Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
H idden away at the back of the orangery was a raised bed in which neat rows of seedlings were beginning to send out hopeful leaves. Lucius took up his trowel and laid out ten terracotta pots. The seedlings needed planting out if they were to thrive.
This work was a far cry from the intricate horticultural science he’d been reading by candlelight, and yet all the more essential for it. Something about the scent of freshly turned earth and the slow progress of new, green life soothed his soul.
Here, among the tender, tiny growing things, he was at peace.
And there was a satisfaction unlike any other in knowing that it was he alone who had brought this small miracle of flora about. He who had crossbred the sharp tangerines with the sweeter clementines sent home from Spain, carefully collecting the pollen from one flower and daubing it inside another, taking note of which plant succumbed to disease and which thrived in his hothouse’s pale imitation of Mediterranean heat. These strong green rows of plants were thriving because Lucius had cared for them. If he had only the security of another full year at Whitby Manor, he would create something truly special here.
And perhaps, if he could find a way to tend his family as carefully as he tended his orange trees, the Whitbys would someday thrive again too.
“I knew I’d find you in here.” Isobel approached with a smile and sat on the wrought-iron chair beside the raised bed, looking with interest at his seedlings. “These had barely begun to sprout on our first meeting here,” she said, delighted. “Now look how fine they are! What will you do with them next?”
Lucius thrust his trowel into the soil, forgetting to roll up his sleeves. He cursed under his breath as the soil marred the white shirt cuff which Clarkson had starched to perfection. The under-gardeners had been easy enough to part with; his valet remained indispensable while he wanted to maintain the pretence of being a member of polite society. “When I can manage it without covering myself in dirt,” he said, pulling off a leather glove and rolling up his left shirt sleeve, “I will plant each seedling out into these pots. With any luck, we’ll have ten new orange trees ready to fruit next year. Completely new, at that. They are hybrids of my own creation.”
“What is it that you’re hoping for?” asked Isobel. “Better yields? Resistance to disease? Here, let me help you.”
Before Lucius could object, she’d brushed the dirt from his right shirt sleeve and removed the cufflink to roll it up his arm.
“Stop that.”
She gave him a look that plainly said he was being silly. “It’s easier if I help you. Hold still.”
Lucius jerked his arm out of her reach before the touch of her fingers could send any more agreeable tingles down his spine. “I can do it perfectly well myself,” he said, demonstrating the depth of his hubris by fumbling with the sleeve as he rolled it up the rest of the way. “I thought we had an agreement about this sort of thing. Physical contact is out of the question. In fact, so are clandestine meetings. You should not be here.” Though, heaven help him, he was glad that she was. The cool, damp relief of the soil, the warmth of the glass-filtered sunlight, the knowing smile in Isobel’s voice: they were all part of the same soothing lullaby. She calmed and revived him every bit as much as the citrus scent filling the air.
Another of the little luxuries he now had to give up. Paupers didn’t woo dukes’ sisters.
Isobel leaned in closer, a conspiratorial sparkle lighting her eyes. “We agreed that we would not meet in private unless we had something urgent to discuss,” she reminded him. “And as it happens, I have an important suggestion to make.”
Lucius’s body responded to her glow of mischief in ways he struggled to ignore. He turned his eyes back to his work. “Unless you are suggesting that we put an end to this entire silly business, I do not wish to hear it.”
He did not look up to see what she made of that. He did not want to know whether she would be hurt or relieved.
“Tell me about the oranges,” said Isobel.
She’d caught him. He met her eyes, finding no guile in that blue gaze.
She must know what she was doing – didn’t she? Slipping into the orangery, touching his arm, all softness and sweetness and questions about horticulture. Was he really so transparent that a little slip of a wallflower knew exactly the way to bait him?
“I am trying to propagate a particular species that I encountered in Spain,” he said. “But, my lady, that has little to do with our arrangement –”
Isobel leaned her chin on her hand, head cocked to one side as though nothing in all the world interested her more at that moment than what he had to say about Spanish citruses. Feeling the full force of her attention was a little like being caught in an open field on a cloudless night with a full moon. She was luminous, and Lucius felt at once illuminated and cast into shadow.
No wonder she played the wallflower. Imagine the devastation she’d wreak on society if she inflicted that full-moon beam on every unsuspecting dandy who asked for a spot on her dance card. It would be carnage.
“Can a Spanish tree really thrive in an English orangery?” she asked.
“That’s the problem,” he said, giving in. He eased his fingers in into the soil, not bothering to replace his gloves, and felt for the ball of roots of the first young seedling. He lifted it from the earth, chalky soil cascading through his fingers. “I sent home three plants, and not one of them has survived. I was lucky that the head gardener managed to coax one of them into flowering before it withered away. He bred it with a hardier plant which was already here, and when I returned home, I began refining the strain.”
“There must have been something particularly special about those Spanish oranges.”
