“What do you mean? With my schedule, I wouldn’t have any time for you at all.”
“But we’d still have the evenings. We could go out for dinner and . . .” She shrugged helplessly. “I just feel that it isn’t good if you go away, and I’m left behind all alone. Just the thought of it almost scares me.”
“Oh, Flora.” He released himself gently from her embrace. “I would like nothing more than to have you at my side. But what about Alexander? And the shop? Is Mother supposed to look after everything by herself? She would not manage that.”
Friedrich sighed and took out his pocket watch. He was late. The train would leave in just under an hour. He also had to make sure that he got his visit to Bad Ems over with as quickly as possible—the Baden-Baden season would open again in just a few weeks. He had mud and water samples to deliver and results to wait for, but he did not expect to learn anything particularly new on his trip to Bad Ems, unlike the bigwigs in the Spa and Bath Administration. He was certainly interested in the inhalation regime that had been introduced in Bad Ems some twenty years earlier. At least there the people had not set everything on the casino and had promoted the region’s curative advantages far earlier.
“It’s only for a week,” Flora pleaded. “We can just take Alexander along with us. I’d be so happy to see something new for a change. For inspiration . . .”
Friedrich put his watch away in his pocket, took out his train ticket, and glanced absently at it. “You’re talking as if I am off on a pleasure cruise,” he said.
Flora turned away from him. “Your objections are justified, I know,” she said softly. “But how many times have you told me that I can’t think of anything but the shop? Now here I am thinking about both of us, and that doesn’t suit you, either. I just think a little time together would do us both good.”
“Yes. No.” Friedrich gave an agonized sigh. “If you’d said all this earlier, we might have been able to think about it, but like this?” He saw Flora’s disappointment and felt a silent anger rise inside him. He had come to get a kiss goodbye and good wishes for his journey. Instead, he now felt queasy about going at all. “Why are you making it so hard for me?” he blurted. “Can’t you be content with what you have for once? Can’t you just be a . . . a normal, everyday woman, and not always looking for whatever comes next?”
Flora stepped away sharply, as if he had slapped her.
Friedrich wanted to take back his words instantly, to find appeasing words to make up for the hurt he’d caused. He did not want their farewell to end on a discordant note, not like this. But nothing came to him.
The watch in his pocket ticked.
“Adieu,” he finally said, and left.
“Püppi was overjoyed at the daffodils. She even recited a poem by a German poet—Goethe, I think,” Konstantin said to Flora as they strode along Lichtenthaler Allee in the damp, misty morning air.
Then his companion, in a dramatic voice, began to recite:
Thus the early sprung narcissi,
Bloom in trim rows in the garden
Well may one imagine that they
Know for whom they wait so smartly.
“That’s exactly the poem! Where do you know that from?” As they walked, Konstantin took a bundle of twigs from her. They were not blooming like the other bundle that Flora carried, but their leaves had a silvery sheen. With his free hand, he wiped away the droplets of morning dew.
The bundle soon grew heavy in his arms. What did Flora want with all the greenery? And what was he thinking, coming out with her on one of her early-morning wanderings? She was a pretty thing, admittedly, and there was something in her passion for flowers that he found entertaining. And her admiration of him felt good. In the last few weeks, he had caught himself often imagining her as his lover. Just once to trace the lines of her slender neck with his finger, to feel her young, tender skin beneath his, to probe beneath the many layers of fabric of her skirt for the most feminine part of her body . . . maybe then he would better ride out the times with Püppi. My God, a little pleasure ought to be granted to him!
His train of thought was abruptly interrupted as he stepped in a puddle with his right foot. Damn it! Hadn’t he promised himself to stay away from married women? What was he doing out here at the crack of dawn?
Flora beamed at him. “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Every child in Germany learns his poems.” She scratched her nose. “There’s another verse, something about lilies, but I’ve forgotten how it goes, I’m sorry.” With her hand holding her gardening shears already reaching out toward a blooming almond tree, she paused. “How nice to hear that the princess liked them. Some people would be a little put out, because in the language of flowers, the daffodil, or narcissus, stands for self-centeredness.”
Konstantin waved it off. “I sometimes wonder how much of any of it she really understands. She lives almost entirely in the past these days. Flora, if it weren’t for you, I think I would already have gone mad.” He realized as he said it that it was no glib compliment, but the truth, and the thought frightened him. He hoped he was not falling in love with the girl. It could not just be physical desire that kept him going back to her shop, because their meetings with one another were invariably demure. And in that respect, he was not suffering much. He was almost always able to find a chambermaid somewhere who was willing to give herself to him in a dark corner.
“I do wonder what could be so exciting about a stroll through wet fields, but if I can keep your boredom at bay for a while like this, then I’m happy.” She laid a second bundle of blooming branches in his arms, then put the shears away and crouched down.
“It’s strange, somehow,” she murmured to herself. “Wherever there are cowslips, cuckooflowers are not far away. But daisies are usually to be found in the company of violets and forget-me-nots. White, purple, and that beautiful blue . . . everything in nature grows in complete harmony.” She straightened up with her head tilted to one side and one hand shielding her eyes from the morning sun. As they walked on, she looked at Konstantin. “And then I come along and mess everything up.”
