Chapter 36

Every time the servants saw Lea’s pale, thin figure, she reminded them of a ghost drifting through the corridors of an old castle from a legend. Having lived and worked in this ducal residence where Lady Ellarod had once commanded everything for nearly ten years, they found it genuinely difficult to accept this faint, drifting presence as their duchess. At least in their hearts.

Even Owen himself never said a word about his wife Lea. He didn’t even exchange the most perfunctory greeting that a couple, however loveless, would ordinarily offer each other out of basic respect. He treated Lea not merely with coldness but with something close to outright disregard. It wasn’t only his love that was absent. Even the authority that should rightfully have belonged to Lea as mistress of the house was still held entirely by the head maid Amelia. The servants had started placing bets on how many years it would be before Lea was turned out.

“But she is a little pitiable, isn’t she. She doesn’t seem like a bad person!”

Even while making those bets, the servants felt a measure of guilt. Lea genuinely wasn’t a bad person. There were plenty of mistresses who slapped maids for disobedience or assigned them unpleasant tasks as punishment. Lea, by contrast, had never given the servants any unreasonable punishment, or even an order.

Looks of pity and contempt, curiosity and unease poured over Lea in a complicated mixture. But to Lea, it didn’t matter which. The eyes themselves were what tormented her.

Hatred hurts a person, but resignation makes a person ill. Lea grew paler by the day and lost weight. The young mistress had been thin enough when she arrived that there seemed to be no flesh on her at all, and now she was gaunt as a bare winter tree. The servants clicked their tongues every time she passed. At this rate, she would end up in a coffin rather than a hospital.

“Oh, Head Maid! I have something to tell you!”

“What is it?”

“I happened to see the lady the other day, and she looked terribly thin! Her color was poor too! She must surely be unwell. Shouldn’t we call a doctor?”

The gardener, who was approaching forty and easily frightened but equally easily moved to sympathy, couldn’t help but notice. In this fine season, the mistress of the house was wilting like a plant kept in the shade. Moved by pity, he raised the matter carefully when Amelia came to settle the cost of the garden seedlings.

“The lady is fine. If she were unwell, her personal physician would come to examine her at any time. There is no need for you to concern yourself with the lady’s health, Mr. Paul. Now, how are the preparations for summer coming along? What became of the seedlings we discussed?”

But Amelia dismissed the gardener’s concern without a pause. Her cold reply made the gardener named Paul uncomfortable. Word had it that this head maid was stirring the master against the mistress because she didn’t want to give up the authority she held. Wicked woman. Paul’s eyes twitched as he recalled the rumor Mrs. Colden had been spreading. But he answered politely enough.

“Not yet! But the hydrangeas have budded. The wholesalers have given me their word on the other seedlings too, so there won’t be any delays. This is a ducal house order, after all!”

“Good. Hydrangeas fade early, so be careful not to leave any damaged blooms. And don’t forget to plant the roses when the hydrangeas are cleared.”

Paul’s expression soured again at Amelia’s words. Managing the garden was properly the mistress’s right, wasn’t it? Ordinarily the mistress of the house would choose the flowers she liked and tell the gardener. Until now, the absence of a mistress due to unfortunate circumstances had meant Amelia decided everything, but the master now had a proper wife. Paul cleared his throat and instead of answering Amelia’s instructions, asked:

“Yes, well. That’s how it’s always been, but this time shouldn’t we ask the lady? She might not care for hydrangeas or roses! Though I’ll grant you, it’s quite rare to find a noblewoman who dislikes roses.”

“That is for the master to decide. It would be best if you focused on your own work, Mr. Paul.”

But Amelia was unmoved by Paul’s suggestion. She continued in her flat, expressionless tone, as though she were reciting from a script.

Paul had nothing more to say. After Amelia left and he was trimming the dead leaves from the hydrangeas, the coachman, one of his drinking companions, came over clicking his tongue.

“Come on, Paul. What good does it do you to take the side of a woman who’s about to disappear.”

“That’s not something anyone can know for certain!”

Paul snorted at the coachman’s advice.

“I know what you’re trying to say. But you never know how things will turn out. Think of Lady Ellarod. Who could have predicted what happened to her!”

Paul had spent his whole life tending to flowers and trees that couldn’t speak, and perhaps because of that, he was unusually sensitive to human feeling. It was much the same reason that someone who had lived on plain, unsalted porridge all their life had a more finely tuned palate than someone who ate lavish meals every day.

Unlike the other servants, Paul didn’t believe Owen would truly use Lea and then discard her cruelly, as he had Lady Ellarod. Something essential was missing from Owen’s eyes for that kind of cruelty. Only complete indifference could carry out something so terrible. To forget someone you had locked away in a distant island hospital required not just hatred but the ability to erase them entirely from your mind.

Right. You never know how things will turn out. And Lady Ellarod and this mistress are different people. Different people don’t have to meet the same end.

Back in the garden tending to the hydrangeas, Paul nodded to himself in agreement with his own thoughts. Besides, he had seen with his own eyes the look on the master’s face when he watched his young mistress. The expression on the master’s face as he watched the mistress staring blankly at the garden was not indifference but something that could only be called obsession. A kind of tenacity, like iron filings clinging to a magnet. It was not the look of someone who had forgotten. It was far too full of lingering attachment to be the gaze of a man who would coldly cut away a flower that had served its purpose and wilted.

Yes, lingering attachment.

There it was in the man’s green eyes, the kind of attachment one might feel remembering a flower that had once blazed with beauty, a flower that now brought only pain every time it was seen, and yet could not be cut down.

Of course, Paul knew nothing about Owen and Lea. Like the others, he believed Lea was the daughter of a foreign businessman with a mental illness. But as a gardener, he trusted what he saw in a person’s eyes and manner more than any amount of talk, the same way he trusted the silent language of flowers and trees.

So deep in his heart, Paul felt a vague but strangely firm conviction that someday, perhaps, that flower might bloom again.

❀❀❀

Contrary to Amelia’s assurance, Lea truly began to fall ill.

The days were growing steadily hotter. This country, set between two great rivers, suffered not only from the heat when summer came but from the humidity, which was the most troublesome visitor of the season.

The ducal servants threw the windows open every morning and moved briskly through the house. They checked regularly on items that couldn’t afford to absorb moisture and placed dehumidifying pouches filled with salt and herbs throughout the residence. Some of the objects in their care were worth more than a lifetime of their wages, and everyone kept their nerves sharp as they tended to them.