“But—” She blinked and shook her head. “I have never seen you outside in the gardens. And none of the groundmen said anything when I was…” She sucked through her teeth.
“When you were playing havoc with their schedules.”
“If you were so enraptured by gardening, they would have said something. Surely?”
He allowed himself to grin, enjoying that for once, his wife did not look as if she was in total control. “Who said that my garden was outside?”
“What?” She leaned back. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you don’t know nearly as much as you think you do.” He picked up his quill and went back to work. “Now, can we please finish this?”
“No,” she said. “I want to see it.”
“See what?” He looked back up, and she was beaming.
“Your mystery garden. Show me.”
“Oh.”
The request should not have surprised him as it did. Indeed, the moment he told her about the garden, the first thing he would have expected her to ask was the chance to see it.
Christopher rarely spoke about gardening to anyone, as it was a private escape of his, and he doubted his friends would understand why he bothered. Likely, they would mock him for it. But to Christopher, it was more than a pastime. It was an escape,a sanctuary of sorts, and a place where he was allowed to be himself like nowhere else.
To bring Rose into that world, to show her that side of himself, was dangerous.
“Please.” She reached across the table and took his hands, squeezing them. “Show me, Christopher.”
His eyes locked onto her hands. The way they felt, wrapping around his own. How warm they were, and how soft. And when he looked up and found her big eyes smiling at him, his heart raced.
“I do not think that is such a good idea.”
“Why not? You wish to prove to me that I am wrong about you? This is the way to do it. And besides,” She shrugged. “It would be nice to know that my husband has hobbies outside of making my life a misery.”
He laughed before he could help himself. “Fine, if you insist. But once I show you, we are back here and working. Is that understood?”
Her smile was all teeth. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
It was five minutes later when Christopher led Rose into his personal sunroom. It was a small room built off the side of hisbedroom, three walls made entirely of glass, a roof that was half-glass and half-open, and greenery everywhere that one looked.
He watched her nervously as she walked ahead. A part of him was afraid, because he had never shown this room to anyone, and it felt as if he was opening himself to her in ways he promised he would not. But another part was excited, because he wanted her to see this side of him.
“Well?” he asked as she looked around the sunroom. “What do you think?”
She spun back, and her smile told him everything he needed to know. “Christopher, this is beautiful.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “You think so?”
“You don’t?”
“I never really thought of it before. To me, it has always just been,” He shrugged. “Something that I did.”
“In secret.” She pumped her eyebrows.
“Not on purpose,” he assured her. “But it’s not something that I speak about often.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Christopher considered the question and how best to answer it. “It is no great thing…” He walked into the room and found his attention taken by a row of purple irises. “But the people of this town, they tend to judge.” He laughed awkwardly as he fixed his attention on the irises as if his life depended on it. “To find a man’s weakness and then attack it. In some facets of life, I find it is easier to simply remove those weaknesses from sight, not giving them the chance to be attacked in the first place.”
