“I . . . it’s already so late and—” Flora wanted to stand up and leave, but could not. She felt almost glued to her seat.
“I’m worried about Püppi—Princess Stropolski,” said Konstantin, out of nowhere. “She feels tired and drained. She is awake night after night, but instead of enjoying her waking hours, she sits in her room and gazes into the darkness, where the ghosts she fears so much are just waiting for her to fall asleep.”
“Now that you mention it, I realize that the princess wasn’t there this evening. She was the first one to commission my work.”
Konstantin nodded.
Flora went on. “I’m sure the princess will be feeling better once she’s home again. Travel for a woman her age must be . . . trying.”
Konstantin laughed. “Home? Where is that supposed to be? I have no idea where we are going to end up when the season comes to an end. The Russians are plagued by homesickness for Mother Russia, but they don’t want to go home.”
Then why don’t you stay here? What is better or more beautiful elsewhere? Flora wanted to ask him, but her own impudence frightened her. What business was it of hers where these people spent their winters?
Before she could do anything to stop him, Konstantin took her hand again. “You know what? Your dream shall come true. You will see your flowers in the casino. I’ll come up with something, I promise you.” He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, then called for the waiter.
Chapter Forty-One
Of course, Flora’s news about the late-night incident caused an uproar in the Sonnenschein household. Red blotches appeared on Ernestine’s face, and she went down with a migraine. Friedrich was angry that Flora had not gone to the police immediately, and he insisted on accompanying her to the station that very minute. But he was angrier at himself. Why hadn’t he asserted himself and collected his wife after the party?
As luck would have it, the vagrant was arrested the very next morning when he tried to steal a chicken from a woman at the market. The policeman to whom Friedrich and Flora reported her assault brought them the good news in person.
Flora heaved a sigh of relief. At lunch, in a long discussion with Friedrich, she managed to convince him that she would now be safe when she walked through the town. Friedrich and his mother were making a fuss, but Flora was decidedly cheerful. Nothing happened in the end! Konstantin had saved her.
She had just reopened the store after the midday break when her savior appeared in person, carrying a bowl of blueberries.
Flora felt momentarily dizzy at seeing him again.
When he asked how Flora was, she told him that the thug had been arrested. Glancing at her belly, he inquired after her baby, and she assured him that she and her baby, too, were fine.
“I can’t do much after the fact to remove the bitter taste of what happened last night, but”—he handed her the bowl of berries—“perhaps you will still enjoy the fruit.”
“I have to thank you a hundred times. No, thousands! If not for you . . .” Not wanting to linger too long on the thought, Flora popped one of the berries into her mouth. How sweet and juicy they were! She came around from behind the counter, grabbed a fat bundle of ferns and bellflowers out of the buckets, and began to tie them into a bouquet.
Konstantin smiled as he watched her work. “A bouquet for me? I guess in your famous flower language?”
Flora nodded. The bouquet was almost finished when she added a few blooms of morning glory.
“And what does this bouquet have to say?” Konstantin asked.
Sabine, who had come in with a cup of tea for Flora, whispered in her ear, “Is that the man who rescued you?”
Flora replied with a short nod, then elbowed Sabine aside.
“The bellflowers express deep gratitude. The ferns are meant to bring you luck in love and games.”
“I can use both of those!” he replied with a laugh. “And what about these?” He touched the morning glory, and his eyes—smiling, full of interest—burned into Flora’s.
Suddenly, she felt hot, feverish. Was she coming down with something? She cleared her throat abashedly.
“The morning glory? Oh, they’re nothing special.”
“I’d let a man like that rescue me any day.” Sabine sighed as she watched Konstantin go. When she saw that Flora’s gaze was also directed toward the door, she added, “I might be mistaken, but didn’t I read in your book that morning glory is a symbol of affection?”
“What if it is? I think Konstantin is very nice. And I will never forget how he helped me yesterday.”
