Work Text:
According to the lady of the House of Nuvelle, the grounds of her estate were one of its most shining qualities. With an open port eager for maritime trade, the gardens bloomed through all four seasons with lush and fragrant blooms as gifts from Dagda, Brigid, Albinea, and other lands open to the sea.
“Nobility and gentry alike heard tales of our splendorous flora far and wide!” Constance tossed her hair proudly as she reminisced with a distant and dreamy air. “Thanks to gracious ambassadors eager to make nice with our esteemed house, we had no lack of luxurious blooms from the farthest reach of the seas.”
She sighed dreamily. “Oh Emile, you should’ve seen it. I remember when the entire grounds were simply carpeted with the most exquisite of colors and fragrances, like Nature’s own tapestry. It was one of the most beautiful features that our House could boast of!”
“It sounds beautiful,” Jeritza commented with a faint look of bemusement. “Is this why you’ve been so adamant about exerting yourself as of late?”
Constance rolled her eyes. “Of course, Emile. Why else would I be knee-deep in muck if not to restore the beauty of House Nuvelle?”
Jeritza wanted to point out that the lady herself was not quite in such a decrepit state as she had imagined herself to be in. Yes, she was kneeling in a plot of black soil and wrestling with more than a few ornery weeds, and yes, she was slightly flushed with the exertion of her current task even in the slight chill of the temperate winter weather, but even now there was a grace to her posture and carriage that would never quite be chased out of the high-born Constance von Nuvelle, even when dressed down to her simple working clothes and 'knee-deep in muck'.
“Don’t stare, Emile!” Constance’s coy tone broke him out of his trance and Jeritza winced when he finally caught the full force of her sly smile. She put a soil damp hand to her mouth to hide her giggle. “It isn’t polite to gaze at me so intently, you know. It is quite unnerving.”
“My apologies,” he replied in a dry tone that didn’t sound very apologetic at all. “I am just confused as to why you insist on shouldering this task alone when you have an official groundskeeper.”
“I am not alone!” Constance huffed as she struggled to uproot a particularly stubborn weed that had gnarled its way into the cobbled walk of the garden. “You’re here too, aren’t you?”
“I am.” Jeritza acquiesced. He didn’t expect to be pulling weeds with the lady of House Nuvelle in the dark of the evening, stripped down to his shirt and breeches and sweating from the unexpected exertion of tilling the earth, but he didn’t particularly mind. “I am glad you trust me so explicitly.”
“Well of course!” Constance wiped her brow and beamed at him. “Your presence is refreshing to me, even with that taciturn nature of yours.”
He coughed so as to turn the heat of his face away from her far too-discerning eyes. “I’m glad to hear it.”
Jeritza could hear the smile in her voice even as Constance suppressed a triumphant chortle.
“Demure as always,” she teased gently. “Now help me uproot this monstrous vine, because I simply cannot get it to budge.”
O.O
Slowly and surely, the ruined gardens began to recover. The once bramble-thick and weed-ridden grounds that have endured years of neglect were slowly stripped of their unkempt appearance by one determined Lady Nuvelle and the silent stranger who called himself Jeritza. And as if sensing the fierce determination of its caretakers, the grounds slowly came to life underneath Constance and Jeritza’s firm touch, the dry grass growing greener and the soil burgeoning to damp fertility as the weeks crept by.
“What will you grow here?” Jeritza asked one cool evening, watching Constance firmly raking out the last tendrils of weeds with the air of the abolisher.
She paused in her work. “Why, roses of course!” Constance said in an astonished tone, as if she was taken aback by the fact that he had to ask at all. “Heaps of them, in every color imaginable! We might have some lovely lilies in the corners perhaps, maybe some violets if I’m feeling adventurous, but roses in abundance, for sure!”
“You always were fond of roses,” Jeritza said quietly, and Constance beamed at him, a pleased flush coming across her features as she leaned prettily on her rake.
“I happened to find the memories associated with this particular bloom soothing.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “Do you recall? You offered them to me whenever I visited House Bartels.”
“I remember,” Jeritza murmured. “You loved wearing them in your hair, even when the thorns scraped at your skin.”
Constance burst into a round of laughter. “A veritable crown of thorns! And yet you never had the decency to pluck them off for me. You never change, Emile.”
Jeritza grunted, but even his indifference can’t mask the inevitable smile that danced around his lips. “Hm.”
Constance’s voice fell from its strident tone into a wistful sigh. “Those were some of my most cherished memories,” she confessed into the quiet of the evening still. “I clung to them on days when I thought I would drown under the light.”
Jeritza was silent. As Constance dragged the rake through the earth with half of her usual energy, the warm and balmy air of the gardens yawned in the cavernous silence between them before he cleared his throat and spoke.
