The Story

He was already there when she arrived. Standing by the fireplace, in conversation with Mr. Whitmore, holding a glass of wine he had not touched. She knew he had not touched it because she checked when she entered the room, and checked again an hour later, and the level in the glass had not changed.

He found his way to her after supper, in the manner of a man who has planned a thing but intends it to appear accidental. She found this faintly entertaining.

"Miss Caven," he said, which established that he had enquired after her name.

"Monsieur Varenne," she said, which established that she had enquired after his.

A small symmetry. They both noted it.

"You have been walking the moors every morning," she said. "I've seen you from the lane."

"And I have seen you in your kitchen garden." A pause. "Your plants are remarkable."

She looked at him directly. "Yes. They are. I've been trying to understand why for some years."

Something shifted in his face — almost nothing, almost nothing at all. The slight compression of a person who has been surprised.

"And have you arrived at a theory?"

"Several," she said. "None of them satisfy me. You?"

The pause this time was longer. She let it be long. She did not, she had discovered across years of conversations that men found unsettling, feel any particular obligation to fill silences.

"I have theories about many things," he said at last. "Fewer answers than I would like."

"Three thousand years," she said, without knowing she was going to say it.

The glass almost left his hand. Almost. He caught it with a precision so absolute it was itself a tell. No human reflex was that controlled.

"I beg your pardon?" he said, very quietly.

She did not know where the words had come from. They had arrived in her mouth from somewhere below conscious thought, from the same place the herb-knowledge came from, the same deep wordless intelligence that told her which plants were dangerous before she had read it in any book. She did not understand them. But she believed them.

He looked at her for a long moment. The fire behind him was very bright. His face in the light of it was — she searched for the word — composed. Composed in the way of a thing that has been assembled with great care and has held its shape for a very long time.

"You are a very unusual woman, Miss Caven."

"So I have been told," she said. "Generally not as a compliment."

Something happened to his mouth. It wasn't quite a smile — more the shadow of what a smile might look like on a face that had largely given up that form of expression. But it was something.

"I intend it as one," he said.

"Good," she said. "Then we're off to an honest start."