The fifth Duke of Cranbrook arrived Sunday afternoon to take possession of Harcott House. Lavinia liked him scarcely better than his sire. He was a handful of years older than she and insisted on calling her Mother with a lasciviousness that made her insides roil.
“You always have a home here,” he said at dinner, foot pressing hers under the table. Lavinia hadn’t planned to observe a proper mourning period before marrying Neal. Four months at Harcott House, she’d thought. Perhaps five.
Now the prospect of remaining through the cheese course made her skin crawl.
The next morning, she woke early and walked in the gardens, turned and turned through the green hedges. With every turn, she expected to see him. Neal. Framed by twigs and leaves, grinning. Leveling her with those bright brown eyes.
But no, he’d have boarded his train by now. By now, he might have decided he didn’t want to marry her. She hadn’t let him go, but then, she hadn’t gone with him. A selfless act. One that made her more worthy of him, and that might mean she’d lost him.
Was it selfless? Or was it cowardly? She feared seeing his cousins and owning up to her lies, feared getting quizzed by his mother on the morphology of the Plesiosaurus. She feared that his sisters would sniff out the feathers on her, years of winged hats, and gape with wounded horror. She’d endure their ridicule, but why? So Neal could make known his ridiculous decision.
He’d chosen the kind of wife who faded.
She kept walking, eyes welling, spilling over.
Tragic Lavinia, watering the garden with tears.
He didn’t think she’d fade for him. He had once called her a wordsmith. When she’d spun out ideas about what to name that ointment of his, he’d eagerly jotted down her phrases. He took advice from her. He appreciated her imagination. He made her feel essential, like earth and atmosphere. With him, she was water and salt, electricity and light, moss and silt. She was the tender new shoot unfurling from something deep and ancient and nourishing. Lovely didn’t begin to describe it.
Maybe she should trust him, trust that.
She entered the heart of the maze and roamed between the hedges and the narrow flower beds. She sat on a bench facing the enormous planter. It was bursting with new plants, concentric rings of pale green and pale pink leaves.
Where was Neal’s train now? Reading? Didcot? Swinton?
Later in the day, she went to Weston Hall to beg a position for Nan and discovered Anthony slumped over his desk behind a mountain of wadded paper. He was not a bookish man, and his statesmanship clearly cost him. She drew a chair close to his and tugged his latest effort from beneath his elbow. The beginnings of a speech on local self-government in India.
Indian self-government, not her area of expertise. Sentences, however . . .
“Once I figure out what you mean here,” she said briskly, pointing. “I’m sure I can make it sound much smoother.”
“I don’t want it to sound smooth.” Anthony batted away the paper.
Lavinia frowned. “Then I shall make it thunder.” She picked up his pen.
Anthony looked at her, startled, then kicked back in his chair with a laugh. “All right, then. Make it rain fire.”
“Gladstone will tremble in his boots!” She positioned herself at the end of his desk, the paper spread before her.
“Actually.” Anthony cleared his throat. “I’ve joined the Liberals.”
“Have you?” asked Lavinia absently, brows coming together as she tried to decipher his opening. His script was bad, his syntax worse. “Well, I guarantee someone will tremble. I am a writer of bloodthirsty prose.”
Hours passed. Hours of struggle, and some hilarity, during which she experienced her selves layering over one another. Her childhood self, bickering with Anthony, demanding her way. Her writerly self, newly confident, exploratory. At the end of it, they’d produced a legible document Anthony could read on the floor.
Lavinia sailed downstairs to take tea with Lucy and the members of her painting club, immensely pleased, Nan’s future secured, and a blow struck against authoritarian rule in the colonies. Tea turned into dinner, and by the time she left Weston Hall, she had in her possession several sketches by Gwen Burgess that answered to her descriptions of her novel’s most gripping scenes.
She’d feared the return to London, but here she was, reconstructing her life, different from the one she’d lived before.
Now she feared a return to Cornwall. But if she went, if she joined Neal, couldn’t she construct a life there too? One that was good for both of them?
Maybe she couldn’t. But couldn’t they? The two of them, together?
Back at Harcott House, she stood at the window in the guest chamber, waiting for the sky to grow dark. But it didn’t. The sun had stalled. The day stretched on and on. So much light.
Midsummer.
His mother’s last.
She scarcely slept.
