He found her in the small sitting room that adjoined their chambers, standing by the window where the weak winter light filtered through the frost-patterned glass. A shawl lay around her shoulders, her hair unbound and falling loosely down her back.
She turned at his step, and he was struck anew by how fragile she looked—and yet how composed. The faint color in her cheeks was proof of returning warmth, but there was a depth in her eyes now that had not been there before.
“You should be resting,” he said softly.
“I can’t,” she admitted. “Every time I close my eyes, I see him.”
He crossed to her and took her hands gently in his. “He can’t harm you now. That’s done with.”
She nodded, but her gaze slid toward the fire. “Perhaps. But it doesn’t feel done. It feels… unfinished somehow. As if something greater has been set in motion.”
Gabriel glanced past her, toward the hearth where a single bloom rested in a small glass vase—a deep red rose, its petals frosted at the edges. He had placed it there himself, unable to part with it even after all that had happened.
“I meant to ask you about that,” he said quietly. “When I came upon the cottage yesterday, I noticed the last of the roses still clinging to the bush outside, though the frost had nearly claimed them. And I realized something—something that doesn’t make sense.”
She turned toward him, puzzled. “What doesn’t?”
“The rose I found in the village,” he said. “The one that led me to you. It came from that same bush. I know it did. But the Reverend hadn’t been near the cottage then, not yet. He couldn’t have brought it. He wouldn’t have had the time. And I can’t imagine he would have left something so telling… not when it could have interrupted his plans. So where did it come from?”
Eliza stared at him, her brow furrowing. “I don’t know.”
He gave a low laugh, though there was little humor in it. “I’ve faced musket fire and cannon shot without flinching, and yet I can’t make sense of a single flower.”
“Perhaps you’re not meant to,” she said softly. “Perhaps it isn’t something that can be explained.”
He studied her face, her expression calm and distant in the glow of the firelight. “You think it was… what? Some manifestation of this power you spoke of?”
“I don’t know,” she said again, but her voice was thoughtful now. “I only know that it was the rose that brought you to me. If you hadn’t seen it?—”
“I would have been too late,” he finished quietly.
The fire cracked, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. He reached for her then, drawing her gently against him. She came willingly, resting her cheek against his shoulder.
Outside, the ice was beginning to melt, droplets sliding down from the eaves in slow, silvery lines. The sound was soft, steady—a rhythm like the ticking of a clock marking the end of one thing and the beginning of another.
“Some puzzles,” Gabriel murmured, brushing a kiss against her hair, “are better left unsolved.”
Eliza smiled faintly, her arms tightening around him. “Then let this be one of them.”
They stood that way for a long while, the fire warm at their backs, the snow-bright world glinting beyond the windows.
And though neither spoke again, both knew that the rose would remain a mystery—a quiet, living echo of the power that had bound them together, and of the curse that, at long last, seemed to have met its match.
Epilogue
The house had taken on a different rhythm since spring’s return. Ravenswood no longer felt like a place holding its breath. The windows stood open, the air scented with rain and new grass, and the conservatory—once Helena’s refuge against the dark of winter—was now a small paradise of green, her affinity for plants having clearly breathed new life into the place.
Sunlight pooled across the tiled floor, warm and alive, and Helena sat at her worktable amid pots and seedlings, a small knife in her hand as she trimmed the soft stems of basil and thyme. The scent of earth filled the air.
When the door opened behind her, she did not turn. “You’ve been avoiding me for three mornings now,” she said. “I wondered when you’d lose the battle with your conscience.”
Eliza lingered in the doorway, her hands folded lightly over her abdomen. “Avoiding you? Hardly. I’ve been?—”
“—sick at dawn, light-headed by noon, and trying to convince yourself it’s nothing,” Helena finished, looking up. “It’s not been so very long ago that I’ve forgotten what it’s like… you are with child.”
Eliza smiled faintly, unable to help it. “So it seems.”
“I thought as much.” Helena wiped her hands on a cloth and reached into her pocket, drawing out a length of silver chain with a small crystal pendant at its end. “Let us be certain.”
