A Highly Courageous Adventure (Flora Hyde-Clare Mysteries #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Iknow cabbage.

Ask me anything about the hardy, versatile plant whose smooth leaves are covered in a waxy coating—anything at all—and I will respond with a lengthy dissertation on optimal growing conditions and popular varieties.

Truly, you would be astonished by the extent of my knowledge, by the discernment and wisdom on display, and you would lean in a little closer, confounded by your own impulse to underestimate me, before thinking, Goodness gracious, isn’t that Flora Hyde-Clare a young woman of substance?

She is not a lovely bit of fluff after all.

(Well, lovely, yes. Let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater.)

But not too much substance, of course.

There is nothing so unattractive as an excessively erudite female.

Bluestockings—brrr!

The trick to presenting an intelligent demeanor that does not teeter into aggressively intellectual is sprinkling your conversation with just a few cabbage tidbits at a time: one or two per response, three if the listener holds a degree from Oxford or Cambridge or is a member of Parliament.

Also key is delivering them with airy nonchalance.

Ideally, you want it to appear as though the thought has just occurred to you.

I know everything about cabbage because I studied cabbage in anticipation of meeting Sebastian’s father, whom I am desperate to impress. The Holcroft patriarch is all that stands between me and eternal bliss, and I am determined to overcome the obstacle with grace, charm, and tenacity.

If that means engaging in lengthy discourse about boring old vegetables, then let us embrace tedium in all its tedious forms.

I will do anything to earn his approval so that he will give his son permission to marry me and then Sebastian will finally confess his love and seek my hand and we will settle into wedded bliss like a pair of cooing turtledoves and the world will be golden and heavenly forever and ever.

It will happen.

It is the only acceptable outcome.

I have been waiting weeks for Sebastian to declare himself.

We met in April, had a horrible falling out in May (all his fault!), and enjoyed a gorgeous reconciliation in June.

And now it is July.

July is declaration time.

Actually, the third week in June was declaration time, but when Sebastian remained silent, I realized he could not speak without gaining his father’s consent.

A dutiful son, he would never defy his sire.

Filial obedience is part of Holcroft the Holy’s rigid code of honor, and I have too much respect for him to wish for him to renounce long-held scruples just to please me.

Do I sound stoic?

I hope I sound stoic, because I have worked very hard to maintain the facade of stoicism when inside I am raging against his stupid integrity.

The number of times I have had to curl my hands into fists to stop myself from grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him and demanding he confess his love is well into the double digits by now.

Impossible man!

Holding my own emotions in check has grown increasingly difficult, but I will make no admission where I am uncertain of its reception. In my head, I have a wretched image in which I boldly proclaim my love and he nods politely and asks if he may give his reply in a week or two.

Brrr.

And that is a real shudder, not an affected one like for bluestockings.

You see now why I prepared so diligently for our visit to Red Oaks, the Holcroft family seat in Lower Bigglesmeade in Bedfordshire.

It is my one chance to amaze his father, a challenging proposition made even more difficult by the presence of my parents and brother, Russell.

Together they are a motley assortment, and I am not so naive as to expect them to go an entire two weeks without embarrassing me.

Mama cannot go two hours without stumbling into a verbal briar patch.

By necessity, then, I have to win over Mr. Holcroft without delay.

He must find me so delightful that he does not care what faux pas my relatives make.

Hence my memorization of cabbage facts.

A man of science devoted to increasing the crop yield of his land by producing the heartiest vegetables in the most fertile soil, Mr. Holcroft has identified cabbage as essential to his agricultural goals.

I know of his interest because his oldest and dearest friend, the man with whom he attended Oxford and who rescued him from the relentless abuse of the bullies who tormented him during his early days at the university, Sir Dudley Grimston, mentioned it when Sebastian and I visited him in his office.

Master of the rolls, he insisted we join him for tea and biscuits and conversation, and while we were enjoying what I thought was a comfortable coze with an honorary member of the Holcroft family, Grimston was arranging our demise.

His only interest was in delaying our departure to provide his henchman with sufficient time to arrange our murders in a squalid room in Snipper Lane.

