“Who? Who doesn’t know what?”
“Mr. Stansbury. He doesn’t know about you. You know everything about . . . about him . . . and about how he’s in love with you, but he doesn’t . . . I didn’t tell him about you. I’m so sorry. I’ve ruined everything.”
“No. No, don’t be sorry.” She clasped my hand in hers. “You’ve done wonderfully. You’ve done perfectly. There would be no fun in it if you hadn’t left something for me to do.”
The carriage turned off the road and as it made its way up the drive, Miss Templeton drew a deep breath. “Is my hat straight? Are my cheeks too pale?”
“They’re—”
“Oh, don’t answer. But would you do me the favor of speaking to the butler? I don’t know that I can do it just now. I’ve been dreading a betrothal for so long that I hardly know how to enjoy it. But I can. I must.” She closed her eyes. “I will.”
“You are.”
She blinked as if in surprise, and then she broke out in a radiant smile. “I am, aren’t I?”
The butler took us down the hall into the glasshouse and announced our presence. Mr. Stansbury appeared at the end of the building, from a grove of ferns. Miss Templeton nearly swooned beside me. As we stood watching him approach, she reached out and clutched at my arm. Then she whispered a word to me. “Adah.”
“Adah?”
“That’s it. That’s my name.”
“Your name is Adah?”
She nodded though she did not take her eyes off him. “I must claim it now, mustn’t I, since I’ll have to live with it.” She lifted her chin, though it trembled.
“Adah is a lovely name, Miss Templeton.”
“I never thought so before, but . . . do you think it will do?” She tore her eyes from him and looked at me beseechingly.
“I think it will do just fine.”
As Mr. Stansbury reached us, she released her grip on my arm and extended her hand toward him.
He took it into his own, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. “Are you well, Miss Templeton?”
“Oh, yes. I’m quite the happiest I’ve ever been, Mr. Stansbury.” Her smile was tremulous, but wonder lit her eyes. “Thank you ever so much for asking.”
Neither of them moved, and still he kept hold of her hand.
She glanced up at him. “And you?”
“Me?”
Her smile burst forth like the sun, and she threaded her arm through his. “Yes you, dear man.”
I felt quite extraneous as they proceeded up the aisle leaving me to investigate his new palm quite on my own.
February plodded past with its long, dreary days. I was hoping to hear about a paper I had decided to submit to one of the journals. I told our publisher I would not be doing a book on wax flowers. They mailed back, asking if I would do one on knitted flowers instead. Seeing as how I did not knit and did not plan to learn, I declined that offer as well.
Mr. Trimble’s spider orchid finally bloomed. As I knelt on the floor beside the Wardian case, I discovered that he had been right. It looked nothing like the illustration of its type. It was both more and less than I had anticipated. As he had predicted, the flower had bloomed below the leaves, and the petals did, in fact, droop. I spent a few moments admiring its form, and then I moved it into indirect sunlight, where it would be happiest, and went on about the day’s work.
Though I continued to receive many invitations to dinner parties and dances, with Mr. Trimble’s departure, work had quickly consumed me, and I found myself venturing forth less and less, which suited me just fine.
One morning in mid-March, while I was working on an illustration, the bell sounded at the door.
Miss Hansford was out doing the marketing, and I was not at all happy to have my work interrupted as I went to the door and pulled the latch. “Yes? What is it?” My annoyance died away when I saw it was not the morning post. It was Mr. Trimble.
He bowed. “Miss Withersby.”
I nodded.
He looked more refined than when he had lived with us. He was wearing a grey top hat with an impeccably turned-out frock coat and a wide cravat tied up in a knot beneath his chin. “May I come in?”
I stepped aside, let him through the door, and gestured toward the parlor.
He took off his hat with a nod. Stepping into the room, he surveyed it as if he’d somehow missed its tight, drafty quarters. Papers and journals were once again piled haphazardly about the room.
“You can see we’re back to our old habits.”
The corner of his mouth lifted in a smile.
I now realized that, as hostess, the burden of conversation fell upon me. “Are you well, Mr. Trimble?”
“I am, thank you.”
Wasn’t that just like him, to lecture me about speaking in questions and then not follow his own advice? “It’s rather fine weather for this time of year, isn’t it?”
“It is. Although I’ve been told rain is much more preferable to a botanist than fair weather.”
“In the summer.”
He blinked, as if startled. “Pardon me?”
“Rain in the summer is much more preferable. In the winter it’s only depressing.”
“Forgive me. I must have misremembered how you—”
“You must be anxious to speak to my father. I’ll go get him for you.” I turned in the direction of the study, but he grabbed hold of my elbow.
“Please, Miss Withersby. I would much rather speak honestly about—”
“It was you, if I remember correctly, Mr. Trimble, who taught me that people generally never say what it is that they’re really feeling and that no one expects to be told the truth. I don’t see why you should apologize for following that social convention.”
