He sank to his knees on the grass, a gentle, knowing smile in his eye. “Poppy. Do me the honor of being my wife.”
She keenly wished he would get up.
“You flatter me. But you, above anyone, know that I have no wish to marry.”
He grinned up at her, expectant. “You feign that you don’t wish to marry to save people thinking no one will have you. You don’t have to do that anymore. Don’t you see? You aren’t what most men want, but you are what I want. All that rig about you being a mad old spinster—I’ll turn it on its head.”
She bristled. “You will do nothing of the sort. Please—”
“Poppy, don’t be foolish. You can’t stay here alone. You can leave all these shrubs behind,” he said, gesturing at the plants she had so carefully nurtured since girlhood. “I’ll buy you new gowns. We’ll take private rooms, bring in a cook and a maid. In a few years I’ll have enough for a horse. Sooner if I can find a better place. Come to London with me. As my wife.”
“No,” she said firmly, her sympathy for the disappointment she was causing him having eroded with every sentence of his speech. “And do please get up.”
His face fell. The light behind his eyes went dull, then dark. She looked away.
“I’m sorry, Tom. Truly. And I am grateful for your friendship. But my life is here.”
He went bright at the cheeks. “Friendship. That’s what you’d call it? Because I might call it something else. Or do you spread your favors around to all your friends?”
She closed her eyes. It had been a single moment in the woods. One very brief moment, nearly five years before, when he had come to help her gather moss and she had laughed at something he had said, and he had pushed her against a tree and kissed her. And for about one half second, she had permitted it—if to permit was to freeze—before she pulled away in shock.
They had never spoken of it. But ever since that day, he had looked at her like he knew something about her that she did not.
Like he had some claim on her.
And because he was a favorite of her uncle, because he helped her in the nursery, because he sent her plants from London, she’d gone on smiling and pretending not to see it, pretending it did not seep inside her skin and rankle her from within her very bones.
She was deathly, deathly tired of it.
She inhaled, and met his aggrieved look calmly. “Tom, you have always been a friend. I hope you will remain one. But I have no wish to marry you, or anyone else. If that is why you came here, I must ask you to take your leave.”
His mouth fell open. His face clouded over with some mix of bemusement and hurt.
Her anger melted as the man took on the old, pained expression of the boy he’d once been. Poor Tom. He was full of bluster, but he was no worse than other men, and he’d been kind to her, for all his unbearable presumption.
“I know you’ll find a lovely wife. No doubt someone far more suitable than me.”
His eyes went dark and flat as glass, like those of a dog that might attack. “But you’ll not do better, Miss Cavendish. That’s a promise.” He turned and quickly walked away, his thick neck and arms huddled over his ribs as though to protect a smarting heart. She watched him go until she couldn’t bear the sight of it.
How could he so mistake her intentions? He, who had listened to all her grand plans for years? To think she would give up her life’s work—the passion into which she had poured all her efforts and every last shilling—for a flat in London and a maid? She’d more likely sail to India, or cut off her own arm and present it to Tom Raridan’s London cook to serve for supper.
What she wanted in this life was not a husband. It was freedom, finally, from dependence on men. Her entire life had been dictated by their fortunes: their deaths, plunging her from crisis to crisis; their charity, allowing her to survive, to scrape by, to make her tenuous foothold in business; their half-truths, sabotaging her ambitions. She was tired of needing permission, dispensation, kindness. She intended to be the mistress of her own fate. And there was one thing she knew with absolute certainty from observing the ways of the world: one did not get that kind of power by marrying it.
She sank back against the warm glass wall of the greenhouse and stood there for a moment, letting its heat soothe the goose bumps that had risen on her forearms despite the glare of the sun. Tom was correct about one thing. She was utterly alone now. Breathing in the loamy, balmy hothouse air, she felt it keenly. If she was to have any chance of securing her independence, she would need to find in herself the ferocious iron will that so many had accused her, not fondly, of possessing.
