Bed of Flowers Page 7

  Bonny hefted the shawl in her arms. “Good, because in a week or so I’ll have something for you.”

  Mrs. Reed laughed. “You might have to put it aside. Here, look.” She untied the twine holding her bundle closed, revealing a folded square of glistening white cloth.

  “Oh!” Bonny leaned forward to rub her fingertips along the fabric and gasped at the slick, smooth texture. “Is this silk?”

  “For your wedding dress.” Mrs. Reed began to unfold the cloth, gesturing for Bonny to hold two of the corners. “Don’t even think about the price. This is a gift; it would be rude.”

  “But how? It’s so dear—” Bonny pressed her hand to her chest, tears burning behind her eyes. “Oh, Mama.”

  “Perhaps we were a bit extravagant,” Mrs. Reed admitted. “But things will be so much easier for us after you’re married. Mr. Gavin promised to arrange for Margot to have a season in London; he says he can send her to his cousins in town. Once Margot’s settled, we’ll sell the house…” Mrs. Reed sighed. “I want you to look pretty on your wedding day. You don’t mind sewing?”

  “Of course not.” Bonny shook the fabric, enjoying the silk’s smooth ripple. “It will be a treat to work with something so fine.”

  “Nothing makes me happier than seeing you happy,” said her mother.

  “I do have a small favor to ask,” Bonny said. She’d thought about what she’d say to her parents all afternoon and finally decided not to upset them by bringing up Lord Loel’s name. “I’d like to make a few regular visits to Mrs. Twisby, but it would have to be very early in the morning. It’s the only way that I can fit the visits in with my delivery rounds, without losing the whole day to other tasks that you need me for.”

  “How early?”

  “She’s an early riser, so if I arrive in time to take breakfast, I think it will all work out.”

  “It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to—how many books did she donate?”

  “It’s not about that!” Bonny chided. “It could have been one, and I would still have agreed. She’s interesting, actually, and I enjoy talking to her.”

  “I have such a good daughter.” Mrs. Reed kissed Bonny on the cheek. “Sometimes I think I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”

  Bonny felt a little queasy as she returned the embrace. It wasn’t entirely a lie, but—well. It was near enough as to make no difference. She was intentionally hiding information that would have provoked a very different and much less pleasant reaction from her mother.

  But she couldn’t justify reviving the painful memories her whole family tiptoed around for the sake of a silly squabble about an orchid. And yet, precisely because it was Lord Loel she was dealing with, she couldn’t abandon her challenge for the sake of her family’s feelings.

  There was already so much pain and bad feeling between the Loels and the Reeds. A small offense, negligible in most circumstances, would deepen and reinforce the divide. And while no one in her own family knew it—not her mother, not her father, not her sister—Bonny had carried a secret guilt in her heart for years, ever since Loel left. It was that, more than anything, that made it impossible for her to turn her back on him now.

  She set out early the next morning while it was still dark and chilly outside. Walking briskly warmed her up, though, and she arrived at the greenhouse just as the sun crested the horizon.

  Lord Loel was already hard at work in the yard. He’d dressed himself properly for the first time, with coat, cravat, and waistcoat covering his distracting figure. She almost thanked him, but that would have required drawing attention to his previous indecency.

  Which—being a well-bred lady—she would never do. If pressed, she would have denied that she’d even noticed his figure, let alone the way that linen clung to his sweat-dampened muscles.

  He sat on a low stool, legs spread to either side of some large, shallow, rectangular box… a planter, at a guess. He swung a hammer with one hand, steadying the planter with the other, with three nails clamped firmly between his lips.

  A soft cap shielded his face from the sun and limited his field of view. Bonny took the opportunity to observe without being observed. To notice the way his cool green eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened around the nails in advance of each swing.

  “Lord Loel?”

  His brow furrowed as he looked up, transferring the nails from his lips to his hand. “Good morning, Miss Reed.”

