Bed of Flowers Page 3

  Mrs. Twisby sat beside a lit fireplace on a sort of low, flat sofa with her legs curled. She scooted off as Bonny arrived, smiling in welcome. She was compactly built, with plump limbs and thinning hair drawn into a neat bun at her nape. “Miss Reed? You must get more beautiful every day.”

  Bonny smiled and kissed Mrs. Twisby on the cheek. “You’re very kind. But why do you have the fire going? It’s nearly summer.”

  “Old bones.” Mrs. Twisby pointed to a chair. “Stop hovering.”

  “A little bit of daily exercise would help with that.”

  “Oh, exercise.” Mrs. Twisby pulled a face. “What brings you here? It’s a long walk to make for no purpose.”

  Bonny explained the circulating library. Mrs. Twisby listened with interest, asked a few questions, and finally made her way over to the cozy reading nook tucked against the window.

  After browsing for a moment, she slipped one volume out of the row and handed it to Bonny. “Perhaps this one? I doubt you already have it.”

  It was beautifully bound in red leather, the title printed in gold on the spine. The Widow, by R. E. Timothy. Bonny had never even heard of the author. Cordelia would be thrilled.

  “This is perfect!” Bonny beamed. “Thank you so much!”

  Mrs. Twisby blinked. “You know… perhaps if I join your circulating library, I could spare a few more. That way I’ll get to try something new instead of reading the same books over and over again.”

  “But that’s a marvelous idea! We’d be so happy to have you.”

  “I know it’s a long way from New Quay…”

  “So you’d best make it worth my while,” said Bonny. “Will you agree to take me on a walk when I bring your books?”

  “Take you on a walk.” Mrs. Twisby snorted. “You’re not fooling anyone with that talk.”

  “At least during the summer months,” said Bonny. “It will do you a world of good.”

  “I’ll let you ask.” Mrs. Twisby plucked four more books from her shelf and handed them to Bonny. “Here, take these before I agree to anything else.”

  “It’s a bargain.” Bonny kissed Mrs. Twisby on the cheek again. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Her route home skirted the boundary of Woodclose, the Loel estate. The gates stood open and she paused, a pleasant little idea twinkling in her mind. The Loel library had once been famous. Most of the books would be dry, dusty classics in Latin or Greek, of no interest to the library’s members… but there’d be some gold amidst the dust. If she came back with Mrs. Twisby’s five books and more from Lord Loel, Cordelia would be over the moon.

  Besides, Lord Loel owed her. It had been eight years since the fire of 1845, long enough to know nothing would ever be the same. She didn’t think of him as a bogeyman like her family or most of New Quay did. He hadn’t meant any harm. But he could spare a novel or two.

  On that note, she turned up the drive.

  Chapter 3

  Deep, uneven ruts scored the gravel road, treacherous even on foot. Weeds competed for dominance where once an elegant lawn had spread like a carpet over the gentle rise.

  While the last Lord Loel and his lady had been alive, they’d kept Woodclose in such picture-perfect condition that one could almost believe they’d had the leaves on the trees waxed one by one to make them shine just so.

  Mind, nobody had liked the previous Loels. The townsfolk of New Quay mostly gossiped about the endless stream of visitors to the great house, united in their disapproval of the excess and frivolity on display.

  It was still sad to see the place in ruin. It had been silly and extravagant but very pretty.

  Or maybe she was sad for a different reason. The Loels’ fortunes had turned at the same time as her own family’s and for the same reason. She hardly noticed the changes at home anymore. A life she’d once thought of as a nightmare had become normal… and good. She had no complaints, in any event.

  When Orson Loel had been young, the pampered heir to a title and a fortune, he’d developed a passion for sailing. His parents had bought him a pretty little yacht, and he took it out almost every day, flitting up and down the coast alone.

  One night, he’d returned home after sunset. He’d lit a lantern as he moored the little yacht, only to kick it over in a moment of inattention. It tipped and cracked—or cracked and tipped—spilling whale oil and flame. The flames caught on the bleached wood of the pier and raced to the quay. From there, the fire spread to the dockside warehouses.

