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“Young man,” he said, “fifty years I have collected. Sums spent. Days given to a bloom I could call perfect. Never once have I heard a flower spoken of with the heat you give this woman.”

He rose and took Angelo into a house of glass. Rows of tulips stood in clay, color against a gray February sky beyond the panes.

“This one.” Sir Horace stopped. Angelo’s breath caught. “It puts me in mind of a sunset I saw once on the Midland sea. Fine in the very wildness of it.”

Angelo could have wept. It was right. Entirely right.

“Take it,” Sir Horace said. “Put it in her hands. And tell her an old man who has chased beauty all his life believes she must be uncommon, if she has drawn this from you.”

Angelo tried to pay. He pressed coin and paper until the old man, grudging, took a sum that matched the flower’s worth. It cost nearly all Angelo had carried. He would have paid ten times. A hundred. Whatever the pot asked.

Then, the bloom packed in straw, he turned the coach for Grimsfell.

For Isolde.

They had left when the morning had a little sun in it. He would not risk a hothouse thing in the raw dark. Frost still sat in the ruts. Trevithick had grumbled at the hour and then seen the set of Angelo’s mouth and saved the rest. All the road Angelo held the box. He ate little, only a heel of bread at a turnpike that tasted of nothing. He slept less, dozing with his chin on the lid and waking at every jolt. He spoke to Trevithick only when the road required it. The rest of him was the tulip, and his whole care was keeping it alive until the hall. Once the box slid and he caught it with both hands and swore in Italian under his breath, then apologized to the flower as if it could hear.

Now the coach took a rise and the gray sheet of sea opened. Angelo’s heart picked up. The cliff road ran along the drop where land met sky met water. Afternoon was going. The sun already leaning down. He asked, quiet, that they reach the house before evening’s colder air caught them.

Almost there. Almost home. Now only a way to put it in her hands.

The known outline of the manor stood on the gray. He saw the towers and the chimneys and the odd angles, and a rook lifting off a stack. The place was as strange and pulling as the woman in its walls. He found he was smiling at a pile of stone. Trevithick glanced back through the small window and said nothing. He was a wise man. The box in Angelo’s lap had grown warm from his hands. He shifted it a fraction and felt, through wood and straw, the clay. Still there. Still his to give.

The coach turned into the yard. Hooves struck stone. Angelo was moving before the wheels had quite stopped. He shoved the door with a shoulder, careful of the box, and did not step down. Cold air rushed in. He pulled the box tighter.

“Trevithick. Find the gardener. At once. I cannot leave this coach. The bloom must stay warm.”

A nod. The man went toward the beds. Angelo stayed. His breath showed white in the cold, and he held the flower against February as if the season itself meant harm. He would not lift the lid until there was heat to receive it. Grimsfell kept glass among the walls of the inner garden. Get the pot into that warmth and it would live. It had to live.

Everything hung on that.

He waited through minutes he counted in heartbeats, and each beat felt long. What if Elias was off the grounds? What if the glass house sat cold in winter? What if, after the miles and the talk and the nights without sleep, he had failed?

Then grit sounded under a boot, and Elias came round the stable, curiosity in the old face under the cap. He moved quicker than his years. Angelo was glad of him.

“Mr. Scott.” His Cornish accent was thick in the cold. “Ye’re back, then. Trevithick said ye wanted me, urgent-like.”

“I need you.” Angelo stepped down at last, box to his chest. “I have a plant. A house-grown bloom. It must be kept warm. The glass in the walled garden. Is there heat? Is it kept up?”

“Aye, sir. Miss Isolde—” Elias caught it, not quite in time. “That is, we keep the house going the year round. A stove in the corner. Heats it proper.”

Angelo said nothing of the slip, though his heart jumped at the name. The staff knew more of their hidden mistress than they let on. Questions could wait for later. Now the tulip needed him.

“Take me there. Before the cold tells on it.”

Elias nodded and led through the walled garden. Angelo noticed the sleeping beds and the hedges in frost as they passed, and then the glass at the far end. It was modest and well kept. Inside it was warm and damp despite the winter beyond. A small iron stove threw heat, and the air was thick with earth and green.

Angelo followed him in and felt his shoulders drop. He set the box on a clear stretch of board and lifted the lid.

The tulip was whole. Its petals seemed to hold their own light in the dull glow through the glass. He let out a breath he had not known he was holding.

“Grazie.” The thanks sat soft on the air. “It lived.”

Elias came near and looked with open interest. “That’s a fine piece. I’ve not seen one close. Where’d ye come by it?”

“A private man in the south. Sir Horace Pembury.” Angelo lifted the pot and set it where the light was best. He found a glass bell on a shelf and put it over the bloom, cutting the draft. “I hunted the county for it. It is … a gift. For someone.”

He did not add more. Something in the voice must have done the work. Elias studied him, then nodded, as if a private sum had come out even.