Warwickshire Roses

The nursery held roses that most gardens had forgotten—Victorian varieties, Georgian finds, flowers that had been growing since Shakespeare's time. I'd been preserving them for thirty years, fighting genetic erosion one bloom at a time.

"Ms. Thornton?"

The man examining my heritage beds was clearly serious—the way he looked at the roses, the questions he'd emailed, the genuine appreciation in his eyes.

"Grace. And you're the collector from Boston."

"James Chen. I've been searching for specific varieties for fifteen years." He touched a petal with reverent fingers. "You have three that I thought were extinct."

"They're not extinct. They're forgotten. Different problem, easier solution."

"Will you teach me? Not just sell me plants—teach me to keep them alive."

I taught him for six months. He flew over regularly, stayed in the village, spent days learning what made heritage roses different from modern hybrids. He was a quick study, but more than that, he understood why the work mattered.

"Why roses?" he asked during month four. We'd moved from the nursery to my cottage, professional boundaries long since blurred.

"Because every rose carries history. Someone bred this, someone named it, someone loved it enough to pass it on." I touched a bloom in the vase between us. "When we lose varieties, we lose those people. Their work, their love, their connection to beauty."

"That's profound."

"That's horticulture. Profound is what people call obvious when it's about plants." I met his eyes. "Why do you collect?"

"Because beauty needs guardians. Because my grandmother had a garden full of old roses, and when she died, they were ripped out for lawn." He reached across the table. "Because I've spent fifteen years trying to find what she lost."

"I might have some of them."

"You might have all of them." His hand found mine. "Grace. You're the first person who's understood why this matters. Why I fly thousands of miles for flowers."

"I fly thousands of miles for flowers. Just in different ways."

We kissed in my cottage while roses nodded outside, their scent filling the air with something that felt like blessing. His mouth was warm, certain—the kiss of someone who'd finally found what he was searching for.

"The bedroom's through there," I said.

"Show me."

The bedroom looked over the nursery—four hundred varieties visible from my window, every one precious. James looked at the view with understanding.

"You sleep with them."

"I live with them. Sleep is just part of living."

"I want to live with them too. With you."

We made love while roses bloomed outside, our bodies finding rhythms that patient cultivation had taught. James touched me with collector's reverence—understanding rarity, appreciating what time had built.

"You're beautiful," he said.

"I'm built for gardening."

"You're built for nurturing. Same thing." He kissed down my body. "Let me nurture you."

We came together while the heritage beds waited for tomorrow's attention, both of us finding completion that decades of plant preservation had prepared us for. When I gasped his name, it was with the same satisfaction I felt at a successful propagation—life continuing, beauty persisting.

"Stay," I said.

"In Warwickshire?"

"In my nursery. In my life." I touched his face. "Boston has roses. But Warwickshire has me."

He stayed. Sold his American practice, became my partner in preservation. Now we run the nursery together—his collection knowledge, my propagation expertise, both of us fighting extinction one bloom at a time.

"We're gardeners together now," James said one evening.

"We're guardians together."

"Is that different?"

"It's better. Gardening is tending what exists. Guardianship is making sure it continues." I pulled him closer. "Like us. We tend what we have, and we make sure it lasts."

The roses still bloom. The nursery still preserves. And now there's a collector who became a partner, who found in my varieties everything he'd been searching for—including love that had been waiting, like a heritage rose, for the right gardener to tend it.