How could Lucius possibly explain? His mind traced back to two years ago, to a warm night filled with silver moonlight, to the nearby sound of waves and the scent of the orange trees lining the square. To the cool, sweet taste of fruit and the haunting melody plucked on a harp by someone in one of the villas nearby.
“Honestly?” He lowered the uprooted seedling gently into its pot and began scooping soil in around it, packing it tight. “There are a hundred practical reasons why the fruit grown in Spain is superior to that grown in England. Sharper flavour, sweeter juice, larger fruit… But I’m not really looking for any of that.”
He flexed his fingers, noting with a degree of satisfaction that the earth had ingrained itself into every crease of his knuckles. His fingernails would send his mother into conniptions if she saw them before he scrubbed them clean.
Here and now, in this moment, these were not the hands of a spoiled, useless country gentleman. These were hands that had cultivated life. Hands that might be put to good use.
“There was a particular night in Spain,” he said, “when I felt true contentment. I don’t know whether it had anything to do with the weather, the heat, the people… But what I’m trying to do is replicate for myself some small piece of that Spanish beauty. To bring a little ray of south European sunlight into these dreary English days.”
Isobel was still watching him intently. Lucius had spoken too long; his mouth felt dry. “You must think I’m half mad,” he muttered. “It’s sentimental balderdash, I know. But I find the hobby diverting.”
“I would be quite the hypocrite if I laughed at someone else’s passion,” said Isobel. “I like your idea very much. There are days when I’d give anything to be transported somewhere else.” She gave a shy half shrug, lowering her eyes. Releasing him from the moonbeams at last. “But you must have noticed that already. Everyone knows I’d far rather dissolve myself in music than pay any attention to the here and now.”
He wished he’d studied music. He wanted to tell her about the Spanish harp, how the melody had been sweet and achingly sad all at the same time, how it mingled in his memory with the taste of the clementines, but he lacked the words to explain it. “These will need watering in,” he said instead, gesturing at the seedlings.
There was a battered tin watering can beside Isobel’s bench. She lifted it and gave it a shake, finding it empty. “Where is the pump?”
Lucius nodded towards it. By rights, he ought to be sending her off on her way. One un-chaperoned meeting in an orangery could be explained away; two such private rendezvous would be less easily brushed aside.
It was a mystery, then, why he found himself pushing up and down on the pump handle as Isobel held the watering can.
“I won’t get my hands dirty,” she said. “At least until I’ve seen you at work long enough that I think I could handle one of those little plants without breaking them. But I can certainly give them a good soaking.”
She looked so pleased to have found a way to help him that Lucius laughed aloud. “There’s no magic to it,” he said. “It’s not exactly playing a sonata.”
“But I like to watch you do it,” said Isobel. Her eyes widened again, just the way they had when he kissed her hand. “I so rarely see a gentleman do anything actually useful with his time. Oh, my brother spends hours and hours writing letters and practising speeches and riding about the place to oversee this or deal with that. And I suppose it’s very unfair of me not to consider that truly useful.” She bit down on her lip, raising her eyebrows in alarm. “Of course, I know that you make yourself extremely useful in that way too. I’ve noticed all the hours you spend in your father’s study. I only meant that there is something real about what you’re doing here. Something nourishing, something good.” She lifted the watering can, its new weight sending her slightly off-balance. “So I’d like to keep watching you, and I’d like to help.”
Lucius could not argue with that. He took the trowel and cut down into the soil around the next seedling. “No eligible dukes in your future, then.”
Isobel sent a shower of sparkling water droplets into the soil around the seedling he just planted out. “I hate to disappoint you, Mr Whitby, but if you imagine that I’m continually plagued by a steady stream of dukes and lords begging for my hand, you are mistaken. If I were that sort of person, I should probably have forgotten Lord Randall the moment I left Brighton.” She rested the watering can on the raised bed and sighed. “And I would probably be a better person for it.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Lucius. “There’s something to be said for the avenging angels of the world, after all. Where would we be if cads like Randall were allowed to break hearts from here to Land’s End with no consequences?” He held her gaze for a moment. “He was a fool, you know. A fool not to know what he had. A fool not to fight to keep you.”
This is no more than friendly affection , Lucius tried to tell himself. The protective instinct that raged in his gut whenever he heard Isobel stutter in Randall’s presence. The way his hands itched to strike the man a violent blow every time he thought of Isobel being hurt.
But Lucius had friends aplenty, and there was nothing at all in common with his affection for them and the lance of white-hot intensity that struck him through when Isobel met his eyes.
“On that subject,” she said slowly. “I came in here to tell you something.”
Lord Randall has made me an offer. Lord Randall has seen the error of his ways, and it’s time to end our pretence.
If he had any sense at all, he’d be praying for her to utter those words. But that fist clenched tight in his chest, and it was suddenly hard to remember all his good, sensible reasons for bidding Isobel goodbye.
“If it’s not too much to ask,” she said, “I would like to jump ahead a few points on your numerical scale.”
“No.”
