Mrs. Pendrake did not appear to be enjoying the ride. She sat rigidly, arm braced against the door. Her eyes were enormous. Blue eyes. The color of the forget-me-nots threading the hedges.
A bump sent them both a few inches up into the air.
Neal rapped the roof with his knuckles, just for show. Cornish drivers were all madmen.
If the devil himself tried to slow them, they’d run him off his feet. Which made for great good fun. He’d always liked a breakneck pace. Well, not always. Not during that lightning storm in Argentina. His horse had spooked as he mounted and dragged him half a mile dangling from the stirrup. The episode had been a bit too painful, and a bit too on the nose. He’d very nearly been sliced to ribbons by the variety of pampas grass he’d been sent to collect. But in every other circumstance, the faster the better. Improved the circulation.
The road curved dramatically, and the driver cracked the whip, accelerating into the turn. Mrs. Pendrake gasped. Her hives looked livid. The color had drained from her face, accentuating the patches of inflammation.
There could be no doubt. Faster was not better in the mind of his future wife. An amusing divergence. He could tease her about it into their dotage. The exception that proved the rule. They were, after all, eerily compatible.
She is you. That was what his friend Simon Hitchens had told him after hearing her lecture on Lilium regale, the regal lily of the Chinese Empire, at the Royal Botanic Society. But prettier, and in petticoats.
The cab tipped, eliciting a cry from Mrs. Pendrake, high-pitched and feminine. She covered her eyes. Had she covered her eyes while boating over the Yeh-Tan rapids? Or clattering down snowy ravines in that donkey cart? Her manuscript never mentioned mortal terror, and her encyclopedic observations of the terrain indicated obsessive, unabating attention. She left so little out a reader could be excused for asking himself if she so much as blinked.
A thunk as the left wheel returned to earth.
“Dear Lord,” she whispered, and he realized she’d begun to pray.
Might she be overly pious, then? The cab swerved again and Mrs. Pendrake yelped in a new register.
“Christ,” she swore, revealing—to his relief—a healthy eclecticism in relationship to ecclesiastical propriety.
“Do something,” she hissed, and he rapped again on the roof. The driver didn’t slack the pace but neither did he increase it.
“We’ll be quite all right.” Neal smiled. To no effect, as her face remained buried in her hands. “There are hardly ever any bang-ups.”
He put the toe of his boot on his tin specimen box, which was rattling against his portfolio on the cabin floor. Doing damage to the loosely packed plants. A shame, but no tremendous loss. He’d walked to the train station on a lark, and the area of the moor he’d explored on the way was already well botanized. Reverend John Jenkins, of St. Neot, maintained excellent records as far west as Kilmar Tor.
He’d wanted to wait for Mrs. Pendrake before venturing into less-trammeled territory.
And now she was here, in the flesh. Expiring with terror.
“Can you smell the lady’s bedstraw?” He inhaled deeply, through his nose and his mouth. The evening air had a honied taste.
She lifted her head, bracing herself again against the door, but made no response. She seemed to be holding her breath.
Perhaps it wasn’t the speed that troubled her. She might suffer from claustrophobia. His brother Perran, newly appointed to the faculty of the medical college at the London Hospital, was co-writing a paper with a French professor on the subject of extreme dread of enclosed spaces. At Christmas, he’d expounded on the topic to Neal as they roved the family home in Penzance looking for the children, whose zealotry in hide-and-seek made it abundantly clear that they were not among the afflicted. Indeed, Perran’s youngest son—the winner—had to be sawed out of a cupboard. Neal did think he’d experienced a touch of claustrophobia himself, during stormy transatlantic voyages, and during afternoon teas in those sealed-up London sitting rooms stuffed with marble bric-a-brac.
They weren’t enclosed per se on this country lane. But the towering hedges leaned so close to the sides of the cab that ferns and foxgloves slapped the windows. Sometimes a stone clattered audibly against the fender. He could see how it wasn’t unlike plunging down the long green gullet of a sea monster.