“It was deplorable of me to leave you without saying one word on . . . Well, I could hardly say anything on my behalf, could I? But if I could have . . . I would have said something. I would have told you how very sorry I was to leave. How very sorry I was to leave you.” He paused as he swallowed. “I was so sorry.”
I glanced from his face down toward his hand, which had fixed itself to my sleeve.
He let go. “Will you say nothing?”
I looked him in the eyes, willing myself to remain immune to the pull of their deep blue depths. “Again, I must remind you of your own advice that conversations feed on questions prompted by those things the conversants wish to know. I can truthfully tell you there is nothing I wish to discover about you or anything you have said. I will say, however, that I never had the chance to congratulate you on your engagement, my lord.”
He winced. “Please don’t think you must do so now. I’m afraid I’ve gone and botched it.”
“On the matter of botched engagements, I feel I might be able to offer you the benefit of my own unfortunate experience.”
“I do not think you can help me, Miss Withersby. While I have made clear my intentions to return to the colony, Lady Caroline seems to feel that marriage to a sheep farmer from New Zealand is quite beneath her.”
“I always said it was a preposterous line of work.”
“Perhaps. But it generates a decent income. If my memory serves correctly, you once said those in polite society were rather rude, and I have to say I agree.”
“That’s an extraordinary thing to say, considering that you are one of them, Mr. Trimble.”
“By birth, Miss Withersby, but not by inclination. Through my bloodline runs a tendency to spend rather more than our income allows. If you will not think me too free for saying so, the first Earl of Cardington left us with an enviable fortune that later generations quickly depleted. My elder brother, it appears, will be the last to be able to do so and even he will insist upon doing it in poor taste. He gambles and several years ago was rather slow in paying off his debts. When he was accused of being a cheat, he challenged the man to a duel. I could not see the situation ending well for either man, so I contrived to keep him from that meeting, believing the taking of some young man�
�s life, or the end of his, would reflect poorly on the family’s name.”
“That may explain your deplorable family, but it has nothing to do with your engagement.”
“Former engagement. Lady Caroline is a longtime family friend. Several years ago, while she was away on the Continent with her mother, her father died. I was the one dispatched to bring them back, and at that time I made the careless promise that she was not to worry, that I would personally see to it that she was always taken care of.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what else did you say?”
“That’s it. That’s all I said.”
“And from that she inferred that you were to be married?”
“She did.”
“And you could not retract it? Say you did not mean it?”
“I did mean it. I did take care of her. I saw to it that her father’s estate was honestly settled.”
“That did not require you to marry her.”
“It did not, but what is a gentleman to do? It did not matter to me at the time, since I assumed I would one day marry anyway. How was I to know that I would one day also fall in love?”
I could not stop a blush from suffusing my face.
“In any event, after thwarting my brother’s attempt at a duel, I was shipped off to New Zealand and told to make something of myself.”
“Which you seem to have done quite admirably.”
Again his lips lifted in the promise of a smile. “I find the colony well suited to an honest life.”
“But Lady Caroline did not share your opinion?”
“She did not. And to remedy the social humiliation of letting her not-inconsiderable fortune slip through my family’s fingers, I have considered that I might have to get myself banished again.”
Get himself banished? “How?”
He sighed as he turned his hat over in his hands. “I suppose the best thing, the quickest route, would be to take up with an unsuitable woman.” His gaze darted toward mine.
“I have been told that people of your class do so all the time. And without any apparent shame.”
He sent me a piercing glance. “Upon reflection, I would have to agree with you. But I was thinking . . . if I married the woman in question I might actually be ordered to go far away. Expected to even. I would have to consider it my duty as an honorable man.”
He seemed to expect some sort of reply, but I had already conversed with him more than I had meant to.
Just as I decided to get my father, the echo of his words stopped me in my step. “Did you just ask me to marry you, Mr. Trimble?”
“I might have. Why? Would you accept such a ridiculous proposal from a preposterous sheep farmer?”
“I might. If I were given the courtesy of a proper proposal.”
“Good heavens, Charlotte. I don’t like games any more than you do. Marry me!”
“Though I have to say that I do not disapprove of your expression of ardor, that was an imperative statement, Edward, not a question. How can you do me the honor of asking for my hand when you do me a dishonor by assuming that—”
He took me by the shoulders, pulled me to himself, and kissed me. Rather thoroughly. Quite beyond what might be considered the bounds of appropriate displays of affection. Fortunately, there were none present to observe us. At length he released me. Or tried to, but I wound my arms about his neck when he would have let me go.
He put a hand to my cheek. “Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Will you, for heaven’s sake, marry me?”
“For heaven’s sake? I hardly think so.” Although I did rather wish to kiss him again.
“Confound it!” He grabbed my hands and sank to his knees. “You are the most maddening, most vexing, most exasperating woman I have ever met. Let me make this very plain for you, Miss Withersby. I love you. I need you. I wish to marry you.”
“That’s all very nice for you, Mr. Trimble, but do you not wish to solicit my opinion on the matter?”