“Those were happier times,” he said slowly. “I…have gone down a much darker path since then.”
Constance clicked her tongue at him. “There you go, being all dour again. You’ve certainly regressed from that bright and blushing lad who used to shower me in blooms, haven’t you?”
Jeritza started. “I didn’t—”
She grinned at him. “Do you deny it? It was a flattering display that I would not consider turning down were you to repeat the gesture.”
This time, there was no use trying to hide the immediate blush that covered the pale expanse of his face. As Constance laughed, her sweet and strident voice filling the warm silence, Jeritza closed his eyes and committed this image, this image of loose hair, faint stars, and darkened soil under a lady’s boot, to memory, lest he let it fade along with the memory of a laughing girl wreathed in a crown of roses.
O.O
As the coastal climate of House Nuvelle slowly melted from mild winter to balmy spring, the first rose roots, bestowed upon the recovering house when trade began to circulate after the war, were sown. Freshly watered and covered with fresh, loose earth, the seeds were ever urged on by their caretaker, who patrolled the gardens incessantly even under risk of the strengthening sunlight.
“It’s been so long,” Constance sighed as she bent to peer at the fertile expanse of dark soil, broken by tiny shoots of green that swirled up from the ground. “and you all are so small. Will it really be years until I see your full-grown potential?”
“The caretaker said it would take a few weeks for the roots to flower, Constance.” Jeritza reminded her as she straightened with a long-suffering sigh. “Now come into the shade. The sun’s bright today.”
Constance heaved a great sigh as he took her by the arm and led her under a nearby awning. She complied quietly, settling onto a bunch without so much as a murmur.
“There will be flowers soon.” Jeritza adjusted the film of her sunhat so that her face was shielded from the hot glare of the tropical sun. “Soon, Constance.”
“I hope so,” she muttered glumly. “otherwise all the lovely roots that we were gifted from those kind ambassadors will all wither and rot under this horrid sun, and I will have accosted you for nothing.”
“I am here of my own volition, Constance.” Jeritza told her firmly. “I’m looking forward to the bloom of the roses as much as you are.”
She gazed up at him, her eyes sad and overcast. “Really?”
“Really.” Jeritza glanced up at the wheeling sun overhead, wincing as the rays spilled from the clouds like blood from an open wound. “But I’d rather tell you why on a dimmer day.”
Constance hummed gloomily, hiding her face on the breadth of his shoulder as she twisted her fingers into his gloved ones. “Alright.”
Jeritza went stiff beneath her touch. But before Constance had time to panic and draw away and blame her actions on the weather, he was already threading his own fingers through hers and leaning his own head on the top of hers, drawing her closer until she could hear the frantic beat of his heart.
She closed her eyes with a wry smile. Maybe this horrid sun wasn’t so bad after all.
O.O
After weeks of agonizing wait and tentative false starts, the roses, despite all of Constance’s fears, finally bloomed.
They were little balls of red speckled amongt the jet black branches, hardly anything to be truly proud of, but Constance fairly shrieked with joy when she ventured into the gardens as the warm evening air stole across the grounds. It was a small triumph compared to their monumental victory over Those who Slither in the Dark just a scant few days ago, but this felt nearly, if not equally, triumphant in its own degree.
With the air of the conquering hero, Constance walked with a determined stride to where Jeritza was brooding in the rather shabbily outfitted training ground of House Nuvelle.
“Those dummies weren’t meant to be ogled, Emile.” Constance called out with an excited air. “Whatever are you doing here anyway?”
“Thinking,” Jeritza replied slowly.
“A most engaging pastime.” Constance commented gaily as she tripped over to where he was standing with his arms folded behind his back. “Will you join me in the gardens? Something most exciting has happened and I wish for you to be the first to witness my magnificent triumph!”
He turned to her, his distant expression focusing on her face in surprise. “Have the flowers bloomed?”
Constance cackled. “Nothing gets past you! Humor me, won’t you?” In a bold show of confidence, she extended her arm to him; an invitation, a question. He took it.
“You should be resting,” he chided her as she merrily led him through the maze of rooms towards the estate grounds. “Your wounds haven’t fully healed.”
“You’re one to talk,” Constance shot back at him. “Look at you, tottering around in the training room of all places, pale as a ghost after all that blood you lost! Come, some fresh air will do you good.”
Jeritza looked as if he were about to argue, but then the guard watching the doors leading to the estate opened them with a smart salute, and he fell silent at the sprawling sight before them.
They both had been so busy with stamping out the last of Those who Slither in the Dark that he had given thought to the garden until now. The last time he had visited this garden, the bushes were flourishing but flower-less, dark against the vibrant haze of the evening sky.
