Page 12

Eleanor stood just within the threshold of the garden room, her gloved hands resting neatly at her waist as her eyes slowly took in the curious expanse before her.

It was a peculiar chamber, to be quite honest, octagonal and faced in ageing panes of glass that curved like the shell of a nautilus.

Vines had begun to lay claim to the structure, pushing through small, ancient cracks, their green tendrils curling with quiet confidence.

Dust blanketed the once-elegant chaise longues and wicker chairs in a hushed grey, and the floor bore the fading outline of a once-vibrant carpet now long removed.

Strangely, the rest of Loxley House, ever so immense and ordered and unrelentingly polished, bore no such signs of abandonment.

One might be forgiven for thinking the garden room had been quite forgotten.

Eleanor tilted her head. No music had sounded here in years.

No conversations had floated through the air. No footsteps but hers stirred the dust.

And yet, there was promise.

She stepped further in, the hem of her morning gown brushing against a fallen leaf that had curled in upon itself like an old letter never sent.

Sunlight dappled the floor through the mottled glass, turning the dust motes into glittering flecks, and the faint scent of old soil and lemon verbena hung in the air like a memory.

“What have they done to you?” she murmured under her breath.

The garden room was not ruined, merely neglected. A widow, not a ghost.

She could picture it differently. If she allowed herself the indulgence, of course. Lush ferns in great earthen pots. Ivory curtains gently rustling with the breeze.

A low table set for tea, perhaps, with a samovar that hissed sweetly and scones with redcurrant preserve. Books, too, her own modest volumes from home, those she’d smuggled into Loxley like contraband, displayed beside a small writing desk in the corner. Yes, it could be something. Something hers.

But then, a sudden snort broke through her reverie.

The door behind her creaked as it was flung open by the most improbable of intruders. Percival, the pug, waddled in with great purpose, snorting, wheezing, and trailing a length of muddy ribbon that Eleanor suspected had once belonged to her grace.

“Oh no,” she said flatly, taking one step back as the creature barrelled towards a half-upturned flowerpot like Napoleon setting siege.

He launched himself onto a faded ottoman with a grunt, sending a puff of dust into the air that made Eleanor cough and flap her hand like a harassed governess.

“I see,” she said, her tone dry. “You are clearly the rightful master of this room.”

Percival ignored her entirely. He snuffled along the window base, his tail wagging like a misfiring metronome, and then without so much as a moment’s hesitation, relieved himself upon an empty flowerpot. Eleanor gasped.

“You did not just do that!”

The pug, however, looked most pleased with himself.

She folded her arms and narrowed her eyes, but the twitch of her lips betrayed her amusement. She would not laugh. Not aloud. Not where he might hear her and assume he’d won her affection.

Still, the dog was persistent. He circled her feet twice, then settled down in a contented lump at her slippers, wheezing like a badly tuned fiddle.

Eleanor sighed, long and slow. “You are incorrigible,” she told him. “But I suppose your master is no better, so you had nowhere to learn manners from.”

The pug snored in reply.

She turned back to the room, speaking now more to herself than to her unlikely companion. “If no one wishes to bother with this place, then perhaps I shall. A shame to let it fall to disrepair when it could be quite… divine. A proper conservatory. A place for morning letters, or tea. Or silence.”

She paced a little, tapping her chin with one gloved finger. “We shall need fresh linens. And perhaps a new rug. I dare say I could move that desk from the east study—the one no one uses. It would fit nicely beneath the bay window. And—”

Percival sneezed loudly. Eleanor startled, then looked down at him with a curious expression.

“Well,” she said, more softly now, “if you insist on being my audience, you might at least refrain from bodily eruptions.”

The pug blinked up at her, his eyes wide and round and far too innocent.

She knelt beside him, not quite sure when she had decided to do so and rubbed one velvety ear between her fingers. “You are not so very awful,” she admitted under her breath.

His little pink tongue lolled in agreement.

Eleanor glanced around the room once more, now with something bordering on fondness. It might take some time, but then again, so did everything worth having. Including, perhaps, getting to know one’s husband. Or his ridiculous pug.

“Come along, then,” she said, rising and brushing off her skirts. “Let us see if Mrs Lytton has any soap left. We shall begin with a proper scrubbing. Of you, first and foremost.”

Percival barked once in protest but followed her nonetheless, his paws pattering dutifully behind her.

Approximately half an hour later, Eleanor found herself in the small scullery off the kitchen wing, which was an unglamorous room tiled in worn slate and always faintly damp no matter the season.

She was bent over a tin basin with her sleeves rolled above the elbow and a determined gleam in her eye.

Percival was in the basin. And he was not pleased.

“Oh, do be still, you absurd animal,” Eleanor implored, as another hearty splash sent water up the front of her bodice in a rather impolite fashion. She sat back on her heels with a sigh, water dripping from her chin. “You act as though I am attempting to drown you in vinegar.”

