A Garden Without Roses

The strange letter arrived on the morning of the seventh of March.

Winter, uncommonly long and cruel, was still having its way with the world; snow lay thick along the mountain slopes of our land.

My sister's letter, crowded with things I could make no sense of at all, ended with a promise that she would come home in time for our mother's death anniversary.

Our mother's anniversary fell on the fifteenth of March. Even when that day came, my sister did not.

In her place, a telegram arrived from House Cecilla.

That was what the telegram of the sixteenth of March had to say.

Four years earlier, when our father, Baron Dvorden, had died without warning, Dorothy and I had divided our duties between us. It was the only way to keep the barony from the jackals who had begun to circle House Dvorden the moment he was gone. Sifting a worthwhile man from the fools who flooded me with proposals had been my task. Dorothy's had been to go up to the capital, marry into a respectable noble house, and find us someone who would stand as a shield for our name. It had been her scheme as much as mine; she had always looked toward the nobles of the capital with longing.

My sister, who had been so vividly lovely, so fresh and bright, fell into a burning love with Viscount Michael Cecilla the moment she arrived in the capital. The two of them married in a whirlwind, barely three months after they met.

And so four years passed. Dorothy, wife of Viscount Cecilla, took her own life.

Leaving behind a single bizarre letter that made no more sense no matter how many times I read it.

I packed my bags the instant the telegram arrived.

The estate could be left in the butler's hands for a while. The household that had served House Dvorden for so many years would keep the barony safe in my absence — and even if they could not, I had no choice.

Suicide.

Dorothy was not a child who would throw herself from a window.

Something had happened to her. Whether she had truly taken her own life, and if she had, for what possible reason — I needed to see it with my own eyes.

On the twenty-first of March I arrived in Caliwood, the imperial capital, dressed in black mourning, and walked through the gates of the Cecilla manor.

White magnolias were blooming with an elegant grace, and forsythia lined the path, their buds splitting open one after another. I crossed that garden and knocked at the front door. The butler showed me into the drawing room.

An expressionless maid brought tea to me as I sat alone in that unfamiliar parlor. She told me the viscount would be down shortly, and I called her back as she turned to leave.

"The forsythia is in bloom. Does this estate have a rose garden as well?"

"There are no roses at this manor, my lady."

"I see. Very well."

After she had gone, I drank my tea slowly.

The letter my sister had written on the second of March had been signed, quite clearly, from a place that could not exist.

Even if the estate had possessed such a garden, roses would not have bloomed until May. They could not possibly have been billowing in the first days of March, when the last cold of early spring still had its teeth in the air. And yet that was what she had written.

A Cecilla garden where the roses billowed — where, exactly, was that supposed to be?

Beyond the window, the gardens of the viscount's manor were stirring with every flower that knew how to welcome an early spring. In this house, where my sister — more beautiful than any of those blossoms — had withered away to nothing.

I emptied my cup, and emptied it again, and emptied it once more. Viscount Cecilla did not appear.

I summoned the maid and asked, making no effort to hide my displeasure, how much longer I was expected to wait. She offered only a useless I-couldn't-say and hurried out of sight.

I skipped the meal entirely and sat like a stone in that drawing room until the sun went down. When even the maid stopped coming, I shoved myself up and walked out.

My stride widened without my meaning it to. For all the years I had spent refusing to let my feelings show, I was furiously, unmistakably angry.

I was near the entrance, moving down the corridor, when I saw the butler who had first received me turn hastily away. He had met my eyes. There was no question of it.

I went after him at a pace that was nearly a run and caught him by the scruff of the neck. Caught him, quite literally. When I yanked the back of his jacket with a violence I did not bother to disguise, the butler spun around, his face a picture of disbelief.

"What is the meaning of this, my lady?"

"Where is the viscount?"

He twisted free of my hand as he turned, and his reply was stiff.

"His Lordship is out."

"Out? Did you not inform him that I had arrived?"

"Of course I did. But a matter of great urgency arose, and he left the house in haste."

"Then you might have told me he had gone out."

