He had once told me about a man who ate the seeds believing them medicinal and spent three days convinced he was being pursued by demons. He had laughed while telling it—that contagious, helpless laugh reserved for stories that were terrible and funny in equal measure.
Next wasAconitum napellusfrom the Alps, commonly known as Monkshood. The seedling’s leaves were already showing the distinctive palmate shape that would deepen as it matured. I recorded its vigorous growth rate, noting that Dr. Ambrose had cultivated it from seed rather than root division—a difficult propagation method, but one that produced more potent specimens. The ancient name for it was wolfsbane, given because it was capable of killing a wolf within minutes.
ThenTaxus baccata. The English yew was slow-growing even in ideal conditions. Every part of it was lethal except the red aril surrounding the seed, a small, sweet mercy wrapped around something capable of stopping a heart. The ancient druids had considered it sacred, a guardian of the boundary between life and death.
I lost myself in the familiar rhythm of identification and notation—the leaf structures, the growth patterns, the recording of soil conditions and watering schedules—leaving out the more honest descriptions:beautiful, patient, willing.
I was labeling a particularly delicate specimen—Artemisia absinthium, wormwood, with its distinctive silver-green leaves and bitter aromatic oils—whenthe greenhouse door opened, and Hawthorne glided in with that unhurried grace of his.
He did not acknowledge me or Dr. Ambrose. He simply walked to the far side of the greenhouse, where a collection of flowering plants sat in a row of clay pots, and began tending them—deadheading spent flowers, removing yellowed leaves, adjusting stakes with a gentleness that seemed at odds with everything else about him. His fingers brushed the blooms with such tenderness that I thought, for one deranged instant, perhaps the plants were the only things that recognized him as kin.
I leaned forward for a better angle as he paused over a cornflower. His touch moved across the silky petals, and the flower seemed to respond. The leaves lifted. The petals opened a fraction more, appearing to draw something vital from his touch.
I sat back, almost smiling.
I was being absurd.
He was simply an excellent gardener with an unfortunate condition. Perhaps he had some muscular disorder that affected his movements and gave him that odd, stilted quality, or a childhood illness that left him sickly. Yes, that had to be it.
My attention drifted back to him three more times before I forced it to remain on the wormwood. I was deep in this fruitless battle with my own curiosity when I became aware of Dr. Ambrose behind me.
He leaned against the doorframe between the greenhouse and his study, arms crossed, watching me with interest.
How long had he been standing there?
“I think that is enough for today,” he said, glancing up to where the light was beginning to fade through the glass panels. The sun hung low, shards of orange light cutting into the stone floor.
I looked around, genuinely surprised. Hours had passed without my noticing.
Hawthorne slipped past us now, moving through the door. Dr. Ambrose maneuvered aside to let him leave, neither acknowledging the other.
“Already?” I asked, turning my attention back to him.
“You have been at it for quite some time.” He straightened from the doorframe, but made no move toward me, keeping the distance between us. “You work thoroughly, Miss Reed. Your father must have trained you well.”
The praise warmed a place in me I tried very hard to ignore. I did not want to care what he thought of my work, and yet I was not entirely successful in that ambition.
“Did you know my father?” I asked, brushing soil from my hands onto the canvas apron he had provided as I approached the doorway.
He hesitated, then nodded. “For a time.”
“Yet you and I have never met before now.” The words emerged as a statement, though my tongue ached to make them a question.
At what point had he known my father? Had we met, and had the memory simply been lost to the darkness?
“No,” he replied, suddenly distracted by a speck of dirt on the floor, toeing it with his boot. “A shame, really. I imagine we would have got on quite well.”
A flush crept up my cheeks when he lifted his gaze to me again, warmth alight in his honeyed eyes. I forced myself to look away.
“You should go in for supper,” he said, graciously changing the subject. “Agnes is probably convinced I will work you into starvation on your first day, and I would rather not prove her right.”
“Of course,” I replied, the words sticky in my throat. “I would hate for her to think poorly of me for letting her food grow cold.”
He stepped aside to let me pass, making no move to follow.
I paused, looking back as I untied the apron and hung it on the hook next to the door. “Are you not coming?”
He shook his head, already turning back toward his workbench where the belladonna specimen waited with the patience only dead things possessed.