In the morning, she called for the carriage and rattled into the north of London. When she stepped out, her heart was pounding. She paused on the street looking up at Holloway Prison, its turrets, then passed into the courtyard, stopping before the entrance, an enormous arched door flanked by twin griffins, stone keys clutched in their stone claws. A guard approached, and she ducked her head, retreated.
It wasn’t time.
She wasn’t ready to talk with her father, to hear his answers to the questions she now knew to ask. She could take longer, however long she needed. When she was ready, she’d welcome Neal’s support.
Neal was in Penzance now. Maybe her support didn’t measure up to his. Maybe she did the right thing, for him, keeping away. The selfless thing.
Being selfless wasn’t her strong suit.
Neal loved her for her selves. Shouldn’t she bring all of them to bear, rush to him with everything she had?
She paused by the gates, eyes drawn to the yolky yellow heads of dandelions in bloom. The leaves, they did have purple spots. It wasn’t just that they were filthy.
She stained her gloves scrabbling in the dirt, levering the whole plant out. The footman’s eyes widened to saucers as he opened the door for her to climb back into the carriage.
She smiled at him.
If she took the train tomorrow to Plymouth, overnighted in a hotel, caught the first train the next morning to Truro, and changed at the station to the West Cornwall Railway, she would get to Penzance before St. Peter’s Day.
She had so much light on her side.
This Golowan, the house was overfull with Traymaynes. The dining room couldn’t hold the whole boiling of them. The children didn’t stand still long enough for a head count, but Neal knew they numbered nine, if he didn’t include the one Nessa and Cyril were expecting.
Nessa had made their happy announcement the previous afternoon on the quay. Neal’s mother had been walking slowly, one hand on her Newfoundland’s shaggy back, the other arm linked through Neal’s, head turned to watch the children load into a boat. Before she let him go to embrace her daughter, Neal felt her tremor.
She was smiling, but her eyes brimmed.
Bittersweet, these few golden summer days together. By the time the season came around again, they’d celebrate a new life among them.
But Heddie Traymayne. Where would she be?
It was a metaphysical question, or a religious one. Or a scientific one, as Neal sometimes thought. The body went back to loam, and flowers grew. Reverend Curnow might say she’d be with them still in spirit, looking down with her beloved husband at her side.
Neal didn’t believe it, not quite in those terms. But ever since he’d arrived in Penzance, he’d been hearing his father’s voice. He’d heard it loud and clear right then.
Well, my lad, when will you make your happy announcement?
He didn’t know how to answer. Did he have a happy announcement? During his last imaginary conversation with his father, he’d boasted about his future wife. A lot had changed since that afternoon in Kyncastle.
He hadn’t known what to say, when Emmeline had asked after Muriel at dinner on the day he’d arrived. He’d stuttered under his mother’s gaze, which made things worse. Tomas and Loveday leapt in to sing the praises of Muriel Pendrake.
“She’s in London,” he said at last.
His mother had leaned forward eagerly, but before she could speak, Molly, Alice’s middle child, burst into the room, soaking wet. The turkey had chased her into the pond.
“Because she’s got dirty feet!” yelled her brother, John, running in behind her. No longer the center of attention, Neal had risen to help Kelyn and Loveday carry empty plates into the kitchen.
Today, the family roved outdoors, crossing the brook and wandering up through the orchards and across the fields to the sea. The adults picnicked while the children—and Neal—splashed in the water. After Neal changed out of his wet clothes, he found Perran, Jory, Nessa, Cyril, Jenni, Kelyn, and Emmeline gathered on the lawn in chairs set up in the shade of the elm trees. The twins had been caught eating grasshoppers, and Perran and Jory were assuring Kelyn that no harm ever came of consuming insects.
Neal caught Jenni’s eye, and she stuck her tongue out at him.
“You used to eat flies,” she said. “Do you remember?”
Ah, the family’s favorite game was about to commence. Tease baby Neal. He knew how to play, though.
“I still eat flies,” he said, and smiled blandly. The sound of wheels on gravel made him turn his head.
A cab was rolling up the lane. Neal glanced at Perran, who shrugged his shoulders.
Their mother’s sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins had visited for St. John’s Day and gone on to Uncle Arthur in Penryn. Everyone else was here, except William, who’d stayed behind in Kyncastle with the cows.
