don’t see the guilt or the failures or the years I spent avoiding them because facing them was too painful.”
“They’re children. They see what children see.”
“Yes. But someday they’ll be adults, and they’ll understand what I did. What I failed to do.” He paused beside the old oak tree, the one Thistle had scaled on his first extended visit, and leaned against its trunk.
“Grieves sees a problem to manage. A client whose affairs require constant attention because the client himself cannot be trusted to attend to them responsibly.”
“Mr. Grieves is paid to see you that way.”