“All right,” Sabine said with a dismissive wave. “I just want to point out that a man like that can be risky for a woman.”
“What kind of talk is that?” asked Flora, giving her friend a light rap on the head.
Konstantin kept his word: Flora got to dress the casino in her floral arrangements. The commission came formally from Princess Stropolski, and it was for the casino’s final day of operation.
Flora considered it a twist of fate that she should get to decorate the elegant rooms on that particular day. With a heavy heart, she positioned her majestic arrangements of roses—half deep-red, half blackened with ink—beside the roulette table. Then she took a step back and watched the gamblers play.
How things had changed, she thought, since the rainy afternoon when she had gambled away the little money she had at this very table.
Usually, most of Baden-Baden’s visitors would have been long gone this late in autumn, but on October 31 the roulette table was thronged with people. Russian mixed with English, and the guttural sound of Portuguese with various German dialects. Everyone knew the language of the ball that rattled as it jumped among the numbers and colors.
What a high-spirited atmosphere reigned in the room, even on that final day!
Princess Stropolski and Konstantin sat together at one of the roulette tables. The princess did not look well at all, Flora thought. Her face was deathly pale. She stroked her faithful little lapdog mechanically but took no notice of his playfulness.
Konstantin, however, seemed in the best of moods. He laughed as he embraced the man beside him. The man avenged himself with a hearty dig of his elbow into Konstantin’s side. Flora smiled. Konstantin could really enjoy himself! And he was oblivious of everything around him, so involved was he in his game.
When was the last time she had felt so lighthearted? Perhaps when she had worked with Seraphine on the ABC of Flowers? Yes, there had been such moments then, playing with words and flowers and ideas.
Still, though, there had been the pressure of finishing the book in time for the start of the season. And whenever she devoted herself to her floral decorations, she was always painfully conscious of delivering only what fulfilled the wishes of whoever had commissioned her.
In contrast, the people around the tables seemed as carefree as children.
Konstantin looked up, waved to Flora, and mouthed a word that she understood as “later.” She nodded happily.
Yes. Later. She wanted to ask him if her ferns had, in fact, brought him much luck in the game and—
“Last game, ladies and gentlemen!” the head croupier announced, at which a murmur rumbled through the room. Konstantin turned his attention back to the table.
On tiptoe, Flora watched as the wheel was set in motion a final time. The last fling of the ball . . . and it settled finally on the red nine. Flora did not see who the lucky winners were.
The croupier’s final “Rien ne va plus” was still echoing in Flora’s ears when half a dozen Conversationshaus staff stepped past Flora and began to roll up the huge carpet from the side. Other staff brought in ladders and extinguished the candles on the chandeliers for the last time, taking no notice of the guests still standing around, who slowly began to slink away like beaten dogs.
When Flora returned from a visit to Kuno’s grave the next day—she had taken him a few roses—she was passed by a procession of carriages, riders on their horses, and piled-h
igh wagons—all of them rolling out of town as if the plague had broken out in Baden-Baden.
Where were they going, now that the days were gray? What was better about Paris, London, or Monte Carlo? Who would tie their bouquets there?
The gravel crunched loudly underfoot as Flora walked along the lonely Promenade. The shop windows left and right were empty, the small tables and chairs at the cafés cleared away. No more coffee aroma in the air, nowhere the pop of a champagne cork.
“They’re all gone!” Flora grumbled when she arrived at the store. “Who knows which of my customers I will even see next season? They will probably turn their backs on Baden-Baden forever. And not one of them came to tell me goodbye.” Not even Konstantin, she added to herself.
“What did you expect?” Sabine said. “That our summer visitors would come one by one and say a personal adieu? You get some strange ideas in your head. Aren’t you happy that things will be a bit quieter now? It will give you a chance to get ready for the baby.”
