There was a pause.
"You have kept it six years, I understand."
"Yes, my lord."
"Alone."
"Mostly. Her ladyship has been kind enough to help of late."
He said it simply, without any weight, and the Earl felt his hands close behind his back until the knuckles ached. Her ladyship has been kind enough. The man said it so easily. He said it as though it were nothing at all.
"Yes," Lucian said, very evenly. "I have noticed that her ladyship is kind."
Samuel Hale looked at the Earl's back, and a faint line appeared between his brows. He was not a quick man with people, but he was a patient one, and patience, which is only attention that has learned to wait, had taught him more about the human weather than any amount of cleverness. He thought: Something has happened. Something is wrong in this house.
"My lord," he said carefully, "if there is anything—"
"That will be all, Hale."
"Very good, my lord."
He bowed and withdrew, and stood for a moment in the dim corridor outside the library, frowning at the polished floor. Then he went back to his glasshouse, because the orchid would not wait, and because he did not know what else to do.
Chapter Seven: The Night It Bloomed
He sat up with the orchid on the night of the twentieth.
It was an old habit from the days when he had kept the plant alone, and he had not been able to break it. There was a chair beside the shelf, a thin rug, a lantern turned low, and a flask of tea going cold on the floor. He had no great expectation of anything happening before dawn. But he had learned over six years that the thing he loved had a mind of its own, and that the only way to be present for it was simply to be present.
At about midnight the door opened, very softly.
"Mr. Hale?"
"My lady." He rose at once. "You should be abed."
"I could not sleep. I came to see—" She stopped. She stood in the lantern light in a plain grey cloak with her hair down her back, looking suddenly very young. "Is it going to open?"