Chapter 17 #2
The invitations for the garden party had been sent, and a buzz about the community had already been set in motion.
All two hundred people had RSVPed that they would be coming to see the conservatory and all of the work I had done to restore it.
Not one single invite had turned down the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the infamous Blackwood Manor conservatory.
So much was riding on my shoulders, and knowing the conservatory still wasn’t planted weighed on me like cement blocks resting on my tired shoulders.
I had to put in extra time in the gardens now to be sure that it would be finished, but also in fear that Darius Blackwood might soon be halting my momentum.
As if the chaos surrounding Darius’s return hadn’t been enough, when I entered the garden this morning, the spadix—the tall, fleshy, phallic column in the center of the corpse flower—had lengthened and was now protruding out of the large cabbage-leaf-looking outer covering of the spathe.
The corpse flower was preparing to bloom faster than I had hoped, faster than even Lithgow had thought, and defensive panic set in.
Immediately, I sent photos to Professor Lithgow to lean on his expertise.
It was nearly impossible to nail down how much time we had before it bloomed, and once it bloomed, the spathe would only remain open for twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
If my work in the conservatory was to be done to showcase it at the same time as the bloom, I had to work faster. Faster than I was capable of working.
Jasper had offered his gardeners, but as much as I needed the extra hands right now, it felt wrong to have someone else help me when I was so close to having the entire thing completed all by myself.
It was stupid not to take the help, but I had already completed the majority of the hard labor I would have used the gardeners for as it was.
It would most likely take me longer to explain what they needed to do and how carefully they had to do it.
I knew I could do it; I had to. But how was I going to do it and solve the murder of Hester Blackwood at the same time?
“Wow, I can’t believe how different it looks in here,” Jasper said.
I leaped out of my skin as I turned. He stood on the paver walkway near the house entrance, admiring the first section of the finished garden.
Beautiful coleus bunched together in tufts of dark purple, with green ruffled edges whispering around the leaves, mixed in with the completely white monstera hybrids, while giant golden pothos spilled out onto the freshly tidied path.
It was the simplest of beds, more of an edging to the walkway’s entrance, but I had been so excited to plant something that I couldn’t help myself, even though I still had far more to do to most of the other scapes before I would be ready to plant them.
The next week would be spent working on the soil conditions of the other beds after solidifying from Hester’s notebook exactly where tropicals and subtropicals would be best planted to get optimal conditions in the multi-temperate space.
Combing through Hester’s gardening notebook had proved to be absolutely fascinating as far as the conservatory was concerned but failed to give me much more information about her, though I did find her absolute hatred of daisies and roses to be quite comical.
I wish I knew the backstory because, in her obvious love of dark, mysterious, Gothic plants, it was unusual to hate roses, arguably the most stereotypical Gothic flower of them all.
For some reason, though, it didn’t surprise me.
After being in the remnants of her space for so long, I’d started to feel like I knew Hester personally, not just in a ghost form.
It was obvious she did things her own way, not because they were the most popular or beautiful.
I admired that more than I could put into words.
She didn’t do it to please everyone else; she had done it for her. A trait I wished I had more of.
The environmental structures of the conservatory were fascinating.
There were dedicated sections for cacti and succulents; desert plants like saguaro, prickly pear, and barrel cactus; a section for Mediterranean plants like lavender, oleander, and rosemary; a section for Alpine and mountain plants with Astor’s edelweiss and saxifrage, which were not to be outdone by the ornamentals.
Hester had even procured a section of carnivorous plants at one time, and I made sure there was a space in the garden tucked away and protected by large fake boulders and plants, almost as if it were a room all in itself, where the pitcher plants, sundew, and Venus flytraps were kept happy until it was their turn to be planted.
Beyond sorting through the forgotten decay of everything, I had to restore each of the conservatory’s perfect little environments.
Typically, because the various plants required such different conditions, they would be housed in different rooms, but again, Hester had been an original genius and had managed to set up large, visually aesthetic blocks in the giant space that acted as walls, allowing for temperature and humidity customization for each subsection.
It was brilliant, and something I hadn’t seen many botanical gardens try.
My colleagues would be thrilled to see the workings of it all.
The Mediterranean plants enjoyed hot, dry temperatures, whereas the tropical plants thrived in warm, humid environments.
Sowerby had been unstoppable in helping me with the heating and cooling systems of the conservatory, even if he complained the entire time.
It was odd. After a few days of helping me in the garden while Jasper was out of town, Sowerby had grown increasingly irritated and crotchety, even shaking and tearing up, though not in front of me, of course.
Things I could only watch from the corner of my eye for when I would turn and talk to him, his face would turn to annoyed, stiff stone as it always was, as if nothing happened.
Seeing how much distress it was causing him to be with the old memories of Hester and the garden, I insisted he work only on the technical side of the conservatory instead of in the beds with the plants, which seemed to please him, though I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed at the lack of useful help.
I imagine being in here brought back painful memories, and even though I was doing all that I could to bring hope back to the space, it still held her memories.
Besides, it was just as easy for me to do it alone, as his pace was slow and significantly more careful than mine had become, with the corpse flower threatening to bloom.
“So you like the dark plants,” I said to Jasper, a smile lighting up my face.
“So did your mom. I couldn’t believe some of the cool things she had planted here.
It’s like a Gothic gardener’s dream. Almost everything she has in here is on the darker spectrum.
It’s going to be beautiful once it’s all complete.
” We obviously hadn’t been able to procure all of the exact plants that Hester originally had.
When I gave Jasper the list of plants needed, I tried to find substitutes similar in color or impact but less expensive.
