Chapter 18
“Flower witch?” Mr. Grimm mouthed silently, turning to Luna in confusion.
“Oh!” Luna plunked the kettle back down on the nook stove, remembering suddenly the young lady from yesterday. She’d wondered if that accidental flash of her sorcerer’s mark would come back to bite her. A stone of dread dropped in her chest. She gripped the counter’s edge for support.
Mr. Grimm, noticing her distress, made a soothing motion with one hand. “Let me handle this,” he said. Dropping his scoop and leaving the Mama Morgana’s where it sat, he stepped to the door and said in his poshest voice, “Your pardon, madame. We open at nine o’clock.”
“You will open to me at once!” the woman on the other side declared.
“And who are you exactly, madame?”
“I am the Countess Claudine d’Ackerley. I attended the Duchess of Kinsley’s assembly last evening and bore witness to the spectacle of Miss Eugenia Lambert. I will speak to the flower witch immediately.”
Luna shook her head in response to Mr. Grimm’s curious look.
She’d never heard the name Eugenia Lambert.
It may or may not belong to the young woman to whom she’d sold the lisianthus.
Summoning her courage, she crept out from behind the counter and approached the door, calling out in a timid voice, “Um, may I ask . . . who gave you the name of this shop?”
“My good woman, Phillips, spoke with Miss Lambert’s maid. It was she who revealed the establishment from whence Miss Lambert purchased her enchanted corsage.”
Mr. Grimm caught Luna’s eye once more. “Enchanted corsage?” he whispered.
Luna shrugged. “I’m sorry,” she called in answer, “no enchanted blooms were sold from The Arcane Bouquet. Your information is incorrect.”
A moment of stunned silence followed.
Then, to Luna’s great dismay, a sudden sob exploded on the far side of the door. “Then how will I ever manage to get Lord Bruxley to say boo to me?”
It was so unexpected, such an abrupt letting down of the dignity hitherto displayed, it wrung Luna’s heart.
She looked at Mr. Grimm, who stared back at her, his expression one of mounting horror as the sobs on his doorstep intensified.
Luna reached for the doorknob, but Mr. Grimm’s hand came down on her wrist. “Wait,” he cautioned.
Luna flicked her eyes to meet his. “We can’t very well leave her out there.”
He looked unconvinced. But when Luna tugged against his grasp, he let her go.
She turned the bolt, opened the door, and found herself facing an enormously impressive personage.
A woman, no longer young but remarkably stately, clad in a tremendous amount of purple and green plaid, all expensively cut in the most modish fashion, complete with militant-grade shoulder pads.
Not the sort of person one would expect to stand in shop doorways sobbing her heart out over someone named Lord Bruxley.
“Oh, quick, do come in!” Luna cried, ushering the woman inside, pleased to note that she was not shadowed by a maid as Miss Eugenia had been yesterday.
Somehow, Luna felt it imperative that no one see the Countess d’Ackerley at such a disadvantage.
It wouldn’t bode well for the future of The Arcane Bouquet.
“Please, lady countess,” she said, uncertain of the correct form of address for a person of such eminence, “don’t distress yourself!
Come, tell me what is the matter. Mr. Grimm! ”
Her employer stared at her over the lady’s shoulder pads, all white-ringed eyes and shock.
“Put the kettle on right away, if you please!”
“Erm—why—yes. Yes, of course.” Taking care to lock the door behind him, Mr. Grimm darted back to the nook, fetched the kettle, and rushed to fill it at the trimming sink, all while Luna ushered the countess back behind the counter and into the cane chair, where her sorrows might be hidden behind the privacy curtain.
“There, there, lady countess,” Luna said, patting the woman’s shoulder pad, a gesture she suspected was probably futile. “Don’t take on so! Do tell me what the trouble is, there’s a dear.”
“I have told you!” the countess brayed with great elegance, a feat which could only be accomplished by the very cream of society.
“I saw it all take place before my very eyes only last night! Miss Eugenia Lambert, a consummate wallflower, became, most unexpectedly, the object of keen admiration from numerous masculine parties at the Duchess of Kinsley’s.
They say the Duke of Woolfwood called on her father’s house later that very night to ask for her hand in marriage!
She—who has never danced more than three dances at any given ball, even the year of her debut! ”
This barrage of information flew at Luna at such a bewildering rate, she struggled to grasp what she could from it.
“I’m . . . terribly sorry?” she ventured.
