Flora groaned when he told her the name of his new hotel and the room number.
“I’ll wait for you . . .”
Hardly had Konstantin left when Flora grabbed a handful of flowers and trotted to the kitchen door.
“I have to make a delivery. Keep an eye on the shop while I’m out, please. And tell Ernestine that she should feed Alexander after his nap,” she called to Sabine. Then she hurried off.
Looking neither left nor right, Flora ran in the direction of the Trinkhalle. What am I doing here? she asked herself when she finally stood, out of breath, in front of the long building. It was not Friedrich she was going to see. She wanted to be alone with her unworthy thoughts and emotions.
Tears trickled over her cheeks as she crept past the Trinkhalle like a thief and tramped up Michaelsberg, the hill that formed part of the parklands beyond. Although the sun was shining, it was uncommonly quiet. Only here and there did she see an occasional walker among the trees. Most of the visitors were probably down on the Promenade or wandering along Lichtenthaler Allee, as usual. That was fine with Flora. Her legs trembled as she climbed the hill.
This bench . . . she and Friedrich had sat there often in their first summer together. And here, on these paths, they had gone strolling on many an evening. Why didn’t those memories make her feel anything?
Had her heart beat faster back then? Had she felt that strange feeling in her belly? She could not remember.
Flora blinked as the dome atop the Stourdza Chapel appeared between the trees. A Romanian count had had it built to honor his deceased son, Friedrich had once explained to her.
Oh, Friedrich . . .
Why did her heart not beat any faster when she thought of him now?
And why did it begin to pound when Konstantin flitted through her mind? She only had to look at him to forget everything around her. Earlier, too, she had almost succumbed, had wanted nothing more than to press against him, feel his powerful torso against her breasts, his hand wandering up her thighs.
She reached the chapel and, sobbing, dropped to her knees. She beat the stone with her fists, as if like that she could destroy her love for Konstantin.
Love? Was it really love?
Or was it just desire? A kind of disease?
Flora hoped so fervidly that the latter was true, because a disease could be cured, couldn’t it?
“Dear God, let me be strong! I beg you. I will do penance. Give me back my peace. I promise I will be a good wife and mother . . .”
Her words echoed in the high, domed building, her voice sounding strangely hollow.
Should she go back to Gönningen? Would she be cured there? No. She had to find her strength alone, here. She could not let herself be so easily seduced, like a whore. She would go home to her husband and child, right now.
Yes. She would do that.
Perhaps, if she tried hard to be a good wife, she could one day look Friedrich in the eye again. Perhaps, if she truly stayed strong, she could one day look at herself in the mirror without feeling wretched and ashamed.
Flora looked around the chapel one last time.
Please, dear God, give me the strength and the courage.
Then she stood up, wiped her face, and brushed the dust from her skirt.
In the distance, from town, church bells chimed four times.
“Really, your customers are becoming more and more outrageous, putting demands on your time like this. Why, it’s almost seven o’clock!” Ernestine shook her head so violently that one of her hairpins flew out and fell on the floor.
Flora crouched to pick it up. “Did you manage all right without me?” From the corner of her eye, she saw Sabine standing in the doorway, eyebrows raised, watching her critically.
Flora handed the hairpin to Ernestine, then stepped back before Sabine caught the scent of lovemaking that wafted around Flora like the sweetest perfume. Stop accusing me like that! she felt like screaming at the maid. I know very well that what I’m doing is not right. I know I’m playing with fire. But it’s . . . just playing. And I simply can’t do anything else.
Chapter Fifty-One
Her eyes closed tightly, Flora moved to the left to make room on the cool sheets for Konstantin. With a sure hand, he undid the buttons on her blouse, slid it over her shoulders, and caressed her breasts as if he were handling a precious treasure. His lips were warm and experienced, encircling her nipples, promising intimacies to come.
Flora instinctively opened her legs. She wanted her lover closer to her, to feel him inside her, to take him in. She was not used to a man taking so much time . . .
But Konstantin pushed her legs together again gently. “We have all the time in the world. You are so lovely. I could lie here and look at you for hours.”
A shiver went through Flora as she felt Konstantin’s tongue on her breasts again—small, firm motions that made them burn with passion. Forgotten was the sinfulness, forgotten her bad conscience. More. She wanted more!
Konstantin’s lips had left her breasts, and his hands traced the curves of her waist, moving a little deeper, deeper.
The tremor that began between her legs and rippled outward, down to the tips of her toes . . . up to the end of every strand of her hair! To each fingertip . . . Could one lose one’s mind from sheer desire?
“Flora, dear Flora . . . will you look at me, too? Or . . . touch me?
Flora opened her eyes abruptly and blinked several times. What did he mean by “look at me”? He was naked! And touch him? Wasn’t she doing that the whole time?
He took her hand and guided it down between them, placing it around his sex. “Like that . . . you can make a man very happy.”
It took a moment for Flora to recover from her shock. Friedrich never would have thought to ask something like that of her.