Was it William come to join them?
The cabman reined the horse and jumped down. The trunk he lowered onto the grass looked familiar. The cab door opened, and Lavinia stepped out, cradling a hatbox.
Neal stood, heart pounding. She was standing down the slope from them. Had to look up at the boiling clan. Thank God they weren’t all on the lawn. She would think a mob confronted her.
Emmeline ran forward before he did. “Muriel!”
Neal felt a jab in his side.
“I knew it,” Jenni said, and jabbed him again for emphasis. “I knew it from the way you didn’t speak of her. Quiet as a clam.” She winked at Nessa. “Neal has a sweetheart. I thought he’d given up after that Elizabeth.”
Nessa swatted at her. “Why don’t you stay quiet as a clam for once?”
“Because I don’t want to deny you all the benefit of my insights and observations.” Jenni swatted back. “She does look rather like Elizabeth, though, doesn’t she?” From her muffled squeal, Neal could tell that Nessa had stamped her toe.
Emmeline and Lavinia were walking toward them. Kelyn came around the table as Tomas struggled to his feet, a twin under each arm.
“Do you remember this pretty lady?” He gave a few bounces and the boys shrieked and kicked.
“Dear Muriel,” said Kelyn, a crease between her brows. “But you’re in mourning. I’m so terribly sorry. Neal didn’t tell us.”
“Oh, that. It’s nothing.” Lavinia placed the hatbox on a chair and smoothed her skirts. The black silk set off her pallor. Her eyes flitted and she licked her lips, ill at ease.
“My husband,” she added, unnecessarily.
Everyone had to have noticed the widow’s cap. It perched on her shining hair. Neal saw Kelyn glance sharply at Tomas, who tilted from side to side in a modified shrug.
They’d met Muriel Pendrake as a widow. One didn’t expect that a widow could be widowed. Did one?
He opened his mouth and shut it again. If Lavinia had given him a lick of warning, he would have prepared the way. Confided in Jenni, perhaps. Come up with a plan for approaching his mother. For explaining to his cousins.
She never made anything easy.
He wanted to shake her. Since he’d left her in the Sambourns’ garden, he hadn’t known what to think, about her, about them, their future.
He wanted to fold her in his arms. Carry her to that sheltered stretch of beach where he could look back and forth between her eyes and the waves, gauging their relative blues, until his air gave out and he had to sip the breath from her lungs.
“Mrs. Pendrake.” Jenni spoke warmly. “You are an inspiration. I hope to go to China one day, to the Peking Observatory.”
Neal started. Bad beginning. Quite bad, in fact. Lavinia’s skin was taking on a sickly cast. He should intervene. Say something before Jenni started asking about the egret density on the Yangtze River.
“We’ve heard all about you.” Jory chimed in. “And owe you a debt of gratitude. You saved our little brother’s life in the harbor.”
Now Neal felt his jaw drop. He hadn’t realized his cousins and siblings had conferred in such detail about his and Lavinia’s visit to Kyncastle.
“Which makes you an honorary Traymayne,” continued Jory. “We’ve each of us saved Neal’s life. If you haven’t noticed, he likes to get into scrapes. There was the time—he was five, I think, or six—he tried to ride Mr. Knight’s sheep, right there, in the field just up the hill.” He waved an arm, warming to his story. “He climbed a fir tree and jumped onto a ram’s back, an evil-tempered old ram. Boreas, his name was. Well, Boreas bucked like the devil, tossed Neal ten feet in the air. He landed plumb on his head. Knocked him totally senseless. He was about to get trampled by the flock, but I jumped the fence and—”
“I’m all for embarrassing, Neal,” interrupted Nessa. “But we should let Mrs. Pendrake get settled first, and we should introduce ourselves. I’m Nessa, Neal’s sister, and this is my husband, Cyril.”
“Perran,” said Perran. “There’s about two dozen of us, all told. Good luck with the names.”
“Mrs. Pendrake is here?” Neal’s mother had emerged from the house, where she must have been reading in the sitting room window seat. Her spectacles still perched on her nose.
This had to end, this confusion.
“Not precisely.” Neal blurted it out. Lavinia shot him a strange look. A mixture of apprehension and something sweet and hopeful. He saw that she was twisting her gloved hands. What was wrong with him, leaving her to stand there while his family studied her like an interesting exhibit with an indecipherable label?