“Of course.” Flora bit her lip. Everyone must have been in a terrible hurry to leave. Because the Baden-Baden season had gone on so long, they must have postponed engagements and appointments. Yes, that’s how it must have been, Flora thought to console herself. Princess Stropolski, Irina Komatschova, and a few others would certainly have come to say goodbye otherwise. And Konstantin Sokerov, too.
So there had been no “later” after all.
Would she ever see him again?
Chapter Forty-Two
“Today a year ago we danced at your wedding, and now look at you, a regular little family. Oh, I’m so happy I could cry!” Hannah clapped her hands together so loudly that the infant in his basket on the table opened his eyes wide and instantly began to wail, for which Hannah earned a disapproving look from Flora. “Sorry, darling. I’m not used to being around such little creatures anymore.”
Flora picked up the baby. “It’s not so bad. But I hope little Alexander goes back to sleep again soon. I’ll take him to bed, and when I come back we’ll have a glass of wine, all right? We’ve got our first wedding anniversary to celebrate, after all.”
Shaking her head, Ernestine watched as her daughter-in-law left the room. “It’s amazing how fast that girl recovered from the birth. I remember being so exhausted back then.”
Hannah shrugged. “I guess we Kerner women are made of sterner stuff. Being pregnant is not a disease, after all.”
“Well, now, I wouldn’t be so sure. I had such a rumbling in my tummy, or a gurgle, no, it was really more like banging around, yes! Well, on some days . . .” While Ernestine went on about every little affliction that she suffered during her own pregnancies, Hannah’s thoughts drifted back to her arrival in Baden-Baden just a few days ago.
She had arrived on January 2, one day before Alexander’s unexpectedly early birth. It was as if she’d had a premonition. At the sight of her daughter, Hannah had gone rather weak at the knees. It was not just Flora’s swollen belly, but her radiance and everything about her—she was so different from the Flora who had left Gönningen a year before as a newlywed. Flora exuded a self-confidence for which Hannah found herself actually envying her daughter.
Like a queen, she suddenly thought.
“The day before Christmas Eve, she was still standing in the shop,” said Friedrich. “She’d been closing up very early the evenings before, at least, but we were desperately in need of a little peace and quiet when the season was over.” Without a sound, he opened the bottle of sparkling wine that Sabine had brought in. “All of the running about was not good for her. Sometimes she was so jittery . . .” He waved one hand dismissively.
Hannah held out her glass to him. “Well, Gönningen women are just like that. Temperamental.”
“You are certainly somehow . . . different,” said Ernestine. Neither her voice nor her expression betrayed whether her words were meant as a compliment.
Flora returned, and all four raised their glasses to the young couple’s first anniversary.
“Friedrich tends to exaggerate, you know. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he says,” said Flora. “But was I supposed to let Maison Kuttner have all the Christmas business?”
“By no means! After that complaint to the police they’ve not earned any clemency at all, though I do sometimes have a bad conscience because you’ve been working so hard,” said Ernestine, with a fond look at Flora. “If my Kuno could see everything you’ve set in motion . . .”
Flora handed Ernestine a handkerchief, then said to Hannah, “I’ll show you the shop tomorrow. Just before Christmas, I bought a lot of potted plants in bloom. Sabine has been watering them, but I’d still like to check on them. I thought a little color during the cold months couldn’t hurt. The flowering violets and begonias will march out the door.”
Friedrich raised his eyebrows. “It sounds as if you’d like to get back into the shop sooner rather than later. But you really need a little more time to rest.”
“And Alexander needs his mother,” Ernestine said emphatically. “When my Friedrich came into the world, I . . .”
When his mother was done rattling off her list of all the trouble he had caused her as a baby, Friedrich said to Hannah, “At least Flora is sensible enough to let you take over the seed trade.”
“And thank God for that,” said Hannah with a grin. “I’m very happy to get around and see our customers again. Helmut is off with Valentin, and Seraphine and I would have just been sitting around the house for the next few weeks anyway.” Hannah told them how Seraphine would have loved to come back to Baden-Baden, but Hannah had convinced her that one of them had to stay at home and look after things there.
