Neal finished checking over the labels on the new specimens, then walked through the palm house inspecting the pipes. Mrs. Buddington, a longtime Varnham client, was showing her grandchildren the giant bamboo. Neal greeted her and scooped up the youngest child so that he could pick bananas for his siblings.
“Especially hot, isn’t it?” Mrs. Buddington sat on a bench, beaming mildly as the youngsters wrestled with their fruit, and Neal bowed his way out, with the excuse of seeing to the vents.
Before he turned into the hallway, an economic botanist attempted to draw him into conversation. What he wanted was after-hours access to the Elaeis guineensis.
“Certainly. Arrange it with the manager.” Neal’s eyes kept drifting over the man’s shoulder. Pointless. The palm house was a construction of brick, steel, and green glass panels. He couldn’t see out to the lawn.
When he did manage to exit the building, the view discouraged him. He waited, of course. Pretended to occupy himself with the herbaceous border of the main walkway.
But he already knew.
She wasn’t coming.
Over the past two weeks, Lavinia had kept but three of their agreed-upon meetings. Her mourning occupied nearly all of her time. The funeral and related functions. No inquest, thank God. The Duke of Cranbrook was known to have suffered angina pectoris. His death in the early days of marriage to a young bride occasioned smirks, not suspicion.
Neal didn’t like to think of those smirks. He’d too strong an urge to wipe them off the offending faces. Nonetheless, he was sensible of the good fortune. London didn’t buzz with speculation about Lavinia’s disappearance in Cornwall. Everyone who knew she’d been gone had kept quiet.
Last Sunday, she’d used the pretext of a walk in Hyde Park to visit him in the gardener’s cottage at Umfreville House. She’d looked pale in black silk, demure and oddly distant, but once she’d shed her widow’s weeds, once they were skin to skin, flooded with each other, everything rushed back. Her color. His certainty. The bed was narrow. They fit just barely on their sides, cramped and sweaty, but neither wanted to disentangle. They conversed mouth to mouth. Her news tumbled out.
The will had been read. No special provisions. Under the law, she was entitled to a dower’s share of income from the ducal properties. Enough to finance a version of the life to which she was accustomed. The next Duke of Cranbrook was already preparing to move into Harcott House with his family. Lavinia’s mother had found apartments near Grosvenor Square.
“I have my own money.” She’d breathed it. At such proximity, he could only stare into her eyes, whirlpools of blue that could drown a man. “And I’m going to publish my novel, soon. Mr. Watt, he wants to run it in serial parts, in a weekly magazine, which means I need to write the rest as fast as I can.” Her laughter blew lightly on his face. She had found time to meet with Alan’s friend, the syndicator, but Neal couldn’t begrudge her that.
She’d sobered and spoken with peculiar intensity. “I am becoming a legendary widow, wouldn’t you say?”
“Legendary,” he’d agreed, and hesitated. “Of course, you don’t need to be a widow to be a legend. It’s my hope that you’re a widow for a legendarily short period of time.”
She’d smiled in answer, a smile that looked so fragile he’d decided to support it with his own lips.
As his wife, she’d lose her title, and her deceased husband’s income. She’d slide down the rungs of rank and, legend or not, she’d become common. Did that fact give her pause? Something had kept him from asking.
Sometime later, she’d pressed her face against his neck. “Do you know what else I am?”
“Besides a legend?” He’d put his chin on the top of her head.
“An orphan,” she’d whispered. “Parents disown their children. I’ve disowned my parents. In my heart, they’re dead.”
He’d heard her rawness, the hurt inside the defiance. So, he’d bottled his first response. Eventually your anger may ease. And if you’re lucky, your mother and your father will still be alive, and you’ll say the things to them you need to say, and maybe you’ll be heeded. And maybe something will change. In you. In them.
He’d said instead, “Whatever you are, you’re not alone.”
He’d meant it. He meant it still.
He was in love with the woman. If he had to make a case, argue points—why Lavinia and not Muriel, why Lavinia and not anyone else—he’d fail to convince. It exceeded the rational, the well reasoned. Upset his understanding of cause and effect. It was based on everything and nothing.
It proved that science needed faith.
Yes, these weeks had been trying. He’d stayed in London longer than he’d intended, meddling in matters his managing director was already adeptly handling; in essence, making more work for himself, and his employees, to justify his continued presence.