Konstantin shook his head vehemently. “That isn’t true. Your bouquets show a wonderful harmony themselves.”
Instead of responding to his compliment, she cleared her throat. “Konstantin, what I wanted to say to you . . . I look forward to you coming to the flower shop, truly, every time. But you can’t come out picking flowers with me again. And you can’t give me anything else. I know you only mean well, but I’m a married woman, and the people around here love to work things out for themselves. Do you understand?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t understand that at all. We’re just going for a walk. There’s nothing indecent about that!” Unfortunately, he added silently. He stopped, one hand holding her sleeve. He lifted her chin so that she had to look him in the eye. “Flora, now don’t be so terribly stern. Enjoy the moment.”
“Enjoy . . . but it isn’t about enjoyment!” she replied. “It is about doing your daily work. About attending to one’s duties, and about being someone that others can rely on. Isn’t it?”
Konstantin dropped the branches and flowers and all his reservations about married women.
He took Flora in his arms and kissed her. Kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.
Chapter Forty-Six
As soon as Friedrich returned from Bad Ems, he threw himself back into his work at the Trinkhalle, making repairs and tending the property from first thing in the morning until late in the evening. Friedrich was still holding the broom he used to clear away cobwebs from the walls when the first spa guests came strolling along the paths.
What everyone in Baden-Baden had hoped for—but few believed would happen after the closure of the casino—came to pass: the streets filled with visitors, and the 1873 season began.
On the one hand, everything seemed as it always had been. But on the other, nothing was.
“It’s the middle of May already, and I still can’t find m
any familiar names in the guest lists. Where are my customers?” Flora leafed frantically through the Badeblatt, then looked over at Friedrich. “No sign of Matriona Schikanova. And it doesn’t look as if Piotr Vjazemskij has turned up, either.”
“Vjazemskij was only here for the casino—Baden-Baden isn’t interesting for someone like him anymore,” said Friedrich, dipping his spoon into the marmalade pot.
It was a rainy morning with low-hanging clouds and an unpleasant, gusty wind. The guests would mostly still be in bed, so he allowed himself the rare luxury of a leisurely start to the day.
The evening before, they had heated the dining room, and a little of the warmth remained. Even Alexander was sleeping soundly, although he usually woke very early—a tendency that he had indisputably inherited from his mother. Friedrich looked over to the cradle by the window and smiled. Ernestine stepped into the room.
“What a miserable day!” Cocooned in a heavy knitted cardigan, she joined them at the table. When Sabine had poured her coffee, she wrapped her hands around the cup as tightly as if her life depended on it. “Flora, am I mistaken, or did I hear you rumbling through the house before it was even light?”
“I . . . yes, I was out picking flowers,” said Flora, trying to concentrate on the guest lists. “Finally! Princess Irina Komatschova, Count Popo, and there are the Gagarins and the Menshikovs! Konstantin was right: almost all of them have come back.”
Friedrich laughed. “I could have told you they’d be back. With their International Club, no doubt they have big plans for the Iffezheim racetrack this season. Who knows, maybe you’ll get to make the laurel wreath for a winning horse.”
Flora smiled, but it was a pained smile.
“You were out picking flowers so early? It was hardly even light!” Ernestine said.
Flora frowned at her mother-in-law. “Now that spring is here, I find it easy to get up early. Besides, I can get a lot more done during the day this way.”
Was she supposed to say that it was Konstantin who made her get out of bed so early every morning? That is was because of him that she went creeping through the meadows and fields in the dawn twilight? That she did not want to run the risk of meeting him outside ever again?
Flora stared absently at her hands. That kiss . . . what a sheer delight! She had flushed hot and cold, tremors running through her, warm, exciting—
Done. A slip, one time, never to be repeated. She would make sure of that.
Of course Konstantin had apologized to her. He had been carried away by the radiance of the morning, by the bounty of nature around them, by the feeling of having discovered in Flora a kind of kindred soul.
Kindred souls—what a lovely notion.
Flora pulled herself together and tapped on the list of names of newly arrived guests. “I don’t know most of the names here. Who are these people?”
Friedrich leaned over the Badeblatt, and for a moment she thought she smelled not his scent, but Konstantin’s. Leather and tobacco and cognac and . . . but it was just the odor of the tincture that Friedrich applied to the small nicks when he shaved.
“Most of the men and women here are connected to the music world or some other side of cultural life. Really, Flora, you must know some of them from last year.”
She shrugged. Last year? She was having enough trouble with this year, with trying to act as if everything were normal, with living every day as if it were everyday.
And all the while, deep inside, an unease roiled. She often found herself unable to concentrate on her work. When was Konstantin coming? Would he come to buy flowers at all? And then she scolded herself for thinking about him so much.
“But what’s this?” Friedrich’s eyes widened. “There are also the names of several high-ranking statesmen here, from Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, even Berlin. Baron von Schimmel from Schwedhausen with his family, Count Volkhard von Fürstenweiler and his wife. And that one, too! Look at that—it’s a veritable gaggle of nobles and diplomats.” He shook his head. “It’s one of fate’s ironies, I think, that the men who had a hand in the war with France—the same men who are to blame for the French not being here—are now coming here themselves.”
