Chapter 15 #2
“Yes,” Dorothy replied smoothly, her chin tilting. “But that is not why I came here.” She turned to Eugenia with a small, encouraging smile. “Come, dear, let us sit.”
She guided the child toward the pair of chairs before Magnus’s desk.
Eugenia obeyed, perching neatly, her hands folded in her lap.
Dorothy settled beside her, arranging her skirts with composure, then faced Magnus squarely.
There was a determination in her bearing now, as though she had come with more than a passing remark about flowers.
It was true. She had come to speak of far more, though she cloaked it in the gentlest of beginnings. For part of her resolve to make this marriage succeed lay not only in her duty as Eugenia’s caregiver but in her desire to mend what was broken between him and Eugenia.
The child was still wary of him. Dorothy had seen it in the way Eugenia’s shoulders stiffened whenever his deep voice sounded, in how her eyes flitted to the floor rather than meeting his.
Magnus could not help but intimidate—he did so to almost everyone—but Dorothy was certain that beneath his stern exterior lay a man who wished for better.
She had glimpsed it, fleeting but certain, in the softness of his gaze when it lingered upon the girl.
Eugenia, too, would flourish under such a bond.
Dorothy knew it instinctively. Thus, her plan had taken root.
To build a bridge between them, one small step at a time.
Her first thought had been flowers. If she could discover whether there was a bloom, a memory, some common thread that might draw uncle and niece together, then perhaps there would be at last a place where their words might meet, something to bind.
Dorothy smoothed her skirts, steadying herself.
“Eugenia has chosen a new favorite flower,” she began.
“It is the hyacinth. She seems quite taken with it. I recalled, when I was a girl, hearing there was some sort of story tied to its name. A tale from the ancients, perhaps? Though I confess I cannot remember it clearly.” She looked directly at Magnus now, her eyes steady. “I wondered whether you might know it.”
Magnus’s brows lifted slightly, the faintest mark of surprise at the question.
He leaned back, setting aside the papers he had dropped when they entered, then sat up straighter as his gaze shifted to Eugenia.
“Is that so?” he asked, his voice gentler than it often was.
“Is your favourite flower the hyacinth?”
Eugenia, who had been sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap, nodded with such enthusiasm that a lock of hair tumbled forward across her brow. She pushed it back quickly, her lips curving in the smallest, brightest of smiles.
Something softened in Magnus’s countenance. He turned to Dorothy once more. “What story is it you would have me tell? What did you hear?”
Dorothy shook her head with a rueful smile.
“Only that there was some tale about the flower’s origin.
A Greek name, perhaps? Hyacinthus? It was mentioned once by a tutor who did not think I was listening, but it stayed with me all the same.
I only remember that there was something tragic in it, but nothing more. I thought, perhaps, you would know.”
Magnus’s lips curved, not into his usual wry half-smile but into something gentler... softer, almost wistful. It transformed him in an instant, smoothing the hard edges that so often marked his features.
Dorothy blinked, startled, and found herself staring. She had seen him scowl, she had seen him cold, she had even seen him weary, but never this. Something in his eyes glowed, distant yet warm, as though he had been drawn for a moment into a memory no one else could see.
“Why—why did your countenance change so suddenly?” she asked before she could think better of it.
Magnus glanced at her, the shadow of that smile lingering before he pressed it away. “It is nothing,” he replied, his voice even.
Dorothy lowered her gaze quickly, though not before her mind raced.
It could not be nothing. A smile like that belonged to a recollection, to someone—or something-he cherished.
For a heartbeat, she thought it might have been a lover from his past. The thought of it curled within her like a sting.
She kept it pressed deep inside, resolving that one day, she would ask him.
Magnus shifted, as though aware of her scrutiny, and directed his words toward Eugenia.
“You asked of the hyacinth,” he began, his voice smoother now, low and melodic, as though he had slipped into a different register altogether.
