“I take care of this space myself,” Essos tells me as I step away from him, breaking the moment.
“Why’s that?”
“It’s a special place to me. I’m honestly glad that our joint tour was canceled. I was dreading it all morning. Perhaps that’s why I was so generous with Steve. He saved me from disappointing you all when I changed my mind. I’ll admit to telling Sybil to bar access to the space as well. I wanted to show you around myself.”
“And yet you took Zara here earlier, and now me?” There is an edge to my voice when I say Zara’s name that causes Essos to still before he drags his gaze to meet mine.
“No, Zara and I took the long way around the garden. I was showing her the vineyard on the grounds. She was interested in the wine we’ve been having at dinner.”
I suck my lower lip into my mouth and fight the urge to step toward him. If what Galen said about Essos is true, he holds too many secrets for me to fall into a possible trap so easily.
“Oh.” It’s so soft, I’m not sure I would have heard it if I didn’t know I said the words.
Essos doesn’t call out my jealousy, he just holds his hand out to me, beckoning me to follow his lead.
Each type of flower he shows me seems to open up to me as if I were the sun, and I wonder if that is more of Essos’s magic. I remember how the dahlias in the bouquet he brought me opened early.
“Is this you?” I ask, leaning in to inhale the scent of a plumeria.
“Is what me?”
“How they all seem to be blooming as we pass—is that your magic?”
He seems at a loss for words, his mouth opening and closing before he answers. “Yes and no. It is the magic of my realm that allows flowers with different needs to bloom, but I think—” He shakes his head stopping himself.
“What?” I ask, smirking.
He shakes his head again, laughing. “It’s going to sound like a line, and you’re worth so much more than a jumble of cliches.”
I fist my hands in my dress out of his sight. Nothing about how I’m feeling is normal. I shouldn’t want to have Essos woo me with pretty words in this garden while his brother is telling me that we were once married.
To diffuse the tension and the obvious want I think I’m reading on Essos’s face, I drift toward some stargazer lilies that match my dress and inhale deeply. Thatiswhat I’m reading, I think—the tense set of his shoulders and how he has to keep his hands clasped behind his back to stop himself from reaching for me.
Or am I seeing what I want to see—a man besotted with a woman he can’t or shouldn’t want? My heart gallops over the implications that I want to see love in his eyes when he looks at me, but I can’t think about that, not now, not on the heels of Galen’s information, not when Essos is standing before me looking at me like I hold the sun and moon in my hands.
Essos picks a red lily and threads it into my braid.His hands are gentle, the stem seamlessly winding into my hair.
“They’re my favorite.” I gently reach back to touch the flower in my hair, gazing at him. “But then, you already knew that.” I smile before turning back and picking a matching flower, then tucking it into the breast pocket of his jacket.
“I told you, I want to learn it all firsthand.”
I’m still trying to perfect the flower in his pocket when his hand covers mine, pressing it against his heart. I can feel the rapid thumping through his three-piece suit. It’s ridiculous how much I love that he wears them.
Something about suits nags at my mind, but I can’t put my finger on it.
“This isn’t even the surprise,” Essos says.
I look up at him and try to imagine this man as the monster Galen portrays him. Essos hasn’t been nearly as forthcoming as Galen has been, so I try to keep these budding emotions in check. But damn it, Essos makes it so hard. Galen’s revelations may have come too late, as I know I’ve started to feel something for the man in front of me.
“There’s a surprise?” I ask.
He slides his fingers between mine, as if it’s something we’ve done a thousand times, and graces me with a smile. He leads me farther into the hedges, and in the distance I hear the static rush of the waves crashing. We come to what I think is a dead end, and Essos instructs me to close my eyes. I hear him step behind me and feel his hands cover my eyes as he slowly walks me around a corner before stopping again. When he removes his hands, I open my eyes to find two midnight-black horses standing there, tied to a bar.
I spin around and look at him. “You expect me to ride? Inthis?” I gesture at my dress.
Essos at least has the decency to look abashed as he walks over and pets the closest horse on the nose.“Yes, well, I might have been too intentionally misleading with my clothing instructions. I can change your attire, if you want. You don’t have to ride if you don’t want to, but I imagine you’ll like it.”
I take a step back as the other horse noses toward me, sniffing at my hands. “How about not.” For now, this dress will be my protection against riding. I don’t mention to him that I have never even seen a horse in person, let alone been this close to one. They are so much larger than expected, and they have powerful bodies. This feels like a terrible way to tempt fate after being pulled into the depths nearly to my death and having drowned once before. I would hate for the third time to stick.