He’d stayed for her.
Every time she wrote that she thought she could slip away, meet him here or there, he went to that place and he waited. Most often in vain. He understood. She discharged a solicitor only to be besieged by a countess. Society was eager to condole with her in the hopes of extracting some delicious morsel of gossip. Perhaps, on some level, she enjoyed the attention. Much ink had been spilled in the gossip columns when the Duke and the Duchess of Weston paid not one but two visits. Lavinia had been cut from Society because of her father’s malfeasance, the wrongs he’d perpetrated against the duke’s family. Now that Weston himself showed Lavinia favor, her detractors couldn’t use that old scandal against her. She’d been rid of the noxious Duke of Cranbrook and remained a duchess. He didn’t fault her if she was enjoying the attention. A series of domestic upheavals had cast her down and then returned her to the peak. Such a dizzying trajectory was bound to produce a mix of emotions.
So, he didn’t fault her. He was forced to repeat this to himself when, hours later, Alan’s valet knocked on the cottage door to hand him a black-bordered envelope delivered to Umfreville House with the last post. Lavinia’s mourning stationery. Neal ripped it open.
My Dearest Neal, the letter began.
I spent the day barnacled with callers and couldn’t get out the door.
He took the letter inside, read the rest of it over a drink, then poured another and reread the concluding lines.
On Saturday, the Sambourns host their annual garden party. My attendance is all but compelled, so I compel yours. Wouldn’t my pirate like nothing more than to swarm up the back wall and drop down behind the holly trees? All eyes will be turned to the tennis court. No one will watch for the figure stealing down the path, except, your devoted, Lavinia.
He stood, let the letter drop, and pressed his thumb hard into his eyebrow. He flung himself backward onto the bed. The linens diffused her scent, faintly. Rose and gardenia.
A sound rumbled in his chest, caught behind his ribs. He couldn’t tell if it was a laugh or a groan.
Lavinia sipped Möet under an arbor. She felt like the black center of an anemone, a half dozen girls ringing her in a blaze of color. With her title, plus Anthony’s seal of approval, she’d converted from pariah back to princess.
All afternoon, Cora, Agnes, and Elise had stood closest, chattering at her brightly. Cora’s overlong engagement to a grouse-obsessed Scottish earl was nearing its conclusion. The wedding was scheduled, and Cora did so hope Lavinia could attend. Agnes, married years ago, kept her eyes on the tennis court so she could belittle her own husband’s every move as he lost serially to opponents young and old, male and female. Elise’s titters never ceased.
Tripe-spouting, intolerable friends. Lucy was right, of course. They’d been bred to it, just as Lavinia had. Perhaps they would read her novel—Miss Laliberté’s novel. They would read of the pirate duchess—a spoiled girl who discovers a world beyond the drawing room, breaks every social taboo, and ends up richly rewarded for her transgressions with a life of love and freedom—and they’d long for broader horizons themselves. Bigger hearts. Muriel Pendrake wanted to thrill readers and inspire new enterprises with writing. Well, so did Lavinia. Only not for the sake of botanical discovery. For the sake of self-discovery, not just hers, but other girls’ too.
What did Cora do well?
“Cora,” Lavinia spoke over Agnes. “Do you still play tennis? I remember you were brilliant at it. You let the gentlemen beat you because they wouldn’t ask you to dance otherwise. But you were better than all of them.”
Cora looked surprised, and displeased. She’d always underplayed her athletic ability. And what did Lavinia imagine? That she’d leave the earl to his grouse, don a cricketing cap, and head for the greenest pitch, where she’d bowl her way into history?
The surrounding girls goggled briefly. Lavinia never used to say anything odd. Then Agnes sighed.
“I wish someone would let Stokes win.” She referred to her husband exclusively by his surname. “It grows embarrassing.”
“There’s Miss Powell, by the refreshment table.” Elise pointed with her champagne flute. “Maybe she can tell Sir Vincent to ease up on his serve. Though I don’t know as that would help. Have you considered Stokes might require spectacles?”
“It’s more than his vision. He holds the racket like he’s wringing a goose’s neck. He couldn’t win against a goose.” Cora rolled her eyes. Then she waved to Miss Powell, beckoning her over.