“This will open up soon,” he said. “Any moment now.”
Mrs. Pendrake remained silent. Her shoulders slid up around her ears. He felt the muscles in his forehead tightening.
“These aren’t your springy Midlands hedgerows.” He tried to draw her attention to the window. “They’re solid, filled with stone. Proof perfect that our driver has never, in his long career, made the slightest miscalculation.”
Nicely done, Traymayne. He suppressed a wince. Not the most assuring line of reasoning. Her grimace confirmed it.
“Are the crashes always fatal?” The question emerged like an accusation.
“When they do happen . . .” He abandoned the sentence and began again. “Our driver hasn’t ever crashed and won’t ever crash. That was my point. There now, look.”
The hedges fell away from the road and they were bowling along the crest of a hill, the land undulating into the distance, green fields striped by the flowering hedges. The setting sun sent ruddy light slanting through the clouds. The lane unspooled smoothly before them.
She slumped forward, her whole body relaxing. He, too, relaxed, scrubbing a hand through his hair. There was something communicable about anxiety. His awareness of her agitation had coiled him tight as a spring. He made a mental note to ask Perran if he knew the Greek for that phenomenon.
She heaved a breath and cast her eyes about.
“Much better,” she said, and turned to look out the window. “Are those sheep?”
He tilted his head, peering over her shoulder. “Cows.”
“Hmm. On the small side, then.” She pressed closer to the glass. He refrained from comment. The creatures were far away, pale dots on the pastures. But, well, they were very cowlike all the same. British Whites and Jerseys. A zoologist she was not.
“And which way is the sea?”
“That way.” He had to reach over her to point. As he did so, he glanced down at her hair, blond, elaborately coiled and curled. The locks that had tumbled down were pin straight. His mother had always claimed there was an inverse relationship between the outside and inside of a woman’s head. The more overdeveloped the hairstyle, the more underdeveloped the cognitive powers.
“We’re not heading toward Fowey?” She remained turned toward the window and spoke with studied casualness. Yet he saw her shoulders tense.
“No,” he replied slowly. “We’re heading north. Fowey is south. Why? Do you have some reason to go there?”
“No!” She turned abruptly and pressed back into her seat. Her gloved fingers skimmed her reddened cheeks, then she folded her hands tightly in her lap. “Just a point of reference. Do you think we’ll get more rain?”
He hesitated. There was something deadly and familiar about that tone of voice, about that exact question. Usually, it presaged prattle. Or else an uninspired dialogue punctuated by increasingly awkward silences. Rarely did it indicate interest in natural conditions and their effects on human, plant, or animal behavior. But perhaps he should take her at her word.
“Rain?” He studied the clouds—billowing, a bit dirtied by their fierce transit over the heights of the moor—and shrugged. “My mother always says the weather in Cornwall is good in a novel, bad for a picnic. It’s a windswept, wild place, or it is in this district, at any rate.”
Mrs. Pendrake spoke with an odd quaver in her voice. “I like novels and picnics.”
To his immense surprise, her lower lip bumped out. A localized swelling. But no, it couldn’t be attributed to a sudden intensification of her symptoms.
Mrs. Pendrake was pouting.
He stared, aghast. She didn’t notice. The tension that had gripped her when she’d mentioned Fowey seemed to have dissipated into girlish sadness, drooping head and all. “It will be a long time, I fear, before I’m reacquainted with either, novel reading or picnicking.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, at a loss. Was he meant to comfort her? Or was her sulk some devilish prank?
He had thought himself ready for this encounter. He had prepared by ruthlessly uprooting any expectation. By opening his mind to every possibility. What if her voice grated? What if he didn’t find her pretty, as Simon had? If there was no physical rapport whatsoever? Secondary issues. The relationship he desired rested on a foundation of intellectual affinity and common interests. Everything else would grow in time.
