The few times she had seen him in passing, he had been all polite solicitude. How is your ankle recovering, Miss Cavendish? Constance tells me your designs are a thing of beauty, Miss Cavendish. As though they were distant acquaintances passing unexpectedly in a crowd. There was no acknowledgment of that last fevered hour they had spent alone together in his study. How he had called her to the wild and left her there, shaking and alone.
At supper she watched him leaning toward the empty conversation of Miss Bastian. Politely following along with her accounts of Parisian modiste shops and fashionable personages she had once seen in the crowd at the theater. Even Constance could not hide her boredom, yet Westmead nodded attentively, kindly, until Poppy could barely swallow her soup.
Not the kind of man with whom there is a future for you. Her blood grew thick as venom at the words. When she allowed herself to recall them, she felt like the Furies of Greek myth, those godlike women animated purely by their lust for vengeance.
Her anger was overblown, she told herself. His words, after all, were not inaccurate. And yet it was the deployment of them just precisely then, while her body was still vulnerable, while her heart was still prized open from her chest. The precise humiliation he had inflected and the flash of shame that had pierced his eyes exactly as he did so left her no doubt he had done it intentionally. He had coarsened what had awoken between them and made it tawdry. He had taken down her defenses and punished her for letting him.
A fluttering among the girls broke her concentration. She looked up from the wreath she was weaving to find Tom Raridan standing in the doorway.
“Poppy,” he said. “A word?”
Tom had always had a habit of appearing without notice. Since her girlhood she would look up to find him suddenly in her midst, as though he had traveled through the ether and landed in the Bantham Park stable yard, or in the middle of a clearing where she’d been picking bluebells. It had never bothered her in childhood, but it was becoming unnerving, how he trailed her.
Ignoring the staring maids, she beckoned him to follow her outside to the kitchen yard.
“How did you get in here?” she whispered.
He gave her a roguish smile. “Strolled in through the service door.”
“You are bold to come here after the things you said to Westmead about me. I can’t imagine what you were intending, but I will not soon forget it. You should leave.”
He made a great show of not understanding. “You have no cause to be cross-tempered. Someone needs to protect you now that there’s no sensible man to keep you out of trouble.”
“I’d be grateful to be spared any further attempts at protection. Why are you here?”
“I have news for you. I was at the Angler and Fin having a pint this afternoon.”
She frowned at him. He knew she did not approve of his habit of spending his days at the public house. It was drink that had been the undoing of his father.
“Don’t fuss. Just a pint to pass the time. Robins came in. Said he saw a couple that called themselves Hathaway at the inn at Ploverton.”
Bollocks. Eliot Hathaway was her uncle’s heir and Ploverton was only an hour’s ride away.
“But they aren’t due for days. And why would they stop there? Robins must be mistaken.”
Tom came close and attempted to take her hand.
She pulled her fingers away and stepped back. It would not do to have the servants see her touching a strange man in the Westhaven kitchen yard.
His features turned harsh—for a second she thought he might grab her again. “Tom, mind the servants,” she hissed under her breath.
His face returned to its usual affable composure. “It would be a shame if Mr. Hathaway were to hear whispers of your scheme. Wouldn’t be surprised if the magistrate were called. You ought to marry me for your own good. I won’t let anyone insult you.”
“It seems to me, Tom, that the only person insulting me is you.”
“I come here to warn you out of charity, and you accuse me? But then that’s our Poppy,” he said, his voice overloud with what she suspected was the easy amusement of the slightly sauced. “Never showed a lick of gratitude.”
Any trace of solicitude he had shown her when her uncle still lived was gone. Had he ever been her friend, or had he merely been a man with expectations?
A pair of maids heading toward the icehouse glanced at them.
“Go,” she said. “Someone will see you here.”
With an impish expression he grabbed her hand again and placed it to his lips. She jumped away with such force that she tripped over a sack of flour, sending a fine spray of dust up around her. The maids stopped what they were doing and stared.
“Go,” she whispered between clenched teeth.
Archer hauled a bundle of branches into a sack, a pastime for which he had developed quite a skill of late. It was amazing the pursuits a man could develop an affinity for when he no longer had the capacity to sleep, or eat, or think.
Abilities he had lost when he walked out of the room on Poppy Cavendish trailing a sickening string of words that would not have been out of place in the mouth of his father. I’m not the kind of man with whom there is a future for you.
The words were true, of course—he wasn’t. But not for the reasons she would hear. She would see a duke, taking what he wanted and withdrawing his interest. Reminding her of her place.
It was behavior worthy of the benchhouse, and he knew it. He had nothing but contempt for wealthy men who treated women poorly, and even less regard for aristocratic snobbery. He had alienated half of London’s drawing rooms with these qualities, earning himself the nickname “the humble Mr. Stonewell” among the swells and lordlings who spent their days at White’s and never dirtied their boots with the coarse commercial dust of the City of London. The man he had been in that room in that moment with Poppy was not the man he wanted to be, and he was ashamed. He owed her an apology.
