When he had rented the sleigh for the entire day, Konstantin had hoped that a change of scenery would also do Püppi good. He had not, however, reckoned with how agitated and confused she seemed to be lately by anything that deviated from her normal routine. Sometimes just the face of a new chambermaid was enough to remind her of some long-past acquaintance, and off she went into her endless reminiscing, from which she only returned with great difficulty to the here and now. That a sleigh ride would trigger recollections of the Russian winters of her childhood . . . he should have expected something like that.
Poor Püppi. How long could things go on like this?
Konstantin, pondering, squinted toward the sun that was just starting to creep into the sky beyond a few naked trees. Soon, its light would transform the town into a glittering, snow-white winter fairy tale.
One of the horses scraped a hoof impatiently in the snow. “What’s it to be?” the coachman asked again.
“I have an idea,” Konstantin murmured. And with the first rays of sunlight, a smile stole over his face.
“To Princess Stropolski in the Europäischer Hof? Now?”
The messenger boy who had handed Flora the note and now stood waiting in hope of a tip shrugged uncertainly.
Flora frowned, then looked up from the note to the boy and then around her at the shop.
It was an exceptionally quiet morning, and Flora had so far spent it cleaning. Apart from Else Walbusch and Mr. Schierstiefel, no customers had come by. Ernestine was in the living room with Hannah and her embroidery, and both were keeping an eye on Alexander, who was sleeping soundly in his bassinet.
Flora pressed a coin into the palm of the boy’s hand. “Run back and tell them I am on my way.”
Then she trotted into the house to tell them that the princess had sent for her.
“Princess Stropolski? That could be a big order. Go. I’ll take care of everything here,” said Ernestine, while Hannah, at the mention of the princess’s name, grimaced, which Flora did not understand.
Maybe Konstantin will be there with her, she thought, filled with hope, as she hung the “We’ll Be Right Back” sign on the shop door.
“You are completely mad!” cried Flora half an hour later. “Kidnapping me in broad daylight for a jaunt in the snow . . . And then this!” She laughed and held up her champagne glass. What was she thinking, joining in willingly?
The clink of their glasses mixed with the tinkling of the tiny bells that hung on the sleigh and the horses’ harnesses.
Flora had barely emptied her glass when Konstantin refilled it for her. “I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive my little subterfuge.” He winked mischievously at her over the rim of his glass.
“I’m going to have to think long and hard about that,” Flora replied with a giggle, and she sipped at her champagne. It tasted wonderful, and she was already a little dizzy from the first glass.
Although the chill winter air lay on her face like a film of ice, her cheeks were red and warm. But was that any surprise? There she was, in the middle of the day, sitting with a Bulgarian and drinking champagne in a horse-drawn sleigh hung with a hundred bells.
When she had seen Konstantin in front of the Europäischer Hof, her heart had skipped a beat. Where was the princess?
He had rented the sleigh for the entire day, but the princess did not feel like going out, Konstantin had told her. So he thought that Flora might like to go for a ride, and it would be a shame to shut the horses up in dim stables on such a beautiful winter’s day.
Flora had shifted from one foot to the other doubtfully. How was she supposed to explain to Friedrich later that she had gone for a sleigh ride with a strange man?
She had been on the verge of turning Konstantin down when a load of snow from a low branch slipped and fell directly on her head. Puffing and laughing, she had shaken it off and swept her wet hair out of her face. From downturned eyes, she had looked up at Konstantin. He seemed to be waiting so yearningly for her reply.
A sleigh ride. Why not, then? No one at home needed to find out about the little adventure, anyway, did they?
“You are the only person I know who could come up with an idea like this,” said Flora. “I’d like to know why you spoil me like this.”
“Why?” Konstantin replied. “Because you’re young, you’re beautiful. Life is beautiful, too, and you and I have been chosen to revel in it!”
Flora reddened. Young and beautiful—no one had ever said anything like that to her.
