Page 116 of A Shadow Amongst the Roses

His mouth curved faintly on the last word.

“He will come for you,” Ashwood said. “Of course he will. He believes he’s your shield. But he cannot be everywhere. And you cannot be both safe and truly free while you remain in his keeping. With me you could be otherwise.”

“With you,” Eliza said slowly, “I would be nothing more than a key you have not yet turned.”

“Keys can open many doors,” he said, extending his hand. “Come away. You’ve already closed one door. Quite soundly.”

He took another step toward her.

Fear did not rise. Only clarity.

“You crawled into my life through roses and shadows,” she said. “You used a child to test me. You frightened a woman who trusted you nearly witless. And now you talk to me of freedom.”

“If I have misjudged you,” he said, “you are rarer than I believed.”

Ashwood held his hand out to her, palm open, fingers relaxed, as if patience itself lived there.

“Come away,” he said. “This house has made you a piece in its own game. I am offering you the chance to step off the board.”

Eliza looked at his hand.

For a moment, she understood precisely what he believed he had done. He thought the fracture behind her had widened. Thought the silence she carried now was uncertainty rather than decision. He had mistaken restraint for invitation.

“You are wrong about one thing,” she said.

His brow lifted, faintly amused.

“Only one?”

“You are not the only man who can adapt.”

Another voice entered the garden, low and stripped of ornament.

“That is true.”

Ashwood turned.

Thomas stood between the outer arches of the rose beds, the thorns caught in his coat where he had come through the narrow paths. Mist clung to his hair. His posture held no urgency. No heat. Only intent.

Something shifted in Ashwood’s expression. Not fear. Calculation, quickly revised.

“So,” he said softly. “This was arranged.”

Eliza did not look away from him.

“You listened,” she said. “You watched. You assumed the shape of what you saw was the whole of it.”

Ashwood’s gaze flicked between them now. He measured distance. Ground. Exit.

“You led me here,” he said.

“You led yourself here,” she said. “You heard what you wished to hear. You watched me walk out and believed I did not look back.”

Roses shifted again at the edge of her sight. Eleanor stood at the terrace steps, one hand on the stone rail. Nathaniel had taken up a place at the far corner of the bed. Clara waited near the open door that led back into the house. None of them spoke. Their presence closed the paths as firmly as walls.

The paths narrowed. Not abruptly. Inevitably.

Ashwood’s jaw tightened. For the first time, his composure thinned.