She waited until her hands stopped trembling and set about pruning her rows of potted plumeria—a repetitive, physical task that always helped clear her mind. The perfume of the flowers drifted around her as she worked, and she welcomed it into her lungs. She strained on her tiptoes to reach the branches of the plants on the highest shelf, humming to herself.
“Miss Cavendish, I presume?” a man’s voice said, startling her.
She lost her grip, and a plant came careening down toward her head.
The man leapt in its way, just barely blocking the pot’s impact with her nose by diverting it to land with a thump against his own shoulder. In so saving her face from the blow, he pinned her body between his larger person and the shelves in front of her. Bits of fragrant foliage stabbed at her cheek and throat. Something brushed across the back of her neck—the starched linen of the man’s cravat.
Oh, this blasted day. Had she not enough to face without uninvited gentlemen showing themselves into every last room of her nursery? Unsettling her with unwelcome suits of marriage? Assaulting her with plants?
She craned her neck to get a better look at this latest intruder, who had steadied the pot back on the shelf and was now attempting to unravel the buttons of his waistcoat from the lacings of her sturdy leather work stays.
And then she blushed, overtaken by a sudden rush of mad desire to be wearing anything—anything—other than a straw hat and a faded old gardening dress.
He was not precisely a pretty fellow, whoever he was. His nose was crooked, as though once broken, and his eyes were dark and heavy browed. But his hawkish profile, taken with his immaculate clothing, great height, and slim build, nearly stole her breath away. Had he not barged in on her and wreaked havoc on her last shred of peace on the most upsetting day of her life, she might have even been inclined to like him.
Instead, she narrowed her eyes. “Who are you, sir?”
“Archer!” a woman’s throaty, cultivated voice trilled from the doorway. “Please tell me that woman you are accosting is not our Miss Cavendish.”
The man freed his final button and stepped away, turning to the young woman with a mordant smile. “I couldn’t say. I’m afraid we haven’t had a chance for introductions.”
“I am indeed Miss Cavendish. And this is my nursery. May I be of some assistance, or have you merely come to overturn my plants?”
The petite woman sailed inside with a gracious chuckle, her hooped skirts flouncing perilously close to the fragile tendrils of Poppy’s passiflora as she walked.
“Forgive us, Miss Cavendish. My brother has such a curious approach to making introductions. I am Lady Constance Stonewell and this poorly mannered fellow is the Duke of Westmead.”
Poppy bit back a bitter laugh. Westmead. Of course. When the universe took it in mind to test what you were made of, the trials came raining down at once.
Westmead inclined his head, causing a white petal to flutter from his fine head of glossy hair. “My profuse apologies for startling you, Miss Cavendish. There was no one outside.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, my lady, Your Grace,” she said, making little effort to infuse sincerity into her tone. “To what do I owe the privilege?”
“You won’t like it when I tell you,” Lady Constance said, leaning in with a sparkle in her eye, as though she and Poppy shared a long history of private jokes. “You see
, I understand you have had dealings with my gardener, Mr. Maxwell.”
Maxwell. Poppy nearly groaned aloud at the man’s name. He’d been after her for weeks to take on a floral design commission for a ball at Westhaven—repeatedly failing to understand that she was not a decorator, and most definitely not available. The confusion had begun when she’d made gifts of floral arrangements to a number of the larger estates in the shire, hoping the striking designs would attract more customers to her exotic cultivated plants. Along with new clients, the scheme had won her an accidental reputation as an artisan of ballroom fancies. One that was flattering, but did little to further her ambition to sell trees.
“A most persistent fellow, your Mr. Maxwell,” she said. “I’m afraid, however—”
“Evidently not persistent enough,” Lady Constance interrupted. “I’ve been quite despondent to learn his pursuit of your talents has been fruitless, for much depends on the success of this ball, and I’m told you are a genius. So I’ve come to beg. Or, failing that, to bribe you with my brother’s worldly goods.”
