The morning light was pale, softened by a thin veil of mist that hung over the Grant estate. The world outside her window looked almost unreal, as if someone had washed the colors away and left only shades of quiet gray. Emily stood there for a long while, staring out, her reflection faint in the glass.
She had begun to recognize the reflection now the curve of the lips, the slope of the jaw, the unfamiliar eyes that looked back at her. Emily Grant's face. Not hers, yet hers all the same. It was a strange kind of duality, like living in someone else's skin while trying not to lose your own ghost inside it.
After breakfast, she wandered into the west garden, where the rain from the night before still clung to the rose petals. She liked it there quiet, open, untouched by the politics of the house. She sat under the marble arch, lost in thought, until Timothy's voice cut gently through the silence.
"I didn't take you for the type who liked gardens."
She looked up, startled slightly. "You sound surprised."
"I'm not used to seeing you outside," he said, hands in his pockets. "You seem more… library than sunlight."
Emily tilted her head, a faint smile touching her lips. "I didn't realize you were keeping track of where I spend my time."
He shrugged. "Hard not to notice. You move like someone who's always planning something."
"Maybe I am."
He studied her, quiet amusement flickering in his eyes. "And yet here you are, sitting in a garden doing absolutely nothing. That doesn't look like planning."
"Even soldiers rest," she said simply.
Timothy's brow lifted slightly. "And what are you fighting?"
She didn't answer, just looked at him then focused her attention on the lily flower growing under her feet.
The silence between them wasn't heavy this time; it was steady, like an unspoken understanding.
He eventually sat down beside her on the stone bench, keeping a polite distance. The sunlight filtered through the vines, casting delicate patterns on the ground. Neither of them spoke for a while.
"You've adjusted quickly," Timothy said at last.
"I adapt," she replied.
"That's not the same thing."
Her gaze flicked toward him. "No," she agreed softly. "But sometimes, it has to be enough."
He turned his head to look at her fully, studying her face as if searching for something hidden beneath her calm exterior. There was a question in his eyes not one he was ready to ask, and not one she was ready to answer.
When she rose to leave, he didn't stop her. But as she walked away, she caught his reflection faintly in the glass doors of the conservatory his gaze lingering, unreadable, perhaps curious.
Later that evening, as she brushed her hair in front of the mirror, Emily found herself thinking about his words again. You move like someone who's always planning something. He wasn't wrong. Her mind was a map of strategies, names, and debts yet to be collected. But in the rare moments of stillness like this morning, like that garden she caught glimpses of something quieter.
Not peace. Not yet. But presence.
She leaned closer to the mirror, meeting her own eyes. "I'm still me," she murmured. "No matter what face I wear."
The reflection offered no argument just silence, and the faintest flicker of something she couldn't quite name.
Her thought drifted back to the expression she saw on Timothy's face that afternoon,
And for reasons she didn't understand, it made her feel less alone.