by Kate Hardy
Hugo Grey was a businessman first, so she needed to show him the plans she’d made for grant applications. Plans that showed potential footfall and revenue, so he could see that the project would be self-supporting. And then she’d show him the things that really made a difference: Viola’s journals, her butterfly collection and the garden itself. She knew he’d probably seen them all before—but she was also willing to bet that he’d never seen them from her particular point of view.
Armed with her laptop, Alice took the Tube to Notting Hill and walked to Rosemary’s house. Hugo was already there waiting for her, leaning against the gate. She’d expected him to let himself inside to stake his claim to the house; the fact that instead he’d waited for her outside made her feel a lot more relaxed about the situation. Though, at the same time, her heart skipped a beat as she drew nearer to him. His cobalt-blue eyes really were stunning. He’d changed into jeans instead of the sharp business suit he’d worn in the office and taken off his tie; it was odd how such tiny differences could make him look so much more approachable.
‘Thanks for meeting me here,’ she said.
‘You’re welcome.’
Was she? Was that mere politeness, or did he actually mean it? She’d never been able to tell with Barney’s set. She’d taken them at face value—and then she’d learned that they’d been laughing at her all along, mocking the working-class girl who’d been stupid enough to think that the privileged classes would ever accept her for who she was.
‘Shall we?’ He gestured to the front door; once he’d unlocked it, he stood aside for her to enter.
She caught her breath as she walked into the kitchen. ‘It doesn’t feel right, being here without Rosemary.’
‘That’s how I feel, too,’ he admitted.
‘I’d always put the kettle on and make us some tea before we started work on the journals.’
‘Proper loose-leaf tea, and make sure you warm the pot first,’ he added.
She could almost hear Rosemary saying that; clearly it had been the same for him when he’d visited. She looked at the teapot on the dresser. ‘Given what I know now about the tea service, I don’t think I’d dare use that teapot ever again. I’d be too scared of dropping it. I can’t believe she let me think it was just ordinary.’
‘I can,’ he said wryly. ‘She once told me not to save things for best. She said you need to use things now and enjoy them, rather than save them for a special occasion that might never come.’
‘She was full of wise words.’ Alice felt her voice thicken in her throat. ‘I miss her.’ But getting emotional wasn’t going to help anything. She needed to keep this businesslike. Professional. She looked at him. ‘But that’s not why we’re here.’ She set her laptop on the kitchen table. ‘What do you want to start with, the journals or the butterfly house?’
‘The journals,’ he said. ‘I assume you had copies made when you borrowed them.’
‘Yes. I photographed them myself.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘And, before you ask, the reason I took them was in case you refused me access. I promised Rosemary I’d finish writing Viola’s biography and editing her journals, and I think it’s important to keep promises.’ Especially as she knew how it felt when someone broke a promise to you. ‘Just so I don’t waste time running through stuff you already know, what do you know about Viola Ferrers?’
‘She was born in 1858 into a fairly wealthy family, and she followed the fashion of Victorian women collecting butterflies,’ he said promptly. ‘Her husband bought this house when they married, and it’s stayed in the family since then.’
‘OK. First off, Viola was a proper entomologist, so please don’t dismiss her as an amateur collector with a “little hobby”,’ Alice said, making quote marks with her fingers and giving him a hard stare. ‘She was much more than that. She studied butterflies scientifically. She wrote papers, though because she was a woman she never got to hear her papers read at the Linnean Society—just like Beatrix Potter.’
He blinked. ‘That was a reason for them not to read her papers? Because she was a woman?’
‘Oh, they read the papers, all right,’ Alice said. ‘But Viola wasn’t allowed to hear them being read. At the time, women weren’t allowed to be members of the society. She couldn’t even go along to meetings as a guest. But she didn’t let any of that nonsense stop her studying butterflies. Let me show you.’
* * *
Again, Hugo noticed how vital and animated Alice was when she talked about the project; he really, really liked that. He followed her into Rosemary’s study, and she took one of the narrow leather-bound books from the shelf.
‘I know you’ve already seen them, but I want to put them in an academic context for you. Viola kept these journals from the age of sixteen,’ she said. ‘She used them as a sketchbook as well. She travelled around the country to see botanical gardens; she wrote down the details of the butterflies she saw there and sketched them, too.’ She opened the book, flicked through a couple of pages and held the book out to him. ‘See?’
Viola’s handwriting was very neat and regular, and Hugo noticed that all the diagrams were labelled. ‘She’s called the butterflies by their Latin names,’ he said, surprised; that hadn’t registered when he’d been young. There was a water colour of a copper and black butterfly on the page Alice showed him. ‘Boloria euphrosyne.’
‘The Pearl-bordered Fritillary. It used to be widespread throughout the country, and now it’s mainly found in parts of Scotland, Cumbria, Devon and Cornwall,’ Alice said, looking sad. ‘They’re one of the early spring butterflies; their caterpillars feed on violets.’
‘I’m not sure I remember ever seeing any of these in real life,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘There are some specimens in Viola’s collection.’ Alice went over to the large display cabinet, opened one of the drawers and slid out one of the frames. ‘Here.’