“Hear me out. Randall is beginning to show some signs of interest, but without any remorse.”
“No.”
“Let me finish! Randall is still suffering under the delusion that he could have me, if he chose. We have succeeded in showing him that I have value. But he will not truly suffer until he values me and knows he has lost me.”
“ No. ” There was only one way to persuade Randall that Isobel was out of his reach for ever. They had already pushed the stifling rules of courtship too far, too fast. To go any further would be madness.
And no matter how tempting that madness might be, Lucius could not do it.
“I am not going to ask you to marry me, Isobel.”
“Goodness, how melodramatic.” Was he imagining it, or was there something brittle about the way she laughed? “There is no question, of course, of us really getting married.”
“I should think not, since it’s becoming ever more clear that you wish to end this fanciful scheme by marrying Randall.” Oof. Perhaps he would have done better to pay less attention to the hurt in Isobel’s voice and more to keeping it out of his own. He sounded bitter as a Seville orange ( thrives in well-drained soil topped with manure, prone to disease in high humidity ).
“I would not marry him if he were the last man on earth,” she snapped. “And neither have I any intention of marrying you , so there is no need to be so – so masculine about it! Surely there is no real difference between a make-believe betrothal and what we have already been doing?”
“There is an enormous difference.” Lucius drove his trowel into the soil again, the better to marshal the thoughts which exploded and scattered away like sparks from a firework every time he faced the unbending defiance in Isobel’s eyes. “There is your brother, for a start. I have absolutely no desire to drag the Duke of Loxwell into this mess by writing to him to ask for your hand.”
“I don’t believe for a minute that you are afraid of Alex,” she said. “But in any case, I can manage him. There is no danger of his charging after you with a pistol once our deception is completed.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?” Lucius raised a muddy hand. “No, don’t answer. I have given you my answer, Isobel. It’s no . I am sorry that our efforts so far have not produced the result you wanted, but I’ve done as much as I honourably can. What you are suggesting is utter madness. It could ruin you.”
“I’d dearly love to know why you value your own reputation so little that you imagine a public connection between us would ruin me.” For a moment, Lucius was afraid Isobel was going to argue further. But instead she gave a weary sigh and sank back onto the garden bench, letting water spill from the watering can and dampen her skirts. “No. You don’t have to explain, Mr Whitby. I am sorry for pushing you. I already know why my suggestion is so unpalatable.”
A thrum of tension ran down Lucius’s spine, though he knew that she could not really know what he was thinking.
If he and Isobel announced an engagement, there would be no way to apply the brakes to his father’s runaway spending. The wedding would be arranged before the day was out… Only to come crashing down the moment his family’s dire situation was dragged into the light by Loxwell’s lawyers. And while he was sure that neither Isobel nor her family would ever seek to humiliate him, he could not risk his sisters’ future on the hope that not a single lawyer or clerk would spread whispers of the Whitby shame. And that was only the best-case scenario. At worst…
At worst, Isobel would be his wife by the end of the summer, and her entire inheritance would be thrown into the bottomless pit of his father’s debts.
“What do you know?” he asked, fearing the answer.
Isobel gave another of the little shrugs she used to feign carelessness when tears were brightening her eyes. “Why, that I’d embarrass you, of course.” The tremble in her voice tore at his heart. “The dashing Mr Lucius Whitby, engaged to that strange girl who spends all her time at the piano? Isobel ‘Bluestocking’ Balfour?” She raised her hands to her lips, a semi-hysterical laugh spilling between her fingers. “I rather think it isn’t my reputation which would be ruined.”
“Are you serious?” Lucius took a step towards her, knowing full well that it was the wrong thing to do. “You cannot be serious.”
It ought to be no concern of his what she thought of herself. It was not in his power to comfort her. And he knew exactly what would happen if he gave in to the desperate need to stop those tears before they fell from her eyes.
But already, it felt inevitable.
“You think you’d embarrass me?” He dropped to his knees before the bench, so that he could look up into her downcast eyes. Isobel avoided his gaze, her mouth twisting bitterly.
“I embarrassed him .”
“Is that what he told you?” Now there was anger, too, mingling with the sensations within Lucius that were already burning with a volcanic heat. “And you believed him?”
“He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to say it. But he made it perfectly clear all the same.” At last, she let him look into her eyes. Large and blue and bright with tears. And that was the end of all Lucius’s better instincts.
“I told you once before that you did not understand how dangerous this deception was,” he said. “If you think I was concerned for myself, you are hopelessly mistaken. You are not an embarrassment. You are as far from an embarrassment as it is possible to be. If you refuse to accept responsibility for the power you wield over men, I must find a way to make it clear to you.”
And there were a thousand better ways he could have done that, weren’t there?
There were a thousand chances, in the instant before his lips met hers, for Lucius to make the right choice and back away.
But instead, he let that tight-clenched fist in his chest unfurl, and the relief of giving in was so great that just before he kissed her, he smiled.