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Her husband.
Dorian frowned fiercely. “The previous Duke of Rath had a good gardener. Yes.”
“Do you mean your papa?”
A furious blink of his long eyelashes and his gaze grew darker. “I do.”
“Right. I’m sure if the gardener had been allowed to keep working, the garden would be in its prime. Most of the plants seem to be fine, just wild and overgrown. I do understand why your roses died. It’s not the neglect they had for what…a decade I would guess?”
“Twelve years,” managed Dorian.
Twelve years? She frowned. That was how long ago John had died. A coincidence? Or was it yet another sign of the connection between her husband and her brother?
She’d asked Mrs. Knight two days ago if, to her knowledge, Mr. John Rose had been a friend or an acquaintance of the duke. Mrs. Knight had replied very sternly it was not her place to talk of her employer’s social connections. The best person to ask was her husband or his friends and family.
To which Patience had blushed, embarrassed she had not thought of it herself. She might ask Lady Buchanan or one of Dorian’s friends tonight if they were present.
“Well, the reason most of your garden is dried and those plants are dead is because of disease. I could see the signs of mildew, blight, and rust. Damask roses are very susceptible to those. So I suppose without a gardener who could fight the disease or perhaps uproot the unhealthy plants, these were left to fight for their lives or die. Some, I guess, couldn’t survive without care.”
Dorian rubbed his gloved hand, and when her gaze dropped to it, he hid it behind his back.
“The old gardener died soon after my papa,” he explained. “And I never bothered to hire another one.”
“Why not?”
He glared at her. Was he going to dismiss her again, or bark something about not asking questions?
But he surprised her when he said sadly, “I never liked that garden anyway.”
She felt a smile tug at her lips. “Indeed, you shall find it far more to your liking once I have finished with it.”
“No,” he said. “Allow me to be clear. You may only plant your roses. You may not touch anything else.”
She frowned. “Oh. What a shame. It could be so beautiful. And that glasshouse,” she added dreamily.
A burst of warmth shot through her as she imagined the glory that glasshouse could be. A place where she could collect tropical plants, study their patterns, learn how to help them thrive, and make them stronger, and how she would draw them, paint them, document them. Perhaps she’d be able to make them flower and develop seeds. She could even find plants that would be useful for medicinal purposes.
Dorian’s scowl deepened. “I don’t want you to touch it. That is the rule. I did allow you to put in your roses, but it’s only because you seemed so unhappy.”
“Right.”
He studied her, then his gaze softened. “Making you unhappy was never my intention,” he added.
“Oh,” she said, all words stolen.
She beamed at him then, and to her surprise, there was something like the shadow of a smile on his own lips. But it was gone so quickly, she thought it was surely her imagination.
“Well, I’m much less unhappy since I came to your room three nights ago,” she said.
He nodded. “Good.”
He cleared his throat and uncrossed his long legs, which looked especially firm and muscular in a pair of beige breeches, then crossed them again. “What could make you even happier?”
She studied him, blinking. “Are you trying to—”
“I do have my rules. But I’d like to know how to ease your discomfort in my…er…your new home.”
And suddenly she knew…she was still lonely. She slept well in his arms and therefore felt better, but she spent her days alone. Her family had left after the wedding, so abruptly…