It was a long, long time since Hugo had seen the frames of butterflies. And it still amazed him that these specimens were more than a hundred and fifty years old, yet the colours were still fresh. ‘That’s beautiful. And also really sad, because—well, shouldn’t butterflies be flying, not pinned to a board?’
‘I’m glad you said that,’ Alice said. ‘I agree. Though at the same time we do need to curate the collectors’ frames we still have. So many of these haven’t been kept properly and the butterflies have just crumbled into dust over the years.’
‘I remember Rosemary showing me the big blue butterflies when I was very young,’ he said. ‘They fascinated me.’
‘Those would’ve been tropical ones from South America,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing that was Morpho didius. That’s one of my favourites, too.’ She put the frame back carefully and fished out another. ‘Here.’
‘That’s what I remember,’ he agreed. ‘The colour. Though obviously I’ve never seen a live one.’
‘You wouldn’t, in England, unless you’ve been to a butterfly house. Though there are some blue British butterflies,’ she said. She tipped her head very slightly to one side, as if thinking about something, and then said, ‘I could show you.’
‘In London?’
She nodded. ‘Or a bit further afield.’
She was asking him to go on a butterfly expedition with her?
Right then, she looked exactly like what she was: a butterfly specialist. Scruffy, not caring about fashion in the slightest, and totally in love with her subject.
‘All right,’ he said. Because going further afield with her wasn’t the same as going on a date, was it? Alice was proposing a scientific expedition to back up her argument on the butterfly house project, and as he was on the opposite side it made sense for him to accompany her so they were both in full possession of all the facts.
But what if it was a date?
He checked himself. Of course it wasn’t. Though, if he was hone
st with himself, Alice Walters intrigued him. And he was definitely attracted to the scientist, the woman who glowed with passion when she spoke about her subject. That snub nose. The freckles. The light in her grey eyes.
Reining in his thoughts, he brought the subject back to the butterflies. ‘The specimens in these frames: are they butterflies that Viola collected herself?’
Alice nodded. ‘She went on expeditions abroad. In Victorian times, you didn’t actually need a passport to travel, so we don’t have exact dates of when she went. But she wrote up her expeditions in her journal. Some of her specimens are in the British Museum.’
Hugo hadn’t known that, either. ‘And that’s important?’
‘It means the specimens are of really, really high quality. Lots of collectors in those times offered specimens to the British Museum and were rejected.’
‘And hers were accepted? That’s pretty special,’ Hugo said.
‘Exactly. You should be proud of her,’ Alice said. ‘And she didn’t get the specimens solely from expeditions; she used to breed butterflies here in this garden, working out what food plants and habitats helped to produce the best specimens.’
Now he was beginning to understand why Alice thought the journal project was so important. ‘And that was rare for a woman in her time?’
‘Probably not,’ Alice said. ‘A lot of women did academic work that their husbands took the credit for—which isn’t me having a feminist rant at you, it’s just stating how things were back then. Women couldn’t even study at university until a decade after Viola was born. Even when they were allowed to attend university, at first they couldn’t graduate; they were given a certificate of completion for their exams rather than a proper degree.’
‘I had no idea,’ he said.
‘The University of London was the first one to allow women students and the first one to confer degrees on women. Viola studied there—at my college, which is why Rosemary contacted me in the first place—and she fell in love with one of her fellow students. Luckily for her, he was pretty enlightened and he encouraged her to keep up her scientific work, even after they got married. She bred her butterflies, did her experiments and wrote papers for entomology magazines.’ Alice folded her arms and gave him a level stare. ‘And I think her name should be a lot better known.’
‘Did my great-aunt do something similar?’ he asked. What Rosemary actually did had always been a bit of a mystery to him.
‘Yes. But she took photographs of butterflies, rather than going out with a net and a killing jar. That’s how I do things, too. I want to conserve butterflies, not preserve them.’ Alice put the frame back in the cabinet. ‘Which leads me to the butterfly house. Shall we go into the garden?’
‘Sure.’ He went to the back door; after he’d unlocked it, he stood aside so she could lead him into the garden.
He noticed there were several butterflies resting on the buddleia, soaking up the sunshine.
‘Peacocks,’ she said, seeing his gaze. ‘The blue eye-spots make it obvious why they get their common name—but I bet you didn’t know they hiss.’
He stared at her. ‘Really? Butterflies hiss?’
‘Well—it’s not actual hissing,’ she amended. ‘It’s their third line of defence against predators. The first one is the underside of their wings looking like a leaf; if a bird works out that it’s potential food and not a leaf, then the butterfly will open its wings to flash those eye-spots—it’s called a startle display. If that doesn’t make the bird back off, then the butterfly rubs its wings together and it sounds like hissing.’
‘That’s amazing.’ Hugo could see now why Rosemary had wanted Alice to set up the educational centre. This was the sort of fact that would hold a child spellbound. The way Alice talked held him spellbound, too.
‘Butterflies are amazing,’ she said. ‘That buddleia needs a bit of work so it’ll have better growth next year. But you already know from Rosemary’s will that she wanted the garden properly re-wilded and filled with plants that attract butterflies and bees.’
