The east garden at dusk was a different place than it was in daylight.
In the mornings it was purposeful, the gardeners moving through it with their tools and their quiet industry, the hedgerows trimmed and the gravel paths raked into clean, parallel lines. But in the hour before the second bell, with the light going amber and low and the rest of the household pulled inward toward supper and lamplight, it became something else entirely. Still. Unhurried. The kind of place where a conversation could breathe without being overheard.
I had chosen it deliberately for exactly that reason.