“It is no ordinary flower, at least not in the tales told of old. Its story is said to begin in Greece with a youth named Hyacinthus, beloved of Apollo, the god of the sun.”
Eugenia leaned forward, her eyes wide, and Dorothy felt herself leaning too, drawn in not only by the tale but by the way Magnus told it.
“He was,” Magnus continued, “a prince of remarkable beauty and spirit. Apollo cherished him as did the West Wind, Zephyrus. But as often happens in tales of gods and men, affection can breed envy. One day, Apollo and Hyacinthus played a game of discus, casting the heavy disk across the field. When Hyacinthus ran to catch Apollo’s throw, the wind, jealous and cruel, turned its course.
The discus struck Hyacinthus down. And so, the youth perished. ”
Dorothy’s breath caught. She had no idea that it was that tragic a tale.
Magnus’s eyes flicked to hers, his voice lowering as though weaving her into the tale as much as Eugenia.
“From Hyacinthus’s blood, Apollo caused a flower to spring.
Violet and blue, as if stained by grief yet beautiful beyond compare.
The hyacinth. It is said that even in his sorrow, Apollo inscribed the petals with his lament, a reminder of love and of loss entwined. ”
Dorothy whispered, her voice faint but clear. “That is sad.”
Magnus inclined his head. “Yes. Sad, and yet… the flower endures. What is lost is not forgotten. Something fair arises in its place to remind us of what was once held dear.”
Dorothy shivered at the cadence of his words, at the richness of his voice as it lingered over love and loss.
“So,” she ventured quietly, her eyes on the little girl at her side but her words meant for him, “from grief came something enduring. Beauty, even.”
“It is one of those paradoxes life seems determined to teach us. That sometimes it is the fracture that allows something finer to take root.”
Dorothy’s heart gave a curious ache at that, and before she could stop herself, she asked, “Do you believe such things truly happen outside of myths?”
His gaze lifted to hers, searching, and for a moment, the study felt far smaller than it was, the air between them drawn taut.
“I do,” Magnus said at last. “Though perhaps not as suddenly as in a tale. Sometimes what is broken does not mend swiftly. But given time, care...” His eyes flicked toward Eugenia, then back to Dorothy.
“... something stronger may grow where before there was only loss.”
Dorothy’s breath caught, though she forced a faint smile to her lips. “Then you think there is hope in beginnings that come after sorrow?”
“Perhaps,” Magnus said simply, and the way he said it left her strangely unmoored, as though he spoke of something more than flowers and fables.
Dorothy glanced at him, her heart stirring. For all the strangeness of their union, for all that it had begun in shadow and obligation, she wondered, just for an instant, if there might yet be something like the hyacinth waiting to grow between them.
It seemed, in that instant, as though Magnus sensed the direction of her thoughts, for when Dorothy’s eyes lingered on him, he immediately looked away, reaching for a paper on his desk as though it required urgent attention.
Seizing the moment, she said lightly, “Would you care to help Eugenia sketch a hyacinth, Your Grace? She has it in mind to add one to her painting, and I daresay your guidance would be of use.”
Magnus glanced up at her, the briefest flicker of uncertainty crossing his features.
His eyes met hers, only to retreat again, as though the very act of deciding how to answer cost him some effort.
“That is all very well, but it will have to wait until our return from London. For the present, I must settle certain matters before we leave, and there will be little time.” He turned to Eugenia then, softening almost imperceptibly. “Would that be agreeable to you?”
Eugenia gave a little snort of assent and nodded briskly, her curls bouncing with the motion.
To Dorothy’s relief, Magnus’s mouth curved, the barest suggestion of a smile, before he bent again over the papers in his hand. It was fleeting, easily missed, yet it lit something warm in her chest.
She sat back in her chair, her heart strangely unsteady. For reasons she could not name, the smallest ease between him and Eugenia, the smallest glimpse of gentleness in him, unsettled her. Their marriage, born of necessity and shadowed by reserve, was becoming something altogether more confusing.