“Maybe they’re trying to make up for some of Baden-Baden’s lost trade,” said Ernestine.
Friedrich snorted. “You don’t believe that. These men are coming here for the same reason as all the other guests: because Baden-Baden has something to offer them!” He nodded toward the sideboard, where a small pile of freshly printed programs for the new season lay.
Flora’s own eyes turned automatically to the stack of programs, each of which listed the attractions organized by the spa committee under the leadership of their newly appointed director. There were chamber music soirees, matinees, military concerts, galas, and symphonies—and the town’s own orchestra was playing three times a day with more than forty musicians. The Grand-Ducal Court Theater of Karlsruhe was appearing in the theater, and other German ensembles were coming to perform.
Konstantin had said that the Baden-Baden theater could stand up to the most splendid in Europe, and that she should absolutely go with him to see a performance. It would be his treat, and after the show he would take her for hot chocolate with a shot of rum. He made it sound so easy—the two of them, in public, in Baden-Baden.
He’d crept back into her thoughts again, when she should really have her mind on Friedrich, her husband, the father of her son, to whom she had sworn herself until death did them part.
“So many wonderful performances—wouldn’t you like to take me out to the theater or a concert, too?” she asked with deliberate gaiety. “Why should we leave all the nice things to the tourists?”
Friedrich drank a swig of coffee. “Because all the nice things are put on for them?” His voice was heavy with irony. “Frankly, I think the program is too much. When are the guests supposed to take the waters or bathe? Between performances?”
That was so typical of Friedrich. All he ever thought about was his precious water! Flora didn’t know whether to feel sad or angry.
“Don’t you think, Flora?” said Ernestine. Then she shook Flora’s arm. “Child, are you even listening to me? I said that theater people would certainly have a sense for flowers. With your ABC, you might be able to win over some of them as customers.”
Flora looked at her mother-in-law uncomprehendingly.
“Honestly, sometimes you’re more absentminded than me. You know what? I’m going to go to the theater myself and ask the dressing-room girls if they’d be prepared to hand out your little booklet to the guests.” Smiling kindly, she patted Flora’s hand.
“You could also count the smaller hotels this year when you print more of the ABC, and not only the big, fancy places,” Friedrich added. “The big hotels spare no effort as it is in making their guests’ stay as comfortable as possible, and the smaller places have a very hard time competing. Gustav Körner, for example—the owner of the Hotel Marie-Eluise—was complaining to me about it just yesterday. Your ABC would be a small gift he could pass on to his guests.”
Flora frowned. “What guests? Princess Stropolski, whom I advised to take her curative baths at the Marie-Eluise, mentioned that when she went she was almost always the only guest there. My booklets would not be seen.”
“No guests? I’m not surprised,” Ernestine said. “Gustav Körner’s wife ran off with a man from Milan, you know!” She opened her eyes wide at the horror of it.
“I haven’t heard that story yet,” said Flora as she lifted Alexander, who had just woken up, from his crib.
Friedrich nodded. “It happened last autumn. And without a woman in the house, Gustav probably won’t be able to run the hotel much longer. Marie-Eluise was the one who took care of everything. When she was there, the place was always spic-and-span. It’s a shame that the hotel is going downhill. Especially because the spring that flows through its cellars is one of the best in town. You should see the water analysis I had done for Gustav. It—”
> “Everyone has their burden to bear,” Flora interrupted him. If she listened to Friedrich’s water stories one moment longer, she would go mad. She folded the Badeblatt together with her free hand and looked across the table at Friedrich and Ernestine. “Theater people, writers, politicians—it seems to me the guests who’ve come this year are as mixed a crowd as we had before. And the stage itself hasn’t changed . . .”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Baden-Baden, June 9, 1873
Dearest Mama, dearest Papa,
I hope my letter finds you well. The new season is in full swing here. Does that count as an excuse for not writing to you in so long? Mama, Papa, though I may not write as often as I should, I think of you all the time.
The days are busy here. I have a lot of new customers, mostly people who work in the theater: actors, dancers, and I’ve even got a real opera diva who comes in. She only ever wants orchids, as if those are easy to come by!
All the prominent statesmen from Berlin that Friedrich is so happy to see here, on the other hand, are rather thrifty gentlemen when it comes to flowers. But what is it Father always says? Every little bit helps.
“Is too much information about the business in a letter boring?”
Sabine finished mopping the floor, then looked up. Flora had put down her pen. “No idea. I’m not the one to ask.” Sabine tipped the sudsy water down the drain. The shop floor practically gleamed, and now she could tackle the next task. The Monday morning rush of customers had abated, and before the next ones came in the early afternoon, she wanted to get things cleaned up.
Flora had also wanted to make the most of the brief respite to write her letter to Gönningen. But instead of continuing to write, she gazed absentmindedly out the window, as she had so often recently.
Sabine sighed. Where was her friend’s mind wandering? She hoped it wasn’t to—
The Flower Shop (The Seed Traders' Saga Book 2) Page 27