The Old Rose Garden

A Victorian Romance and Erotica short story
by Lady T. L. Jennings

I stayed in bed for a couple of days until I was starting to feel better. The thunderstorm and its aftermath had kept me prisoner in my chambers, and although I did not really want to know what kind of havoc the workers had created in the old rose garden, not knowing what they had done was somehow worse.

In my mind I prepared myself for the worst as I crossed the field just after dawn to make sure that I was alone. A thin layer of morning mist was still dancing in the morning light, and dew covered the grass.

However, when I finally stepped through the black iron-wrought gate to the rose garden, I found to my relief that the damage that they had done was less than I had anticipated.

My feet made soft sounds against the gravel as I slowly walked along the white gravel path that nimble fingers had cleared of willow herbs and dandelions. I noticed that the thick moss that used to cover most of the statues around the pond had been removed and that the climbing ivy vines and bindweeds had been peeled away, but to my delight I saw that someone had kindly left some ivy at the foundation of the statues.

For the first time since I was a little girl, I could actually see all of the seven statues again, and I realized that the marble statues around the pond were actually some sort of women dressed in loose Greek-inspired togas, with carved stone fish jumping in the sculptured waves at their feet.

Naiads, I thought, and I knew instinctively that I was right. They are water nymphs! The insight almost made me laugh with childish happiness.

The pond had been cleared too, I saw as I curiously walked closer. The gardener had pumped away the stagnant, greenish water and scrubbed the bottom of the pond. In the shade of a thick rosebush the same person had thoughtfully placed several wooden buckets and filled them with water and the few surviving water lilies. He will probably replant them later, I concluded approvingly.

However, before I had time to investigate further the other changes that had been done in the old rose garden, I heard footsteps approaching on the gravel. Who is here this early? I thought, alarmed, and without hesitating, I swiftly and quietly ran up the low hill and hid behind the trunk of the magnolia tree.

Cautiously I peered around the smooth tree trunk, almost not daring to breathe. It was the young man with the dark and pretty eyes that had seen me in the window.

So what do I do now? I thought and was starting to feel a little bit silly. Here I was in my own garden, hiding from the gardener that my brother had employed. Any other normal young lady would have either plainly ignored the worker or possibly, if she was rather fast and forward, she would start a conversation with the young man, pretending that she had forgotten that she was not accompanied by a chaperone.

The most bewildered thought, however, was that I really wanted to talk to him, I realized to my own vast surprise. I was curious about him and wanted to know what he planned to do next in the rose garden.

My bent knees started aching from the awkward position as I hid behind the tree, and I decided that since the gardener really was not an actual gentleman per se and I did not, in fact, have a reputation as a proper marriageable lady anyway, my honour certainly could not be considered at risk if I merely talked to him.

Besides, it really is my garden, after all, and no one ever comes here anyway, I thought, and I rose from behind the magnolia and stepped out from under the shadows of the blooming tree.

However, as I walked towards him, I suddenly felt the first subtle warning. The edges of my vision blurred and wavered slightly.

Not now! I thought frantically and tried to hurry back to safety behind the magnolia tree before I was seen. But it was already too late. The young man must have heard me coming, and he turned around, and our eyes met. And then the veil that separates our reality was stretching thinner and thinner around me, and I stepped through into a different time and place.

The reality in front of me shifted.

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Copyright © 2013 Lady T. L. Jennings