Her eyelids almost closed, she peeked downward. She had never in her life touched a man there. The delicate skin was so wonderfully tensed, and how yearningly his shaft throbbed, as if it had a life of its own. Was that caused by her touch? Was she doing it right? Wasn’t she hurting him? Uncertainly, her fingers closed around him a little tighter, and she smiled as she heard Konstantin’s groans. She seemed to be doing something right . . .
But the next moment he pulled free of her. “Slowly, my darling. You’re going too fast. Love is something to be enjoyed like champagne, not to gulp down like a glass of spa water.”
“It’s already after two. I should have been back in the shop long ago.” With a sigh of pleasure, Flora rolled onto her back and gazed around Konstantin’s room.
He had certainly made it his own. His clothes were everywhere, his boots and shoes scattered on the floor. On the small table by the window stood a bottle of port, and beside it a jar of something Flora had not immediately recognized. “Preserved walnuts. Püppi hated them,” Konstantin had explained before eating one of the nuts himself and popping one in Flora’s mouth. The delicacy had an unusual flavor, salty and sweet and sharp. The entire room smelled of the preserved walnuts and of Konstantin, of his masculinity.
“Always in a hurry, my little businesswoman. Does a fire break out in the shop whenever you’re not there? Do the flowers transform into ghastly ghosts while you’re lying in my arms? Are your violets being stolen by a horde of robbers as we speak?”
Flora had to laugh at the image of robbers fleeing through the streets of Baden-Baden with her potted violets.
“My customers like to discuss their special requests with me, not Sabine.” Ernestine would also be wondering where she was all this time, Flora thought as she kissed the hollow between Konstantin’s shoulder blades. And there would be hardly any time left to spend with Alexander that afternoon. But not even the thought of her son made her get out of bed, get dressed, and leave.
How perfectly their bodies nestled into one another, as if they were fashioned for nothing else. Flora cradled her cheek in the curve of Konstantin’s neck, enjoying the warm, moist cocoon of sweat and love in which their lov
emaking had swathed them. Like Adam and Eve. Like the Garden of Eden . . .
The hairs on her salty skin were beginning to prickle with desire again when Konstantin abruptly sat up.
“I don’t like to throw you out of my bed, but we have to get up. They’ll be laying Püppi to rest very soon.”
For Flora, the summer of 1873 passed in a state of exhilaration, with Konstantin as both her poison and antidote. They met in his hotel, where Flora always used the back entrance, and they met out in the meadows, too. Of course, they saw each other at the parties for which Flora arranged the floral décor and to which Konstantin was invited as a guest, but for Flora such evenings were more anguished affairs than joyful. She wanted to drive away all the cackling chickens that gathered around Konstantin the moment he entered the room. Konstantin, who was well aware of her jealous eye, flirted all the more with his admirers.
He did not ignore Flora, though, and when he talked with her the women who so gladly kept him in their midst looked on with a critical eye. He would return to them after a whispered pledge of affection or two, and Flora was left to console herself in the knowledge that there were hours in which he belonged to her alone.
Her talent for coming up with excuses and rationales for leaving the house and shop developed rapidly, and also for her occasionally disheveled appearance when she returned home with her skirt grass-stained or her arms scratched.
“Blackberries,” Flora said then, or “I slipped and fell; I’m so clumsy!” But the truth was that she had lain voluntarily among the nettles and thorns.
As soon as she was home, and with a heavy heart, she washed away the perfume of love that clung to her body.
You’re a sinner! You are not worthy of being the wife of a good and loyal man like Friedrich.
A thousand times she made up her mind never to see Konstantin again. But she returned to him. Again and again. How was she supposed to leave him? How would she ever again be able to do without what only he could give her?
What her family and her customers saw of her was only an imperfect thing. It was Konstantin who . . . completed her. Never was she in higher spirits than with him. With him she laughed until tears ran down her face, and sometimes he was sillier even than she. In his arms, the carping of customers was a distant memory, and there was no talk of healing waters, oh no—they had champagne instead!
But when the rendezvous was over and Flora trotted breathlessly home again, the burden weighed heavily on her shoulders. Alexander. Ernestine. Friedrich. And there was always the work: bouquets to be made, orders to be placed, invoices to be written. She had to get home. She did not have another valuable minute to waste!
There were moments when she stood at the counter in the shop and her floral arrangements came to her with uncommon ease—when every movement flowed into the next, when erotic desire inspired every deft motion, when she scooped her creativity from the cornucopia of love. But most of the time she kept her passion for Konstantin separate.
If she had not been able to do that, she would have gone utterly insane.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Nine o’clock. He should have been at the Trinkhalle long ago. Friedrich walked faster. It was not that the guests necessarily had a glass of healing water in mind so early in the morning, but before the first of the ladies and gentlemen arrived he had to sweep the floor, empty the trash, wipe the glass panels of the doors clean of yesterday’s fingerprints.
You’re no more than a lackey, you know, he thought, as he had many times before.
His presentations on the benefits of taking the waters were poorly attended. Not many wanted to hear about his conviction that a drinking regime was best undertaken along with a course of curative baths. Friedrich was coming to doubt whether the members of the spa committee were serious in their efforts to turn Baden-Baden into a true spa town. No one seemed to have much interest at all in the ideas about healing spas and water cures that he had put forward during the year. He had been hoping, because of those ideas, to be called to join the committee and to obtain a better position. But the way things looked, he would forever be no more than a page boy to the rich at the Trinkhalle.