“You don’t know how happy you have made me by coming out with me now,” Konstantin went on. “You have, in point of fact, saved my life, because I would otherwise have died of boredom. Thank you for accompanying me.”
Flora gasped in surprise as he planted a kiss on her cheek. “Konstantin! How can you—” She broke off abruptly and pointed excitedly off to the right. “Look! Just there is where carpets of cowslips grow in March. And a little farther back you can find wonderful wild lilac.” The impetuous kiss was forgotten as Flora’s gaze wandered wistfully along the avenue. “If only spring were already here. I miss the colors and the scents, and I so want to go out and pick flowers again.” She swallowed a large mouthful of champagne, and for a moment she thought she could smell the springtime in her glass.
Konstantin exhaled, a slow, deep sigh. “You live in time with the turn of the seasons. You live so close to the natural world, and I admire how . . . immediately you experience everything. You are actually part of it all, one could say. I guess that is what they call home. It’s strange, but when I’m around you, I am reminded of what I myself have lost. I can’t feel any roots in me, not anymore. I can’t sense ‘home’ anywhere. The most I could tell you is when the opera season starts in a certain city, or if there’s a premiere at the theater, or when and where everyone is meeting for a hunt.”
Flora looked at him sideways. “What you call ‘home’ is nothing special. Can’t one also long for the unknown?” Just then, she ducked beneath low-hanging fir branches. At the same moment, one of the horses snapped at some of the fir sprigs in passing and munched on them happily as it trotted on. Konstantin and Flora both had to laugh.
“When I began to travel, I thought that the exotic was worth striving for, and more than anything else that having nowhere to call home meant having my freedom.” Konstantin swung his arms out wide. “I wanted to cast off the bonds of my old home and follow untrodden paths. But I have come to wonder, sometimes, if I am walking into a cul-de-sac.”
The bitter tone of his words surprised Flora. He usually seemed so sure of himself. His face was only inches from hers. She could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, glittering in the pale sunlight. The urge to take him in her arms and cheer him up with a thousand tiny kisses was suddenly overwhelming.
“Don’t you carry your home in your heart?” she asked quietly. “And can’t a person put down new roots in a foreign land? Perhaps you should really start painting again.”
“There is nothing I’d like more. In your presence, I feel so inspired, as if your creativity were infectious. But then there’s Püppi. She’s getting stranger every day. And sicker, too. Day in, day out, everything revolves around the state of her health. What she can eat, what she can’t, when she can sleep, and when she can only rest. No one asks how I am. Baden-Baden, in the season, is an entertaining place, but now that winter is here, there are only a few of us in the hotels, and all the sitting around drives me mad.”
What kind of fool am I? Flora chided herself silently. How was he supposed to start painting again if the princess monopolized all his time?
Konstantin went on. “Forget my stupid remarks. Maybe I’m feeling so melancholy just now because coming out with you has made me so happy. Maybe we humans are doomed to yearn for the one thing we cannot have.” He looked her roguishly in the eye.
Flora laughed. “I’m sure I’ve heard that before, but I can’t remember from whom. Maybe you’re right.” At least Konstantin’s expressi
on had brightened.
“You long for your meadow flowers, and I long for our Russian friends. I’ve been so bored lately that I’ve even started to miss old Popo, and Irina’s constant complaints about how terribly expensive life has become.” He shook his head. “Püppi writes letters back and forth with many of them, so I know that the Gagarins and Anna and perhaps Matriona and her sons will return at the start of the season. Then we’ll have a little more variety, at least, and it will do Püppi good, too.”
“They are really planning to come back? Even with the casino closed?” Flora asked, her voice trembling a little. That was more than she had dared hope for. She could hardly wait to tell Friedrich!
Konstantin grinned. “Who needs a casino to spin a ball? And as long as the ante’s right, one can always find someone for a hand of cards. Oh, look!” He laid one arm across her shoulders and pointed off to the right, where two deer had just appeared from a copse.
“Just like at home in the Swabian Mountains,” Flora whispered, and leaned into Konstantin’s arm.