“You don’t mind that Liz is joining us,” she said to Agnes, who was absorbed in a brief volley. “Your husband’s crushing defeat will bring her joy.” She addressed everyone with a small, pink smirk. “It proves her fiancé isn’t the worst tennis player in Christendom. Only the worst rider. Did you hear he was thrown into the Serpentine?”
A quick, mean-spirited anecdote followed, summarizing Sir Vincent’s unfortunate morning ride in Hyde Park.
Lavinia hardly listened. She was staring as Miss Powell approached. A pretty blond flibbertigibbet. Lavinia had never wasted a thought on her, except to note that her prettiness was similar to her own, and to assure herself that she didn’t suffer by comparison. She’d certainly never called her Liz. Or Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Powell, engaged to Sir Vincent, baronet.
Lavinia’s hand flew to her chest. She’d taken to carrying Neal’s silver cigarette case in her bodice, beneath the ruching of black lace. She imagined it as a shield, protecting her heart. It wasn’t enough. She had to leave, now.
She opened her black parasol. “Sometimes my grief overcomes me,” she murmured, and set off across the lawn.
The Sambourns’ property was large, with a slight slope atop which the house towered. Croquet at these parties was something diabolical, and she gave the match a wide berth. Debutantes in pale summer silks were drifting back and forth from the tennis courts, as older ladies and gentlemen seated in basket chairs or reclining on turkey rugs inspected them languidly and commented among themselves. An embowered band played familiar tunes of dutiful merriment.
Same old ton. Perhaps this summer’s hats were bigger.
The gardens stretched behind the house. Roses had been trained up the back wall. The vines bloomed profusely, spiky with lurid red thorns. She’d forgotten the roses. They foretold a brutal climb, brutal indeed. She couldn’t warn Neal, so she returned to the edge of the patio to wait. Surely, he’d come soon. She turned her head, and she saw him. He stood inside the house, stood by the piano, laughing with the Sambourns’ eldest son, Graham. They both wore short cream-colored jackets and knickerbockers.
He didn’t need to swarm up the back wall, like a pirate. He’d walked through the front door, like a gentleman. A gentleman who’d once been engaged to Miss Elizabeth Powell, a facsimile of Miss Lavinia Yardley.
She stepped quickly off the patio. She was the one stealing down the path. She grabbed bunches of her gown in her left hand and flew through the garden toward the back wall, so quickly she could feel the drag from her parasol. She let it go, let the handle sail over her shoulder. She reached the wall and stood for a moment, blinking at the stone and the roses. Now would she swarm up? Her little fantasy had turned inside out and reversed—unhappily.
She already felt too hot and her skin prickled at the very sight of the thorns.
“Roses are worse than cats.” Neal spoke right behind her, and she turned. He was twirling her parasol, grinning. “If that’s a Worth gown, you’d best think twice.”
“It’s not a Worth.” She gave the skirt a shake. The gown was simple, crepe de chine and black lace. “It’s a Stirling. Lucy’s aunt designed it for the Celestia Jordan. To play Ophelia. But she wanted white.”
Neal lowered the parasol, eyes sliding over her. “Lovely.”
“It’s not lovely.” She stood stiffly. “Lovely is trite. Lovely is . . .” Elizabeth Powell. Lavinia Yardley. So much for dreaming she could change. She was a ninny through and through.
“Lovely,” she muttered, and suddenly she was gasping for air. Neal tossed the parasol into the pansies and stepped forward. She stumbled back, would have gotten herself pricked and tangled in the roses, but for his quickness. He folded her into his chest.
“Easy now,” he said, soothing.
“She’s here. Your Elizabeth.” She clung to him. He was silent.
“It’s a small world,” he said at last, and held her tighter. She could feel his chin pressing through her widow’s cap.
“It is, isn’t it?” She’d been writing of the wider world, but in the end, the small world of the ton was what she knew best. She would let Neal down in Cornwall. Another Elizabeth Powell. Seeing the girl had made it patently obvious. She struggled to calm herself.
“Still,” she said, stepping back from him, “I didn’t think you’d have an invitation to the party.”
“Graham Sambourn and I were at Oxford together.”
She bent her lips into a smile. An Oxonian gentleman. Where was her brawny-armed, unkempt Cornish pirate? Neal’s muscles swelled his jacket, but he looked combed, clean, and wholesome. He was even wearing special sporting shoes with laces. He’d planned to play tennis, to participate in the party. Whereas she’d imagined they’d linger in the bushes, where fantasy ruled and daily pressures dissipated to nothing.
