Chapter 4: The Confrontation in the Garden
The tea party was a form of torture. The clink of porcelain, the dry rustle of silk, the vapid laughter that floated like pollen on the thick, perfumed air—it stuck in Jennie’s throat. Lady Maria’s voice droned on about lineage and the proper fermentation of leaves. Jennie watched a fly batter itself against the windowpane, its desperate buzzing a soundtrack to her own suffocation.
She excused herself with a muttered, unconvincing word about a headache, and fled.
The rose garden was not a place of gentle contemplation. It was a riot. The Manoban ancestors had planted these roses centuries ago, and they had grown stubborn and vehement, rejecting the order imposed on the topiary near the house. Here, the blooms were violently red, deeply gold, unnervingly white. Thorns curled like claws. The air vibrated with the drunken industry of bees, and the scent was so heavy it felt like a taste on the tongue—sweet, but with a dark, green rot underneath.
She walked barefoot, having kicked her slippers off on the terrace, the damp, cool earth a relief. She trailed her fingers along the rough stems, not minding the occasional prick. It was real. It was sharp. It was better.
Then she heard the voices.
Low. Measured. A man’s and a woman’s.
She went still, a predator catching a scent. Through a lattice of tangled canes and full-bodied crimson blooms, she saw them. Leonid stood bathed in the late afternoon honey-light, his profile severe. And beside him, looking up at him with a gaze of practiced admiration, was Lady Sera.
Jennie knew of her. Everyone did. The daughter of a count with dwindling coffers and soaring ambition. She was elegance personified, her hair the color of wheat, her gown a waterfall of ice-blue silk. She was saying something, her voice a melodious murmur. Leonid listened, his head tilted in that way he had, the way that meant he was absorbing every strategic syllable.
A hot, sour wave crashed through Jennie’s chest. It was the same feeling as seeing a stranger touch her only possession. It was a primal, red hate.
She didn’t think. She moved.
Pushing through a gap in the hedge, thorns catching at her simple muslin skirts, she emerged into their secluded clearing with the sudden, disruptive energy of a fallen branch. Both of them turned. Leonid’s eyes flashed—annoyance, then a warning so sharp she felt it in her teeth. Lady Sera offered a polite, bewildered smile.
“Leonid!” Jennie chirped, her voice too loud for the space. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
She closed the distance and, before he could step back, looped her arm through his. She pressed the entire length of her side against him, feeling the stiff silk of his doublet, the unyielding muscle of his arm beneath. He was rigid as oak.
“Lady Sera, may I present Jennie,” Leonid said, his voice a controlled monotone. “A ward of our household.”
“A sister,” Jennie corrected, beaming a smile that showed too many teeth. “His dearest sister. We are so very close. Isn’t that right, Leo?” She used the nickname she knew he despised, tilting her head to rest her temple against his shoulder for a sickening moment. “I was just thinking this morning how I miss our talks. In your bedchamber. Before the dawn.” She sighed, a theatrical little sound. “You always give the best counsel when you’re half-asleep. Though you do hog the blankets.”
Lady Sera’s perfect complexion went from porcelain to a blotchy pink. Her smile froze, then trembled. The implication hung in the fragrant air, ugly and unmistakable.
“I… see,” Lady Sera stammered. Her eyes darted from Jennie’s wild, tangled hair and bare feet to Leonid’s stony face. “I should… I should rejoin the party. My mother will be wondering.”
“A pleasure,” Leonid said, the words ice-chipped.
The moment Lady Sera’s blue silk vanished around the hedge, the atmosphere shattered. Leonid’s hand locked around Jennie’s wrist, a vise of bone and sinew. The pain was instant, bright.
He didn’t speak. He yanked her off the path, dragging her behind a towering, thorn-choked hedge that blocked them from the house. The soil was wet here, sucking at her feet. He released her wrist only to spin her and push her back against the rough stone of the garden wall, his other hand planting itself beside her head, caging her in.
His face was inches from hers. The cold fury in his eyes was a living thing. Up close, she could see the faint pulse hammering in his temple, the tiny flecks of amber in the dark brown irises.
“What,” he hissed, his breath hot against her lips, smelling of the expensive tea he must have been forced to drink, “game are you playing?”
Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs, but she lifted her chin. The imprint of his fingers bloomed on her wrist. “No game. I was just telling the truth. We do talk in your bedchamber.”
“You are destroying any semblance of reputation you have left.”
“I never had one. And I don’t want one she can fit into.”
“This is not about what you want!” His voice dropped, a low, dangerous vibration. “That was a political conversation. Her family’s shipping lanes could save ours from a very costly conflict. You just turned me into a gossip-ridden libertine in her eyes.”
“Good.” The word was a spit. “Let her think you’re corrupted. Let her think you’re tainted. Then maybe she won’t want you.”
He stared at her, a muscle leaping in his jaw. The sheer, bewildered outrage on his face was almost satisfying. “You think this is about want? You think any of this is about personal desire?” He leaned closer, the weight of his body not touching hers but radiating a heat that was just as confining. “My life is not a page from your storybook. It is ledgers, and alliances, and securing a future for everyone under this roof. Including you, you feral little idiot.”
The insult, the sheer dismissiveness, cracked something open in her. The fear and jealousy melted into a hotter, more reckless fury.
“Then secure me!” she shouted, the sound raw in the quiet garden. A bee buzzed past her ear, indifferent. “You’re so good at securing everything else! Secure me to you! Lock me in your ledger if you have to!”
For a second, he was silent. The only sound was their ragged breathing, mingling in the humid air. His gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth, then down to the neckline of her dress, where her pulse hammered in the hollow of her throat. The anger in his eyes didn’t fade, but it changed, deepening into something more complex, more terrifying.
His voice, when it came, was barely a whisper, all its beautiful music turned into a rough, discordant scrape.
“You have no idea what you’re asking for. You think it’s blankets and whispered secrets at dawn. It is not.” He pushed off from the wall, suddenly putting a foot of cold, fragrant air between them. He looked at her as if she were a complicated, unsolvable problem written in a foreign tongue. “Return to the house. Put on your shoes. And if you come near me again before this party ends, I will have you confined to the north wing for a month.”
He turned and walked away, his boots crushing petals into the dark earth.
Jennie slumped against the sun-warmed stone, the fight draining out of her, leaving only a deep, aching hollow. She looked at the blooming red mark on her wrist, a perfect bracelet of his fury. She brought it to her lips, pressing the sting against them.
He hadn’t denied it. He hadn’t said he wanted Lady Sera. He’d just said it wasn’t about want.
That, she thought as the bees droned on around her, was the only thing she had to hold onto. It was a thin, sharp straw. She clung to it until her fingers bled.