She’d known him from childhood, her elder brother’s best friend. He had accepted her for who she was, just as she’d accepted him, and she had told herself it would be enough. More than enough. Her heart still ached, would perhaps always ache, whenever she thought of Henry, the sacrifices he’d been willing to make.
How dare that same heart hammer like raindrops on the roof whenever Tristan looked her way?
Henry had been gentle and laughing and, most of all, kind—in other words, everything the Duke of Raynham was not. Over the years, however, she’d also caught glimpses into the shadowy place that hid behind Henry’s smiles. She had known what he wanted, what he feared. Whereas Tristan…
Well, perhaps that was part of the difficulty. Perhaps the two men were not so different after all. For despite Tristan’s show of sternness and strength, she could not shake the feeling that he too had a secret. Some soft spot that had made necessary his hard, protective shell. The thorns that guarded the tender shoot beneath.
As did she, of course. As did probably every living being. Even a duke.
How foolish to want to discover his.
A confrontation with a closed door put a stop to her peripatetic musings. Unbelievably, her wayward feet had taken her back to her chamber. If she’d tried, she couldn’t have found a more direct route. With a sigh, she let herself in. Such a lovely, elegant room. And stuck in it, she felt as out of place as a weed in a crystal vase.
Through the large windows she watched gray clouds shed raindrops that coursed down the glass like tears. No matter how large, the room felt like a cell and the weather was her jailer. She didn’t belong at Hawesdale Chase, and she didn’t know what to do with herself. The devil finds mischief for idle hands, Mama was fond of saying. But the trouble wasn’t really idleness. She glanced down at rough, stained fingers that had ruined a small fortune in embroidery silks before her mother had conceded defeat. The trouble was that her hands were no more proper than the rest of her.
The notion of teaching Lady Viviane had been a momentary bright spot. She’d never had the opportunity to share her knowledge. Not one of her younger siblings had ever expressed any interest in plants. But she’d put an end to that potential diversion with her talk of…
The blush that she’d managed to keep at bay in the library burst into flame on her cheeks at the memory. Not the memory of what she’d said, for that was simply science. Or nature, if one preferred.
But, oh, the memory of his face as she’d said it, the flare of shock in his face…and more than shock too. Something that had made his dark eyes darker still.
She had needed him to understand the controversy surrounding ladies and the study of botany. She would not have wanted to teach his sister without his knowledge and at least a modicum of support. But she would have lived much more comfortably without ever knowing what his face looked like when he set aside the mask he wore so habitually—that of the overbearing officer, the starchy duke—and showed himself to be a man with all-too-human and quite ungentlemanly desires.
Good heavens. Another moment and she’d be proving right all the naysayers who insisted that ladies ought to know as little as possible about…about…
“Sex.”
She forced herself to say the word aloud, to break the spell her imagination seemed determined to cast. Curling her fingers into the soft leather cover of her journal, she made her way to the vanity table, for there was no desk in the room. The weather might have curtailed her research, but she could still work. She had drawings to refine and notes to organize. She would spend her day sitting right here, writing…
She had left the pens and ink in the library.
With a sigh, she flipped through the journal. Its pages crinkled crisply since they’d been wetted by the rain. Drawings, descriptions, observations, lists flickered past beneath her thumb. At her roughly sketched map of the house, she stopped, her progress impeded by the stub of a dull pencil still marking her place. It would have to serve.
No sooner had she settled to the task of translating her shorthand notes about the varieties of moss to be found in Shropshire than she heard a knock. A servant, perhaps, though she had not rung. Tucking the pencil between two pages, she rose and went to the door.
Tristan was the last person she expected to find on its other side.
“Miss Burke,” he said, and dipped his head. “I had neither cause nor license to make such a remark. I’ve come to make amends for my behavior.” He spoke stiffly, as might be expected from one without a great deal of experience in offering apologies. Though to be fair, his expression was sincere.
When he bowed, she could see that his sister stood behind him, arms folded, and Erica found the scene so familiar, she had to stifle a laugh. How many times had one of her elder siblings marched her before an authority to exact a confession of wrongdoing and to witness the gratifying spectacle of her punishment?
In this case, however, she gathered that Lady Viviane would gain no benefit from seeing someone slam a door in her brother’s face.
“What sort of amends?” Erica asked instead, wary.
“We wish to show you the glasshouse,” Viviane said.
“Hawesdale’s conservatory houses more than a hundred varieties of plants, many of them tropical species,” he explained. “And it has the added appeal of being always temperate, no matter the weather.” As if on cue, a blast of rain and wind rattled the windows behind her. “You might study or sketch there to your heart’s content.”
His words—an echo of Henry’s promise to give her time to fill every page in her journal—pierced to her very heart, far sharper than his jab at the notion of a love match, though of course he could have no way of knowing how the offer would affect her. In looking for somewhere safe, somewhere other than his face, to rest her eyes, she discovered he was carrying Lee’s Introduction to Botany, along with the pens and ink she had abandoned.
“And we can begin our first lesson,” added his sister.
Tristan sent a warning glance over one shoulder. “Now, Viv. Miss Burke has not agreed…”
Disappointment streaked across Viviane’s thin face.