His parents’ relationship presented the model. Their profound mutual understanding had strengthened each of them in their pursuits while also nourishing their decades-long union. Whereas he had always let impulse and attraction guide him, with disastrous results. He was planning the antithesis of seduction. With Mrs. Pendrake, he would establish a reasonable, affable, equable, equitable connection.
Conversation, of course, formed the cornerstone. They’d already laid it together. Not in person, no, but on paper. When he’d first written to her in April, she’d been five weeks back in London from Hong Kong. Their letters, while growing friendlier over the past two months, less strictly professional, remained focused on botany. She wrote about the talks she was delivering at the Royal Botanic Society and at field clubs, about the botanical prizes she’d presented to schoolchildren in Newcastle upon Tyne. He wrote about the flora of Cornwall he was compiling, a massive undertaking, years from completion. She admitted that she, too, found herself fascinated by the native plants of the British Isles, which she’d long neglected in favor of faraway blooms. They’d shared few personal details, but the omissions told their own story. The omissions, and Hitchens, a trump when it came to digging things up. Dinosaur bones or Society secrets—he had a knack for uncovering both. Mrs. Pendrake, soon to enter the fourth year of her widowhood, remained romantically unattached.
At the end of May, she’d sent him her manuscript to read, “Recollections of a Plant Huntress in China, Mongolia, and the Malay Archipelago,” and he’d reciprocated with an invitation, asking her to accompany him on an expedition across Cornwall, which would kill two birds with one stone. She’d have the opportunity to educate herself on native plants, and he’d gain the help of a masterful collector as he worked on his flora.
There was a third bird in this neat little scenario.
At the end of the expedition, he would propose. If she didn’t accept, he’d present her with the evidence and wait for her to reconsider based on the merits of the case. Either way, they’d be engaged in time to surprise his mother at the midsummer festival and fulfill her dying wish. Perfect.
The plan, though, included no provision for pouting. He’d have to fall back on the rake’s rule book. A promise was the conventional return on a pout, was it not?
“We’ll pick a cove,” he said. “There are dozens along the Lizard. One will serve as a site for a magnificent picnic.”
At that, she smiled, a funny, lopsided smile that bent her nose to the left. A quirk of her features? Or had the strawberries particularly irritated the membranes of the sinuses?
“I didn’t bring any novels.” She sighed, then brightened. “But I have all my favorite issues of The Queen!”
His own smile faltered. But why shouldn’t Mrs. Pendrake enjoy, in her leisure, the banalities of Society gossip, celebrity profiles, and fashion plates? Or dedicate hours to curling her hair and pinning bows all over her décolletage? True, he’d been taken aback when he’d first seen her waiting for him at the station. In fact, he’d even glanced up and down the platform to ensure there wasn’t some other more sensible-looking woman standing alone by her luggage. If it weren’t for the puffy eyelids and the rashes on her cheeks, Mrs. Pendrake wouldn’t have seemed out of place at a garden party in Mayfair. Blond ringlets, pink silk—she resembled one of the Society butterflies with whom he’d been wont to entangle himself, back in the dark days before he’d come to his senses. In point of fact, she resembled Elizabeth. He hoped his mother wouldn’t make too much of that unfortunate coincidence.
Her fingers rose again to her face, hovering, before she caught one hand with the other and forced them both down.
“Drat it,” she muttered.
“Itching, is it? Hold on.” He rummaged through his several coat pockets. Field notebook, pencil, tags and elastics, string, fishing twine, matches, seed and spore bottles, compass, knife, scissors, trowel. Glass clinked against glass, and metal clanked against metal. He’d worked out a credible filing system at Varnham and implemented it in both the London and the Truro offices, streamlining operations. And he could be meticulous when it came to selecting, collecting, and packing specimens. Also, pressing and drying them, taking notes. But organization had never been his strong suit. He rarely left one of his nurseries without an assistant running after him with his hat or the pruning shears.
“Aha,” he said, fingers closing on a wide, shallow glass jar. That was the one. He passed it to her.
“Ointment,” he explained. “I always keep a jar of it with me.” Somewhere. “Helps when I nick myself or get into some nettles.”