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath in through his nostrils, and then opened his eyes and fixed that penetrating gaze on me. “Do you wish to marry me, Miss Withersby?”
“Yes.”
“Yes? Is that all you’re going to say?”
“Would you rather I said no?”
“No! It’s just that I’ve declared to you my love and . . . and my devotion, and I just . . .”
“Like a flower in bloom, I’ve discovered that it’s no good to try to adhere to some idealized type that has no basis in reality. I can only be what I am and offer up what petals I have, hoping that someone might look beyond what is supposed to be to what, in fact, actually is.”
He stood, grinning. “That’s altogether fanciful of you.”
“It’s meant to be poetical.”
He took my hands in his and brought them up to his chest, where he bent his head to kiss my knuckles. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to become a sheep farmer’s wife.”
“Or perhaps you’ll have to become a botanist’s husband.”
He smiled as he bent to kiss me once more. “Perhaps I shall.”
Epilogue
The Templeton-Stansbury marriage was the wedding of the century. At least, that’s what was claimed in Cheshire. The nuptials were held that May at the church, presided over by the rector. A reception was given afterward in the stumpery, which was disguised, by the bride, with a breathtaking array of ferns and flowers for the occasion. The couple repaired to the Continent for a yearlong honeymoon, from which I was sent a constant stream of letters. Though Mr. Stansbury had intended to spend the year acquiring specimens for his collections, Adah prevailed upon him to take her to Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. It was my understanding that a cargo hold of trunks containing stylish gowns, Wardian cases of exotic plants, and crates of fashionable new furniture awaited them at Overwich Hall upon their return.
Mr. Hopkins-Whyte fed the remains of his unfortunate specimens to the fire during the months of February and March and then made a visit to his beloved Northumberland for a fortnight in April while the children’s nurse and the cook put the rectory in order. To his great surprise, he got himself married to a third cousin while he was there. She has the makings of a very fine Mrs. Rector.
Out of respect for my father, Edward and I did not marry until he had settled himself in with the Admiral. And for the purposes of convention, we waited until Lady Caroline had found herself a suitable husband. With her family’s connections, however, it did not take long. Before the end of June I was being called Mrs. Trimneltonbury. And I must say, I delighted in hearing it.
That summer, I undertook a journey I had never imagined. It took a full two months to reach New Zealand, and another month of provisioning in Christchurch, and only then, once we reached Edward’s sheep farm in Canterbury, did I discover the parcel of letters awaiting me from home.
I confess that I will never fit with the Trimneltonbury family, but Edward and I have determined to cultivate our own species in a place that pleases us both, with a life we adore. I had not ever had the pleasure of acquainting myself with sheep, but I find they are not quite so dreadful as I had feared. And Edward himself is more wonderful than I had hoped. There is an abundance of flora just waiting to be discovered, and I conceive of at least several volumes that need to be written and illustrated in order to adequately represent them to the rest of the world. And on the whole, I find myself quite . . . happy.
Note from the Author
I have this great idea for a book about painting, and women, and botany!” I told my agent and my editor. It wasn’t until I planned my research that I started having second thoughts. Because to understand science, you actually have to read about science. And I did. I read about botany, about the history of botany, and about the histories of the botanists who comprise the history of botany. I started my research back in the 1700s and read about what happened well into the
1900s. What a challenge I set for myself with this book: to have a main character who lived and breathed science, yet make botany interesting to people like me who have no particular interest in it.
This book is based on the stories of the multitude of women whose contributions to the field of botany have largely been ignored. Women, like Charlotte, who wrote books and created illustrations that were credited, upon publication, to men. My writing was fueled by outrage at the knowledge that in spite of all of their hard work, they were not given credit for it.
The mid-1800s was a turning point in the study of botany. That area of science had chiefly been the purview of women and clergy who had an interest in the classification of plants. It was a safe pursuit whose study was meant to illuminate God and enrich faith. It was wrested from them, however, by professional academics more interested in the patterns of the distribution of plants.
The opening up of the study of botany to the “why” instead of simply the “what” struck fear in the hearts of many religious people of the era. They believed that investigating the distribution of plants somehow diminished the role of God in His creation. Although the distributionists came up with some dubious theories, they were matched in their doubtful rationale by responses from the religious adherents of the science. In some ways, religion’s credibility was so damaged that it was effectively written out of the scientific debates of the period and, sadly, most of the scientific debates of today.
Botanists had a reputation during the era for being philosophic thinkers with hardy constitutions and a winsome sort of charm. In the wilds of the colonies, in search of rare specimens, they perpetuated a reputation much like that of Indiana Jones. Illustrating their discoveries was part of the job description, and many of them, like Edward Trimble, dashed off whimsical caricatures of flowers. From the world of botany sprang the genre of literary nonsense best exemplified by the works of artist/writers like Edward Lear and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), who socialized with the era’s leading philosophers and amateur botanists such as John Ruskin (the famed patron of the pre-Raphaelite artistic movement).
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