Chapter 1 #2
Mr. Ellery looked between them, apparently decided that this was no longer his negotiation, and simply nodded.
The man paid. The book was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. And then he turned to face her properly for the first time, and said, with a gravity that might have been courtesy or might have been something more ironic underneath, "I do not believe we've been introduced."
"We have not." She tucked Genera Plantarum back onto its shelf. "I do not intend to be introduced. I was correcting an error."
"You were taking a side in an argument that was not yours."
"I was preventing a commercial injustice. It is different."
He regarded her for a moment with those dark, unreadable eyes. Then he said, "Where did you study botany?"
"I did not. I read."
"Most people who read know considerably less than you do."
"Most people who read do not read the right things." She stepped past him toward the natural history section, and, because something about the way he was standing suggested that he would follow rather than be dismissed, said, over her shoulder, "What were you going to do with it?"
He was, in fact, following.
"With what?"
"The Bateman. If you'd got it for twelve."
"Study it."
"You already know the difference between a planifolia and a pompona. You do not need to study it."
A pause.
"No." He stood beside her at the shelf, not too close, his wrapped parcel under one arm. "I have a greenhouse. Three specimens in it have never been properly identified, and I've been arguing the question with myself for two years."
She pulled a volume from the shelf, The Orchidaceae of the British Isles, which was not precisely useful for specimens from the tropics but was one of her favorites, and opened it without looking at him.
"What are the presenting features?"
He told her. She listened, asked questions, pushed back on two of his observations, and agreed with a third. He was precise. He did not speak in the imprecise romantic vocabulary some men used about plants, the vocabulary that meant they had admired a drawing once and retained nothing practical.
He spoke like someone who had spent genuine time observing, who had noticed things and remembered them.
They were in the botany section, then the natural history section, then somehow in the small alcove near the window where a battered armchair lived beside a table of discounted volumes.
Outside, the light was thinning toward evening.
Verity could not have said with certainty how long they had been talking.
"Enclosure," she said, returning to an earlier point. "You said the English countryside survives it. I think you are being deliberately optimistic."
"I said it survives it in some forms. I did not say it survived intact."
"You implied—"
"I implied nothing. You inferred it."
She looked at him properly then. He was almost smiling. It transformed his face into something she had not quite anticipated. Less severe, more alive, like a portrait that has been returned to after years away from it and seen differently.
She felt something catch, very slightly, in her chest. A small involuntary thing, like a thread pulled taut. She was suddenly, briefly, aware of the distance between them, which was not very much.
"You are infuriating," she said.
"You are correcting me again," he said. "Do you do that with everyone?"
"Only when they deserve it."
Something in his expression shifted; she could not have named it, and he looked away, toward the window and the street beyond.
"I should go," he said. Not apologetic. Simply true.
"Yes." She closed the book in her hands. "So should I."
They did not exchange names. She did not offer hers, and he did not press. They parted at the door of Ellery and Sons. He turned east, and she turned west, and the evening settled in around her like something she had not quite finished reading.
She was aware, for a strange, suspended moment, of the precise sound his footsteps made on the stone before the noise of the street swallowed them. She did not look back. She did not think about why she had noticed.
Cressida was waiting at the corner of St. James's Street, hatbox in hand, glowing with the satisfaction of a woman who has secured something in exactly the right shade.
"Lavender," she announced, falling into step beside Verity.
"The most extraordinary lavender silk you have ever seen in your life.
Madame Leclerc had it in the back and was saving it, she claimed, for a special client, and I told her that I was the special client, and here we are.
" She held up the box as evidence. "Did you find what you were looking for at the bookshop? "
Verity thought about that with more care than the question strictly required.
"Not exactly," she said.
In the carriage, Cressida talked about the silk, its weight, the way it moved, whether it wanted ivory or gold at the trim, and Verity watched London pass the window and said yes and how lovely at the appropriate intervals, which was apparently not appropriate enough, because after a few minutes, Cressida stopped mid-sentence about sleeve length.
"You're not listening."
"I am."
"You are not. You have the look you get when you're thinking about something you've decided not to tell me."
"I do not have a look."
"You have several looks. This is the third one." Cressida angled toward her on the seat. "What happened at Ellery's?"
"I corrected an error in a botanical catalog."
"You do that every time you go in. What else?"
Verity kept her eyes on the window. "I had a conversation."
"With Mr. Ellery?"