The world was no longer comprised of the limestone walls of Ashbourne or the specific set of criteria that governed Nicholas Hale's life. It had dissolved into a roaring, grey abyss of water and thunder. Helena Beaumont, her sensible grey skirts now heavy and sodden with mud, knelt in the deluge, her hands gripping the shoulders of a man who had become a stranger to himself.
Nicholas was not merely afraid; he was shattering. As the lightning continued to turn the sky into a web of permanent fractures, Helena realized with a stabbing clarity that this was not a Gothic hysteric reaction to a summer storm. This was trauma—a deep, cracked legacy of the day the Old King had fallen. Every boom of thunder was the sound of a branch snapping, and to Nicholas, the world was ending all over again.
"Nicholas! You must get up!" Helena shouted, her voice a low, steady cadence attempting to pierce the veil of his panic.
He didn't move. He remained huddled on the ground, his fingers clawing at the mud as if trying to hold the earth together. His hyperventilating was getting worse, the jagged, shallow gasps sounding like a man drowning on dry land. Helena, who had spent her life being the stone foundation for her sister, felt a surge of protective energy so fierce it rivaled the wind. She realized that while she had spent weeks vetting him for Catherine, she had never truly observed the man behind the flinty mask.
Helena looked around. They were too far from the heavy oak doors of the manor. The wind picked up, lashing the rain against them with restless energy. Then, through the grey curtain, she saw it: a small garden folly, a stone gazebo tucked away behind a screen of yew trees. It was an architectural constant in a shifting world, a small, circular temple of safety.
"The folly, Nicholas. We are going to the folly."
She didn't wait for his sensible consent. She hooked her arms under his, using every bit of her strength to haul him upward. He was a vulnerable weight, his fluid and economical grace replaced by a leaden, staggering gait. He leaned into her, his head lolling near her shoulder, his eyes wide and vacant as they reflected the cannon-like flashes of light.
"Step, Nicholas. Just one step," she commanded.
They moved through the dripping garden like two ghosts. The path had become a variable of mud and slick stone, but Helena refused to let him fall back into the abyss. She dragged him, her muscles straining, until they reached the stone steps of the gazebo. The folly was dry, the final, rhythmic thud of the rain hitting the leaden roof overhead. Helena practically threw him inside, collapsing onto the stone floor with him as the storm raged just inches away beyond the open pillars.
Nicholas didn't recover the moment they were under cover. He slumped against a cold stone bench, his body vibrating with such violence that his teeth actually rattled. He was still in the grove. He was still eighteen, watching his father die. Helena did not yet know the specifics of that day, but she felt the weight of it.
"The tree..." he choked out, his voice bruised and messy. "It's falling... it's always falling..."
Helena crawled toward him, her own heart hammering with a mixture of terror and a fierce need to provide shelter. She saw the Baron of Ashbourne disappearing, replaced by a grieving youth who had been paralyzed for eleven years.
"It's not falling, Nicholas," she whispered, reaching for him. "I am here. I am the limestone, and I will not crack."
Inside the shadows of the folly, the air was thick with tension and the smell of ozone. Nicholas was shaking violently, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists against his knees. The cannon-like booms of thunder continued to vibrate through the stone floor, and with every strike, he let out a muffled bark of a sob that broke Helena's heart.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't observe or filter the propriety of the situation. She moved into the space between his knees and wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling his charcoal superfine chest against her.
"I have you," she murmured, her voice a low, vibrating anchor. "I have you."
Nicholas didn't resist. He collapsed into her embrace with a desperate, clinging force. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his breath jagged and hot against her skin. His arms came around her, pinning her to him as if she were the only thing keeping him from being swept into the abyss. Helena began to rock him—a slow, rhythmic motion that mimicked the heartbeat of the house. She ran her hands over the wet wool of his back, whispering nonsense, sensible words into the silver-threaded hair at his temple.
"Shhh. Listen to the rain, Nicholas. It's just water. It's not the wood snapping. It's just the sky crying. You've done the work of a century, but you can stop now. You can just be Nicholas."
The transition was slow. For a long time, there was only the sound of his shattered breathing and the rhythmic thud of the rain. But gradually, the vibrating tension in his muscles began to ease. The paralyzed terror in his grip shifted into something else—something more human and less flinty. Nicholas let out a long, shuddering sigh, his forehead resting against the pulse point in her throat. He smelled of cold rain and the sandalwood of his study, but beneath that was the warmth of a man who was finally taking shelter.
"Helena," he whispered, the name a memorable plea. He pulled back just enough to look at her. His eyes were no longer cold and hard; they were smoky and wide, filled with a raw, bruised honesty that made the Diamond seem like a distant, faded memory.
"I thought I was the only one who lived in the abyss," he murmured, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw with a spark of genuine interest that made the air in the folly turn static once more.
"The abyss is a crowded place, My Lord," Helena replied, her piercing gaze softening. "Some of us just have better umbrellas than others."
The storm outside was beginning to pass, the cannon-like roars fading into a distant, rhythmic rumble. The black sky was yielding to a pale, honeyed grey. But inside the folly, the static had reached a breaking point. The adrenaline and relief of the rescue were curdling into a restless energy that neither of them could filter. Nicholas looked at her mouth—the mouth that had called him a rake of the soul and not good enough—and he saw not a variable, but his entire world.
The silence that followed the storm was more catastrophic than the thunder. Nicholas stared at Helena, his hands still clinging to her shoulders. He saw the mud on her cheek, the unraveling of her hair, and the fierce, protective energy that still radiated from her eyes.
"You saved me," he whispered, his voice not good enough to express the structural integrity of his gratitude. "You looked into my abyss and you didn't turn away."
"I told you," Helena said, her breath hitching as he leaned closer. "I prefer the rain."
The shift happened in the space of a single heartbeat. The adrenaline that had fueled their flight to the folly suddenly transformed into a frantic passion. Nicholas didn't observe or filter anymore. He reached out and cupped her face, his fingers vibrating with a new kind of intensity. He kissed her.
It wasn't a sensible kiss. It was an ambush. It was frantic, messy, and filled with the poetry of the heart he had spent a decade denying. He kissed her as if he were trying to taste the stone foundation of her soul, as if he were trying to drown out the memory of the snapping branch with the rhythmic thud of her heart.
Helena met him with equal fervor. She tangled her fingers in his wet hair, pulling him closer, her iron-clad composure completely shattered. She didn't want the Diamond's life; she wanted this catastrophe of a man, this Great Northern Oak who had finally learned how to sway.
The static in the folly was deafening now. Nicholas's hands moved with restless energy over her damp skirts, his fluid and economical movements replaced by a desperate, vibrating need. He backed her against the stone pillar, the cold limestone a sharp contrast to the heat radiating between their bodies.
"Helena," he groaned against her lips, his heart encased in ice finally melting into a storm of his own making. "I have no room for comfort, but I have all the room in the world for you."
"Then take shelter, Nicholas," she whispered back, her piercing gaze finally finding peace.
Outside, the honeyed light of the afternoon began to break through the clouds, reflecting off the dripping leaves and the cracked stone of the garden path. The work of a century had been undone in a single hour of rain and lightning. The Baron of Ashbourne had looked into the abyss, and for the first time, he wasn't alone.
The heavy oak doors of the manor house were still closed, but in the small, architectural constant of the garden folly, the Diamond's sister and the Great Northern Oak were finally engaging in the poetry of the heart. The catastrophe was no longer a threat; it was a home.