Chapter 204: The White Rabbit Escaped Me

LOUISE’S POV

He went back to staring at his dirt, his small stick resting motionless between his thumb and forefinger.

I watched him for another minute.

The silence between us stretched out, but it wasn’t the sharp, dangerous silence of the main house. It was just quiet. The heat was finally starting to break as the sun dipped behind the high stone wall of the garden.

There was no one waiting outside the door to tell us where we ought to be. No one was calling our names from the main building. No footsteps approached along the tiled path.

For once, the world seemed willing to leave us alone.

I found myself watching the light move across the floor.

It slid slowly over the tiles, turning the edges of the flowerpots gold. A leaf trembled in the faint breeze that slipped through a gap in one of the upper windows. Somewhere above us, the trapped fly had finally gone quiet.

I wondered whether Adrien could hear my thoughts.

I wondered whether he had noticed that I had no answer for him.

My curiosity got the better of my defense.

"Fine," I said, leaning forward, resting my chin in my hand. "You ask me, but you haven’t said anything about yourself. What about you, Adrien? What is your grand ambition? Are you going to take over the estate? Are you going to run a company? Become someone important so you can finally order me around?"

Adrien looked at me, his eyes wide and clear in the dimming light. He let out a soft, breathy laugh that barely made a sound in the quiet room.

"No," he said gently. "I don’t want to run a company. I don’t want to order anyone around."

"Then what do you want?" I pressed, eyebrow raised. "You must want something. Everyone wants something."

He considered the question seriously.

That was another thing I found irritating about him. He could make the simplest question seem worth thinking about.

Most people in our family answered quickly. They knew what they wanted because they had been taught to want the same things. Money. Influence. Respect. The satisfaction of seeing someone else move aside when they entered a room.

Even at sixteen, I knew how to describe ambition in the language of adults.

Adrien seemed to be searching for a language of his own.

He leaned back against the glass wall behind his crate, resting his head against the frame. He looked out toward the garden, his expression calm, peaceful, and entirely devoid of the tension he usually carried in his shoulders whenever he walked through the front door.

"I don’t know what I want to become," he admitted calmly. "I don’t have a big title in my head. I don’t think about being famous or rich or powerful."

He paused, his eyes tracing the line of the garden wall outside.

"I just want to live somewhere quiet," he said softly, his voice dropping into a slow, thoughtful rhythm. "A small house. Maybe near some trees, or near water where you can hear the rain on the roof at night. Somewhere where not too much happens."

I stared at him, bewildered.

"Where not too much happens?"

"Yes," Adrien said, nodding his head once, his voice steady and completely serious. "I want ordinary days, Louise. I don’t want one earth-shaking event after another."

"I don’t want people shouting in the hallways, or secret meetings behind closed doors, or listening to footsteps outside my bedroom to see if someone is angry."

He turned his head to look at me, his gaze direct and strangely clear.

"I just want a peaceful life," he whispered. "A life where I can wake up in the morning, make a cup of tea, look out the window, and just... be happy. Without constantly being pulled into other people’s conflicts. Without feeling like every word I say is being measured for a fight."

I sat on the dusty bench, listening to his quiet, soft voice fill the space between us.

A house near the water. Trees. Rain against a roof.A cup of tea.

He described these things with such care that I could almost see them. A small kitchen with an open window. A kettle resting on a stove. A narrow path leading from the back door to the water. Curtains moving gently in the morning breeze.

No servants waiting outside a bedroom door. No invitations printed on thick paper. No adults lowering their voices when children entered a room.

No one asking him to prove that he deserved to exist.

I wondered whether he had ever imagined such a place before.

Perhaps he had been imagining it for years, adding little details whenever the manor became unbearable.

Perhaps the house had existed in his mind long before that afternoon, a place he could visit whenever the real world became too loud.

"Would you live alone?" I asked.

He looked surprised by the question. "I don’t know."

"Wouldn’t you get lonely?"

"Maybe."

"Then what would you do?"

"Invite someone over."

I scoffed. "How practical."

He smiled. "I could have a dog."

"A dog?"

"Yes."

"That is your solution to loneliness?"

"It seems like a good one."

"What if the dog is unpleasant?"

"Then I would have to teach it not to bite people."

I laughed despite myself.

It was a small laugh, barely more than a breath, but it escaped before I could stop it.

Adrien looked at me as if he had witnessed something unexpected.

"What?" I demanded.

"Nothing."

"You are looking at me."

"Am I not allowed to look at you?"

"Not when you look like that."

He lowered his eyes, smiling at the ground. "Sorry."

I should have taken the opportunity to remind him of his place. It would have been easy. A few words about his mother, his position in the family, or the fact that he was sitting on a crate while I occupied a bench would have restored the familiar distance between us.

Instead, I found myself asking another question.

"What would you call the dog?"

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I haven’t decided."

"Then your dream is incomplete."

"That is a terrible thing to say about a dream."

"Someone has to maintain standards."

He laughed again.

I remember the sound more clearly than I remember my own laughter.

It was warm and unguarded, and for a moment, I resented him for making it so easy to forget the things we were supposed to hate about each other.

I wanted to know what else he had imagined.