  Bonny drew closer. “What are you working on?”

  “Nothing of interest to you.”

  “But I’m curious.” Bonny smiled brightly. “Is it for your orchids?”

  His only response was a flat, unfriendly look.

  “You’re certainly very fond of gardening.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “How else?” Bonny asked. “You obviously devote most of your energy and, er, resources to the greenhouse…”

  Loel squinted up at her, head tilting to the side. As though he were trying to decide if she was completely daft or only a little. “I don’t grow orchids for pleasure, Miss Reed.”

  “You don’t? But—”

  “I sell them.”

  Bonny’s jaw dropped. “For income?”

  “Yes,” he said with insulting slowness. “For income.”

  “But…” Bonny couldn’t believe it. Gentlemen took professions that kept their hands clean—both literally and figuratively. A gentleman owned a farm, but he did not wield a hoe. A gentleman had an office in a bank; he never stood behind a register. A gentleman was an officer, not an enlisted man.

  When her father had been at the peak of his success—when thousands of pounds had flowed through his accounts every day and dozens of dockside workers depended on him for employment—her family had still viewed the Loels as members of a class above. They might aspire to acknowledgment from their local lord, perhaps the compliment of his acquaintance, but no more than that.

  Even after all that had happened, Bonny had ventured to Woodclose as a supplicant begging a favor. She’d asked the local lord to donate books to her library. It was the most natural role for her to assume.

  The pampered aristocrat had fallen far, if he had to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, to engage directly in commerce. The evidence was right in front of her, he’d said the words plainly, yet it was still hard to believe.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Yes.” Loel was irritated now. “Really.”

  “But why?” And what had he done to push his parents over the edge, to make them disown him so utterly? If burning down half of New Quay hadn’t been enough…

  Loel sighed and set his tools aside. “Why don’t we go look at the Odontoglossum crispum?”

  “Oh! I’m sorry.” Bonny winced. It had been very rude of her to pry. “That would be wonderful, yes. How is it this morning?”

  “Alive, as luck would have it.”

  She followed him into the greenhouse. She took a deep breath of the rich, heavy air and let her gaze wander. Some places lost their magic to familiarity but not this one. She’d never seen so much purple in her life—pale as a wintry dusk, rich as royal robes.

  “So,” said Bonny. “How exactly does one water an Odontoglossum crispum?”

  “Wait here.” He disappeared along one of the neat stone paths that cut through the lush greenery and returned a moment later carrying an empty bowl in one hand and a strange, narrow brass tube in the other.

  He held the bowl underneath the nearest fountain and gestured her toward the sad little orchid as it filled. “First weigh it again.”

  Bonny lifted the pot, testing the weight, and examined the leaf. “It looks the same as it did before. Is that good or bad?”

  “Neither. Don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Why not?” She put the crispum down. “If it makes me feel better and doesn’t do any harm?”

  “Suit yourself.” Loel handed her a brass instrument with a wooden handle on one end and a small bulb on the other, pie
rced with tiny holes. He tapped the bowl of water. “Dip your finger in.”

  “It’s warm!”

  “Orchids are like Goldilocks—not too hot, not too cold. Ideally, the water should be the same temperature as the rain that falls in their place of origin.” He pointed, finger tracing the course of the troughs overhead. “As the water flows from fountain to fountain, two things happen. The air warms the water, and the water cools the air. It’s coldest at the source and it’s warmest here, where it’s traveled the farthest.”

  “All right.”

  “Now dip the rose into the water and pull back the plunger to fill it.”

  “The rose?”

  He tapped the pierced bulb. “The tip, here.”

  Bonny immersed the tip. Pulling the wooden handle sucked water into the tube with a faint gurgling noise.

  “You push the plunger into the barrel to expel water,” said Loel. “Test it out first.”

  Bonny pushed as instructed, spraying a fine shower through the perforated bulb. “Like that?”

