The next day, Chloe walks through the gardens of House Calendula. Vivid flowers the gardener has raised with painstaking care bloom in every colour. Beside her is her fiancé, Leonardo, smiling the way he always does. That smile used to set her heart racing — or so it should have.
‘Goodness, how thoroughly fake it looks……’
His smile is manufactured, plain and simple. It’s obviously nothing like the one he aimed at his beloved Sherry in that restaurant yesterday. How did she never notice? That faintly dubious smile is exactly the face nobles put on in society.
The girl she used to be, charmed by a look that was pasted on — it strikes her now as painfully ridiculous. And at the same time she’s ashamed of how green she was, unable to see what a person actually is.
[Chloe, today’s dress suits you beautifully as well. You look like a fairy of the roses.] (L)
A sweet voice. The usual compliment. Except now she knows he doesn’t mean a word of it. His words are worth no more than empty courtesy, and probably less. Flimsy things. To think she used to be delighted by lines thinner than paper — it’s absurd.
[Chloe?] (L)
Puzzled by her silence, Leonardo says her name. The Chloe of before would have answered with a smile that opened like a flower and a voice as lovely as a bell. The Chloe standing here now answers with a face like a winter wind and a low voice that pushes him away.
[……Is that so.] (C)
Leonardo looks bewildered by a version of her he doesn’t recognise, and Chloe feels nothing at all. Her feelings for him have cooled to a degree that surprises even her. She can hardly believe it ended this easily.
Hearing what he truly thought, thrown at Sherry across that table, took her heart away from him completely. The voice she believed she loved, the words she took for kindness — all of it was a lie. The smiles, the words, even the way he looked at her. Now that she knows every piece of it is counterfeit, there’s no innocent joy left to feel.
The walk is anything but companionable, and afterwards the two of them take tea in the seats set out in the garden pavilion. On the pure white tablecloth sits a white porcelain tea set and tea scented with citrus, and the tiered stand holds sweets and light refreshments, beautifully arranged.
Ordinarily Chloe would be attentively picking out scones and sandwiches for him, since he doesn’t care for sweet things, and placing them on his plate. And Leonardo would tease, “Everything tastes better when you’re the one serving it,” which had become a habit of theirs.
Today she doesn’t so much as reach for the stand. She sits there cool and silent and takes one quiet sip of her tea.
Leonardo glances at her, then lets his eyes drift to the tiered stand.
[……Chloe?] (L)
[Yes. Is something the matter?] (C)
Thrown by her curtness, he tilts his head and makes a joke of it.
[The scones you always pick out for me — I was wondering whether they’re coming today.] (L)
Only then does Chloe turn her eyes on him. What’s behind them is so cold that a chill runs down Leonardo’s spine.
[……I wonder.] (C)
It sounds noncommittal on the surface, but the refusal in it is unmistakable, and the expression drains out of Leonardo’s face. Watching it happen, Chloe realises something: this is what’s underneath the mask. This is him.
Silence drops between them. In the quiet of the garden there’s only the small, repeated sound of cups meeting saucers.
[Chloe…… what on earth is the matter today?] (L)
[The matter?] (C)
[No, I only mean…… you’ve been somehow different from usual…… ah, though perhaps I’m imagining it.] (L)
‘Imagining it? That’s quite a stretch,’ Chloe thinks, exasperated.
She can see he’s bewildered by this cold, unfamiliar version of her. But trying to write it off as his imagination is beneath contempt.
‘If this were his darling “Sherry,” he’d be falling over himself to get back in her good graces. With me, he doesn’t even make the attempt. Which means I’m a woman not worth the trouble of appeasing……’
It’s only her imagination, but if Sherry turned cold on him, he’d surely worry he had angered her somehow and set about winning her round. Because he wouldn’t want the woman he loves to dislike him.
With Chloe, he doesn’t bother. Worse, he tries to wave it off as her imagination, and the sheer gall of it leaves her genuinely appalled. He won’t so much as pretend to humour his own fiancée.
For him — no, for his house — the engagement to Chloe is the lifeline keeping their noble name intact. Tying themselves to House Calendula is the only reason House Linden clawed its way back into society.
Does he feel no debt for that? Or perhaps he finds it patronising, a favour held over his head. That would at least explain the way he fails to show her any respect.
With every exchange like this, her regard for him drops further, and by now it’s close to hitting rock bottom. Chloe loses all desire to speak, and spends what remains of their time together quietly drinking her tea.
Simplyrical 
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