Chapter 203: On That Warm Afternoon…

LOUISE’S POV

I had expected him to apologize for occupying the room. Perhaps he would stand, brush the dirt from his trousers, and move aside to let me pass. Perhaps he would offer a greeting so stiff that I could find something to mock in it.

Instead, he was concerned about the door.

"The humidity gets out?" I repeated.

He glanced at the glass panels surrounding us. "Well, the heat escapes too. It changes the temperature here."

I looked around at the rows of pots, the damp patches on the tiles, and the little puddle of water beneath a cracked clay planter.

"Are you suggesting the plants will complain?"

"No."

"Then I don’t see why I should care."

Adrien looked at me for a moment.

"I suppose you don’t have to."

There was no challenge in his voice. No bitterness. He simply returned his attention to the fern.

Somehow, that made the answer more irritating.

I pulled the glass door shut behind me until the latch clicked into place.

"There. The plants may sleep peacefully tonight."

He glanced up again. "Thank you."

I stared at him.

He said it as though I had done him a genuine favor.

I walked over to the wooden bench opposite his crate, brushing away a layer of fine yellow dust with my palm before sitting down. I crossed my legs, pulled my skirt over my knees, and watched him work.

He didn’t say anything else for a long time. He just went back to his tiny wooden stick, poking carefully at the dry soil, lifting out small green sprouts and setting them neatly on the stone beside his shoe.

The only sound in the glass house was the quiet scrape of wood against dry dirt and the buzzing of a lonely fly trapped against the high glass ceiling.

Outside, the gardeners were finishing their work. I could see one of them pushing a wheelbarrow along the gravel path, his shoulders bent beneath the fading sun.

Somewhere beyond the garden wall, a car passed on the road, its engine rising briefly before disappearing.

Inside the glass house, the air was warm enough to make the back of my neck damp.

I loosened the collar of my dress. Adrien noticed but said nothing.

I wondered how long he had been there.

"How long have you been sitting on that thing?" I asked eventually.

He glanced at the crate beneath him. "A while."

"That’s not an answer."

"About an hour, I think."

"Doing what?"

He lifted the little stick. "Removing weeds."

"I can see that."

"Then you already know."

I turned my head to look at him properly.

It took me a second to realize he had made a joke.

Not a particularly clever one. Not the sort that would have impressed anyone at dinner. But there was a faint, almost invisible smile at the corner of his mouth.

I narrowed my eyes. "Are you making fun of me?"

"A little."

I sat straighter.

He lowered his gaze to the pot, but I caught the brief twitch of his shoulders.

"You have become very brave," I said.

"Have I?"

"Perhaps the weeds have taught you courage."

He laughed under his breath. The sound was so unexpected that I forgot the next insult I had prepared.

I had heard Adrien laugh before, of course. Everyone laughed occasionally, even the people who lived in our house. But his laughter was usually quiet and brief, quickly swallowed whenever an adult entered the room.

This was different.

For a few seconds, he seemed to have forgotten that I was Louise Dubois, the girl who could turn an ordinary afternoon into an unpleasant memory with a handful of carefully chosen words.

He seemed to have forgotten that he was supposed to be cautious around me.

It was strange.

We were both sixteen, both carrying the weight of a family that was quietly eating itself alive, but for those few minutes, neither of us was playing a role.

I was not Alice’s sharp, dutiful daughter, and he was not the frightened, legitimate heir everyone pitted me against.

We were just two teenagers sitting in a hot, dusty glass house while the sun went down.

Adrien stopped poking at the soil. He rested his hands on his knees, leaning forward slightly, staring down at the pile of pulled weeds near his shoe.

"Louise?" he asked softly.

"What?" I replied, my voice sharper than I intended, purely out of habit.

He didn’t flinch this time. He just turned his head, his brown eyes looking straight at me without any of the usual fear or bitterness he carried around the house.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

I frowned, my eyebrows drawing together.

"What do you mean, what do I want to do? I’m sitting here waiting for my head to stop hurting."

"No," Adrien said, shaking his head slowly. He let out a small, tired breath that sounded almost like a sigh. "I mean... later. When we’re older. When we don’t have to live in this house anymore."

He paused, looking down at his dirty hands, his fingers tapping rhythmically against his trousers.

"What do you want to do with your life?" he asked, his voice low and steady. "What is your dream? If you could choose... if you could just decide your own future without anyone telling you what to pick... what would you choose?"

I looked at him, genuinely caught off guard.

No one had ever asked me that. Not in the way he did.

Adults asked about my studies, my ambitions, and the skills I was developing.

They wanted to know whether I had learned enough about the family business, whether I could hold a conversation with important guests, and whether I understood the importance of making the right connections.

They asked questions with answers already prepared.

What university would I attend? Which department would I eventually oversee? What sort of husband would be suitable for a woman with my name?

Alice certainly hadn’t asked what I wanted. Alice talked about goals, about positions, about securing alliances and taking what belonged to us, but she never asked what I wanted.

She told me what I wanted, and I repeated it back to her until I believed it was my own voice.

I felt a sudden, defensive heat rise in my chest. I didn’t like the feeling of being exposed, of standing in front of him without a script to read from.

"Why are you asking me that?" I asked, leaning back against the bench, folding my arms tightly across my chest. "Are you trying to be clever? Did my mother send you in here to see what I’m thinking?"

Adrien didn’t get angry. He didn’t even look annoyed. He just let his shoulders drop a little lower, a faint, sad half-smile touching the corner of his mouth.

"No," he whispered, looking up at the glass roof where the orange sky was turning a soft, dusty pink. "Nobody sent me. I was just... thinking about it. We’re sixteen, Louise. Normal people our age think about things like that."

"We aren’t normal people," I said coldly.

"I know," he replied softly.