“A teacher ought never to deny a willing pupil, Your Grace,” Erica said quickly. “And I’m sure the glasshouse is a lovely place.”
His reply, when it came, seemed to require an unexpected degree of fortitude. “I’m told it was one of my mother’s favorite haunts.”
She nodded. “Let me get my journal.”
* * * *
Inside the conservatory, the air steamed and the scent of peat filled Erica’s nose. Her attention darted from one pot to the next. Plants she had known only through careful pen and ink drawings and pale watercolors burst into life around her: thick vines, delicate blossoms, sharp thorns.
Despite the dreary skies beyond, the glass-walled room was almost painfully bright, as well as deafeningly loud. Raindrops pounded against the roof and chased one another in erratic races down leaded window panes. She cowered against the assault on her senses, fighting the impulse to cover her ears, narrowing her gaze against the light and discovering as she did so that there were tears in her eyes.
At that very moment, Tristan turned to say something to his sister and glimpsed what she would have given anything to hide. “Are you all right, Miss Burke?”
“Yes, yes.” She lifted one hand to dash away the evidence of her foolishness.
The movement drew Lady Viviane’s attention. “You are disappointed by the conservatory?” she asked, her own expression less skeptical, more pained.
Disappointed? What a pallid word to describe the inconvenient emotions welling to the surface at this moment.
Erica looked from one to the other, and a hiccup of panic rose in her chest. What right had she to feel disappointment? Her lifelong dream was about to be realized. What did it matter that she stood in a greenhouse in Westmorland, w
here all had been arranged for easy perusal, like creatures in a menagerie: clipped, cataloged, and tamed?
And how ridiculous of her to feel grief—or was it guilt?—at the notion that Henry’s fond promise was about to be fulfilled by the Duke of Raynham.
Erica shook her head and blinked away the last persistent tears. “Not disappointed—never that.” As she drew in deep lungfuls of the humid air, a sort of peace dripped into her veins, keeping time with the drumming rain. This was her element—or as close to it as she would likely ever get. “I am grateful. Your brother has been…” Some other word. Any other word. “Kind.”
Tristan still watched her with furrowed brow, as if he suspected her of being not entirely truthful. But before he could speak, they were interrupted by the approach of a man wearing a heavy apron. His face was weathered, his head bald but for a fringe of white above his ears. “Miss Burke, allow me to introduce Mr. Sturgess, the head gardener. Miss Burke is something of an expert on plants.”
Mr. Sturgess’s frown rivaled his employer’s. “That so?” His eyes flickered over the journal she clutched in her arms. “Suppose you want to make a few pretty pictures of flowers ’n the like?”
“We will not interfere with your work, sir,” she promised, with a tip of her chin to include Lady Viviane.
The word we visibly increased the man’s discomfort with the plan. Clearly, he had not anticipated the double threat of having his greenhouse invaded by two women. Still, he conceded with a nod, and she laid her notebook on the empty corner of a nearby table. Beside it, Tristan made a neat stack of the textbook, the pens, and the ink bottle. The knuckles of one long-fingered hand brushed the spine of her journal, and for some reason, she had to quell a shiver.
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“Will I show you around?” Mr. Sturgess’s posture was a curious mixture of resentment and pride as he gestured with one arm toward a long row of potted plants and watched warily as Erica preceded him.
In the center of the rectangular room, under the very peak of the glass roof, stood a stone circle filled with orange trees and ringed by wrought-iron benches. She and the gardener walked toward it between two rows of waist-high tables, past the bright colors and heady scents of gardenias and orchids, while Tristan and Viviane passed between two more sets of tables covered by ferns and even a few cacti. Beyond the miniature orange grove, four more rows of tables formed three paths to another door. “To the kitchen,” Mr. Sturgess explained, as she noted the various vegetables, herbs, and medicinal plants nearest the exit.
Heedless of her gown, Erica knelt and touched her fingertips to the stone floor. “How is it kept warm?”
“Well, now, that’s down to a fancy bit o’ Roman engineering. A fire’s kept burnin’ at that end”—Mr. Sturgess nodded toward the door through which they’d entered—“and the heat passes through channels underground. Comes up through vents in the floor.” He pointed to small, periodic openings beneath the tables. “We keep the plants that like it hottest nearest the fire.”
Her mind reeled at any attempt to calculate the window tax on a room made entirely of glass, or the price of the coal required to keep it temperate. Tristan was watching her, his gaze hooded. Perhaps he was performing similar arithmetic. She half expected him to decry the extravagance.
But of course, some one of his ancestors must have ordered the conservatory built, and his father must have seen to it that it was stocked and maintained, perhaps to please his mother. And with more than half its space taken up by plants that benefitted the estate in some manner, either as food or medicine, no one could call it an entirely useless expenditure.
“Ingenious.” She stood and dusted off her hands.
Tristan turned to his sister. “I should go. But I leave you in Miss Burke’s capable hands,” he told her, “and you”—his gaze lifted to Erica—“under the watchful gaze of Mr. Sturgess.”