Just before they reached the Lichtenthal nunnery, Konstantin asked the driver to stop. He jumped out of the sleigh and held out his hand to help Flora down.
“Shall we stretch our legs a little?”
They walked off into the snow while the driver hung feed bags for the horses.
“Winter smells so lovely. A little like freshly washed clothes,” said Flora, lifting her face to the sun. How late is it? she wondered. Not yet midday, surely. She jumped over a small snowdrift. And so what if it was? It made no difference now. She was allowed an occasional bit of lunacy, wasn’t she? Still, after a few steps, she turned around. It wasn’t necessary to drag out their stroll unduly.
“And the contours of the trees and houses are razor-sharp. No color anywhere, everything black and white, like a pencil drawing, don’t you think?” said Konstantin, and he lifted a branch for Flora to pass underneath.
“Or like a silhouette cut from paper. But at least we are not as motionless as that,” said Flora, scooping up a handful of snow. She formed it into a snowball, then laughed as she threw it at Konstantin.
It took Konstantin a moment to realize that the snow had not fallen from one of the trees.
“Now you’re in trouble!” he said, already crouching and scraping together a snowball of his own. But Flora had her second snowball ready to go and hurled it at him mercilessly.
They romped in the snow, and Flora’s stomach hurt from laughing. She could not remember the last time she had been so carefree.
Tears of laughter streamed down Konstantin’s face, too, as he tried to swat a handful of snow on her head, but she kept twisting free of his grip.
They both saw the group of nuns moving past the sleigh on their way to a barn outside the nunnery walls, but they paid them little attention.
Soon after, loaded with bales of hay and straw, the nuns returned, watching the young couple curiously in passing.
Chapter Forty-Five
Two days later, Ernestine received a letter from Sybille. Strange . . . it was neither Christmas nor Easter. For a moment, she thought about opening it at the dinner table and reading it aloud to the others. A letter from the nunnery was something special, after all. Hannah would certainly be impressed. But then her curiosity got the better of her, and she tore the envelope open.
“The girl’s gone completely out of her mind now,” she murmured to herself when she had reached the end of the letter. To claim that she had seen Flora in the company of an unknown man close to the nunnery! How would Sybille even have recognized her sister-in-law? She had only ever met Flora once, although Ernestine knew that Sybille also possessed a wedding photograph of Flora and Friedrich.
She had written something about a snowball fight right outside the nunnery walls, but part of her text was all but illegible. Sybille had written the words very small and tightly spaced to save room on the side for a Bible passage.
Ernestine glanced toward the door. Flora and her mother were both in the store, thank God!
Sybille wrote that she had seen Flora on Tuesday, and Ernestine knew perfectly well that Flora had gone to visit Princess Stropolski at the Europäischer Hof on Tuesday. Flora had been delighted to go and visit her very first customer so early in the year, and she had spent almost half the day with her. In the end, however, the princess had been unable to decide what kind of party she wanted and what kind of floral arrangements she would therefore need. Well, that’s how rich people were, sometimes.
Ernestine shook her head. What had driven Sybille to write such a confused missive? Did she envy Flora? Was she jealous because of everything Flora had done for the family? Or was it perhaps a moment of religious mania?
The child had always been a little strange. Ernestine only had to recall the penetrating gaze that Sybille liked to put on, as if she were trying to read her thoughts. It was downright spooky at times.
Sending her off to the nunnery had been the right decision, at least, Ernestine thought as she threw the letter into the stove, where it flared brightly and disappeared into a thousand tiny grains of ash. It really would not do to have Friedrich or someone else stumble across Sybille’s muddled lines. She would do best to forget all about it herself, and the sooner the better.
Despite her resolution, however, Ernestine could not drive Sybille’s words out of her mind; come evening, she could no longer stand it. She thought it was only right to tell Flora about it—at some future point, the two young women would certainly cross paths again, and Flora would be better prepared if Sybille began espousing her confused imaginings.