  Bonny’s father had owned most of those warehouses. He had not owned the goods stored inside them, though he had been liable when they’d burned. He’d had enough insurance to escape debtor’s prison, but the fire had destroyed a family business three generations in the making and he’d never recovered from the loss.

  Not that the Reeds had been the only ones to suffer. Everyone in New Quay depended on the port in one way or another.

  The Loels had tried to do right by the town. They stepped in to rebuild lost and damaged property at their own expense. Despite their wealth, those efforts had put a strain on their resources. All the parties and visits to Woodclose had ground to a halt.

  Despite their efforts, New Quay’s trade shifted north to bustling Liverpool and never came back. The damage had been done. It couldn’t be undone by a bit of well-meaning renovation.

  Soon after the fire, Orson Loel—who’d caused all the trouble—ran away from home. Good riddance had been the general reaction in New Quay. Young Loel hadn’t meant any harm, but no one had sympathy to spare for a blue-blooded boy-child who’d cost most of the townsfolk their livelihoods.

  A few years after he ran away, the family fortunes took another turn for the worse. Maintenance on the property stopped. Servants were let go. When Lord and Lady Loel showed their faces, they were pale and unsmiling, with dark circles under their eyes.

  Then they’d died. Skimping on coal and maintenance left the great house damp and drafty enough to endanger an aging couple accustomed to soft living. They’d died from a bout of influenza. Influenza! All the fishwives and cottagers had snickered behind their cold-chapped hands.

  Lord Loel’s last act before he passed had been to summon a solicitor. No one in New Quay knew the details, but his son had returned almost two years ago, and he lived like a pauper, worse than his parents ever had.

  Bonny loved and honored her parents. She couldn’t think of anything she wouldn’t do for them—gladly—and, she suspected, that was why they hardly ever fought.

  Whatever the new Lord Loel had done while he was away, it had been awful enough to complete his fall from grace. The cherished only son had become a pariah.

  At the end of the drive stood a rambling structure built from the same red stone as Mrs. Twisby’s, formed into branching wings with high gables and dotted with cupolas. She rapped at the front door, in vain. No one had seen her coming, and no one answered her knock. That was odd; a gentleman, even one in straightened circumstances, ought to keep at least one indoor servant to look after the house.

  Bonny circled the building. The windows were all shut, not a single room open to the fresh air. When she peeked through the glass, the floors were bare of carpets and sheets shrouded all the furniture.

  Mind, it was a large house. Without money for upkeep, it only made sense to close a few rooms.

  She peeked into the windows along the front of the building and then down the side. All the same. The sheets had been in place long enough to acquire a thick coat of dust.

  She continued around to the back, driven by nosiness more than anything, and found the library. It was a large, high-ceilinged room, draped and dusty as all the others. No—she mustn’t jump to conclusions. Lord Loel might keep a dozen cozy rooms for himself on the opposite side of the house or the upper floors.

  She reached an open yard, bounded on one side by the great house and on the other by a huge greenhouse, large as a London train station. Elegantly constructed from a mix of wood, brick, and iron lattice, its peaked r
oof nearly matched the great house in height.

  A makeshift awning of undyed oilcloth sheltered several cords of chopped wood, stacked neatly against the exterior wall of the house. A wheelbarrow full of dark soil lay abandoned in the shade of a giant oak. Something nearby smelled strongly and revoltingly of fish.

  All the energy and effort here clearly revolved around the greenhouse, not the great house. Could Loel be growing something unsavory—opium poppies perhaps? Was this why so many strangers slunk into New Quay to exchange suspicious packages?

  But if the greenhouse were full of forbidden plants, wouldn’t he put locks on the latches?

  Her heart began to race as she inched toward the greenhouse. A piece of raw lumber kept the door open a crack. Practically an invitation.

  She’d peek inside. If Loel appeared to question her, she’d simply explain her errand. She’d come with good intentions, on behalf of a charitable organization. And clearly, if all the activity on the property centered on the greenhouse, that’s where she’d be most likely to find him. Perfectly innocent.