But every time he saw her, the hollow look on her face arrested him. What could he possibly say when he could hardly account for it himself? It was as though when her fingers had touched Elena’s key, he had woken from a trance. The heat of her skin had been within a finger’s reach of the marks on his shoulders—angry scars that would have left her shocked. Shocked enough to ask him questions that he might have been just raw enough, had her hands been on him, and his mind full of her, to answer. And so instead he’d fled the room, and made very sure she wouldn’t follow.
He slung the finished bundles over his shoulders and trudged along the sloped path, and two maids carried silver buckets to the icehouse. Off to a corner a flash of movement caught his eye. A cloud of flour rose up around a woman in a muslin dress. It was Poppy. And that hulking wantwit Tom Raridan, standing over her.
Bloody bully.
He dropped his branches.
“Raridan,” he shouted, striding down the hill. “What are you doing in my kitchen yard?”
Raridan paused and stepped back, his face a sour smile.
“Good afternoon, Your Grace. I was just calling on Miss Cavendish with some news from the village.”
Archer leaned in, making his taller stature unmistakable. “If I see you slinking about this house like a common thief again, I’ll see that you’re treated like one. And trust me when I say that if I should ever see you lay another finger on Miss Cavendish, I will not bother with the magistrates.”
Raridan folded himself into a mockery of a courtly bow. “Of course, Your Grace. Good day.”
With a parting wink at Poppy, he sauntered out the gate.
Archer’s fingers twitched to grab him by his neck and give him his due for that bit of insolence. But Poppy moved between him and Raridan’s departing back.
“What exactly,” she asked with deadly quiet, “was that intended to accomplish?”
“My apologies that you were disturbed, Miss Cavendish. Are you injured?”
He knew the words were wrong even as he said them. The phrasing was too
formal, as though she were some forgettable drawing room miss he’d once spoken to of her dog, or her watercolors. As though she were Miss Bastian.
“Certainly I am not injured. A better question is, why you are interfering in my conversation?”
“Conversation?” he repeated. “I saw him nearly knock you to the ground.”
“Not unlike your own introduction in my greenhouse. It seems one needn’t be a gentleman to lack delicacy.”
Defiance flashed in her eyes. He drew a breath, willing himself not to match her temper.
“Not a week ago he was here dissembling as though he was betrothed to you and insulting your integrity,” he said, aiming for a calm tone of voice. “I thought you might wish to see him set down.”
Her lips twitched into a rueful little smile. She leaned back a bit, nodding slightly to herself.
“Ah. Indeed. You have great skill for that, haven’t you, Your Grace? Putting people in their rightful place.”
Oh, but that stung. Landed exactly in the spot where she’d meant it.
“Since we are elucidating where things stand, Your Grace, let me be clear. You seem to be under the impression that I am a woman in frequent need of rescue. You are mistaken. I have looked after my own affairs quite competently for well nigh on a decade. I would ask that you stay out of them.”
“Poppy,” he said softly, “I have every confidence in your abilities. But you can’t expect me to stand idly by and watch that lurking knave try to manhandle my—”
“Your what?” she hissed. “Your sister’s hired gardener?” She turned in disgust and walked toward the house. At the door, she paused and turned back. “Please try to recall that my life is not a diversion to distract you from your boredom of the countryside.”
She disappeared into the house.
Chapter 12
It had taken all night, but every last garland was hung. Every last sculpture was mounted. Every last blossom was in its rightful place. The house smelled like sunshine and shadows and moonlight and earth and flowers and beeswax and grass.
She’d done it. She’d brought a forest to life inside a ballroom.
Servants crept carefully through the rooms with brooms and ladders, sweeping up fallen leaves and petals and positioning candles inside crystal.
Poppy led Constance by the hand from the atrium and through the colonnade and finally to the ballroom. For once, the girl was silent.
All around them were trees. The tall, verdant structures made a canopy of the ceiling and lunged down dramatically, casting shadows on the floor. Garlands of delicate flowers drifted from above, some pale yellow like rays of sunlight, others dazzling white, like rain.
“You must be some kind of sorceress,” Constance breathed.
She was not a sorceress. Merely a woman who had forsaken sleep for most of the past three days.
Constance put an arm around her waist. “It is an enchantment, Poppy. It’s going to make you the most fashionable gardener in England. I shall see to it myself.”
Constance was right. Tonight would make her reputation. And tomorrow she could return home and begin the rest of her life.
There had been no further sign of the Hathaways. Grouse had met with her this morning to inform her that her plants were safely situated at Greenwoods, and the grounds at Bantham Park were restored to rights. The slapdash plan had worked. The sheer relief of it exhausted her. And now, at long last, she could go home.
“I’m so glad it’s what you hoped for,” she told Constance. “If you don’t mind, I am going to retire for a few hours before I travel.”
“Yes, of course,” Constance said. “But first there is something I would like to give you. It’s waiting in your bedchamber.”
Constance followed her to the ivory room. The enormous mahogany bed was piled with large scarlet boxes wrapped with striking golden ribbon.
“What is all this?”
“Valeria finished your things.”