He shook himself and jogged to her, reaching out. Her fingers twined around his, the grip fierce, slightly desperate.
“Mother,” he said, facing her, then sweeping the entire group with his gaze. “Everyone. I am delighted to introduce you to . . .”
He swallowed. “My fiancée.” Almost there. “The Duchess of Cranbrook.”
Shock. Even the insects stopped buzzing. Not an entomologically accurate statement, surely. But Neal heard nothing in that moment. Silence reigned.
Lavinia curtseyed. “Please call me Lavinia.”
“A duchess!” Emmeline clapped her hands. “So you do know Sarah Bernhardt and the Prince of Wales! I thought you must be lying.”
“She was lying,” said Kelyn softly. “Lying about quite a bit more than who she knows. She lied about who she was. Neal, were you a part of this deception?”
“No,” Lavinia spoke up before he could answer. “I lied to everyone, including him. To run away from my marriage. I borrowed Mrs. Pendrake’s identity. She’s got it back, though. Don’t worry. She is every bit as extraordinary as ever and doing all sorts of inspiring things to advance science and women’s education, and I’m sure you’d all adore her. She’s exactly the sort of woman Neal should marry, and if I thought she’d truly make him happier than I could, I wouldn’t stand in their way. Because I love Neal.”
She paused to gulp air. “I would have come sooner, but I wanted to spare him embarrassment. I knew he’d disappoint you all, turning up with a debutante. But I was disappointing him, staying away. So I’m here to tell you that I may be a flibbertigibbet, but I love him with every particle of my being. I make him laugh, and I am prepared to race to his rescue whenever he tries to get himself killed, and we don’t know about any of the same things so we’ll never get bored with each other, which we might do if we were just agreeing all the time on the right way to pack bulbs or rehashing the life of Darwin!”
She had to gulp again and this time the pause was punctuated by Jenni’s snort. Lavinia looked at her, brow furrowed.
“I think it might be best to marry someone with whom you have very little in common, to keep things from getting dull,” she continued. “And he loves me.”
Neal’s mother sat heavily in a chair, hand clutching the snow-white braid that hung over her shoulder.
“Forgive me,” she said. “My brain has been sluggish of late. You are not a botanist. You are a duchess who abandoned her husband. That husband, I assume, given your attire, has since passed on.”
“Correct,” said Lavinia with touching concentration. She looked like a schoolboy summoned to a difficult recitation. “I am a dowager.”
“And after meeting my son under false pretenses, you now intend to marry him, in part because you have so little in common.” His mother’s voice was as dry as fossils in sandstone. “Your interests are . . . ? Not botany, I take it.”
“Fashion.” Lavinia had gone rigid. “Particularly theatrical fashions. Dancing. France. I speak fluent French. Novels—reading and writing them. I’ve completed a romance, in fact. A romance of the high seas. I like to shop.”
Neal’s mother looked like she’d been presented with a reconstruction of a dinosaur with the head at the wrong end.
“Will you introduce me to the Prince of Wales?” asked Emmeline.
Jenni and Nessa were exchanging glances. Perran was mouthing romance of the high seas at Jory, who was trying to hide a smile. Christ. The Traymaynes were a judgmental lot. Terrible snobs. Assertive. Righteous. Eager to boss the family baby, who, left to his own devices, tended to land in trouble. Neal bit the inside of his cheek. This old dynamic. He rebelled or he tried to please. It was hard to know his own mind, to separate his convictions from all their strong opinions.
Bollocks, said Neal’s father. What’s hard is your head. Don’t just stand there like a post. Do you love the woman?
“Lavinia’s right,” said Neal. Eyes swiveled. Suddenly, he was at the intersection of all their gazes. Lavinia’s was the one that drew him.
“I love her,” he declared, watching her eyes widen. “It’s an incontrovertible point. Not open for debate.”
Yes. That’s it.
He grinned. “If that hatbox she brought contains a hat with the last dodo bird stuck on top, I’ll still love her.”
Jenni sucked in her breath. “Crikey.”
“I’d mind it, of course.” Neal couldn’t help but laugh at the image. “We’d have a rip-roaring fight, perhaps.” He sobered. “But I’d trust, when it was over, that we’d both see the world through slightly different eyes. And we’d love each other all the more.”