As he passed by the theater, Friedrich ran into the owner of the Hotel Marie-Eluise, Gustav Körner. He paused and greeted the hotelier with a friendly nod and was about to continue on his way when Körner held him back.
“You know a lot of people here in town, don’t you? And quite a few of the guests, too, I’ll wager.”
Friedrich frowned. “That’s true.”
“I thought . . . well, I wanted to ask you . . . would you happen to know someone who would like to buy my hotel?”
Friedrich sighed. “So you’ve really decided to sell it?”
The older man laughed bitterly. “I have no choice. In the last year, I’ve lost not only my wife, but gradually also my guests.”
Friedrich shook his head. “It’s a disgrace. You’ve got one of the best springs in Germany flowing under the place.”
“Please make sure my future buyer hears that. Unfortunately, so far, I’ve had no success in finding one. Before the war, when we still had the casino and the French came in droves, it would probably have been child’s play to sell my hotel, but now?” Körner tilted his head to one side, and for the first time a smile appeared on his pinched face. “What about you, Mr. Sonnenschein? Wouldn’t the Marie-Eluise be something for you?” When he saw the look of disbelief on Friedrich’s face, he added, “You know our springs better than anyone in this town. It was from you that I learned just how good our own spring is. Frankly, I believe you could turn my hotel into a destination for those who come here in search of a good spa.”
Friedrich laughed. “Now you’re exaggerating.”
Körner nodded. “I’ll probably never get rid of the old box. You know, I’d get out of Baden-Baden tomorrow if I could. I’d move to my sister’s place in Munich . . . just to finally get away from the place where everything reminds me of Marie-Eluise.”
With a smile, Friedrich marched on toward the Trinkhalle. Old Körner had some ideas! He, Friedrich, as the proprietor of a hotel, and Flora as proprietress—ha! As if she didn’t have enough to do in the flower shop. And as a mother? She’d hold Alexander in one arm and use her free hand to set tables, and be thinking about whether candelabra were appropriate during the week or should be reserved for Sundays!
His mother could work there, too. It could be a family affair. The thought of Ernestine wearing a small white apron and setting tables in a banquet hall made Friedrich laugh out loud.
She probably wouldn’t do a bad job of it. His mother understood how to run a household in an orderly, efficient way. Flora was good at dealing with people, and he certainly understood the Baden-Baden springs.
Apart from the fact that they would never be able to scrape together the money for the purchase, it would mean he and Flora working side by side—could that go well?
Friedrich’s expression grew serious.
Flora had been so . . . changed lately. He could think of no other way to describe it. She constantly overreacted to things. If she made a joke, she was too jolly about it. When she talked, or sang Alexander a song, or discussed something with a customer, she was always a touch too loud. And there were many times she was too loving! Some evenings, she threw her arms around him and squeezed so hard he could barely breathe.
There was the opposite, too. Days on which she hardly spoke a word and she sat and stared out the window with an absent look on her face, as if . . . as if what?
None of it could be put down to normal moodiness, could it? But when he broached the subject with her, all she said in reply was that he was imagining things.
Friedrich would gladly have talked to someone about his concerns, about how, at times, he felt as if he did not really know who his wife was anymore. But Ernestine was out of the question; she would have gotten too upset. Besides, more often than not, his mother was on Flora’s side.
“You are becomi
ng more and more like your father. All he ever wanted was his peace and quiet, too,” she had said to him just a few days earlier when Flora had asked him if they couldn’t perhaps all go off on a cruise along the Rhine one day. It would be wonderful fun, she had added, as if to pressure him.
A cruise, in the middle of the season? Flora and his mother knew perfectly well that he could not tear himself away from the Trinkhalle for an entire day. And then there was the cost.
He would have preferred to talk to Hannah. No one knew a child like their mother did. Hannah would perhaps have an explanation for Flora’s behavior, and might have been able to give him some advice about how to respond. Maybe she would have commiserated with him and said something along the lines of “Changes like this are like measles, which means all you can do is wait for them pass.”
Friedrich abruptly stopped. And what if they did not pass? Wasn’t it possible for measles to kill you?
Maybe it was time for him to sit down and have a long talk with Flora, and not make do with her excuses.
Should he talk to her about the Marie-Eluise as well? Just to see how she reacted? He pictured her overflowing with enthusiasm about the idea—with Flora, anything was possible.
She would be a good proprietress for a hotel, he was certain of it. A new task for both of them. Together. No more separate roads, and the spa management could go to hell.
He laughed—what a mad idea it was. It really was not like him to drift off into dreams like that. Even if it was only a dream, it was a pretty one. He would have loved to dream it with his wife.
He had just set foot on the top step of the Trinkhalle when he bumped into Lady Lucretia.
Of all people! thought Friedrich with an inward smile. He was certainly not the kind of man to give much credence to omens, good or bad, but that he should run into the health-conscious Englishwoman now was a pleasant coincidence.
The Flower Shop (The Seed Traders' Saga Book 2) Page 30