Poppy bit her lip. She had asked Constance to cancel the order and to excuse her from attending the ball, pleading lingering weakness in her ankle. Constance had agreed.
In retrospect, she had agreed far too easily, making almost no fuss.
“I know you said you would rather not attend, but truly you should. It would be a great favor to me.”
“Constance, I don’t want to argue with you, but I am quite exhausted.”
“Would you at least open the boxes?”
“Very well.”
She removed the ribbon from the largest box and sorted through layers of delicate paper to find a lustrous gown of pale green silk inlaid with tiny drops of opal. She ran her hands along the garment, hardly able to believe the beauty of it. The next box contained a set of stays to fit below the stomacher, panniers to lift the skirts up and out around her hips, and a fine sheer muslin chemise embroidered with flowers in pale green thread. She clutched the garment to her chest and shook her head at Constance’s generosity.
“This is beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Please wear it tonight. Please come. As my guest of honor. You have worked so hard, and I know that the benefits to you in attending will outweigh the discomfort.”
She met Poppy’s eye. “To your ankle,” she added after a brief pause.
Poppy wondered how much she had guessed about what had passed between her and Westmead. Surely, she could not know the full extent of it. And yet there was a glimmer in her eye that implied that little had escaped her.
Constance helped her open the remaining boxes, laying out gold slippers, fine stockings, and satin gloves. “I shall send my maid, Sylvie, to come and dress you and help you with your hair. Say you’ll come. Please.”
Poppy sighed.
“May I think about it?”
“Of course. Oh, and I almost forgot, there is this.” She pointed at a small, unopened box in plain white paper, overlooked in the pile of scarlet trimming. “It was here before. You must have another admirer.”
She kissed Poppy on the cheek, and turned to go. “Send word up to me if you decide to stay. I hope you will.”
Poppy waited for her to leave before opening the final box.
Inside were a clasped case and a folded note pressed with ruby wax—Westmead’s seal.
Cavendish—
Let the final humiliation between us be that I could not find adequate words to ask for your forgiveness. Know that as you ascend to ever-greater triumphs in what shall no doubt be a long and storied life, somewhere a rueful friend smiles, wishing you every happiness.
All regret.
Archer
Inside the velvet box was a crown of perfect white plumeria blossoms. She knew these flowers. They were from her greenhouse. From the very plant he had toppled the day that he’d burst in on her.
Later, after she had sent word to Constance that she would accept the invitation to stay after all, and Sylvie had come to dress her, the maid lifted up the delicate wreath of buds with a wrinkled nose.
“Well, is that all you plan to wear in your hair?” she asked, looking skeptical. “With the other finery, you’d be better with a tiara. Shall I see if her ladyship would loan you one? She has a set of emeralds that would suit you.”
Poppy shook her head.
There were no words for what she felt.
Only the sight of her image in the mirror: a woman with a modest headpiece and eyes that glowed like thawing ice.
Archer tried not to wince as the young Miss Bastian continued to prattle blandly in his ear. How he was going to summon the force of will to offer for her he didn’t know. At least his secrets would be safe with her as his duchess. In the many days of their acquaintance, she had yet to ask him a question.
“Lady Constance has made this place so beautiful,” she enthused, gesturing at the lushness that surrounded them. “You must be very proud of her.” She plucked a rope of flowers from a trellis and wound it around her neck—a gesture meant as flirtation that succeeded only in giv
ing her the aspect of some dairy maiden’s favored milch cow.
He glanced over at his sister, glittering in an appropriately ludicrous pink confection that nearly swallowed her and her crowd of admirers whole.
“I am always proud of Constance. Though I suspect the credit for the beauty lies largely with Miss Cavendish. She has an unusual talent.”
Miss Bastian smiled in a way that was not kind. “She certainly seems to think so. How fine she looks, in that gown. A gardener in Valeria Parc. Imagine.”
He followed her gaze to the assembled crowd below.
She’d come.
He’d been informed she had declined the invitation, but there she was, standing beside Lady Rosecroft, who was introducing her to a group of elegantly dressed gentlemen.
Her lean frame was molded and stiffened into the curvier style of fashionable society, her skirts billowing out around panniers, her bust uplifted with stays. Her hair, for once, was not a riot, but was coiled elaborately around the sides of her head, drawing attention to the elegance of her long neck. She looked every bit the sophisticated London lady she might have been through a different accident of parentage.
Except for one detail.
His breath caught.
She had worn his flowers in her hair.
The simple wreath of plumeria was the only item that gave a hint of the woman she was beneath the finery—the waif in her smudged gardening gowns who stayed up all night drawing plants. The woman who had seen in a patch of wildflowers the makings of this verdant fantasy. No one would mistake her for an eccentric spinster in this crowd. No one would dare take her for an object of pity. And yet, he preferred her in her breeches, lugging plants in the sunshine. Not Miss Cavendish, but Poppy. The brilliant and singular Poppy.
Constance tapped him on the shoulder. “It is time to commence the dancing. I trust you will lead us in the first minuet?”
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