Unbeknownst to us, Grimston was at the center of the Chancery scandal we were about to expose and killing us was preferable to his own ruination.

It was an inconceivable act of betrayal of Sebastian, whom Grimston has known since infanthood, but the villain’s treachery does not make the information he provided about Mr. Holcroft’s cabbage fixation any less valid.

Cabbage, which has been cultivated for four thousand years and is used in China to cure baldness and resides among members of the Cruciferae family.

You noticed, I trust, how my prior statement subtly reveals a familiarity with Linnaean taxonomy.

That is what I mean by “airy nonchalance.” You would never suspect from the blithe way I discuss these terms that I was not even aware they existed three weeks ago.

I practiced how to pronounce Cruciferae and Brassicaceae so that I could present myself as the sort of endearing young person who knows a thing or two about taxonomical classification.

All that work, all that effort, only to run headlong into clover.

Clover of all beastly things!

We are in the drawing room, an assortment of Holcrofts and the Hyde-Clares gathered together, and the chamber is ridiculously large, all towering ceiling and massive tapestries.

And the tapestries are ancient.

I cannot say why their age makes everything worse, but you must trust me when I say it does.

Sitting there, on the stiff cushion of the settee, I know with absolute certainty that my mortification would be less acute if it were observed by morose ancestors glaring down in high-minded, self-important poses in gloomy portraits rather than exquisitely rendered gardens from the fifteenth century.

But I am where I am, and I cannot be somewhere else.

Do I want to jump up and run from the room?

With all my being!

But beating a hasty retreat is cowardly, and I am resolved to be courageous.

It would just be so much easier if I could say something about cabbage, not stupid clover.

“I perceive its great potential,” Mr. Holcroft explains of his new favorite crop.

Of all the rotten turns Sir Dudley has done me, this is the most despicable.

Frantically, I try to recall what I know about clover.

Recall!

As if I know anything about any plant that is not cabbage.

(Or roses. I know several things about roses, including but not limited to the warm golden feeling they engender when a bouquet of fresh-cut blossoms arrives at your home from a gentleman with whom you danced the quadrille the evening before.)

On the verge of smoothly dropping one of my well-noted cabbage facts into the conversation—a bon mot about its root system, which is shallow and fibrous—I stare in bewilderment, unable to devise a coherent response.

But my mouth is open!

It is open because twelve seconds ago, I knew precisely what I would say, so now I look like a fish gasping for air out of the water.

Mrs. Dowell, the eldest of Sebastian’s three sisters and mother to three of his four nephews, tilts her head with curiosity and begs me to speak freely. “You do not have to parse your words with us, Miss Hyde-Clare. We are a most broad-minded family.”

Fiddlesticks!

The Holcrofts, the whole lot of them, are intolerant snobs.

In the twenty-one hours since we arrived at the Bedfordshire estate, at approximately four in the afternoon, my parents, Russell, and I have been subjected to the sharp edge of the family’s contempt conveyed through quaint insults.

That is to say, every comment we make is deemed quaint.

Mama gushes over the quality of the marble floor in the entry hall—a quaint observation.

Papa requests a glass of brandy before dinner—a quaint habit.

Russell greets their greyhound warmly—a quaint practice.

I express pleasure in the robust country air—a quaint notion.

Do I believe the entire family convened a meeting to discuss the most banal and cutting word to apply with hostile consistency? Do I think sweet, darling, precious, and fascinating, among others, were proposed in their turn and found wanting before the company settled on quaint?

Yes, yes, I do.

To give the Holcrofts their due, it is a masterful insult.

They could not have come up with a more devastating slight if they had thought about it for two weeks (though obviously not for two weeks, as I am unworthy of so much of their attention).

It is in its twin implications—of old-fashionedness and strangeness—that the slight truly hits its mark. Each time I hear it, I feel small and inadequate and I have to forcibly hold myself still lest I recoil in embarrassment.

Fortunately, Mama has yet to detect the jeering undertone and continues to receive each utterance gratefully, as though delighted by the tepidness of their admiration.

One wishes to underwhelm.

Always.

There is nothing more gauche than overwhelming one’s listener.

What my family has done to earn the Holcrofts’ contempt is a mystery to me.