Chapter 3
I arrived at Ambrose House the following afternoon with a single trunk containing everything I owned that mattered, which amounted to very little.
A few dresses, all in muted shades of gray and navy, chosen less for beauty than for their ability to conceal soil and stains.
My father’s journals, the ones I could still bear to read without feeling the crushing weight of his absence.
A tintype photograph of him in his prime, standing proudly beside an orchid he had spent five years cultivating, and a leather-bound book of pressed flowers we had assembled together when I was small, each fragile specimen flattened between the pages, preserved long after its life had been extinguished.
Preserved.
A prettier word for decay delayed. The rot had been postponed, not prevented. Given enough time, even the most gently kept things surrendered.
The thought lodged too easily, making itself comfortable amongst the rest of the darkness that lived in my mind now.
I tightened my grip around the handle of my trunk and continued on.
The rain had stopped overnight, leaving the world crystalline, every surface slick with puddles that glittered beneath weak sunlight.
My boots squelched against the rain-beaten path as I approached the familiar iron gates, and found myself pausing again to study the curling vines worked into the metal.
Recognition moved through me in a slow, disorienting wave, blurring my vision for a breath before retreating.
I inhaled deeply and forced the feeling down before it could take hold, continuing up the path as I dragged my trunk behind me. Its weight caught and resisted with each step.
The discoloration in my fingers had receded overnight, leaving only an obscure shadow beneath my nails.
I was grateful for small mercies, even unreliable ones.
The unpredictability gnawed at me more than the affliction itself.
I was unable to anticipate when it would appear, nor control its progression or retreat.
My body seemed suspended in some indecisive state, unwilling to commit fully to life or death, and so it lingered uneasily between the two.
It was an inefficient compromise, I thought wryly. Death should at least have the courtesy to be decisive.
I flexed my fingers inside my gloves, willing blood back into them before lifting my hand to knock on the door.
It opened at once.
Hawthorne stood before me once more, tall and strange, and motionless, his depthless eyes unblinking.
If I watched him long enough, would he ever blink?
The thought formed automatically, but my companion offered no commentary. Perhaps even it found Hawthorne beyond interpretation.
In the daylight filtering through the open door, I could see him more clearly than I had the day before, and the clarity was not reassuring.
Beneath his pale skin, thin lines ran along the surface—too symmetrical to be capillaries, branching in patterns that reminded me of root systems mapped in my father’s botanical texts.
I shook my head, almost smiling at the absurdity of the comparison.
“Hello, Hawthorne,” I said, projecting my voice clearly in case he was simply hard of hearing.
He did not respond. There was not even the slightest indication he understood my greeting, but he moved aside to allow me entrance.
I stepped inside, dragging my trunk over the threshold with more effort than dignity, and Hawthorne maneuvered around me to close the door.
“Oh, you poor dear!”
The voice came before the woman herself, warm and bright, incongruous with the house’s shadowed quiet.
She emerged from deeper within, wiping flour from her hands onto her apron as she approached.
She was perhaps in her fifties, with graying curls pinned neatly at the nape of her neck and cerulean eyes that seemed soft despite the quickness with which they took in every detail of my wind-swept appearance.
“You should have sent word,” she scolded with motherly concern. “Hawthorne would have fetched your trunk. Look at you. You're absolutely winded!”
“Oh no, I am fine, truly,” I assured her, though my lungs still struggled to find a steady cadence. “I did not wish to be any trouble.”
“Nonsense.” She waved the thought away with a flutter of flour-dusted fingers. “You’re no trouble at all.”
She turned briefly to Hawthorne. “Take her trunk upstairs, please, to the guest room at the end of the hall.”
Hawthorne strode forward on command and lifted my trunk as though it weighed nothing, which I could personally attest it did not.
“Don’t mind Hawthorne,” she said, drawing my attention back to her. “He’s… peculiar, but quite helpful.”
Peculiar.
The word seemed grossly insufficient.
“I’m Mrs. Bramblewick,” she continued, her smile returning. “But you must call me Agnes. We’re not very formal here, and I’ve never had much patience for stiff titles.”
“It is lovely to meet you, Agnes,” I replied honestly, a small tension easing inside me at the simplicity of her kindness. “I am Camellia Reed.”
