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“Because I recognize expertise when I see it,” Angelo replied simply. “The layout is too thoughtful, too informed by real knowledge of botanical properties and growing conditions to merely be the work of a gardener. Someone who understands plants at a fundamental level designed this garden. Someone who sees them as I do, not merely as decoration, but as living medicine, as tools for healing.”

Isolde made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob, Angelo could not tell which. “You truly see that? You are not merely being kind?”

“I am stating fact,” Angelo said and felt the truth of it in his bones. “The person who designed this garden possesses botanical knowledge equal to any farmacista … pharmacist I have studied under. They understand which plants thrive together, which require protection, which give their strongest medicine at which times of year. It is masterful work, Isolde. Truly masterful.”

She turned slightly toward him, the movement small but significant. For a moment, Angelo thought she might fully face him, might step into the full light and let him see her clearly. But at the last second, she seemed to catch herself, angling her face away again with what looked like a customary gesture.

“I should go,” she said, but made no move to leave. “You came for herbs. I am preventing you from your task.”

“You are not preventing anything,” Angelo assured her. “In truth, I find this far more interesting than collecting sage. Though I confess, I am curious why you hide. Why you cannot allow me near.”

“I have my reasons.” Her voice had gone flat, guarded.

“I do not doubt it. But surely⁠—”

“Please.” The word was barely audible. “Do not ask. Not tonight. This moment is too … precious … to speak of …” She did not finish.

Angelo wanted to insist, wanted to understand what could drive someone to such isolation, to such careful distance from human contact. But he recognized a boundary when he encountered one, and pushing past it would only damage whatever fragile connection was forming between them. As it was, he was not quite certain that he was not abed, dreaming this ethereal encounter.

“Then I will not ask,” he conceded. “But I hope … that is, I wonder if we might speak again? Perhaps you could tell me about your garden, about the plants you have chosen and why. I find I have many questions, and it would be a pleasure to learn from someone with such obvious skill.”

He was being transparent in his interest, he knew. Making it clear that he wanted to know her, wanted to continue whatever strange dance they had begun tonight. But subtlety seemed wrong in this moment, with moonlight turning the world to silver and a cloaked woman standing like a figure from myth among the herbs she had planted.

Isolde was silent for so long that Angelo feared he had miscalculated. Then, so quietly he had to strain to hear: “I would … I think I would like that. To discuss the garden with someone who understands.”

Relief and something warmer flooded through Angelo’s chest. “Tomorrow night? If the weather permits?”

“Perhaps.” She was already moving, backing toward the far wall where shadows pooled deepest. “If I can.”

“Isolde—”

But she was gone. One moment standing in moonlight, the next simply absent, as if she had been made of silver and shadow all along and had finally dissolved back into her component parts.

Angelo stood frozen, his mind struggling to accept what his eyes had just witnessed. She had been there. Real and solid and present. And then she was not.

He ran across the garden, his slippered feet near silent on the gravel paths, searching for some sign of where she had gone. There, a gap between the kitchen garden’s wall and the larger walled garden beyond it. A narrow passage, barely wide enough for a person to slip through sideways.

Angelo squeezed into the gap, his shoulders scraping against stone on both sides. It opened into the larger garden, a wilder space where ornamental plantings mixed with what looked like fruit trees and flowering shrubs. But of Isolde, there was no sign. No flicker of dark cloak, no pale face in the moonlight.

She had vanished as completely as if she had never been.

Angelo stood in the empty garden, his breath misting in the cold air, and wondered if he had dreamed the entire encounter. Perhaps he had been more exhausted than he realized. Perhaps he had fallen asleep at his writing desk and conjured a phantom woman from his tired mind.

But no. He could still hear her voice in his memory, melodic and haunting. Too distinctive to be plumbed from the depths of old memories. Could still see the way moonlight had caught the curve of her cheek, the delicate line of her throat. Could still feel the pull of mutual awareness that had thrummed between them like a plucked string.

Isolde was real.

And she was the watcher he had sensed all day. The presence behind the grates, the flicker in the windows, the one who maintained this hall’s mysteries while hiding herself from view.

But why?

Angelo returned to the kitchen garden slowly, his mind churning through possibilities. She had responsibilities to Grimsfell, she had said. Was connected to this place. That suggested ownership or at least authority. But why the secrecy? Why the careful distance?

“I cannot,” she had said when he asked to approach. Not “I will not” or “I prefer you did not” but “I cannot.” As if something physically prevented her from allowing him near.

What could possibly⁠—

His foot came down on something sharp, and Angelo hissed in pain. He had forgotten about collecting herbs, forgotten about the cold, forgotten everything except the mystery of the woman who called herself Isolde.