“Now don’t go looking so shocked,” she said to Flora, after telling her in minute detail about the contents of the letter. “Sybille must be jealous because of your good fortune. In the past, you could see the envy on her face if I so much as picked up Friedrich in my arms, as if I were not allowed to do that!”
Flora grasped her mother-in-law’s arm. “Ernestine, on that day, well, there was—”
Ernestine interrupted her with a sad voice. “You don’t have to say a word, dear child. It is abundantly clear that the signs of delusion Sybille exhibits in her letter have upset you, and I feel just the same, which is why I understand you without you having to say a word. But with my own daughter, well, we never really got on. It is so good to have you here!” She embraced Flora so tightly that Flora could hardly breathe.
The old proverb that Flora had quoted on that stormy, snowy Candlemas Day, February 2, 1873, turned out to be true: old man winter faded fast, and when the first violets showed their pretty faces through the previous year’s leaves, no one shed a tear for him.
“My two months here have passed in the blink of an eye. Where have the days gone? And why are we Gönningers always saying goodbye?” Hannah said, and she sighed so dramatically that Flora almost laughed out loud, although she felt more like bursting into tears.
Her mother was going home, and later the same day Friedrich would also be setting off on his own journey. Flora did not know exactly when his train would leave for Bad Ems.
“Come back soon,” she urged her mother as the two held each other and rocked back and forth.
Sabine stood beside them on the platform, holding Alexander in her arms. Hannah looked yearningly at her grandson. “If it were up to me, I’d be on my way back tomorrow. It almost breaks my heart to leave the little boy.”
“I’ll write you every week, and next time you visit, bring Papa along, too. And Seraphine. And Valentin, too, of course. Oh, bring everyone!” said Flora. She sniffed, teary-eyed.
Flora did not have much more time to digest the painful farewell. Hardly had she arrived back in the shop when a widower from the neighborhood appeared, wanting to use the language of flowers to turn down a woman who was getting a touch too persistent.
“It’s the wrong time of year for goosefoot,” Flora told him regretfully. But she could offer him dried autumn asters. Together with Flora’s ABC, the woman would certainl
y get his message—namely, goodbye. The man left with a basketful of the dried flowers.
Sabine, who had brought Alexander in to be fed and who had observed the exchange, shook her head.
“People are cowards,” she said. “They need your flowers to express if something annoys them or pleases them.”
Flora laughed. “Does it matter? If everyone could say what they felt as beautifully as the poets, I would be out of work. Give me the boy before my breasts explode!”
“Say hello to the princess for me.”
“And don’t forget your promise, all right?”
“We’ll see,” Flora said with a smile.
Friedrich watched his wife wave after the departing man, and his forehead rumpled.
“That was that Konstantin Sokerov, wasn’t it? What was he doing here? Wasn’t he here just yesterday? And what was that about a promise?”
As if she had only just noticed him, Flora turned to Friedrich. “He’s a good customer. Didn’t you see the enormous bouquet of daffodils he bought for the princess?” Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks were as red as if she’d just been out for a brisk walk in the fresh March air. My wife is so beautiful, Friedrich suddenly thought.
Then he screwed up his nose again. “In the past, someone like him would have been called un gigolo. Letting an old, sick woman keep him . . .” A small porcelain butterfly sitting on the edge of the counter caught his eye. “What’s that?”
“Konstantin Sokerov gave it to me as a mark of gratitude . . . because the bouquets I tie for him are always so beautiful.”
“A mark of gratitude, uh-huh . . .” Friedrich found the gift excessive. But what did he care about the man? “I’m on my way to the station and came in to say adieu—”
Flora threw herself so unexpectedly at his chest that he had to stagger back a step.
“Flora!”
“Why can’t I come with you? We haven’t been away together anywhere since our wedding in Gönningen. I’m sure I would like Bad Ems. And it would be wonderful if we finally had some time alone together again. Just you and me—”
The Flower Shop (The Seed Traders' Saga Book 2) Page 26