“Or give yourself boils.” She frowned as she unscrewed the lid and sniffed. “What is it?”
He sat his elbow against the door, shifted his weight to the right. Difficult to face her in the tiny cab without crowding her with his body. Physical contact—not part of the plan. Passion was better as the graft than the stock.
“Aloe vera, beeswax, and olive oil.” He’d tinkered with ratios and ingredients for years before he arrived at that simple formula. During their ill-fated courtship, he’d once mortified Elizabeth by offering a jar to Lady Phillifent. A servant setting down the bread sauce had knocked a candle and splashed her hand painfully with wax. Lady Phillifent, declining the salve, had inquired about the properties of aloe vera, and he’d doubled his offense by responding in earnest. Beginning with the plant’s description by Carl Linnaeus.
His lips bent at the memory. For all her ribbons, Mrs. Pendrake was a woman of substance. A woman who had bucked convention to travel the world. A woman who appreciated the consistency of the Linnaean system. He did her a disservice. Not all intellectual women wore pince-nez. For the love of God, he’d read her manuscript! She was nothing like Elizabeth.
She tugged off her gloves and dipped a fingertip into the jar. Ungloved, her fingers were slim and tapered. His eye snagged on her rings. Gold, with diamonds and sapphires. Clearly, Mr. Pendrake had been wealthier, and flashier, than the average plant collector.
He averted his gaze as she rubbed the ointment into her skin.
“Thank you,” she said. “Mr. . . .” He looked back at her. She arched her eyebrows, performing the pause. “Don’t you think . . .”
“Yes.” He rushed to answer. “Yes, of course. Call me Neal.”
“Wonderful.” She handed him the jar, and for a moment his palm tingled, cool glass and warm fingers.
“You do the same,” she said.
He grinned at that.
“Very well,” he said. “Neal.”
“Call me by my first name, if you please.” She tossed her head, extending her long throat, lifting her chin. He felt his forehead knotting once again, this time with the intensity of his befuddlement.
She had the coiffure, couture, and even the mannerisms of a London butterfly. But . . . perhaps she did not have the mannerisms of a London butterfly. Perhaps he was only ascribing her such mannerisms due to her beauty. She was a beauty. Why not admit it? A rash didn’t disguise the obvious. Mrs. Pendrake, due to heritable variety within the species, happened to be possessed of a swan-like neck and a saucy, pointed little chin—what really could she do about it? She had to move her head sometimes. It wasn’t fair to categorize the movement as a tossing of the head. Mrs. Pendrake didn’t toss her head the way Elizabeth tossed her head.
She’d begun to rub her thumb along her cheekbone.
“Aloe vera,” she murmured.
He handed the jar back to her.
“Keep it,” he said. “I recommend putting it on again before you go to sleep. We’ve begun selling it, actually. At the nurseries, and mail order, out of the London office. It softens the skin in addition to soothing minor injuries.” Gardeners were buying it, and amateur botanists, but his managing director in London had also reported wider sales as word of mouth spread. “I’ve half a mind to advertise it as a cosmetic. Make Varnham a household name.”
He’d been thinking aloud. His sisters often told him doing so was a negative trait. Many males were predisposed to it. Thinking aloud. Also, overexplaining. Whistling.
She was looking at him thoughtfully.
“What do you call it?” she asked.
“Varnham’s Ointment.”
“Dreadful. I wouldn’t buy it.” She made a moue of distaste. “It sounds like something you’d rub on a pig.”
Opinionated. That wasn’t a surprise. He cleared his throat. “Do you have a better suggestion?”
“Dozens I’m sure.” She considered, finger tapping her lower lip. “Varnham’s Natural Beauty Balm. Varnham’s Floral Face Cream. Varnham’s Bloom of Youth. Varnham’s Cool and Lasting Aloe Lotion.”
The cab began a broad turn and she broke off to look out the window. The hills had flattened as they’d approached the edge of the moor, and in the graying light, scattered trees, bent by wind, cast black shadows on the otherwise unbroken landscape.