  She heaved open the door. Innocently. She heaved open the door innocently.

  And walked into a permanent spring. Not the one that waited outside—drab, inconstant, a season caught in a tug-of-war between frigid winter and fleeting summer. This was the ideal of spring, more dream than reality. A glaze of moisture condensed on her skin, wilting her dress and sensitizing her to the breeze that stirred the air.

  The light had a filtered quality, as though sifted and strained until only the gentlest glimmers and sweetest rays would be let through to bathe the astonishing flowers inside.

  Hundreds—perhaps thousands—of orchids filled the vast space. Some bore flowers the size of her thumbnail while others bloomed bigger than dinner plates. They sprang up from beds to either side and overflowed pots dangling from an iron lattice overhead. They came in colors as delicate as a lady’s boudoir and as bold as a crime scene.

  And the smell. Bonny breathed deep for the pure pleasure of it. Rich and heady, cool and fresh. The perfume reminded her of a summer rain or a lily pond.

  Several fountains murmured in the cavernous space, all of them connected. Water flowed through a narrow trough snaking overhead to a small drop, powering a small fan as it flowed into another trough that led to another drop and another fan and so on, forming a chain that began deep inside the greenhouse and traveled the whole length of the structure. It was an ingenious system.

  Right in front of her stood a table with sturdy wooden legs and a top of smooth, gray slate. Unlike the rest of the garden, crowded with flowers that draped and spilled and twined over every surface, the table and the area around it remained clear and uncluttered.

  And the only thing on it… Bonny took a few steps closer, hardly believing her eyes. The only thing on it was a weed. A single leaf hanging limply over the side of a small squat pot full of wood chips. No flower, no color.

  Bonny looked from the sad little weed to the plant bed just to her right. The nearest flower—not the most remarkable, simply the nearest—boasted a fringe of white petals resembling a lightly starched lace cuff, beautifully framing a fluted center the rich, saturated red of burgundy wine.

  She bent to sniff at the ugly weedy thing. It smelled of chlorophyll. No perfume at all.

  The strangest thing about this fantastical garden might have been the prominent place accorded to an awful little toad of a plant.

  A rattling noise sounded behind her. Bonny jumped and whirled as the greenhouse door opened and Lord Loel stepped through.

  Everyone said he was dangerous. That he brought bad people into New Quay. When he came to town for market day, Bonny, like all young ladies of good reputation, kept her distance. She’d glimpsed his tall, lean figure from a distance but hadn’t had a good look at him in years. She usually pictured him like he’d been the last time she’d seen him up close: tall and slim, so arrogant that he could hardly tamp down his sneer for long enough to blurt an apology.

  Orson Loel had changed.

  He was still tall, but he’d grown out of his adolescent grace. He was brawny now, long-legged and thick-thighed, with broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms.

  He was handsome, too, but in a feral way. All his features were sharp: his cheekbones were sharp, his chin was sharp. Even his nose sloped down to a sharp point. He looked like a man who, if he tried to give a lady a kiss, would cut her instead.

  Bonny had made a mistake when she came here alone. A very serious mistake.

  “Miss Reed?” His big body tensed as he scanned the greenhouse. “What are you doing here?”

  Bonny clasped her hands behind her back. Loel’s gaze returned to her—his eyes were a bright arsenic green—and they were, like everything else about him, sharp.

  Men had been looking at her with disturbing intensity since she was little. When she’d been twelve, thirteen, grown men would follow her with greedy eyes. In the years since, she’d been insulted, propositioned, and groped more times than she could count.

  She would have said she hated the constant attention—she did hate it—but she was used to it. Loel’s intensity was of a different kind, cold and penetrating. It made her feel small. And she hated that more.

  Bonny forced herself to speak. “I was hoping I could enlist your aid in a project I’m working on.”

  “A project?”