  “Mmm.” Loel nodded. “You water the potting material, not the orchid itself. Control the spray so that it doesn’t splash on to the leaf. The crispum wants to be moist, never wet.”

  “Moist but not wet.” These flowers were finicky as a fine lady. “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Loel nodded.

  “Because after all this preparation, I’m not sure that I’m ready.” Bonny squirted a bit of water at Loel’s face. “What if I make a mistake?”

  Loel wiped his cheek, stone-faced. “The orchid will die, and it will be your fault.”

  Bonny blinked. Either Lord Loel had no sense of humor… or he had a wickedly dry one.

  “Daylight’s wasting,” he murmured.

  With a small scowl in Lord Loel’s direction, she squirted a modest shower of water onto the wood chips. Then she stepped back to examine her handiwork.

  “How’d I do?”

  Loel shrugged.

  “You may as well tell me.”

  “Too much splashing.” Loel pulled a handkerchief from where he’d tucked it into his belt and daubed at the plant. “Like here, where the leaf meets the stem. There’s always a danger of rot—”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all.”

  “You have thousands of orchids in this greenhouse,” Bonny protested. “You don’t have time to pat each one dry with a handkerchief.”

  “I do things right or not at all, Miss Reed.”

  Bonny rolled her eyes. Really. She’d never heard anything so pompous in her life.

  He shrugged, conceding her (unspoken) point. “Practice speeds the process.”

  “Well, obviously.” She knew it from her sewing, if nothing else, how she worked faster even as her stitches grew straighter and smaller. “Anything else?”

  “You tell me,” Loel drawled, confirming that he did, in fact, have a sense of humor.

  “I’m going to sing it a song,” she told him. “You can stay and listen if you like, but I won’t be offended if you return to your carpentry.”

  He left without complaint—perhaps he could sense that she would have felt awkward performing for him. She didn’t know what to make of Loel, so prickly and forbidding, with his past hanging over him like a shroud… and so astonishingly tender with these flowers.

  Her voice was adequate rather than fine; she could sing to an audience without feeling either embarrassment or any sense of accomplishment. In any case, the plant couldn’t complain.

  “Grow, grow, grow,” she crooned, humming the melody to another song. The plant didn’t complain, so she continued. “We grow high, we grow slow, we grow, we grow…”

  So she hummed a bit, searching for a melody that caught her fancy, and then began to sing a song by Charles Dibdin, her favorite of those she heard the sailors singing as they loaded and unloaded their cargo.

  “The breeze was fresh, the ship in stays,

  Each breaker hush’d, the shore a haze,

  When Jack, no more on duty call’d,

  His true love’s tokens over haul’d:

  The broken gold, the braided hair,

  The tender motto, writ so fair,

  Upon his ‘bacco box he views,

  Nancy the poet, love the muse:

  ‘If you loves as I loves you,

  No pair so happy as we two.’”

  She heard a light rattle and click—the sound of the greenhouse’s glass door shutting behind Lord Loel. He must have lingered at the threshold, listening.

  She took a deep breath and continued singing. The second and third stanzas described a storm that nearly wrecked Jack’s ship. In the fourth and final one the voyage ended, and Jack reunited with his Nancy.

  “The voyage—that had been long and hard,

  But that had yielded full reward;

  That brought each sailor to his friend,

  Happy and rich—was at an end:

  When Jack, his toils and perils o’er,

  Beheld his Nancy on the shore;

  He then the ‘back-box display’d,

  And cried,—and seized the willing maid,—

  ‘If you loves I as I loves you,

  No pair so happy as we two.’”

  She liked the song because it had a happy ending. Not only did Jack survive his years at sea, but he grew rich, and when he returned home, he found his Nancy faithfully waiting.

  Bonny had lived in a port town for long enough to know that the reality wasn’t always so rosy. But she could choose what to sing, just like she could choose to believe that the Odontoglossum crispum would blossom and that Charles Gavin was a good man.