Jasper hadn’t even wanted to fix up the garden, and though I was more than certain he had the money and connections to get the rarest specimens available, I didn’t want to push my luck.
Besides, the eleven that had managed to live on in the conservatory were enough to showcase on their own.
It did work out favorably, though, that several of the plants that Hester had loved were no longer considered rare and were quite easy to get.
As always, Jasper’s mood soured at the mention of his mother. That’s right, I was still supposed to pretend she wasn’t dead and haunting me, but that she was still alive, as all three men supposedly believed.
“Maybe she’ll come back and see it,” I said, watching his eyes for signs of deception as carefully as a hawk watches a field mouse.
“I hope she doesn’t. My father has caused enough trouble returning; I don’t need or want her here,” he said as he put his hands in his pockets and walked toward me with his relaxed, confident gait.
“James Bond,” I said, unable to help myself.
“Excuse me?” he said, suddenly matching my grin.
“You’re always in suits. I think James Bond is much more fitting for you than Batman, even if Sowerby is Evil Alfred…friend.” I wiped the beads of sweat off my forehead and removed my gloves as I stood, grateful for the break to stretch my aching back.
A devilish smirk came over his face as his dark brown eyes danced with trouble and amusement.
My insides sparked and vibrated when he looked so playful, especially after just seeing him appear so frigid and distant.
Everyone in the house seemed gloomy and on edge since Darius had returned.
If I had thought the manor had been stuffy and burdened before, it felt doubly so now.
Glad to see my friend back, I waited for what ridiculousness was about to come out of his mouth.
“Would that make you Moneypenny or Pussy Galore, then?” He managed a straight face that absolutely simmered with playful charm. Seeing him smile that way felt like cinder blocks were lifted from my shoulders.
Laughter bubbled up out of me. “Neither. I would want to be Xenia Onatopp from Goldeneye. She was the one who used her strength and seduction to kill, squeezing the men to death with her thighs.” I made a show squatting, which I’d been doing 47,000 times daily while working here in the conservatory.
“I think my thighs might be stronger than hers at this point.” I raised an eyebrow in challenge but was unable to keep a straight face.
It was stupid how candid I could be with him, and I loved it.
His eyes darkened and, as slow as dripping molasses, trailed down my body. I felt the blush creep into my cheeks as they heated. He couldn’t look at me like that. I was far too lonely and delusional for him to look at me like that.
“So, friend—”
“Don’t do that,” he stated, his voice low with command as he took a few steps toward me.
“Do what?” I said, even though I knew what he meant.
The first few times I’d called him a friend, it had been a loud, showy way of making sure he knew that that’s what we were, that he couldn’t get rid of me just because he was scared—because, with real friendship, you don’t always get to pick it.
Sometimes, we find the things and people that we need where they were never supposed to be found. It doesn’t make them any less real.
I realized at that moment how much it would devastate me if he had killed Hester. It would mean that everything between us had been a lie, and it made my anxieties spike. My skin suddenly felt hot and too tight.
Now, I found myself calling him a friend out of frustration.
It would be easier to be friends after I left Blackwood Manor, and that’s how it needed to stay, even if I was having a hard time keeping him in the friend category.
I had never really had a lot of friends, or boyfriends for that matter, but I knew I felt differently about him, even if I shouldn’t.
I had so little experience with men, but I knew the swirling butterflies in my stomach told me this wasn’t friend territory, though I didn’t really know what else to consider him.
He was so close to me now that our chests were almost brushing up against one another as his masculine presence towered over me.
I felt so small and short when he stood this near, and it made my insides tense in a pleasing way.
This was an example of why it was so important that he wasn’t lying to me, that he really wasn’t the man everyone believed him to be.
It was the difference between feeling safe and protected next to his large, strong body and feeling like he would overpower me and hurt me… or worse.
The tension crackled between us as it always did when our bodies got this close. When they were, it was hard to think about anything other than wanting him to touch me—wanting to touch him and trying to fight off wondering what it would feel like, if it would be shocking or comforting.
I thought we could hate each other and the electricity between us would still be there, sparking more.
But that was the real trouble—I didn’t hate him, and he didn’t hate me.
It was like two magnets were given brains and flesh, and even though we were scared and didn’t want to join with the other one, we couldn’t help it, and we couldn’t stop it.
It wasn’t up to us; it was a force beyond nature, something predestined the moment we were put in each other’s presence.
And even if our hearts and our minds couldn’t match up or agree, there was no ignoring the fact that we craved each other more intensely with every interaction.
I turned and continued my work, mostly because I didn’t want him to see my eyes. It was too easy for him to read me. “You were a lot nicer when you were in New York,” I teased, not wanting the lighter conversation to be over yet.
“And you were a lot farther away,” he said.
My stomach tightened. What was that supposed to mean?
“Did you hear back from the lawyers?” I decided to change the subject to something safer. “Have you heard any more from your father? I saw a lot of people carrying things into the new addition. Can I get a tour now that it’s finished?”
“No. It’s a space filled with a bunch of very dangerous, very illegal things that don’t concern you and that you don’t want to get tangled up with, although it does bring up a good point.
Eliza, after you leave Blackwood Manor, things will forever be different for you.
You need to know how to protect yourself.
” He glanced at his watch before pulling his phone from his suit jacket and replacing it after an irritated look.
There was a high-pitched tone that filled the space between us. That was the security ping. I’d been hearing it go off in the distance every time I walked through the main house.
“Quarter after six, I want you to meet me in the shooting range out back. I’m going to teach you how to shoot.”
He turned and left before I could argue.