Color flooded Lavinia’s cheeks. She took several steps backward, as though she needed room to take him in. To take it in.
He realized in that moment that he’d surprised her. Her eyes were brilliant. Glorious.
“The last dodo,” repeated Jenni, frowning and laughing at the same time. “If any part of a dodo is in that hatbox, we’re taking it to the Natural History Museum.”
Suddenly, Lavinia laughed too, her shoulders loosening.
Neal’s next realization was more astounding, more humbling.
She hadn’t been sure that he was sure of her. She hadn’t fully expected him to speak up, to speak back. To present their love as an article of faith.
Her doubt made him ache. But the joy spreading now over her face—it acted as a balm. He’d never seen anything as beautiful.
“No dodo.” Still laughing, she lifted the lid off the hatbox on the chair. “I dug up dandelions.” She said it breathlessly.
Perran, Jory, Nessa, and Jenni crowded around the chair to peer inside the box. Lavinia had lined it with newspaper covered liberally with damp dirt. Neal touched the soft flower head of the wilted dandelion plant.
He had the inane idea that the wind might blow and take his heart along with it, like dandelion seeds. He felt as though the world were making a wish on him.
A wish for love.
He lifted his head and met Lavinia’s eyes. Bluer than the sea, and deeper.
He cleared his throat and glanced at his mother, who had cupped her chin in her hand. Her eyebrows were lifted well above the frames of her spectacles.
“I discovered a new dandelion species in Kyncastle.” He felt oddly shy, with Lavinia and his family gathered so close. “Somehow—Father didn’t collect it. I’d hoped I could bring you the journal with my published description, but it won’t be out until July.”
His lungs felt hot and tight. He went up to his mother’s chair and took her hand, so thin and cold.
“I named it for you,” he said. “Taraxacum hedrae.”
Slowly, his mother’s eyebrows lowered. Her eyelids curved down as her smile lifted her lips. It was that expression he’d been observing these days—bittersweet. Her hand tightened on his.
“I wanted to press a good specimen for you,” he said. “I didn’t find any, though, when I was just in Kyncastle.”
“So Muriel brought a plant.” Kelyn walked to the hatbox and lifted it. “She brought you a plant to press and give to your mother.” She passed Neal the hatbox, then turned to Lavinia. “That was kind of you.”
“But didn’t she come from London?” Jenni folded her arms. “What’s the distribution of Taraxacum hedrae?”
Jenni thought too quickly. She never left him enough time to develop a strategy. He sighed.
“I doubt it grows in London,” he admitted. He didn’t want to say it and hesitated, too long. Lavinia’s face was already falling.
He looked into the hatbox. “This isn’t Taraxacum hedrae.”
“The purple spots, though.” Lavinia started forward, shoulder pressing his side as she studied the plant. “There.” She pointed.
Where to begin? It wasn’t even close.
“Give it here,” said his mother. “I believe I am the intended recipient.” She took the hatbox from Neal’s outstretched hands and settled it on her lap. She addressed Lavinia. “You brought this all the way from London?”
A rhetorical question, but Lavinia nodded.
“Why a hatbox?”
“I don’t have a vasculum,” said Lavinia. “I am interested in botany, but I only learned of my interest recently. I have learned several things about myself only recently.”
She took a breath. “For example, that I would rather have a daisy wrapped around my finger than wear a duke’s diamond.”
She fisted her hands and crossed her arms, fists shoved beneath her biceps. She’d begun to tremble.
“When Neal told me about the dandelions he’d named for you, I knew. I knew how much it meant, how much he loved you. And I knew that I wanted to live that kind of life.”
Tears spilled over her lashes.
“A life where love is common as weeds,” she whispered. She looked around at them, the members of his family, all staring back at her. “You’re so very lucky.”
Her eyes locked on his. She smiled, a smile that lit her like summer sun.
He had promised her they would make their own luck. Dammit, they were starting now. If he kissed her, Perran, Jory, and Jenni would never let him live it down. The teasing would be pitiless.
If he didn’t kiss her . . .
But there was no world in which didn’t kiss was an option.
He pulled her against him, slid his fingers into her hair, sought her lips. They parted beneath his, full and soft and salty-sweet. Her face was wet with tears but she laughed into his mouth. Surprised again. He liked to surprise her. Right then and there, he made it a goal to surprise her every day.