Westmead, she noticed, had turned his back on the conversation in order to survey the contents of her greenhouse. She took a small flicker of pride that it was not yet torn apart. Her exotics were radiant, fragrant, a riot of color and green. Nothing like the staid rows of carnations and orange trees he’d find in the middling force houses at Westhaven.
“You are kind,” Poppy said, reabsorbing herself in snipping leaves to signal that she did not have time for a long interview, “and I hate to be repetitive. But I already made clear to your Mr. Maxwell my inability to take on the commission. I am otherwise engaged, and as I have tried to explain, this is a nursery, not a floral society.”
Westmead glanced at her over his shoulder and caught her eye. “But it is a business, is it not, Miss Cavendish?”
She rewarded him with a tight smile. She disliked being condescended to. Especially by a duke.
“That is correct, Your Grace,” she said pleasantly, locking her jaw around her words like he did. Her grandfather had been a viscount, and her mother a lady; she could speak like one if she wanted to. “But I find I am unable to fulfill new commissions owing to the fact that every man in the whole of Wiltshire seems to be under your household’s employ.”
Lady Constance clapped her hands, as though this was delightful news. “But, Miss Cavendish, if labor is the issue, I would be pleased to put my brother’s resources at your disposal. I’m sure His Grace can be of assistance in whatever you require.”
Poppy gave them both her sweetest smile. “How kind. His Grace might begin by moving these to that higher shelf,” she said, indicating a row of succulents in heavy pots.
She waited, expecting her temerity to earn her a prompt rebuke, followed by the departure of her unwanted guests.
Westmead returned her smile just as agreeably. Then, he removed his gloves one by one, took hold of a tub of houseleek by his bare hands, and placed it where she asked.
His sister looked on blandly as though the sight of a duke doing the bidding of a nurserywoman were wholly unremarkable. “Miss Cavendish, do you read the London papers?” she asked.
“Not frequently,” Poppy said, enjoying the sight of the duke brushing soil from his immaculately cut waistcoat.
“Then perhaps you are unaware of my reputation for planning unholy spectacles at ungodly costs,” she said brightly, as though this description was a point of great personal pride. “Tell her, Westmead.”
“I can attest, at the very least, to the ungodly costs,” he said, picking up another plant with a wink.
“No one save for family has set foot at Westhaven for ages, and so it is very important that my guests are dazzled. I wish to transform the entire ballroom into an enchanting indoor garden,” Lady Constance continued. “Something so singular, beautiful, and lavish that every fashionable hostess on two continents will be in a frenzy to replicate it—particularly after I have it written about in every paper in town.”
She paused, and the sparkle in her eyes had hardened into a rather determined glint. “I am no expert in trade, of course, but I should think a clever woman of business might weigh whether the opportunity to exhibit her talents before the country’s wealthiest clients offers adequate incentive to rearrange her previous commitments.”
Poppy tried to refrain from glaring at the implication she was dull-witted. “My previous commitment, as you call it, is of greater value to me than the opportunity you describe. In fact, to me, it is priceless.”
At this, Westmead turned to her with a delighted grin. “But, Miss Cavendish. Nothing is without a price.”
“Your gardener already offered me triple my customary fee.”
He smiled. “I wasn’t talking about money.”
Lady Constance rolled her eyes. “Now you are in for one of his tedious lectures on business.”
“I would merely advise Miss Cavendish that a shrewd investor knows that coin is but one of many forms of currency, and often the least valuable.”
“Maybe to a duke,” Poppy could not resist saying.
Westmead chuckled. “Let’s test the theory. You mentioned you are in need of able-bodied men. How many do you require?”
Poppy put down her trowel and crossed her arms. For the sake of argument, she doubled the minimum number. “Twelve.”
“Done!” Lady Constance cried.
“Well, it really makes no difference how many men you could provide, because if I were away planting drawing room shrubberies, there would be no one here to oversee their work.”