  Pessimists seemed to dose themselves prophylactically with pain, as though it were a poison they could develop some immunity to. Bonny could not imagine a more obviously flawed and illogical philosophy.

  Outside, Loel had returned to carpentry.

  “My friend told me that some species of orchids are quite valuable,” said Bonny. “I suppose it must be true if you think it’s worth your time to grow them.”

  “Rare breeds sold at auction and wealthy collectors are competitive. They’ll pay dearly to own something unique.”

  “If you don’t mind a rude question, what’s the most you’ve ever sold an orchid for?”

  “To date? Three hundred pounds.”

  “Three hundred?” Bonny gasped. “No!”

  “And I have every chance of improving on that figure, given enough time.”

  “What about the Odontoglossum crispum?”

  Lord Loel shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But you said it’s very rare,” said Bonny. “The only one in England, perhaps in Europe!”

  “It’s worth nothing if it dies.”

  “But if it survives, you think it might be a valuable specimen?”

  “Growing orchids can be a risky business. Nature isn’t as reliable or predictable as the shopkeepers of the world might like.”

  “Since you’re not answering, I can only assume the answer is yes.” Bonny bit her lip. “It would be worth that much… or more.”

  Loel was silent.

  “More, you think.”

  “I had hoped,” Loel admitted.

  “Why did you give it to me?” Bonny demanded. “If I’d had any idea, I never would have asked. We should forget this ever happened—”

  Loel interrupted. “No.”

  “What?”

  “It’s dying, Miss Reed. I know you’d like to believe otherwise, and I know why, but the truth is that the flower’s chances were slim and now they are none.”

  Bonny sucked in a deep breath so she could give voice to her very strong objections.

  “No need to protest,” said Loel. “If the plant survives, it’s yours. You’ll have earned it.”

  That deflated her fast enough. She felt more than a little sick. Three hundred pounds. That was enough to survive on for a year, if one were
very frugal, which Lord Loel obviously was. If she had cost him so much—even if the plant survived, she would not feel right about keeping the proceeds.

  Now she understood why it had come all the way from the high Andes Mountains and why he’d placed it on a table by itself, isolated from the rest. It had been special—as valuable as the most expensive orchid he’d ever owned, or more. She must have put his whole livelihood in jeopardy.

  “We’ll see,” said Bonny, and he didn’t press his point any further. She returned home with a heavy heart.

  Chapter 7

  A storm blew in from the south on Wednesday night and held all through Thursday morning. The worst had passed by noon, though, so Bonny ventured down the street to the Kelly house. Once they’d prepared the book basket, they wrapped it in oilcloth and bundled into warm cloaks.

  They began their circuit at the vicar’s house, where Mrs. Henley opened the door herself. “Hurry, before the carpet gets wet,” she said, ushering them inside. “I have tea all ready for you. We’ll give the rain a chance to calm down and have a cozy chat.”

  Bonny loved many things about Mrs. Henley. Her generosity, for example; she’d donated many of her own books and magazines to the circulating library. Her strong principles, her energy… and most especially her hospitality. Her very delicious hospitality.

  She made the most magnificent tea cakes, moist and rich and beautifully glazed.

  They discussed all the local news: the babies who’d survived the croup, the husbands who drank too much, the new silvered glass mirror at the Black Lion. Mrs. Henley could be discreet, but she saw gossip as a sort of moral duty. She collected all the local news and shared it back out again, her information scrupulously correct and her judgments absolute.

  “I hear your mother has a suitor in mind, Miss Kelly,” said Mrs. Henley, when the teapot was empty and their cups nearly drained.

  “She does,” said Cordelia flatly.

  “And what do you think of this one?”

  “I hope he gives up quickly.”

  Bonny giggled.

  “It may seem funny now, but it won’t forever,” warned Mrs. Henley. “Delay long enough and all the men you’ve rejected will find other women to marry while you’ll be left all alone. I’ve seen it happen.”