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“For the mistress of this house.” Not a question.

Angelo met his eye. “You know her.”

“I’ve kept these grounds nigh fifty years, Mr. Scott. I’ve seen a fair bit.” The face under the weather was hard to read. Angelo saw a scar on one knuckle and soil in the lines of the hands. “She’s a good lass. Lonely. Too lonely, if ye ask me. Been in those walls since she was small. Used to come out when she was wee and help me pinch the dead heads. Then the world taught her different, and the walls took her back. I’ve waited a long time to see a man come looking for her instead of looking through her.”

“I want to help her.” He kept the line low. The stove popped. He did not look away from Elias. “I want her to see she need not hide. That she is fine, not in spite of the mark, but because it belongs to her. That she is owed love and laughter, and a life in day, not only in shade. I cannot take the years back. I can put a flower in her hands and mean it. That is the start I have.”

Because the six days had taught him this. The trouble was not what he thought of Isolde. He had told her she was beautiful. He had tried every way he knew. It had not been enough.

The trouble was what Isolde thought of Isolde.

She could not take his word because she could not believe any eye would find her fine. Years of closed doors and of hiding and of being told her face was a thing to be ashamed of had built walls around the heart that speech could not break. She needed a thing she could see and hold and keep. She needed proof that a fault could be treasured, that difference could be the prize, and that what set her apart was what made her the one.

The tulip was that proof.

“I need a word carried.” He turned full to Elias. “Mrs. Roskelly. She is the one who can reach her in the ways, sì? Can you fetch her? Tell her I have something to show the mistress of this house. Something I crossed Cornwall to find.”

Elias was quiet. Slowly, a smile cut the weathered face. It was the first true one Angelo had seen on him.

“I’ll fetch her. And Mr. Scott? I hope it takes. That lass is owed a bit of joy, after what she’s carried.”

He went. Angelo stood alone with the bloom and the thin heat of hope. He looked at the petals and set himself to be as plain and as sure as he had ever been.

When Mrs. Roskelly came, pink from the frozen path and out of breath, her shawl slipping, he started before she could speak. She had her keys. She always had her keys. He had learned that much. The rest of her face said she had come ready to refuse him and had not yet decided if she would.

“Mrs. Roskelly. I know you have kept her. I know you have shut the door on her name and done all you could to put a shield between her and the world. I honor that. I am not the world. I am a man who loves her. All of her. Including the mark she thinks put her beyond love. I have spent six days hunting Cornwall for this.” He tipped his head at the pot under glass. “I need her to see it. I need her to take the meaning. Please. Per favore. Help me reach her.”

Mrs. Roskelly stared. Her bright blue eyes went wide. Then she looked at the tulip and her face eased. Wet gathered there.

“Ye really do love her.” The admission sat low in her throat. “I thought perhaps … but young men turn, and she’s been hurt so often …”

“I do not turn.” There was no give in it. “I will sit in this glasshouse until she comes, if that is what it takes. I will stay at Grimsfell weeks. Months. Years. I will not go until she knows she is fine, and kept, and owed every good this life can give.”

A long quiet held. Then she gave a single nod, sure of it.

“Wait here. I’ll tell her ye’re back. The rest … the rest sits with her.”

She bustled toward the hall. The glasshouse door slapped softly. Angelo waited in the warmth, among growing things and the smell of a chance. A drop of condensation ran down a pane. He watched it and did not wipe it. His hands wanted something to do. He left them at his sides. If he touched the bell again he would only fuss. The stove ticked. Somewhere a pot of mint gave off a thin green breath. He thought of Marco, who would have clapped him on the back and told him to stop looking as if he were about to be sentenced. He wished for that clap. He stood without it.

* * *

The message came like a thunderclap, shattering the gray monotony of another endless day.

“Miss Isolde! Miss Isolde, are ye there?”

Mrs. Roskelly’s voice echoed through the door to Isolde’s tower room, breathless and urgent in a way that made Isolde’s heart seize with sudden terror. Had something happened? Was someone hurt? Was⁠—

“Mr. Scott has returned! He be in the hothouse, and he’s asking for ye, and⁠—”

But Isolde did not hear the rest.

He has returned.

The words crashed over her like a wave, stealing her breath and sending her pulse racing so fast she felt dizzy with it. Angelo had returned. He had not abandoned her after all. She had driven him away with her silence and her fear, but he had come back.

He came back for me.

She was running before she even made the conscious decision to move. She burst past Mrs. Roskelly, who was still speaking, down the hidden stairs, through the narrow passages, past the grates that had been her windows to the world for so many lonely years, flying toward the exit near the kitchen without a backward glance.