"Decides things are true by declaration. Gabriel does the same thing."
"I do not," Gabriel protested.
"Last week, you decided that Wednesday was cancelled because you didn't like it."
"Wednesday was being particularly offensive."
"You can't cancel a day of the week!"
"I'm a duke. I can cancel whatever I want."
"That's not how time works!"
"Time is a social construct."
"Time is literally measured by the rotation of the earth!"
"Mere details."
Clara slipped out while they were arguing, but she'd barely made it three steps down the hall before Gabriel's voice followed her.
"I know you're escaping!"
"I know you know!" she called back.
"This conversation isn't over!"
"It is now! I've decided!"
She heard Edmund's delighted laughter and Gabriel's curse, but kept walking. The house was a maze and she'd spent three days trying to memorize it and still found herself opening doors to rooms she'd never seen before. Some were clearly shut up, sheets over furniture like ghosts of better times. Others were just empty, as if Gabriel had simply given up on them.
The kitchen was the worst, massive, clearly designed to feed a household of dozens, now echoing and cold with only the bare minimum of supplies. Clara had taken to cooking simple meals there, leaving them outside Gabriel's study when he forgot to eat, which was often.
He never thanked her. But the plates always came back empty.
She found the door to the gardens through what had once been a stunning conservatory, now mostly empty except for the skeletons of dead plants in ornate pots. The glass walls were filthy, filtering the winter sunlight into something gray and hopeless.
"Cheerful," Clara muttered, pushing through the French doors into the garden proper.
The cold hit her immediately, sharp and clean after the musty confines of the house. She pulled her borrowed shawl tighter and surveyed the devastation.
It was worse than she'd thought.
The formal gardens that had once been the pride of Sussex were now a tangle of dead vegetation and overgrown paths. Box hedges had exploded into shapeless masses. Rose bushes were skeletal nightmares of thorns. The fountain, their fountain,was cracked and filled with black leaves.
But there, along the west wall, was their rose.
Clara's breath caught.
It hadn't just survived…it had thrived with the kind of aggressive determination that would have made its gardeners proud. It covered nearly twenty feet of wall now, an enormous tangle of canes that even in winter showed signs of vigorous life. She could see the buds already forming, bringing promises of spring in the midst of decay.
"You beautiful thing," she whispered, approaching slowly. "You survived everything, didn't you?"
"Talking to plants is the first sign of madness."
Clara didn't jump, she was getting used to Gabriel's ability to appear silently behind her. "I thought the first sign was accepting employment from reclusive dukes."
"That's the second sign. The third is actually believing you can save them."
