(Ruby's POV)
The conservatory becomes my sanctuary.
For three days, it's my secret. I wake, I'm brought my silent breakfast, and as soon as the maid leaves, I escape to the glass room. No one follows me. No one seems to care.
I learn the rhythms of this dead wing of the house. The pipes clank heat into the space at ten, fighting a losing battle against the Scottish cold. The best light, weak and milky, filters through the cleaner panes between eleven and two. I've found a stash of potting mix, fertilizer, and tools in a rusty cabinet. Liam was right—his uncle's supplies.
My first act of rebellion is water. Cool, clear life. I give each parched orchid a careful drink, talking to them softly like I used to talk to Mia when she was in pain. "There you go. Just a little. Don't give up."
My second act is assessment. I sketch them in the small notebook I begged from a confused maid. Not beautiful illustrations, but clinical notes. Phalaenopsis: root rot suspected, aerial roots brittle. Dendrobium: pseudobulbs shriveled, likely temperature shock. It's something to do. A problem I can understand and fight.
On the third morning, I find a tray left just inside the conservatory door. Not my breakfast tray. This one holds a proper ceramic watering can, a new bag of rich, dark orchid mix, a pair of sharp, clean pruning shears, and a spray bottle.
No note.
I pick up the shears. They're high-quality, lightweight, and fit perfectly in my hand. Did Mrs. MacLeod leave these? The silent, stern housekeeper who warned me about rules? Or… him?
The thought sends a shiver down my spine that has nothing to do with the chill. Is he watching me? Does he know I'm here, defying the unspoken rule to be a quiet, decorative ghost?
The gift feels like a test. A green light to continue, or a trap being set.
I decide it doesn't matter. The Cymbidium with the yellow leaves needs repotting. I get to work, my hands in the dirt, the earthy smell a grounding comfort. For a few hours, I forget the locked doors and the echoing halls. There is only the root system in my hands, fragile and desperate for care.
I'm so focused I don't hear her approach.
"It's a fool's errand."
I startle, nearly dropping the orchid. Mrs. MacLeod stands in the doorway, her hands folded, her expression unreadable.
"They've been dying for years," she continues, stepping inside. Her eyes sweep over my makeshift workstation—the pots, the tools, the dirt on my dress. "No one could ever make them thrive here. The light's wrong. The air's too cold."
I sit back on my heels, wiping a smudge of soil from my cheek. "Maybe they just needed someone to try."
A flicker of something passes behind her eyes. Not approval. Acknowledgement, maybe. "You're wasting your time."
"It's my time to waste, isn't it?" I say it more boldly than I feel.
She studies me for a long moment. "The Master requests your presence at dinner tonight. Eight o'clock. In the main dining hall."
The blood drains from my face. Dinner. With him. The clinical voice in the dark. The owner of the warm, assessing hand. My heart kicks into a frantic gallop.
"Requests?" My voice is a whisper.
"It is not a request you may decline," she says, and the finality in her tone leaves no room for argument. "You will be shown to your room at seven to prepare. Suitable attire will be provided."
She turns to leave, then pauses, glancing back at the orchid in my hands. "He knows you're here. In this room. He knows what you're doing."
Then she's gone, leaving me with a pot of roots and a tidal wave of dread.
---
The "suitable attire" is a simple, long black dress. It's elegant, severe, and fits me as perfectly as everything else in this place. It feels like another uniform. The maid, Sarah, helps me into it, her fingers quick and nervous. She tries to do something with my hair, but I shake my head.
"It's fine like this." My rebellion is small, pathetic, but it's mine.
At exactly eight, Mrs. MacLeod appears and leads me through the labyrinth of the manor. We don't go to the cavernous entrance hall, but down a different, even wider corridor lined with suits of armor that seem to watch us pass. The air grows colder.
She opens a pair of towering, carved oak doors.
The dining hall is a scene from a Gothic nightmare. It's long enough to host a joust. A table that could seat fifty stretches into the distance, polished to a mirror shine. A hundred candles flicker in crystal chandeliers and sconces, casting dancing, monstrous shadows on the dark paneled walls. The only place settings are at the very far end of the table, and at the very head.
He is already seated at the head.
He is a silhouette against the roaring fire in the giant hearth behind him. The distance between us is a football field of polished wood and silent judgment. I can't see his face. He's just a shape, broad-shouldered and immobile.
Mrs. MacLeod gives me a small nudge. "Your seat, Miss Banks."
My legs are lead as I walk the endless length of the room. The click-clack of my borrowed heels on the floor is the only sound. I feel his gaze on me every step of the way. When I finally reach the chair, a footman I hadn't even noticed materializes to pull it out for me.
