At first he wrote off the appearance of the bright blooms as another idiosyncrasy of living in the ornate, albeit whimsical mansion with Arséne Lupin’s motley crew.

 

Count Saint-Germain had aesthetic sensibilities; providing vases of bright hydrangeas to each room each morning did not seem out of character. Van had no reason to think anything out of the ordinary.

 

Then came the second bouquet, and with something with which to compare the first, its minor imperfections did not pass unnoticed by the sharp, unrelenting gaze of Abraham Van Helsing. The flowers’ bulbous corymb bunches hid the uneven cuts and haphazard size differences. The bright colors detracted from any mistakes or tears in the stems that occurred when removing the leaves. The second bouquet showed much improvement in the art of flower tending. A few stems still suffered from uneven butchering, but there was a methodical patience to the placement of each flowerhead.

 

Dithering over it would not yield anything useful to the cause against Twilight, but as he caught the floral scent that wafted off her hair in the middle of their self-defense lessons, he wondered why he could not shake the image of the petals from his mind. As a diligent teacher, he guided her with firm, directive hands, but his mind wandered uncharacteristically.  Suddenly, he had to know her motivations.

 

“You’ve been leaving flowers outside my room.” He did not mean to sound so accusatory, but it is too late to repeal his statement.

 

Cardia’s attempts to look at him with her inscrutable gaze were thwarted by his careful and pointed correction of her fighting form, unwilling to allow their lesson in self-defense to be ruined by his ruminations.

 

“Yes,” she confirmed, and not the least bit shy about it. “Don’t you like them?”

 

He had taken them into his room twice – lying was useless. “You shouldn’t waste them.” On a monster like me.

 

“Do you know that flowers have special meanings?” The good Count must have been teaching her. He let her turn to face him, watched her hands fold together demurely in their special gloves. “Hydrangeas mean thank-you, from the bottom of one’s heart.” For a moment the silence hung between them, thick with unspoken tension from unbidden and heavy thoughts. “It’s nice to be able to express those kinds of sentiments, isn’t it?”

 

He was no silver-tongued gentleman like Lupin, bold flirt like Impey, kind-hearted comforter like Fran, or reliable caregiver like Saint; with a flustered sigh he reached out and patted the top of her head. The warmth pooled at the tips of his ears was hopefully hidden away when he shifted his glasses higher along the edge of his nose.

 

“You don’t need flowers to talk for you,” he reiterated later, finally, when her confused but pink face finally caught his own on their way back to the mansion. “You do that well enough on your own.”

 

“But can I still give them to you? I quite like arranging them,” she admitted, perhaps a little sheepish.

 

Were the bouquets a thank-you gift or an excuse, now? But the idea of her making them for another made him pause and nod his consent.

 

Besides, he found the floral scent something he didn’t mind amidst the smell of rock salt and cleaning solvent – it brought to mind long chocolate curls and teal doe eyes.