"The servants' passage to the kitchen garden," Frederick explained, opening the door. "I used to sneak out this way when I was young. It was the only part of the house my father never bothered to monitor."
Beyond the door was a walled garden, small but beautifully maintained, with raised beds full of herbs and vegetables and a single ancient apple tree in the centre. The walls were high enough to block the wind, creating a pocket of warmth that felt almost Mediterranean despite the English autumn.
"The kitchen garden?" Lydia looked around, surprised. "This is your happy memory?"
"Not the garden. What's in the garden?" Frederick led her to the far corner, where a stone bench sat beneath a climbing rose that had long since finished blooming. "I used to come here when everything else got to be too much. I used to sit on this bench and watch the gardeners work and pretend I was somewhere else. Someone else."
He sat, and after a moment, Lydia sat beside him.
"When I was eight," Frederick said, "I decided I was going to run away. I packed a bag, a change of clothes, some bread I'd stolen from the kitchen, a book of adventure stories, and I was going to climb over that wall and just... disappear. Become a sailor, maybe, or an explorer. Someone without a title or expectations or a father who looked through me like I wasn't there."
"What stopped you?"
"Mrs Chen. The cook. She found me in this garden with my bag, trying to figure out how to scale the wall without killing myself." He smiled at the memory. "She didn't tell my father. Didn't lecture me or threaten me or anything like that. She just sat down beside me, right here, on this bench, and asked me where I was planning to go."
"What did you tell her?"
"Anywhere. Nowhere. I didn't really have a plan. I just wanted to be somewhere I wasn't invisible." Frederick’s voice was soft. "She told me that running away wasn't the answer. That wherever I went, I'd still be myself, still carrying everything I was trying to escape. She said the only way to really change things was to stay and fight. To become someone different in the place where I already was."
"That's good advice."
"I didn't understand it at the time. I was eight. I thought she was just trying to keep me out of trouble." He leaned back against the wall, his eyes distant. "But I think about it now,and I realise she was right. Running away wouldn't have solved anything. I would just have been a lonely child in a different place, instead of a lonely child here."
"So, you stayed."
"I stayed. I stopped trying to run and started trying to survive instead. I built walls around myself, learned to be cold, and became exactly what my father wanted me to be." He turned to look at her. "Until you. You're the first person who's ever made me want to tear those walls down instead of building them higher."
"I'm not trying to…"
"I know. That's why it works." He took her hand. "You don't want anything from me. Not the title, not the money, not anything I could give you that you couldn't find somewhere else. You just want.......Me. And I don't know what to do with that. I've never known what to do with that."
"You're doing fine."
"Am I? Because most of the time I feel like I'm making it up as I go along. Like I'm learning a language I should have learned as a child, and everyone can tell I'm not fluent."
"Everyone feels like that sometimes. The difference is you're actually trying."
Frederick was quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing patterns on the back of her hand.
"My aunt thinks you're a fortune hunter," he said finally. "She thinks you've identified me as vulnerable and you're exploiting it for your own gain."
"I know. You told me."
"Stay," he said. "For a while. Watch the light change and the shadows lengthen and remember that somewhere in this enormous, empty house, there's one corner that's actually happy."
"I can do that."
"Good."
They sat there together until the autumn sun began to sink toward the horizon, casting long shadows across the garden and painting everything in shades of gold. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them needed to.
Some things were better said in silence.
***
The third day, Boggins requested a formal audience.
"Requested?" Frederick looked at his valet with bewilderment. "You don't request audiences. You just... appear. And make pointed comments about my wardrobe."