Erica’s knee bent in a curtsy. “And who will keep an eye on you, Your Grace?” She hardly knew from whence the teasing words had come.
Tristan’s expression tightened. What had been open became opaque, and despite the room’s heat, a chill tickled along her spine. Mr. Sturgess looked away, uncertain what to make of Erica’s presumption. Viviane, however, laughed. “Miss Pilkington, I daresay,” she teased.
Something like a smile twisted across Tristan’s lips. But he said nothing, merely bowed to them both and gestured for the gardener to accompany him to the door, speaking low as they walked away. In another moment, he was gone.
Viviane asked, “Where shall we begin our study, Miss Burke?”
“At the warmest end of the room,” Erica said as soon as Tristan’s broad shoulders disappeared through the doorway. “We shall imagine ourselves as far away from this cold, wet day as we can. Somewhere on the banks of the Amazon should do it, I think.”
One arm upraised, the girl forged her way across the conservatory, a dauntless explorer. As she followed, Erica sent an apologetic glance at Mr. Sturgess. She expected him to ignore them and resume his duties now that the duke was gone. But he approached them with shuffling steps. “In case you have questions,” he said.
He was relishing this moment in the spotlight, she realized. Had Tristan known he would? “I did hope you might tell us the history of a few of these more unusual specimens, Mr. Sturgess.”
“’Spose I’ve got the time,” he replied with a weary-sounding sigh.
Trying to hide her smile, she collected her journal and busied herself with finding a blank page, as the gardener began to explain how plants from South America and the Far East had come to be under his care. Afterward, she gave Viviane a brief lesson, as bland as she could make it, in the parts of a flower and their various functions, then set her to work sketching the pinnate leaf of a fern suitable for a beginner’s talents.
Once Viviane was occupied, Erica turned her attention to a wild vine that wound its way up and around a trellis surrounding the doorway: a Passiflora caerulea that had survived the journey from Brazil. Certainly nothing she had expected to find on a journey to the Lakes.
“A gift to the late duchess, I’m told.” Sturgess spoke behind her.
“The present duke’s mother?” He nodded. “I understand she loved plants.”
The gardener lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Mebee. Before my time, miss.”
Erica glanced toward Viviane, who was still bent over the fern leaf. Though she suspected the girl had overheard more of the conversation in the library than was wise, she seemed perfectly indifferent or perhaps oblivious to the current one. The noise of the rain against the glass was terrific, and their voices were low. Still, Erica dropped hers almost to a whisper when she asked, “Does the duke make frequent visits to the conservatory?”
“Never, in my experience,” Sturgess said with a shake of his bald head. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw him walk through the door.”
“I wonder why he stays away.” She let her gaze drift over the beauty that surrounded them.
“Couldn’t say, miss.” He fished a small pair of clippers from a pocket on his apron and fingered them absently as he spoke. “But folks do say he likes things orderly—always has, even when he was lad. Bit too dirty and wild in here for his taste, p’rhaps.” He snapped the clippers shut, as if pruning a useless branch. “Well, I’d best get back to my work and not keep you from yours.”
With a nod, the gardener returned to the kitchen end of the conservatory. She watched him until he began watering a row of seedlings, then opened her journal and prepared to begin a thorough study of one of the Passiflora’s palm-sized blooms, a corona of pale petals starred with purple filaments. Any attempt to capture the complex flower would require complete concentration.
Instead, her mind still flitted to and fro like a butterfly at midsummer.
Did the butterflies and bees relish the exotic delica
cies of the Hawesdale conservatory? Or did they politely decline and declare to one another that the fare was simply too rich or too strange? Like gaudily dressed rustics at a town ball, suspiciously eyeing the epicurean delights of the supper table…
She caught herself tapping the end of her pencil against her journal, mimicking the erratic rhythm of the raindrops. With a shake of her head, she set herself once more to her task.
On the sixth such starting over, she thumped her journal down on the nearest table, not thinking how such a display of temper might look. Frowning over her leaf, Viviane did not appear to notice. Mr. Sturgess, however, cast her an assessing look, then left the conservatory through the door nearest the kitchen. Briefly, she wondered if he had gone to ask for assistance in removing her for making a disturbance.
After a few moments, however, he returned, something clutched in either hand. When he was within a yard from her, he held out a plain holland apron in the pinafore style, intended to protect her dress—or rather, the dress that the Duchess of Raynham had loaned to her. With a smile of gratitude, she slipped the apron on. Then he opened the fingers of his other hand. On his palm lay two bits of creamy white fluff.
“Cotton wool,” he explained in a louder than usual voice. “For your ears. Hard to concentrate with all that racket.” With his free hand, he pointed up to the rain-battered roof, and as he turned his head, she could see he had stuffed his own ears with the batting.
With an uncertain smile, she accepted the gift. When he walked away again, she furtively tucked a tuft in each ear. The sound of the rain still came to her, but was muffled now by the thrum of blood in her veins.
How odd she must look. If Tristan could see her now, would his dark eyes dance with suppressed laughter? Or would they turn cold instead?
The Duke's Suspicion (Rogues and Rebels) Page 10