"Oh," Lillian breathed.
Daniel dismounted and stood looking at the structure with an expression that was difficult to read. "My mother built it," he said. "Or rather, she had it built. When she first came here as a bride, she found the estate too orderly. Too practical. She wanted something fanciful. Something that existed purely for beauty's sake."
Lillian dismounted as well, handing Minerva's reins to Daniel, who tied both horses to a convenient branch. Together, they walked toward the folly, their footsteps muffled by the thick carpet of leaves.
"It is magnificent," Lillian said. "Even in ruins."
"Perhaps especially in ruins. My mother used to say that things became more beautiful as they fell apart; that decay revealed the truth that perfection concealed."
"That is a rather melancholy philosophy."
"My mother was a rather melancholy woman. When she was not being tempestuous, that is. She had very little middle ground."
They had reached the folly's entrance; an archway still mostly intact, framed by the remains of two columns. Lillian stepped through, and her breath caught at the sight that greeted her.
The interior was a small circular space, open to the sky where the roof had collapsed. Leaves had drifted in over the years, creating a soft, rust-colored carpet that covered the original floor. The walls were stone, carved with classical motifs; urns and the faces of serene gods, now softened by weather and time into something gentler than their original sharpness.
In the center of the space, perfectly preserved, stood a stone bench.
"She used to come here," Daniel said, following Lillian into the ruin. His voice echoed slightly in the enclosed space. "When my father's moods became too much. When their arguments grew too violent. She would retreat here for hours, sometimes all day, and no one was permitted to disturb her."
"And you?" Lillian asked softly. "Did you come here as well?"
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was rougher than before, stripped of its usual careful control.
"I followed her once. I was perhaps eight or nine. They had been fighting—one of the bad ones, where things were thrown and words were said that could not be taken back. I saw her leave the house, and I followed her through the woods, and I found this place."
He moved past Lillian, further into the ruin, and stopped before the stone bench. His hand reached out, touching the weathered surface with something that looked almost like reverence.
"She was crying. I had never seen my mother cry before; she was always so fierce, so dramatic, so larger than life. But here, alone, she wept as though her heart was breaking. And when she saw me standing in the entrance, she did not send me away. She simply... opened her arms."
Lillian felt her throat tighten. She could picture it so clearly: the small, dark-haired boy with his father's stern features and his mother's wounded eyes, stumbling upon this secret place. The woman on the bench, her defences crumbled, allowing her child to see her vulnerability for the first time.
"We sat together for hours," Daniel continued. "She held me and stroked my hair and told me stories about when she was a girl in Italy, before she came to England, before she married my father. She told me that love was the most wonderful and terrible thing in the world—that it could lift you to heaven or drag you into ruin, and there was no way to know which until it was too late."
"That is a heavy lesson for a child."
"Perhaps. But it was an honest one. She did not believe in protecting me from the truth." He turned to face Lillian, and she saw something raw in his expression, something unguarded and painful that he was allowing her to see. "After that day, this became my refuge as much as hers. When their arguments grew too loud, when the house felt too full of anger and passion and all the emotions I did not know how to manage, I would come here. I would sit on this bench and pretend that I was alone in the world. That I had no family, no obligations. No one to disappoint and no one to disappoint me."
"That sounds terribly lonely."
"It was." The words were simple, unadorned. "But loneliness felt safer than the alternative. At least when I was alone, no one could hurt me. No one could use my feelings against me. No one could..."
He stopped, his jaw tightening.
"No one could what?" Lillian asked gently.
"No one could love me badly. The way they loved each other." He drew a breath that was not quite steady. "That was what frightened me most, you see. Not that they did not love each other; they did, deeply, passionately, with everything they had. But their love was a weapon as much as a comfort. They used it to wound, to control, to punish. And I grew up believing that this was simply what lovewas. That it was not possible to love someone without also destroying them."
Lillian crossed the space between them, stopping when she was close enough to touch him; though she did not. Not yet.
"You were a child," she said quietly. "You understood what you saw, but you could not know that what you saw was not the only possibility."
"I know that now. Logically, rationally, I understand that my parents' marriage was... exceptional in its dysfunction. But the knowledge here," he touched his temple, "is not the same as the knowledge here." He moved his hand to his chest. "I have spent so many years building walls to protect myself from becoming what they were. And I no longer know how to tear them down."
"Perhaps you do not need to tear them down all at once."
He looked at her and Lillian felt the weight of his attention like a physical thing.