“You shouldn’t stay,” she said. “Poor Elizabeth.”
“If I thought my presence would make her awkward, I’d go.” His gaze was as straightforward as ever. “I assure you it won’t. I saw her last week, in fact. Varnham is making her wedding bower.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I’ve hardly seen you. It didn’t seem important.” He studied her face. “Please believe me—there’s no cause for concern.”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t nod. She was concerned, not that he’d choose Elizabeth over her. She was concerned that in choosing her, he chose just as foolishly, as regrettably. She’d been trying to tamp down that fear since that awful, wonderful afternoon in the garden at Harcott House. She’d never known anything as good as his love. She’d lucked into it. She’d accepted it, a selfish act.
Her love wouldn’t be enough for him in the end.
As the silence lengthened, he tugged ruefully at his short, sporting tie. “If my presence makes things awkward for you, I’ll go as well. I only came here because you compelled me.” The corner of his mouth kicked up. “My pirate queen.”
She almost catapulted into his arms. He wanted her, and she wanted him. Forget the rest.
I compel you to follow me, she’d say. Behind these holly trees.
He cleared his throat. “Elizabeth is here. I should tell you, so is your mother. I saw her in the house. I think I’d have recognized her, but I also heard her addressed.”
She jerked, a catapult arrested. “Oh.” She should have predicted it.
“I walked on,” he said. “But I would like to meet her.”
“I wouldn’t like it!” She snatched up her parasol. Anger, anger fortified. Hadn’t he listened? Did he still fail to understand what her parents had done, to her? “You should go.”
Whatever Neal saw in her expression made him catch his breath. He laid a gloved finger under her chin, tilted her head up.
“I love you,” he said, looking into her eyes, and then he kissed her, long and deep. His lips teased her. She fizzed all over, golden bubbles rising from her toes.
She wasn’t intoxicated. She was a flute of Möet. Delicious, ticklish, effervescent with his kiss. He pulled away.
“I would like to meet your father too,” he murmured.
One by one, the little bubbles popped. She flattened inside.
“You’re a fat-wit.” She swung around, resting the parasol handle on her collarbone, presenting him with a big black dome. She spoke to the roses on the wall. “My parents are awful people.”
Look what they produced.
“Don’t think you’d be welcomed with open arms.” She gave a broken laugh. “They won’t see it as gaining a son. They’ll see it as losing a duchess. My title is the only thing they have to show for decades of striving, and conniving, and stealing, and . . .” Her throat constricted.
Selling their souls.
“I don’t expect or need them to embrace me.” Neal lifted the parasol gently, higher and higher. She released the handle and felt the rush of air as he cast the black silk contraption aside. His fingers wrapped her shoulder. She turned from the roses. She would always prefer his face to flora.
“I want to know them,” he said. “So I can know you more fully.”
“And love me less.” She bit her lip. She’d imagined it would start with his family, the diminution of his love, but it could just as well start with hers.
“Never,” he said. “I can help with—”
“You can help by leaving it alone,” she snapped, and he took a deep breath.
“I will,” he said. “For as long as you want.”
She almost looked away from the brightness in his eyes.
“There isn’t long, though,” he said. “For other things.” He tipped back his head, gazing up at the blue sky. “Today is St. John’s Day. Midsummer.”
Her lungs folded up inside her chest.
“You’re missing the celebration,” she rasped. “Golowan.”
His mother’s last. That was what he’d said to Tomas and Kelyn. He was missing it because of her.
“It goes until St. Peter’s Day.” He sensed her agitation and his mouth softened into a smile. “I haven’t missed it. I’ll leave for Penzance on Monday. I wanted to see you before I left.” His smile widened. “To ask you to come with me. There will be barrels aplenty, but they’ll be tar barrels, all ablaze in the streets. We do our dancing with linked arms around the bonfires, the whole parish. Jenni and Johannes, her husband, always bring rockets and fire wheels.”
“I can’t.” She stared at him. Her scalp itched beneath the cap. She felt sweaty, clammy, distinctly unwell. “How would I explain it?”
“You’re imaginative.” He lifted his brows. “And who’s to stop you going?”