‘And a winding path through it, so you don’t see the butterfly house itself until the very last minute.’
She stared at him. ‘That wasn’t stated in her will, but it’s something she said to me a couple of times. So did she discuss it with you?’
‘Years ago, but...’ He didn’t want to tell Alice why he’d needed distracting. He didn’t want her to start pitying him. ‘There was a lot going on in my life at the time. I guess I didn’t pay enough attention to what she was telling me. She hadn’t said anything to me about it for quite a while, so I thought she’d shelved the idea.’
‘And now?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked at her. ‘You’re not like you were at the solicitor’s.’
‘Not wearing a suit and make-up and high heels, you mean?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a scientist, not a fashion plate.’
‘So that’s what you normally wear for work?’ He gestured to her faded jeans and ancient khaki T-shirt.
‘Yes.’ She shrugged. ‘If you’re doing fieldwork, wearing strappy sandals is the quickest way to give yourself a sprained ankle, wearing a dress with bare legs instead of trousers tucked into boots will make you vulnerable to ticks, and little strappy tops are no protection at all against sunburn. So I dress sensibly.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who wears hiking boots,’ he said.
She frowned. ‘Surely you have to wear boots and a hard hat on building sites?’
‘If it’s a working site, like the one I went to this afternoon, yes. Otherwise, ordinary shoes will do.’
She looked at his feet and raised an eyebrow. ‘Handmade Italian shoes are ordinary?’
Why did that make him feel so defensive? ‘They’re comfortable.’
‘They’re the male equivalent of Louboutins.’
Although her tone was slightly acidic, there was a little glint of amusement in her eye. She was teasing him—and, now he thought about it, he was enjoying being teased.
He hadn’t felt like this in a long, long time. It was the sort of comment Emma would’ve made to him.
Emma.
Loneliness washed over him. Would he ever stop missing his wife? Would he ever stop wishing he could turn back time and turn down the invitation to that conference, so he would’ve been there when Emma had that fatal asthma attack and he could’ve saved her?
He didn’t want to dwell on his feelings, so he switched the topic back to something safe. ‘So how do you see the butterfly house working?’
‘Rosemary had photographs of the orangery that used to be here—the one Viola used when she bred her caterpillars. There might even still be traces of it on the wall.’
‘And you think it should be recreated?’ he asked.
‘No, because we’ll be using the building for a different purpose. We’ll need a mix of butterflies, and that includes tropical ones,’ she said. ‘And I need the kind of tech that means we get the right intensity of light and humidity, as well as the right temperature; the plants can’t do all the work. And we need a good design.’ She paused. ‘Which is where you come in.’
Two choices: he could design the butterfly house, or he could block everything.
He thought about it again. A butterfly house. A confection of glass. A house of dreams.
He loved working with glass, and he was so tempted to build it. ‘What sort of thing are you thinking about? A biome, like the ones at the Eden Project?’
‘It could be anything you like. The butterfly house at London Zoo is shaped like a caterpillar, and the one in Vienna is a gorgeous Art Nouveau building. The way I see it, you’re the glass and architecture specialist. Your imagination is the limit. Well, and the site itself,’ she amended. ‘Obviously the shape of the garden and the way the sunlight falls will affect what you build.’
He liked the fact that she’d realised that.
A glass building. Complete freedom with the design. Fulfilling his great-aunt’s dream. This was the perfect commission. ‘The Palm House at Kew,’ he said. ‘That was the first glass building I fell in love with. And glass domes. Like the one at the Reichstag in Berlin with its double staircase.’
‘A dome filled with butterflies free to fly wherever they like. Kind of like a snow globe, except summery,’ she said thoughtfully.
Alice Walters actually got it, Hugo thought. She understood the kind of stuff that filled his head. Knowing that made his skin prickle with excitement.
‘There isn’t really room to build a dome in the garden here. And I’m not making any promises,’ he said, ‘but maybe we could look at the possibilities.’
‘That would be good.’ She smiled at him—the first genuine smile she’d ever given him—and it made him catch his breath. It felt as if the world had just flashed into technicolour for a moment before fading back to its usual monochrome.
For pity’s sake. He had to get a grip. This wasn’t about him. Or her. It was about his great-aunt’s dreams and whether they could make it work.
Her stomach rumbled audibly, and she winced. ‘Sorry. I kind of forgot about lunch today.’
She’d turned up at his office at lunchtime, he remembered, and thrown that hissy fit on him. ‘Because you were too angry with me to eat?’
‘Something like that,’ she admitted, wrinkling her nose. ‘And then I was busy.’
He forced himself not to think about how cute she looked. ‘We could get a pizza delivered.’ Just to make sure she didn’t think he was coming on to her, he added, ‘Seeing as we still have a lot to discuss about Rosemary’s project, we might as well refuel while we work.’
‘Pizza’s fine by me,’ she said. ‘We’ll go halves.’
He liked that, too. She hadn’t assumed that he was going to pay, just because it had been his suggestion.
Sharing.
Could they share? Was this their chance to start compromising? ‘There could be a topping issue,’ he said. ‘Pineapple or no pineapple?’