"Did you not say you would wait for him, my lady? I intended to inform you the moment he returned."

The sheer brass of it stole my breath, but I had no more time to waste. I stepped into the path of a butler whose only thought was escape, and asked again.

"Where did he go? I will go to him myself."

"I am not at liberty to say, my lady. I do not know myself where His Lordship has gone."

"Then when is he coming back?"

"I do not know that either. The hour is late. If you will retire to your lodgings, we will send word the moment His Lordship returns."

His tone was courteous. The dismissal could not have been clearer.

The look in his eyes said that my circumstances — that I had received the news of my only sister's death and come all this way — were no concern of his. And the story of some urgent business that had sent Viscount Cecilla fleeing the house after locking me in a drawing room was a lie, I was certain of it.

I was beyond appalled.

Even while Dorothy was alive, the viscount and I had never been close. But to be ignored this openly, this shamelessly — I had not expected that. He owed me an explanation of what had happened, at the very least. He owed me the courtesy of telling me where my sister was now, the sister whose funeral he claimed to have already rushed through as a formality. He could not treat me this way. I was as good as the only blood kin his dead wife had left in the world.

The truth was that I had felt it from the moment I set foot in the house. Nowhere in that beautiful mansion was there a trace of grief for a lost mistress. The place was nothing but splendor, as if a woman named Dorothy had never existed at all.

I wanted to seize the butler by the collar and shake him, calm face and all, but I clenched my fists until my palms ached and held myself still. Whatever came out of his mouth, I already knew it would not be an answer worth having.

"I will call again tomorrow. Tell the viscount that tomorrow I will see him. Without fail."

"Yes, my lady. I shall convey the message."

I listened to an answer that was words and nothing more, and I left the Cecilla manor.

Only after I had crossed the garden sinking into darkness and passed through the gates did it occur to me that I had no way of calling a carriage. I could have gone back and asked the butler, but I could not summon the will. I stood still in the street as dusk settled over it, and for a moment I did not know where to go.

I had never imagined a situation like this. I had not, of course, arranged for lodgings.

All of it felt like a terrible lie. From the strange letter Dorothy had sent, to the early-spring night wind that raked across my cheeks. All of it.

I lifted my face to the moon and walked, so that the tears would not fall. My bag, packed in such haste that there was scarcely anything in it, grew heavier with every step.

I walked a long way down an avenue lined with splendid mansions and took a room at an inn that looked reasonably clean. Judging by the viscount's conduct, there was no telling when I would be allowed to see him. Which meant there was no telling how much longer I would have to remain in the capital if I meant to learn what had happened to Dorothy.

I counted the travel money I had brought with me, and exhaustion drove me into bed.

I woke from a thin, restless sleep and lay tossing, then opened my eyes all at once.

The thin curtain that veiled the moonlight was stirring in the wind.

Didn't I close the window before I slept?

I was pushing up my heavy eyelids when a black shadow flickered across my vision.

"Who's there!"

I cried out, startled — but what came back was not an answer. It was a brutal pair of hands.

"Mmph— mmph!"

Something damp pressed against my mouth, and a sharp, acrid stench stabbed into my nose. Instinctively I held my breath. But pain clamped down on my arms and crushed my shoulders; I gasped, and the world went black.

I could not have said how much time had passed.

When I came back to myself, I was not in the inn. I was in a lavish room papered in deep green and appointed with antique furniture. I tried to sit up in a rush and clutched my head as a wave of pain rolled through it.

"Ngh…"

I looked around, still making that small sound, but it was a strange place I could not begin to name. Outside the window the dark was complete. Two lamps on the wall were straining to push back the darkness seeping in.

Fear surged up in a sudden, ugly rush, but taking stock of the situation came first. The room itself told a story, and so did the quilt that had been laid over me — expensive, finely woven cotton. That they had moved me to a place like this meant my abductor was no ordinary thief. Which meant, perhaps, that I could tell myself my life was not in immediate danger.

But who had taken me? And why?

I pressed the confusion down and was carefully checking the door when a long shadow rose abruptly from the sofa across from the bed.

He was a man of extraordinary height.