Percival responded with a violent shake of his entire person, sending a second spray of soapy water over her already damp skirts. The smell of lavender soap was now so potent she suspected she might carry it with her to the grave.

“Percival,” she said, in the tone of a governess addressing a particularly wilful child, “if you persist in this aquatic rebellion, I shall be forced to appeal directly to your master. And while I have no doubt he would be utterly useless in the matter, it would at least look like authority had arrived.”

The pug blinked at her. Then sneezed.

Eleanor’s mouth twitched again with that same ill-timed amusement. He was sitting now, resigned, perhaps, or simply biding his time. However, his back legs twitched and fidgeted in the soap-slicked water as if awaiting the next opportunity to strike.

She dipped a handkerchief into the warm suds and began wiping behind his ears with as much dignity as one could muster while crouched on the floor, half-soaked and conducting a skirmish with a stout dog.

“There,” she murmured, more to herself than him. “We are not enemies, you and me. We simply have different approaches to cleanliness.”

Percival made a sound between a grunt and a whimper.

“Oh, don’t attempt sympathy now. You brought this upon yourself. You smell like the inside of a boot.”

She scrubbed his belly, to which he responded by flailing his front legs wildly, splashing her squarely in the face.

“Percival!”

Water dripped from her brow to her nose. For a moment, silence reigned between them, except for the occasional drip-drip-drip of the soapy bathwater onto the stone floor. Then, without meaning to, without the smallest warning, Eleanor laughed.

It bubbled up like champagne, delighted and breathless and wholly unplanned. She pressed a hand to her mouth, scandalised at herself, but another giggle escaped as Percival pawed at her skirt with an air of triumphant mischief.

“You are impossible,” she told him, still grinning. “Utterly without shame.”

He grunted, smug and slumped, like a tiny Roman senator in his bath.

“Well, if you must know,” she continued, resuming the scrubbing of his squirming belly, “I am rather enjoying this. But I refuse to admit it aloud. And besides, you will never tell a living soul.”

The pug’s tail gave a lazy wag.

“Not a word to your master, do you hear? He must not suspect I am warming to you. I have an image to maintain. I am newly married and must be a figure of elegance and reserve. Not a—” she gestured to herself, dripping and sudsy “—madwoman in a scullery, cavorting with your sort.”

Percival responded by licking her wrist.

She recoiled with theatrical offence. “Sir!”

More laughter spilled out of her, and this time, she did not try to stop it. She looked down at the ridiculous little beast before her, now more soap than dog, and sighed in a manner both dramatic and fond.

“Oh, very well,” she finally said, beginning to rinse the final foamy bubbles from Percival’s damp haunches.

“I shall allow this, but just this one time. I don’t want you thinking we are friends now.

Oh, no. You declared war on the notion of personal hygiene a mere half an hour ago, and I’ll have you know that I do not take kindly to that, as you can see. ”

Suddenly, the sound of a footstep from somewhere behind her made her stiffen. It was not loud, merely deliberate. It was measured like a punctuation mark at the end of an otherwise pleasant sentence.

Eleanor turned, quickly, her wet skirts twisting about her ankles. A strand of hair had escaped her chignon and clung damply to her temple. She expected to see someone in the doorway. Actually, she expected to see him.

But there was no one. Perhaps a servant or the wind. Or simply an echo of her own mind and wishful thinking. She waited a breath longer, with her eyes fixed on the space as if it might produce someone simply because she wished it. But no one came.

Eleanor exhaled sharply and turned back to the basin, as irritation prickled beneath her skin like nettles.

Foolish.

What had she expected? That he would appear suddenly, lean against the doorframe with that faintly amused, inscrutable smile of his, and speak to her not as the man she had been bartered into marrying, but as something else? Something closer?

No. That was not their arrangement.

They were to be companions in the loosest, most civilised sense.

Necessary partners, nothing more. When his father’s life ended, when the estate no longer needed the illusion of stability, when society’s gaze turned elsewhere, then they would part.

Quietly. Respectfully. Without scandal, if they could manage it. And most of all, without attachment.

She reached for a towel with more force than necessary and began to dry Percival’s face, though he squirmed like an eel in protest.

“I shall not fall for you,” she told him tartly, rubbing his damp jowls. “And I certainly shan’t fall for your master.”

The pug barked only once as if in response.

She sighed, softer this time, and continued working the towel over his sides with slow, methodical strokes.

“There,” she murmured at last. “All clean. And possibly less of a disgrace.”

He looked up at her, tongue lolling in ridiculous affection. She didn’t smile, but her hand lingered at his side a moment longer than it needed to.

Eleanor looked towards the door once more. It was still empty.

Good.

She turned back to her pug-in-residence and rose, with water still clinging to her skirts, but with her spine straighter than before.

She would not get attached. And that was the end of it.