JOSEPH WAS PLANTING flowers when Chrystabel walked into his conservatory.
In the diffused light from his parchment-covered windows, wearing her shoulder-baring red gown, her cheeks flushed with holiday excitement, she suddenly looked different.
She suddenly stole his breath.
Holy Hades, had his mother been right?
No. She’d put ideas into his head, that was all. Ideas he ought to ignore.
Chrystabel was carrying a Christmas wreath. Determined not to betray his thoughts, Joseph restricted his reaction to a single raised brow. “Surely you don’t need to decorate in here.”
“No, no.” Her smile was entirely too charming. “I arrived in here mistakenly.”
And he was the Royal Gardener. “You wandered into this half-built wing thinking it was part of our living quarters?”
“Yes,” she said, a brazen lie that he found inexplicably charming as well.
He needed air, and he needed to come to his senses. Even though he’d gathered enough pots for his seeds already, he crossed to the wall where he kept stacks of them and fetched an empty one back to his bench, using the time to draw several deep, steadying breaths.
His head felt clearer when he returned. She was still standing there smiling. She’d set her wreath on the floor. “You have an enormous space here.”
“Indeed.” Entire wings tended to be enormous. “Shall I show you back to the main house?”
She glanced about, her wide-set chocolate-brown eyes bright with curiosity. “Would you mind if I have a look around first?”
I most certainly would. He gritted his teeth. “By all means.”
He went to one of the fireplaces and chucked another log inside, trying to take no notice of his guest. But though she’d said she wanted to look around, she wasn’t looking around. She was looking at him. He wasn’t looking at her, but he could feel her gaze on his back.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Building up the fire to keep my plants warm.”
“I meant, what were you doing before that? When I came in.”
“Oh.” With a sigh, he turned to face her. “I was planting chrysanthemums.”
“Chrys—what?”
“Chrysanthemums. My favorite flower.” She wasn’t letting him take no notice of her, hang it. And truthfully, he hadn’t the heart to rebuff anyone who showed an interest in his flowers. “Come, I have mature chrysanthemums over here.”
She followed him to the other end of his conservatory, where dozens of them were growing in wooden boxes. “Oh, they’re beautiful!”
“Thank you,” he said, her obvious delight making him smile. He was very proud of his chrysanthemums. He had pinks and whites and greens and reds and purples and oranges. A few were two-toned; those were his favorites.
“I’ve never seen anything like them,” she breathed, circling the boxes to examine each color.
“They’re very uncommon here—in fact, I may be the only one growing them. They just recently arrived on the Continent from China.”
“How did you get them?”
She looked genuinely curious, which made him eager to tell her. “My uncle left England years ago, when King Charles first went into exile. Even as a small child I loved growing things, and he never had a son of his own, so he indulges me, sending me plants I cannot find here. I’m very fortunate.”
Finished with her circuit, she bent forward to inhale the flowers’ fragrance, her elegant red gown pooling around her. “Oh, their scent is strong, quite earthy and herby. Perfect to temper the sweeter flowers.”
He swallowed hard. Leaning over with her hands braced on her knees, the curve of her backside protruded from the depths of her skirts. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away.
His heart was pounding, his temperature rising. For a moment he felt nearly as out of breath as he had dancing the volta last night. Remembering the wooly tent of a gown she’d worn—complete with dowdy Puritan collar—he found himself longing for its return.
Because Chrystabel in a nice dress was apparently more than he could take.
When she moved to the next box, her hips swayed beneath the scarlet drape. His whole body clenched. “I wish I were going to be here long enough to make some of these into essential oil,” she said wistfully.
He backed away a step, struggling to refocus on the conversation. “Make chrysanthemums into oil? Why would you do that?”
“So I can use the oil to make perfume.” She looked adorable looking up at him. “I’m a perfumer.”
“That’s right, you mentioned it at supper. I’d never thought about someone creating all those fragrances people wear.”
He wasn’t thinking about that now. In fact, he was having a hard time thinking about anything but the lovely roundness of her—
No. He was not having these thoughts. He was marrying Creath in two days, for heaven’s sake. He might not fancy Creath, but that didn’t make it acceptable to fancy someone else!
Unable to stand it a moment longer, he took her elbow and pulled her upright. A little lick of excitement bolted through him at the contact, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it. “Did your mother teach you how to make perfume?”
“My mother taught me very little.” She frowned momentarily but quickly brightened. “My father’s sister lived with us when I was a girl. Aunt Idonea taught me how to distill oils from flowers and mix them to make perfumes.”
