Wonderland has always made it abundantly clear that Buckingham was not permitted to satisfy all his cravings the same way he might at home; months and months in this world have made him a grudging student to that lesson. And yet since yesterday he has come to discover an entirely new cruelty, a desire so deep that his usual distractions would no more sate it than a man with a wooden bucket would empty the waters of an ocean.

After a while he took to distracting himself instead, at least as best as he could. He had, for instance, the notion that perhaps tending to the flowers in the Greenhouse might soothe his thoughts, as it often had in the past. But already he thinks of his gardener rather than the gardens; not of the beauty that bloomed around his estate, but of the shelter its hedges would provide from prying eyes when they lay entwined.

Buckingham shakes the thought off, and vows not to allow his mind another excursion into their direction, which... proves somewhat more trying than anticipated, when he finds the greenhouse occupied by an old, ah, acquaintance.

"Ellen," he greets curtly through a somewhat clenched smile, before he can reel in his surprise.