“A pleasure, dear,” she said sweetly, though a guardedness lingered beneath the warmth. “Come, let me show you to your room. I’m sure you'll want to settle in before Dr. Ambrose expects you in the greenhouse.”
As we climbed the stairs, my attention drifted back to Hawthorne ahead of us. I could not help noticing that he moved without the natural rhythm of a living body. There was no sway to his gait, no subtle shifting of weight, only a smooth, continuous ascent.
Like a corpse on strings, the voice offered as it watched through my eyes.
I frowned, unable to keep the questions crowding my tongue silent any longer. “Agnes,” I began, lowering my voice so Hawthorne would not overhear. “Is there something wrong with him?”
She glanced at me, her lips pressing together as she considered the answer longer than the question warranted. “Wrong with him?” she repeated lightly. “Nothing at all. He simply is what he is.”
The answer sat uneasily between us, but the rebuke was clear enough. I inclined my head and swallowed any further inquiries.
We reached the second floor and Agnes led me down a corridor lined with closed doors, each one identical in shape and color—save one.
It caught my attention at once.
The handle was different from all the others—brass, intricately shaped into a rose in full efflorescence, each petal expertly layered and open, frozen at the exact instant before decay would begin its work.
Someone had spent considerable time creating it with the attention one lavished on a deeply cherished thing.
Or person.
My steps slowed without conscious decision. The brass rose held me there, a strange sensation passing through me and growing more insistent with each step I took away from the door.
Open it! The voice came with such force that I started, nearly tripping over my own feet.
You know you want to, it urged, softer now.
It took a conscious effort not to give in.
Agnes paused at the end of the hall and opened the door, revealing a modest but comfortable room.
It was clean and well-appointed with a narrow bed, a washstand, a wardrobe, and a small desk positioned beneath the window to catch what little light the sun provided.
It was functional and impersonal, a room prepared for a guest rather than someone meant to remain.
“Here we are,” Agnes said. “I’ve put fresh linens on the bed and there’s water in the pitcher. The fire’s laid if you need it.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, glancing around.
I crossed to a small table where a porcelain vase held freshly cut flowers, their petals just beginning to unfurl in shades of pale pink, cream, and red. I brushed one lightly with my fingertips, silk-soft tissue giving beneath my touch.
They were dying already—severed from the root that fed them, and condemned to that neat and predictable theater of decay.
Within days, the petals would curl inward, collapsing upon themselves as slow starvation hollowed them from within.
The edges would turn first, a creeping brown rot deepening to black, spreading like gangrene through flesh.
One by one, they would loosen their grip on the stems that had tethered them to life, falling in silent surrender to gravity and time.
No one would mourn them. No one ever mourned rotten things.
They would be swept away without ceremony, discarded in some forgotten corner of the garden where the earth waited with patient, ravenous hunger.
The soil would swallow them whole, pulling them down into darkness where roots could feast on their decomposing matter—transforming death into new growth without even an ounce of remorse for the life it had consumed.
I smiled.
The symmetry of it pleased me, though I could not say with any certainty whether the pleasure belonged entirely to me.
Hawthorne set my trunk at the foot of the bed with a pronounced thud, pulling me from my reverie. He straightened once more, awaiting further instruction.
“That will be all, Hawthorne,” Agnes said, regarding him with fondness. “You can return to your work in the greenhouse.”
He left without a sound, his footsteps carrying him down the corridor. Curiosity burned in the back of my throat, but I knew better than to give it a voice.
Instead, I moved to the window and looked out at the gardens.
From my vantage point, the greenhouses were clearly visible—three long structures of glass and iron, their surfaces catching the mid-afternoon light until they appeared almost luminous against the waterlogged landscape.
Beyond them stretched orderly garden beds, dormant now, but soon the spring rain and warmer sun would draw the plants from their winter graves.
My companion crept forward again.
I felt it threading through my mind as we stared out at the greenhouses, its excitement quickening my pulse.
“Dr. Ambrose must have a large staff,” I said, turning toward Agnes, “to maintain grounds like these.”
She laughed softly. “Oh no, dear. It’s just myself, Hawthorne, and Dr. Ambrose.”