I sink into it. The plate before me is china so thin I'm afraid to breathe on it. The silverware is heavy, solid silver. A single, perfect red rose lies beside my plate.
"Leave us."
His voice. It rolls down the length of the table, deeper and more resonant than I remembered from the dark hotel room. It's not loud, but it fills the enormous space effortlessly.
The staff—Mrs. MacLeod, the footman—melt away. The doors close with a soft, definitive thud.
We are alone. Me, and the shadow at the head of the table.
A first course appears, delivered through a hidden door in the paneling by unseen hands. It's a soup, something creamy and fragrant. I don't touch it.
"You've been tending the orchids."
I jump at his voice. He hasn't moved. He's not eating either.
"Yes," I say, my voice barely carrying the distance.
"Why?"
The question throws me. "They were dying."
"Everything here is dying, Miss Banks. In one way or another." He pauses. I see the faintest movement as he lifts his wine glass. "It is the nature of the place. You cannot fight nature."
"You can try," I say, a spark of that defiance lighting up again. "You can at least care for the things in your keeping."
A beat of silence. The fire crackles.
"And do you feel you are in my keeping?" he asks, and his tone is dangerously mild.
I grip the edge of the table. "I am in your keeping. Aren't I?"
"You are." No hesitation. "Tell me, do you find your… accommodations… adequate?"
It's such a bizarre, polite question in this terrifying context. "The room is beautiful."
"That is not what I asked."
I look down at my untouched soup. "It feels like a very expensive tomb."
For the first time, there's a reaction from the shadow. A slight shift. A quiet, dry sound that might be the ghost of a laugh. "An apt description. And yet, you prefer the company of dying plants to it."
"The plants don't look at me like I'm a ghost," I whisper, more to myself than to him.
The hidden door opens, and the soup is whisked away, replaced by a plate of some intricate meat and vegetable arrangement. The performance of a normal dinner is surreal.
"The staff have their instructions," he says. "Their discretion is a form of respect. For you, and for me."
"It feels like being erased."
"Perhaps being erased is safer than being seen." He finally moves, cutting into his food. The clink of his knife and fork is precise, sharp. "You asked 'for how long?' The other night. The answer is still the same. Permanently. This is your life now. The room. The garden. The silence. Me."
He says it with such calm finality. This is it. Forever. My chest tightens, panic fluttering behind my ribs.
"And my sister?" I force the question out. "Mia. Is she…"
"Her treatment continues. She is stable. You have my word." He says it like a banker stating a fact. A transaction holding steady. "Your compliance ensures her comfort. Your… rebellion… would have consequences. For her."
The threat is clear, cold, and absolute. Any spark of defiance I felt in the conservatory shrivels and dies. This is the reality. I am a leash around Mia's neck, and he holds the other end.
We eat in silence for what feels like an eternity. Each bite of the exquisite food is like ash in my mouth. I can feel the weight of his attention, even from twenty feet away. It's not the assessing, clinical gaze from the inspection. This is different. Watchful. Curious.
When the final plate is cleared, leaving only the rose between us, he speaks again.
"You found your mother's painting."
My head snaps up. How does he know? Was Liam not just a friendly groundskeeper? Was he a spy?
"I did," I say, my throat dry.
"She had a singular eye. A talent for seeing the light in barren places." He pauses. "A trait it seems she passed on."
Is that a compliment? It doesn't feel like one. It feels like he's cataloging another one of my features.
"How did you know her?" I dare to ask.
The shadow goes very still. "She was commissioned. A long time ago. To capture the manor before it fell completely into shadow." He stands then, abruptly. He's taller than I imagined, his silhouette dominating the firelight. "That is all you need to know."
He begins to walk, not toward the main doors, but toward a smaller, shadowed archway at the side of the hall. As he passes the edge of the candlelight, I get another stolen glimpse.
The sharp line of his jaw, tense. The elegant drape of his dark dinner jacket over broad shoulders. The way his hair, black as the night outside, falls just so. It's infuriating. He's just a man. A beautiful, terrible man.
He stops at the archway, half in shadow.
"You revive dead things, Miss Banks," he says, and his voice is low, almost intimate in the vast room. "A dangerous hobby in a place like this."
And then he's gone, disappearing into the dark passages of his own house.
I'm left alone at the endless table, with a single red rose and a warning that sinks deeper into my bones than the cold.
He's not just telling me to leave the orchids alone.
He's telling me not to revive anything else.
Not my spirit. Not my hope. And certainly not the ghosts of the past—like the ghost of my mother, whose painting hides a secret sketch, and whose connection to this man is a mystery that suddenly feels like the most forbidden thing of all.