Chapter 3
3
Gather the rose of love whilest yet is time.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
R OYAL V ALE P LANTATION
As the plantation bell tolled in the distance, columns of seeds sewn and crop yields swam before Juliet’s bleary eyes. She looked up from the ledger to the open study window that overlooked Royal Vale’s walled garden. An Apothecary rose pressed against the window glass as if begging to be cut and brought inside, its streaked petals infused with crimson, rose, and white, its fragrance heady, as midsummer roses seemed always to be. Was it truly named for fair Rosamund, the “Rose of the World,” in the twelfth century?
Loveday preferred the English rose or wild rose for her stillroom uses. She’d recently turned rose petals into sugar, which held their fragrance even after drying. At the moment she was gathering herbs, a basket on one arm, her straw hat giving her away over the bricked wall of the herb garden. Biding her four and twenty years till she had a beau, a matter that weighed more heavily on Juliet’s mind of late.
If ever a sister was meant for marriage and motherhood, it was Loveday. Yet Father rejected most of her would-be suitors out of hand.
“I wouldn’t part with a pittance for the lot of them,” he’d exclaimed in exasperation after the latest, a fop addicted to gambling, was sent scurrying from the house a fortnight before. “I wish I could as easily banish your dimpled smile and those beguiling hyacinth eyes of yours,” he’d continued, staring at his youngest as if trying to come to terms with her appeal. “The more comely a woman, the more addlepated her suitors, it seems.”
On the other hand, no man wanted to press his suit with the elder, Juliet Catesby, for which she was eternally grateful. Like Loveday had noted, she aspired to be like their Philadelphia aunt, a happy spinster of independent means at forty. But for Loveday she wanted more. And she must carefully orchestrate her sister’s courtship once she found a proper suitor before the truth of their financial straits became common knowledge.
Shrugging off her cares if only for a moment, Juliet left the study and went into the garden, her daybook in hand. Taking a shell-strewn path, she bypassed the herb garden with its fragrant rosemary and mint and entered the side lawn with its myriad trees and ornamental shrubs. At one end sat a foundation for a summerhouse. Flues underneath would heat the future brick structure in winter. But alas, this year’s taxes had been high, and Loveday’s dream was just that—a mere foundation, hardly the summerhouse of her dreams.
Juliet opened her daybook, having indulged her sister’s vision. Even staring at her recent watercolor rendering brought a rush of longing. She was so engrossed she failed to hear the gardener approach.
“G’day, Miss Catesby.”
She turned toward the unmistakable voice so richly inflected. Though nearly fifty, Hamish Hunter had braved the Atlantic two years before. Highly skilled and recommended by her father’s many Scottish connections, he’d lent them The Scots Gard’ner by John Reid upon his arrival. A botanical feast.
“Good day to you, sir,” Juliet returned with a smile. “How goes your earthy undertakings?”
“As well as expected for a Hades-like July.” Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he swiped his brow, but even the heat didn’t dim his grin. “Watering takes most of my time.”
“What’s Scotland like in midsummer?”
“Cooler. Less thirsty. When the haar sweeps in from the sea, the gardens are veiled in mist, a sonsie sight.”
“Sonsie.” The word rolled off her tongue rather prettily. “What beguiling words you Scots have.”
Chuckling, he focused on the daybook she held out to him. He perused the watercolor with a canny eye. “Reminds me of the princely orangery at Ardraigh Hall northeast of Glasgow, with its five-acre walled garden and serpentine walkways. Even a lake brimming with black swans.”
Black swans? She tried to imagine it. He’d told them of grand estates where he’d worked. Dumfries House. Audley End. Bridlee Hall. She and Loveday hung on his words like children listening to a fairy tale. But Ardraigh Hall was new to her.
She moved into the shade of a dogwood tree. “Royalty, then.”
“For the king of Lanarkshire, aye—one of the tobacco lords.”
The magic vanished. Tobacco lords were synonymous with the vilest epithet, not only to the Catesbys but to all Virginia. These unscrupulous, voracious men across the water were enemies of the Tidewater like the French and Indians to the frontier.
Juliet was hard-pressed to keep the scorn from her tone. “I suppose this king of Lanarkshire has a name.”
“That he does.” Was it her imagination, or did his words hold sharp respect? “Mr. Leith Buchanan of Glasgow.”
Forgetting herself, Juliet stared at him. Not the Buchanan of Inglis, Turnbull, and Buchanan, the foremost tobacco lords in Glasgow? The very men responsible for the Catesbys’ misfortune.
Hunter continued as if oblivious to her disquiet. “Though Buchanan is all steel and whipcord, he has a prince’s penchant for gardens.”
She fell silent at this tribute to the villain in her mind—an old, wrinkled Glaswegian stacking coins in his countinghouse from dawn till dusk, devising myriad ways to mire the Tidewater planters in more debt, even ruination.
“’Tis said a man is judged by his acreage and gardeners. Buchanan employed two and sixty gardeners in my tenure.”
Juliet all but gasped. “At one time?” Two and sixty gardeners to their three. And they could hardly afford one, yet Father insisted they pretend otherwise.
“Our bedding plant list at Ardraigh Hall was nigh on sixty thousand plants from all o’er Britain and the continent, not including shrubs and trees and the like.”
“I suppose this man has more than one orangery.”
“Just one near the main house, but it’s massive. These wealthy Scots merchants are fond of gardens. And kirks.”
“Kirks?”
“Churches.”
She turned speechless and breathless all at once. Did these tobacco lords mean to atone for their sins by erecting places of worship when they themselves worshiped mammon? She bit her lip to keep from saying so.
“Granted, these lords o’er the Atlantic commission such to display their wealth and power. But one can pray that in time their hearts turn to the One who alone is worthy of worship, aye?”
With a nod, Juliet bade him farewell and took her daybook back into the house, more troubled than when she’d first gone into the garden.