No one. No one but her. She had to stop herself.
His mother’s last Golowan. And he wanted to turn up with a flibbertigibbet of the first water. Maybe he saw her differently. His mother wouldn’t. She’d be devastated.
She shook her head. “Cranbrook’s son. He’ll be moving into Harcott House. And we have another meeting with the solicitor, on Wednesday.”
“Ah.” Neal rocked back on his heels. “I didn’t realize you were so averse to canceling appointments.”
She flushed. His speech was rarely barbed.
“My husband, a duke, died not two weeks ago,” she said. “I have myriad obligations. You know that.”
His jaw muscles had flexed. His cheekbones stood out like boulders.
She bent to pick up her parasol, then stood in its little circle of shade, looking at his silly shoes, and the white hose clinging to his muscular calves and the bottoms of the knickerbockers.
“I know that you would sacrifice to become my wife,” he said quietly.
She raised her eyes. He thought she shied away from sacrifice when she was trying to do just that.
“Not financially,” he went on. “I haven’t explained, formally, my situation, but I’m, Christ. I’m a wealthy man. I don’t have the way of wealth. Much of the time, it makes my skin crawl. But insofar as I can put the money to good uses, I’m grateful. I would give every penny to anyone in my family, or yours. Your mother, your father. I will provide for them. You’ll have a study in Truro where you can work on your bloodthirsty novelizing, until the cows come home.” His lips tugged in a smile that faded, leaving his face again with that stark look.
“You told me you were Lavinia, just Lavinia. You told me that you didn’t want your father’s name, or your husband’s.” He drew a breath and held it several beats longer than she expected.
“A title is different,” he said. “Titles open doors. I know that. Doors should open to you. My astonishing, marauding duchess with your bluebell eyes.”
She tipped back the parasol. Her lips felt bloodless.
“A daisy doesn’t tie you to me. If you’ve realized you want to let go, let go.” His eyes held such unlikely light. “You’re a dreamer. Don’t let any of us tell you what to dream.”
She tried to speak, croaked something unintelligible. Her heart beat that familiar doomed rhythm.
He was better than any dream.
Tell him so.
He thought her fickle. He thought she’d rather remain Duchess of Cranbrook than transform into Mrs. Traymayne.
Mrs. Traymayne. The syllables sang in her ears. Mrs. Traymayne. Novelist, wife, mother, barrel dancer, baker and eater of saffron buns, traveler of the world, barring China. More and more unfolded as the name repeated. Mrs. Traymayne. It heralded a lifetime of small and large pleasures and challenges, adventures.
She had to moisten her lips with her tongue to peel them apart. She wasn’t fickle. She wasn’t selfish, either. Not anymore. She would destroy Golowan, dash his mother’s hopes for him, ruin their time together.
“I love you,” she said. “I’d go with you, of course I would, but . . .”
Something shifted in his expression. Everything stilled. He was entirely focused on her. Even her heart seemed to stop.
His smile took its time reaching his eyes. When it did, they crinkled. She ached to put her fingers on those creases, to kiss his cheekbones, the bump on his nose, his full, firm lips that smiled at her despite everything.
“Well,” he said on a breath. “I didn’t oblige you coming in, so I’ll oblige you going out.”
He glanced up at the wall.
“The roses.” She made weak protest.
“Gloves.” He raised his hands. “Fashion with a purpose.” He raked his fingers through his hair, disordering it. He looked more like the man she’d first met.
“Neal,” she said. “I’m sorry.” He froze. They stared at each other. He wasn’t smiling. He lunged forward and plundered her mouth, a piratical kiss that made the parasol drop from her nerveless fingers.
“When . . . when you’re back in London . . .” she stammered as he released her. His lips were glistening, eyes hooded. But his wildness had subsided. He touched her cheek.
When would he be back?
She opened her mouth, but he’d already retreated several feet. He bounced on his toes and ran forward, launching himself at the wall. He seemed to bound straight up it, barely using his hands, feet finding invisible crannies. When he reached the top, he hoisted himself, swung a leg over, and paused, looking down from his perch. He tugged fabric from his pocket. Not a decorous linen square. One of his ridiculous kerchiefs. Blue. He waved it at her, in goodbye, or perhaps, she thought, watching it ripple, as though it were a flag.
Then he was gone.