The discussion involved flowers, so even though he desperately wanted her to leave, he couldn’t help but continue it. “Which flowers do you use?”
“Every type I can find—all of those that are scented, I mean. Plus some plants that have scent but don’t flower. My favorite scent is rose, though.” She glanced around. “I don’t see any roses. I guess you can only grow roses outdoors?”
“I think I could probably grow them indoors in winter, but we haven’t any roses here at Tremayne.” Happily, he felt more in control with her standing. Her skirts were voluminous enough to conceal everything below the waist. “We do have roses at Trentingham. Or at least we did—I have no idea what Trentingham’s beautiful gardens look like now.”
An adorable frown appeared on her brow. “Surely your caretakers are sustaining your roses for you.”
“We have no caretakers at Trentingham anymore. Once we left, Cromwell commandeered it to use during the war.”
“Knave,” she muttered in a decidedly unladylike way.
She was refreshingly outspoken. And he was intrigued to find she not only loved flowers as much as he did, she actually used them for her craft. Her passion for perfuming seemed to be as strong as his for growing things.
All at once, he wished he were growing flowers for her.
And even worse, he wished he weren’t marrying Creath.
He wondered if he might be falling in love.
But that was absurd. He barely knew Chrystabel—a relevant fact in itself—but he knew enough to know they were wrong for each other. Here was yet another i word: incompatible. How could a fellow as cautious as he fall for a girl as reckless as Chrystabel?
And in any case, no one could fall in love in a single day. He wasn’t falling; he was having an understandable, male reaction to the sight of bare shoulders and a shapely bottom—and to the ideas Mother had put in his head. All her talk of delightful this and refreshing that was getting to him.
No matter what his mother said, Chrystabel wasn’t irresistible.
He was just finding her hard to resist.
But resist he must, because a frightened young woman was counting on him. He couldn’t think of anything that would be more dishonorable than abandoning his best friend.
“Strawberries!” Chrystabel exclaimed, drawing his attention across the chamber. It seemed while he’d contemplated love and honor and female anatomy, she’d been wandering his conservatory, examining the other plants. “I’ve been wanting to see where you grew them.” She paused in the middle of reaching for one. “May I?”
“Of course.”
She plucked it and popped it into her mouth. Strawberry red fruit between her strawberry red lips. “Mmm,” she hummed appreciatively. “I cannot wait for strawberry tart tonight.”
He couldn’t wait to watch her eat more strawberries.
And now he wanted to kiss the strawberry juice off those tempting strawberry red lips.
He was pathetic.
She wandered over to his next planter box and bent to sniff the small flowers there, forcing him to quickly avert his eyes.
“Oh! I’ve never smelled this scent before. It’s lovely.” With obvious delight, she ran her fingers over the delicate white petals. “What kind of flower is this?”
“Those are potato plants,” he told her, still trying to banish the image of her lips fastened on his. “The fact that they’re flowering means the potatoes are ready to be harvested.”
“Harvested?” She straightened—to his great relief—and cocked her pretty head to one side. “You don’t grow these for the flowers, then? What’s a potato?”
“It’s a tuber—a much-thickened underground part of the stem. It bears buds from which new plants grow, and it also serves as food for the plant. And it’s a good food for us.” He knelt down and dug around one, then pulled it out and rose with it. “You can eat it.”
It was brown, lumpy, and covered in dirt. She grimaced.
He found that grimace charming.
Which was not the same as delightful.
“It’s ugly,” she said.
“It’s delicious.”
“I’ve never heard of a potato before.”
“They aren’t common in England. They’re from the New World. My uncle sent me my first few plants, and they’re easy to grow, so now I have many. A whole field of them in growing season—it’s one of our crops. I planted these in here so we wouldn’t run out over the winter.”
“You really like to eat them, then.” She licked her lips, sending a stab of heat through him. “Are they eaten raw or cooked?”
“Not raw!” He laughed, which made him feel a little less hot—but no less guilty. “They taste awful raw,” he explained. “Our cook prepares them many ways, but my favorite is a pudding with lots of butter and spices.”
“Can we have some tonight? I love trying new things.”
She suddenly struck him as a girl who would be forever full of surprises. The thought brought an unwelcome thrill of anticipation and curiosity. The urge to kiss her had faded—a little—but his heart was galloping regardless.
Hang it all. What on earth was he to do? This wasn’t right, the way he was feeling. He’d never acted so disloyal and despicable in his life.
“Of course we can have some tonight,” he forced out through gritted teeth. “Let me dig up more, and I’ll take them to the kitchen.”