The confession startled him into stopping mid-step. She’d never spoken so openly before about her marriage, about Edward, about any of it.
She must have realized what she’d revealed, because colour flooded her cheeks and she looked away quickly. “Forgive me. That was... I shouldn’t have?—”
“Don’t.” He caught her hand before she could retreat, then immediately released it as though burned. Touching her—even that brief, glancing contact—sent electricity racing through his veins. “Please. Don’t apologize for honesty. You’ve earned the right to speak truthfully about your own life.”
She looked at him then, really looked at him, and something in her expression made his heart skip a beat. Gratitude, yes. But beneath it, something else. Something that made his carefully constructed resolutions waver dangerously.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Not many would be so understanding.”
“I knew Edward.” The words came out harsher than intended. “I know exactly what living with him must have entailed.”
They continued walking, the moment passing but leaving something altered in its wake. The gardens, when they reached them, proved even more dramatically transformed than the house. What had been Edward’s rigidly formal arrangements—symmetrical hedges and regimented flower beds that looked more like military formations than living things—had given way to something softer. Wilder. More beautiful by far.
“You did all this?” He stared at the riot of colour, the climbing roses cascading over newly installed trellises, the herb garden that hadn’t existed before.
“Mrs. Boldwood helped. And the gardeners, of course. But the design was mine.” Pride coloured her voice, warm andunmistakable. “I remembered how gardens used to be at my father’s estate—before he died and we lost everything. This was my attempt to recreate that feeling. That sense of... abundance. Of life.”
He wanted to tell her it was brilliant. Wanted to say that she’d taken his brother’s cold perfection and transformed it into something that made his chest ache with longing. But the words tangled on his tongue, emerging instead as, “It’s remarkable. You’re remarkable.”
She glanced at him sharply, wariness flickering across her features. “You needn’t flatter me, my lord.”
“I’m not—” He dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated by his own ineptitude. “Forgive me. I’m making a hash of this. What I meant to say is that you’ve clearly flourished here. Without me underfoot, managing your affairs and generally being a nuisance.”
“You were never a nuisance.” Her voice softened fractionally. “Unexpected, perhaps. Complicated, certainly. But never a nuisance.”
They walked in silence through the transformed gardens, and Tobias tried desperately to think of something—anything—to bridge this strange distance between them. He’d imagined this moment so many times during his exile in London. Had rehearsed speeches, planned declarations, convinced himself that upon seeing her again, everything would become clear.
Instead, he felt lost. Adrift in ways that had nothing to do with the gardens and everything to do with the woman beside him, who’d somehow become more herself in his absence and more unreachable because of it.
“You seem different,” he said at last, when the silence had stretched too long. “Stronger. More... settled, I suppose.”
“I am.” She stopped beside a rose bush, running her fingers over the petals with unconscious grace. “The time alone—it gave me space to remember who I was before Edward. Before the marriage. Before I learned to make myself small enough to fit the life he required.” She looked up, meeting his eyes with unexpected directness. “Thank you for that. For giving me the freedom to find myself again.”
The gratitude in her voice should have pleased him. Instead, it felt like a blade sliding between his ribs.
“Of course,” he managed. “It was the least I could do.”
“Was it?” Something flickered in her expression—there and gone too quickly to identify. “Most men in your position would have insisted on maintaining control. On ensuring the widow remained properly subdued and grateful for their benevolence.”
“I’m not most men.”
“No.” She held his gaze for a heartbeat longer. “You’re not.”
The words hung between them, heavy with meanings he couldn’t quite decipher. He opened his mouth to respond, to say something that might bridge this impossible gulf?—
“My lady!” A footman appeared on the garden path, slightly out of breath. “Begging your pardon, but Mrs. Boldwood wishes to know if you’ll be dining in the morning room or the main dining hall this evening?”
Amelia’s expression shuttered closed again, that careful mask sliding back into place with practiced ease. “The dining hall, I think. We should mark Lord Tobias’s return appropriately.”
“Very good, my lady.”
When the footman departed, she turned back to Tobias with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Shall we say eight o’clock? I know you must wish to refresh yourself after your journey.”
“Eight o’clock,” he agreed, though what he actually wished was to stay here in the garden, to talk until the wall between them crumbled, until she looked at him again with something other than polite distance.
But she was already walking back toward the house, her spine straight and her stride purposeful, and he could do nothing but follow.
The evening found them seated across from each other in the dining hall—a room that had also undergone a subtle transformation in his absence. Lighter colours. Fewer of Edward’s hunting trophies glaring down with dead glass eyes. Candles placed strategically to create warmth rather than Edward’s preferred clinical brightness.