  “Miss Cordelia Kelly and I have organized a small circulating library in New Quay. We want to encourage literacy among ladies of all classes, and it is our theory that entertaining books further this goal better than purely instructional materials.”

  “And?”

  “As the Loel library is famous, I hoped you might agree to donate a few of your books.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” he said again.

  Bonny admitted to herself that she was relieved. If he’d offered to donate his books, she would have had to follow him into that deserted, shrouded house to browse the library. Just the thought made her stomach twist into a knot.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Bonny eyed the door. “I’ll leave you in peace. Have a lovely day.”

  But he didn’t step aside. He watched her, silently, until she began to truly feel frightened.

  Bonny tried a feeble smile. “I can’t get by if you won’t move.”

  Instead of stepping aside, Loel advanced. Bonny, startled, jumped back. Her elbow, crooked like a chicken’s wing, twanged painfully as it knocked against the pot.

  The pot and its weed skittered to the edge of the table, wobbled briefly, and fell. It landed on the hard cement floor with a crack. The wood chips scattered, laying the sad, sickly little plant bare to its twin root bulbs.

  Bonny gasped.

  “What have you done?” Loel cried roughly.

  “I’m sorry!”

  Loel lunged at her.

  She squeaked and dodged, realizing belatedly that he hadn’t been snatching at her but the plant. The ugly little weed.

  He righted the pot and scooped handfuls of wood chips back into it, wincing as he handled the sprawl of limp greenery. Moving quickly, he laid hands on a pair of clippers—the blades lethally sharp—and a stretch of wire, cutting and shaping a skeleton of support.

  “Will it be all right?” Bonny asked.

  Loel ignored her, ripping a strip of linen from the bottom of his shirt and wrapping the thin wire with it.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Leave,” he said shortly.

  “Or to make it up to you?”

  “Leave.”

  “I’m sorry to have upset you.” She folded her knees and squatted beside him. “Perhaps I could replace it?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  His cold, cold eyes silenced her easily. “Replace it? Be my guest. First find a ship bound for South America. Leave as soon as possible; you’ll be gone at least a year. Upon arrival, organize an expedition into the Andes. Mo
st likely, since you’d be unable to recognize this extremely rare species of orchid based on the single specimen you’ve encountered here, your search would be fruitless. If you were lucky, you might find a living flower to collect. If you were extremely—miraculously—lucky, it would survive the return voyage.”

  Bonny blinked. “That’s absurd.”

  His upper lip curled in a sneer. “Get out, Miss Reed.”

  “But—”

  “Out!” he shouted with enough force to puff out the loose tendrils of hair framing her face.

  Bonny scrambled backward, crablike, then levered herself upright and dashed to the door.

  Bonny scurried down the drive, her heart racing. She was halfway home before she slowed to a walk. By the time she reached the familiar narrow streets of New Quay, her fear had given way to anger.

  How dare Lord Loel startle her. How dare he address her so curtly and look at her so coldly and yell at her like a common servant. She was a lady, gently raised, and he owed her courtesy and good manners. Whether she’d—innocently—intruded or not.

  Bonny stopped at the Kelly house on her way home. Their footman directed Bonny to the attic nursery that Cordelia had adopted as her library and workshop. Bonny skipped up the first two flights of stairs and took the last two at a more stately pace, arriving slightly out of breath.

  Cordelia sat at the small desk she’d positioned by the window, its scarred wooden surface cluttered with her book-binding materials: a deep tray for making marbled paper, razors and a bone folder, twine and thick needles.

  Bookcases lined the walls, but all the shelves were empty—which explained why Cordelia had been so concerned about expanding their library’s membership.

  Bonny placed the small stack of new books on a shelf. “Mrs. Twisby sent these.”

  “How many is that?” Cordelia counted. “Five? And a few I’ve never heard of. Bonny, I’m amazed.”

  “She was very generous.” Bonny paused. “Though I’m not sure we’re saving time with this scheme of yours. She wants to be a member, and of course I agreed. She’d been so generous, and she must get lonely, living so far away from everyone, but it’s such a long walk to her home.”