“Unless, of course, you had a steward,” Lady Constance said. “Westmead has a frightful number of stewards wandering around. I will see you are assigned one.”
Poppy sighed. “I don’t think you quite understand. The work I am already engaged in must be completed in a fortnight, and it involves moving several acres of plants and goods three miles up an unfinished road.”
Westmead raised a brow. “Now you are making excuses, Miss Cavendish, when you should be extracting promises. A skilled negotiator must have an instinct for when to turn the screw.”
The cur was grinning at her.
She wiped her hands on her apron. She had told herself she must live up to the iron in her character. If the duke wanted to see a fierce negotiation, she would show him one.
“Very well. Here are my demands. Fifteen men, a skilled steward, and as great a sum in expenses as is required to transport my goods by the thirtieth of July. In addition, for my time and services I will require a fee of six hundred pounds to be paid in advance.”
The figure was outlandish. It could save her. No sensible person would agree to half so much.
“Very well,” Lady Constance said.
Westmead arched a brow. “Well done, Miss Cavendish. I daresay you’re learning.”
She schooled her face into the expression of a woman who did not need any lessons.
“There is one more thing I will require. A friend of mine is interested in making a proposal to His Grace’s investment concern. You’ll allow me to make an introduction.”
“A friend?” Westmead asked.
“My brother would be delighted to entertain an audience,” Lady Constance said quickly, shooting him a pointed look. “Is that not so, Your Grace?”
“Delighted,” he drawled.
“Perfect.” His sister beamed, once again the picture of sunshine and light now that she had gotten what she wanted. “Miss Cavendish, I will send a carriage to collect you in the morning.”
She extended her gloved hand.
Poppy took the only option she had left herself: she shook it.
Chapter 3
“What an intriguing woman,” Constance said as Archer helped her up onto the seat of his curricle. “Maxwell said to expect a ‘mad spinster harridan,’ but Miss Cavendish can’t be more than five and twenty. And she did not seem even slightly insane.”
He nodded, and did not add that Maxwell had also failed to me
ntion that the nurserywoman was rather winsome. And immensely pleased with herself, judging by the smile that had toyed about her lips after he had, for reasons he could not entirely explain, goaded her into extracting a preposterous sum for a few days of work.
“I’m so glad I was able to prevail on her,” Constance continued as he climbed beside her. “I told you my arguments would persuade her.”
He smiled. “Yes. That and your six hundred pounds.”
“Well, what would be the pleasure of having the richest man in England for a brother if one can’t spend all his money on a ball he won’t enjoy at a house he never visits?”
“Anything to please my ward,” he said, urging the horses forward.
She shot him that same wry look she had been leveling at him since he first sent her to live with their aunt in Paris at the age of eight. As if to say, Yes, let’s pretend that’s how it goes. Let’s indulge in that more pleasant fiction.
He felt a pang. He had done his best as her guardian, but she was effusive and affectionate by nature, and he was ill-suited to respond in kind. Spending a fortune was a meager penance if it helped her believe he was sorry he could not be better. So was accompanying her on foolish errands, as he had agreed to do today.
He reached out and put an awkward hand to her shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I? Doubters be damned?”
“Oh, indeed. Perfectly against your will, and utterly morose in spirit. But present? You are that.”
He shook his head. “You know, small Constance, I believe I have missed you.”
“Oh?” she said, in that bone-dry style she had learned at French court. “In spite of my provoking nature?”
“Because of it.”
She grinned at him. The air around her gave off the silvery smell of French perfume. It was the scent their mother had worn. He leaned away before she could notice that he shuddered.
They were quiet as he drove over the leafy roads that led back from Bantham Park to his family seat at Westhaven. The estate’s vast, rolling parkland was the same luminous green that he remembered from his boyhood, dotted with bales of hay and roaming sheep. As a younger man, he’d felt it unfair that his native southern England did not receive due appreciation for its bucolic glory—a landscape that rivaled the hills of Italy with its cresting downs and golden light.
The Duke I Tempted Page 2