Page 167 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
“I’m so sorry about all your things,” she said. “It still makes me sad to walk through here.”
“Tristane is expensive,” said Osric.
With a look of mortified guilt, Aurienne asked, “You haven’t sold off your books, have you?”
“No,” said Osric. “I left the libraries untouched.”
“Oh, thank Fria. But your collections—”
“Doesn’t matter. Things can be repurchased. People can’t.”
“But you loved the things.”
“I love you more than the things,” said Osric. “If I hadn’t bought Tristane’s help, Swanstone would be a Dreor-infested ruin. I’d still havemy things and you—you’d be dead. What would be the point of the things? Tell me.”
Aurienne gave him a swift kiss on the lips.
He brought her through the house to the terrace where they had eaten breakfast after Aurienne had gruesomely murdered Lady Windermere. From there he led her down wide stone steps to the estate’s pleasure grounds.
“The hothouses?” asked Aurienne as they approached the structures. “Oh—you’ve tidied.”
“I wished to cultivate what little beauty I’ve got left on the estate,” said Osric, leading her into the largest hothouse. “Mrs. Parson has quite a magical touch, when it comes to plants.”
The fig tree with its rotting fruit had been pruned. Dry and sleepy, it awaited summer. The black-and-white tiles were still cracked, but swept clean. The roses, freed from the suffocation of weed and damp, had also been cut back, and now offered minute shoots to the visitors—small crescents of hopeful green.
“I told you this place wasn’t too far gone to fix,” said Aurienne, stepping with evident joy through the rows of budding plants.
Her pleasure pleased Osric. He wished to give her reasons to be delighted forevermore.
“It’s a beginning, anyway,” said Osric. “Mrs. Parson took an inventory. She tells me there are rare roses among them—varieties that have long been thought lost.”
Aurienne studied the freshly burnished nameplates. “She’s right. I recognise some of these from my father’s books. They’re highly sought after. Cupid’s Charm. Baroque Delight. L’Aquarelle. The Sabine. What’s this one?”
Between two labelled roses sat an unnamed specimen, well formed, upright, her new shoots promising both thorn and blossom.
“Unknown. Mrs. Parson said it was a hybrid.”
Aurienne knelt before the rose. Osric watched her in a lover’s daze. She was a quattrocento beauty with her dark hair up and her dress pooling around her like classical garb, all framed by the iron arches of the hothouse.
“Between the Cupid and the Delight,” she said, touching the rose’s tender leaves. “She’ll grow into something lovely.”
“If she’s beautiful enough, I shall call her the Aurienne.”
Aurienne looked over her shoulder. Another blush. He could get drunk on that smile.
He brought her to a potting bench, upon which there sat a small terra-cotta pot. “This is what I wanted to show you.”
Aurienne approached. “An acorn?”
“Yes,” said Osric. “An acorn from the oak tree in the Færwundor.”
“What?”
“I pocketed it while we were there,” said Osric. “I wanted to see if we could get it to germinate before showing you.”
Aurienne, wonder-filled, peeked into the little pot. A tiny green shoot emerged from the acorn. “This is immeasurably precious. The surviving Druids should have this.”
“Do what you will with it.”