Now, they were fairly resplendent with roses.
Fully opened roses that have unfurled in the evening damp and beading with condensation. Half blown flowers that have clustered shyly beneath their wider and braver counterparts, and tiny puckered rosebuds waiting to open another day. Rich velvety red flowers, dusky pink flowers...and even a few white ones that Constance had planted “just for piety’s sake”.
“This…” Jeritza didn’t realize he had stopped in his tracks until he felt Constance tugging on his arm eagerly.
“Come smell them! The scent is heavenly!” She smiled widely in her eagerness, and it was so bright in comparison to the tense worry lines that have adorned her face as of late in their efforts to stamp out the last of their enemies that he’s suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to gather up every last flower in this garden and lay it at her feet.
Jeritza was not a religious man, but in this moment, as Constance plucked a single red rose off of its stem and proffered it to him with a shy smile, he suddenly understood what it was like to worship.
“You gave me a rose, all those years back.” Her murmur was bashful, a little terrified. She won’t meet his gaze. “I wanted to repay the favor as soon as these bloomed.”
He took the flower as if in a trance. It was not the most magnificent flower of her dramatic boasting, but it was lush, crimson, and beautiful. The thorns bit at his gloves, and he snapped them off, slowly, firmly, as Constance fidgeted and fretted with her gloves, staring at everything but him.
“Constance,” Jeritza finally said, haltingly, holding out his free hand out to her. “Would you come here?”
Constance blinked up at him, her face redder than the flower in his hand. She stepped carefully towards him until they were an arm’s length away from each other. Then another step, where now she has to tilt her head backwards to meet his gaze.
“Closer,” Jeritza asked, in a low voice that sent shivers up her spine. “Please.”
“If I step any nearer, it would be improper,” Constance mumbled, her color high, but nevertheless, she took the final step, and she was all but in his arms, and…
Jeritza took the rose and threaded its stem behind her ear. He tucked it carefully around her curls, sweeping her hair off of her shoulder so it could rest undisturbed above her ear like a red jewel among the gold of her hair. His gloved hand lingered on her shoulder, before settling with a light, almost ginger touch, as if he were afraid to be afforded even this luxury.
Constance gaped up at him, her lips parted and her cheeks flushed with a most attractive dusting of pink. Sometime during all of this, she had clutched at his chest for purchase. “Emile!”
“Roses have always suited you more than me.” His breath stirred her hair with every syllable, and he was very much aware of how she shivered under his words.
“And you’ve plucked it clean it this time.” Constance laughed, a watery, trembly sound that shuddered like a sob. “Oh Emile, you can be so exceedingly chivalrous.”
He didn’t reply; he just gazed at her, his sharp blue eyes soft in the evening light. Sometime during all this, somehow his arm had found its way inexplicably around her waist. Now whenever did that happen?
“If you’re trying to court me, you’re doing it all wrong.” Constance stammered and blushed, even as she hid her bright red countenance in his chest. “Oh, this is most unlike me! And yet…”
“And yet, Constance?” Jeritza asked softly, his hand creeping up to thread through the strands of her hair and cradle the back of her head. “If I were to ask to court you?”
“Don’t make me say it aloud, Emile,” Constance mumbled despairingly around a mouthful of his tunic, but he could feel her slowly growing smile against his chest and felt rose-colored warmth bloom inside of him as she raised her gleaming eyes to meet his expectant gaze. “Of course , my dearest. I accepted your suit the moment you gave me this rose.”
Jeritza held her close with an inaudible sigh of relief, closing his eyes contentedly as she burrowed deeper into his chest, the fronds of that blushing red rose in her hair tickling his cheek like a lover’s caress. “I am glad then, for you, and for your diligent upkeep of these flowers.”
“I’ve told you that I would restore this house to its former glory.” Constance preened quietly under his praise.
She glanced up at him with a twinkling air, grinning as he pressed his forehead to hers. “Though, I must admit, the grounds are no longer the most beautiful thing on this estate…”
Jeritza flushed. “Don’t tease me, Constance.”
“It’s not teasing if it’s the wholehearted truth,” Constance informed him archly, her smile widening even as he opened his eyes to gaze hazily at her with only the faintest modicum of protest. “And I shall be ready to inform you of that truth in the days to come, my darling dear.”
“You are incorrigible,” Jeritza said fondly.
“That I am.” Constance admitted with a wide smile as he stroked the fairness of her hair, admiring the scarlet bloom drooping above her ear. She wrapped her arms more firmly around him with a sudden laugh. “But then again, so are you, my dear Emile. Oh, what a wonderful pair we’ll make!”
.
.
.
fin