“What are you doing?” she asked, glancing back at the sound of his pencil scratching the page.
“Making a note. Varnham’s Bloom of Youth, did you say?” He jotted it down inside the cover of his notebook. This was promising. A first, albeit minor, collaboration. He remembered sneaking out of his bed, sitting in the hallway, listening to the murmur of his parents’ voices. His father reading aloud from one of his papers in progress, his mother interrupting with comments, or vice versa.
Cool and Lasting Aloe Lotion. Another fine phrase. He jotted that one down as well. Interesting—she had shown more consideration for euphony, more verbal flair, in that brief recitation than she had in four hundred manuscript pages.
She was watching him write with undisguised satisfaction.
“You’ll need to perfume it,” she said when he lifted his pencil. “Gardenia. No! Azalea.”
“One of the varieties you brought back from China?” He grinned and dropped notebook and pencil into his pocket. No need to make a note. The Pendrakes had introduced an exquisite collection of azaleas to England. It was due to those azaleas that he’d first taken notice of the couple, wondered at the rarity and rightness of such a partnership, and begun to follow their career. Husband and wife—a plant-collecting team. And that was before they’d sent seeds and samples of Davidia involucrata, succeeding where Varnham’s plant collector had failed.
“The most fragrant one,” she said. She was suddenly lit up, radiant, her swollen nose pulled by her smile into that piquant, adorable slant. Maybe she was remembering halcyon days on the temperate island of Chusan, wandering azalea-covered hills.
“So,” he said, tilting his head, forming the phrase. “We’ll call it . . . Muriel’s All-Natural Aloe and Azalea Lotion for a Radiant Complexion?”
“Muriel’s?” She blinked at him. “Oh, I see. Muriel. Pendrake. Well.” She resettled herself on the seat, flustered. “You should keep the Varnham, if you want to become a household name.”
“Let’s decide over dinner.” The inn had come into view, rising from the moor, lonely and beautiful behind its low stone wall. It was exactly the sort of place that most appealed to the wayfaring botanist, almost a part of the countryside itself, the slate walls covered with mosses and liverworts.
He hid his grin, waiting to see her face reflect the pleasure he’d felt when he’d first discovered it.
Blue eyes swung toward him.
“We’re not staying there. It’s a pile of rocks!”
Multiple exceptions, then, were to prove the rule of their immense compatibility.
“Just for a night.” His grin strained. “Inside it’s rather cozy.” Cats prowled in and out of the kitchen, and last night he’d crunched a fish skeleton under his boot going up the stairs. The dark, rambling rooms wouldn’t have passed muster with a well-heeled holidaymaker accustomed to gas jets and Chippendale furniture. But for those with adventuresome spirits, those who knew how to take their rest on damp bedrolls under the stars, the charm of the place was bound to outweigh any minor discomfort. Wind howled all night on the moor, but the inn stood stoutly against it, impermeable, thanks to the spleenwort, yarrow, and rue vegetating in the crevices. Should he mention the yarrow? Which detail would beguile her?
“It’s warm and dry,” he said at last, deciding upon a more basic recommendation, because she’d begun to shiver slightly, and he realized that the light had dimmed dramatically, chilling the air. The clouds lay thickly atop the inn’s roof tiles, swallowing the chimney stacks. If you looked at it with the wrong eyes, well. A grimmer establishment didn’t exist on earth.
“There’s an enormous hearth,” he added hopefully. “Very cheerful. The turf fires do smoke a bit.”
The radiance had fled from her face. Whatever joy she’d found putting her imagination to work, improving upon Varnham’s Ointment—it had withered. Too brief a bloom. Her shivering grew more violent and she hugged herself, leaning her forehead against the window.
“Muriel?”
“It’s only . . .” Her voice wobbled. “Never mind. It’s only . . . It has been an exceedingly long day.”
As he watched in horror, his future wife began to cry.