"The gardens, you mean."
"Yes. The gardens."
He stood beside her, staring at the rose with an expression she couldn't read. He'd put on a greatcoat but no hat, and the wind ruffled his dark hair in ways that made him look younger, more like the boy she'd known.
"It's magnificent," Clara said.
"It's a menace. It's probably destroyed the wall's integrity."
"It's holding the wall together."
"With what authority do you make that assessment?"
"With the authority of someone who actually looks at things instead of brooding at them from windows."
"I don't brood."
"You're brooding right now."
"This is contemplation."
"This is definitely brooding."
“I cannot abide it,” he said suddenly, viciously.
Clara turned to look at him fully. "The rose?"
"Everything. The gardens. The house. The title. The whole damned estate." He gestured wildly at the devastation around them. "It's all dying, and I'm supposed to care, supposed to fix it, and supposed to be the duke my father wanted. But I can't even keep the gardens alive."
"You dismissed the gardeners."
"They stared."
"At your scar?"
"At everything. My scar. My drinking. My refusal to enter into matrimony with some simpering debutante and produce an heir like a prize breeding stallion."
"So you let it all die out of spite?"
"I let it die out of honesty. Everything I touch dies eventually. Why pretend otherwise?"
Clara wanted to argue, but something in his voice stopped her. This wasn't his usual bitter theatrics. This was real pain, raw and badly healed as his scar.
"Show me," she said instead.
"What?"
"The gardens. All of them. Show me what they used to be."
"Why?"
"Because I need to know what I'm working with. And because you need to remember that things can come back from the world beyond.”
"Very poetic. Also completely untrue."
"Our rose came back."
"It never left."