“By the way, Helmut asked if it would be possible to get another stack of your ABC of Flowers. A lot of his customers were so happy with it that they want a second copy.”
Flora nodded. “I have to have more printed for the store in any case, so I’ll order for you at the same time.”
Hannah stifled a remark—so much for more time to rest. She turned to Friedrich.
“So tell me, how is work at the Trinkhalle?”
“Now that there’s no more casino, the Trinkhalle falls under the auspices of the Spa and Bath Administration, which makes them my employer now.”
“Flora mentioned that there were a lot of changes happening in Baden-Baden right now. Just yesterday, on the way to Flumm’s Nursery, I passed a large construction site. What are they building out there?”
The sparkling wine tickled Hannah’s tongue. She leaned back luxuriously in her armchair and looked expectantly at her son-in-law.
“You must mean the Friedrichsbad. They say it’s going to be quite grand when it’s finished. The site you’re talking about is exactly where the Romans once had their thermal baths, and the old Trinkhalle used to be there, too. Fascinating, isn’t it?”
“So they’re naming a bathhouse after you!” said Hannah.
“Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?” said Ernestine. “With all the hard work he’s done, he deserves it. But the bathhouse is to honor Grand Duke Friedrich.”
“A magnificent thermal bath. That will really be a dream come true for Baden-Baden.” Friedrich took a deep breath and straightened up in his seat. “There’s something else that’s rather exciting: in March, I will be taking water and mud samples to Bad Ems, to the best chemists in the entire empire for a detailed analysis. Me, personally!”
A courier’s job, then. Hannah did her best to look impressed. “Well, you’ve always had an interest in the curative waters, haven’t you?”
“I feel deeply honored to have been asked. On the other hand, I don’t have much travel experience at all. I’ll probably end up on the wrong train.” Friedrich had meant it as a joke, but there was a degree of uncertainty in his voice.
“My poor boy. The things they burden you with,” said Ernestine, crumpling the handkerchief in distress.
“My goodness, it’s not as if Friedrich is off to Tierra del Fuego! E
veryone in the German Empire can speak the German language, so . . .” Flora shrugged as if to say, Why all the fuss?
Hannah cleared her throat. “We Gönningers are used to traveling, but I can imagine that it’s a fearsome prospect for other people,” she said to Flora. Turning to Friedrich, she added, “You’ll manage it just fine. There is a reason that they have chosen you for this important task.” It was really Flora’s job to bolster her husband ahead of a journey like that, Hannah thought. Still, her words seemed to have an effect.
More confidently, Friedrich said, “Our waters here were tested many years ago, but the science has advanced, and we are hoping for more precise results from the new tests. And then there’s the mud. I am convinced that it can be extremely beneficial for treating the sick. In the war, they used it to treat wounded soldiers, and it did them good. All that’s missing is the scientific proof.”
“There you are, Mother,” said Flora. “Around here, the main subject is water, water, water. My husband can’t think of anything else, although I prefer a glass of wine or champagne myself.” Flora laughed, but Hannah clearly heard the tinge of criticism.
Friedrich looked across at his wife. “You and your rude remarks. These are serious matters. When we have people coming to Baden-Baden for the spas instead of the casino, then the shop will benefit, too.” His eyes gleamed fervidly. He slid forward to the edge of his chair. “The changes we are going through in Baden-Baden are naturally making a lot of people anxious. Some hoteliers are even considering closing their doors, but if you ask me, that would be utterly the wrong thing to do.”
Flora yawned.
Hannah looked from Flora to Friedrich to Ernestine and back. The Sonnenscheins made a strange family. None of them seemed to have much interest in the others at all. Friedrich had no head for Flora’s love of flowers, and she did not understand his fascination with medicinal waters and belittled him for his interests and his fear of traveling. With her crumpled handkerchief, Ernestine stood somewhere in between.
The Flower Shop (The Seed Traders' Saga Book 2) Page 24