She wound her arms around his shoulders, and he dipped her back, kissing her through his grin. When he straightened and released her, he kept ahold of her hand, aware of their audience. Jory was pounding Perran’s shoulder, smile stretching from ear to ear. Tomas and Cyril were inspecting their shoes. Kelyn was blushing, and Emmeline sighing. Nessa and Jenni looked amused. His mother—his mother had tears slipping down behind her spectacles. She had her arm wrapped around the hatbox as though it held something precious.
Which it did. A common, precious weed.
“I think it might be Taraxacum hedrae,” she said, her voice rasping. “And I should know.” She addressed them all, then looked at Neal.
“Neal.” She smiled as she wiped her eyes and lifted her chin. “Go buy that girl a proper ring.”
During dinner, Lavinia became even more hopelessly confused. She tried to talk to Jenni about bugs and Nessa about stars, mixed up Mary and Maude, abandoned hope on the children. The merry racket of the meal overwhelmed. Elbows bumping, serving spoons clattering. Incomprehensible jests. She felt the curiosity of Neal’s family members like a persistent tug. She also felt their welcome flowing toward her.
They wanted to get to know her better, to put the missing pieces together. She wanted to get to know them better too.
Not tonight, though. They had tomorrow for that.
After dinner, she and Neal walked up through an orchard of twisty old trees and down a lane lined with flowering hedgerows. The hedgerows smelled like honey, and the glowworms spangled the greenery with tiny lights. Where the lane ended the fields stretched down to the sea. The sun had sunk below the horizon, but the sky still blushed with color, lavender above the dark waves.
Neal led her along the beach, past the piles of sticks laid for the St. Peter’s Day bonfires. Tomorrow, the beach would be thronged with revelers and the night would glow with flames. Fireworks would shower the sea with sparks. She’d celebrate with the Traymaynes, celebrate togetherness, and the zenith of the year.
Tonight, the beach was empty. The sand was soft beneath the blanket Neal spread in the lee of a boulder. Soon, experience reconfigured. His rhythm was her rhythm, her rhythm was his, and their rhythm was the rhythm of their surroundings.
There was a high tide of kissing, and a low tide of kissing, but there wasn’t ever a cessation of kissing. Sometimes, it was only this: the drowsy, sweet tangle of tongues. The drift of fingertips over skin.
“I found us a house in town.” Neal’s thumb stroked up and down her throat. “Before I left. I do enough business in London to warrant it. And we can’t have you languishing for want of theater, and shopping.”
She sighed. In his arms, she wanted for nothing. But he was right, she wasn’t done with London. She was ready for her new life to begin, there, and in Cornwall too.
Her lips worried the lobe of his ear. “Where in town?”
“Kensington,” he sighed, then yelped as her teeth closed on his neck.
“Not Kensington.” She licked the little indentations she’d left in his skin. His neck was beyond irresistible. It was edible.
“Mayfair,” she said.
He rolled on top of her, his weight exerting a delicious, indelicate pressure. He claimed her lips, tongue filling her. When he could speak again, he said, agreeably, “Very well. I decide in Cornwall. You decide in London.”
She pushed at his chest and he let her topple him. She straddled his hips, kissed his fingers when he reached up and laid his hand on her cheek.
“So, in Cornwall, we’ll tramp about getting horribly freckled and host dinners for botanical reverends, and in London, we’ll go to balls and the theater and salons for artists and writers.”
He gasped. “Exactly.”
“You’ll have to grow extra lemon trees. Lemon juice cures freckles.”
He pulled her forward so she was stretched on top of him. She turned her face, cheek on his chest, and watched the shimmer of the breaking waves.
“If we could sail right now, anywhere in the world, under the Jolly Roger, I wouldn’t.” She tipped her face just enough to kiss his chest. “I’d want to stay right here.”
His arms closed around her. It felt good. It felt better than good. She rose and fell with his breath.
“When we marry, I won’t be a duchess anymore.”
“Mmm,” he murmured, hand heavy on the back of her head. “I’ll kiss you and you’ll turn into common Mrs. Traymayne. It’s like a fairy tale in reverse.”
She laughed, startled. It was a fairy tale in reverse.
It was the happiest ending—the happiest beginning—she could imagine.
“Kiss me now,” she said, and he did.