Truth be told, she was glad to hear the mouse-ish young woman to whom she’d sold the lisianthus had enjoyed something of a fairy tale moment.
It was Luna’s staunch belief that every girl deserved one now and then.
“Her maid,” the Countess d’Ackerley continued, “told my good woman that it was all due to the flowers Miss Lambert bought from this very establishment. She said she witnessed the exchange herself—how the flower witch guided her mistress to the correct choice of bouquet, promised their attractive influence, and even flashed an eldritch symbol on her wrist as proof of her powers.”
“Oh!” Luna winced. How easily the truth had become conflated. “Well, you see, it wasn’t really—”
“Meanwhile, I can’t convince Lord Bruxley to offer me more than a tip of his hat on Sundays, much less settle down and propose as everyone knows he ought!”
“Everyone?” Luna echoed. “Ought?”
“Of course! He’s the only man in the world whom I could ever love, for he’s the only man in Ballycastle with a proper seat.”
Luna blinked, uncertain what she was supposed to make of this information.
“Lord Longshanks claims his is the best seat in the Wilkeringson’s Equine Club, but everyone knows that’s pure braggadocio.
Whereas Lord Bruxley sits that gray hunter of his like a gods-born incarnate, and when he flies over the bullfinch at Clapsaddle, why!
My heart skips a beat.” She pressed a large-knuckled hand against her double-breasted bosom, approximating a heave that would satisfy even Auntie Arabella.
“No other man in Ballycastle truly understands horseflesh.”
While Luna struggled to comprehend how such knowledge might form the basis of a true and lasting affection, she was not, admittedly, an equestrian. “My lady countess,” she said, soothingly, “I’m sorry to hear of your troubles. But unfortunately—”
A renewed sob of despair broke off whatever she might have said, accompanied by the sudden whistle of the kettle.
Glad for a distraction, Luna leapt up to fetch the kettle from the stove and darted back to the kitchen, where Mr. Grimm had taken shelter.
He stood rather awkwardly behind the work table, as though ready to duck.
“Quick!” Luna said at sight of him. “Tea!”
He startled and reached for the box of chamomile-lavender.
“No!” Luna cried, holding up a staying hand. “You can’t serve chamomile to a bruised heart. Give me the orange llarmi. Hurry!”
Mr. Grimm obliged, and Luna hastily poured a measure of dark leaves into the new rose-and-violet pot, followed by steaming water from the kettle. “Bring the teacups and milk as soon as you can,” she said urgently as she settled the lid on the pot. “And where is that tea cozy?”
He produced it from a drawer, and Luna was pleased to discover that it fit quite snugly over the round little pot. She met her employer’s gaze and said, “Chin up, Mr. Grimm. And if you’ve a spare cube of sugar anywhere in your pantry, best fetch it posthaste! The situation is, I fear, rather dire.”
“Really?”
“No.” Luna laughed outright at his panic-stricken face. “Heartache is a trial, to be sure, but it’s generally soothe-able. Heartbreak is a different story, but I trust that’s not the situation here. Still, a little sugar would go a long way.”
With that, she returned to the counter nook, where Countess d’Ackerley still sobbed into a monogrammed handkerchief. Luna set the cozied teapot on the counter to steep, making mental note of the time on the clock, then returned to the lady, kneeling in front of her.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
And so the countess did. Spilling out the story of her unrequited pining, which had been the thorn in her gentrified flesh since her own debutant season, six years past. Oh, she’d had offers aplenty, of course!
But how could she settle for a man who thought good riding meant a meandering plod around Bally Park, when a horseman like Lord Bruxley lived and breathed?
Luna listened to all with great attention.
Eventually, Mr. Grimm crept from the kitchen, depositing teacups, milk, and—bless him—a small sugar bowl, along with the newly-acquired silver spoons.
Luna prepared the tea with quick and practiced care, finally pressing a cup into the countess’s trembling fingers.
“You know, lady countess,” she said gently as Countess d’Ackerley raised the cup to her lips, “even if I could give you a flower to attract Lord Bruxley’s attention—which, I assure you, I cannot—you would be left to wonder to the end of your days whether he liked you or was simply under the influence of enchantment. ”
Countess d’Ackerley’s prominent (and rather red) nose twitched several times over the brim of her cup before she took a loud gulp. Then she set the cup back in its saucer, a considering line formed between her well-bred brows.
“But,” Luna continued, “if it’s meant to be between you and Lord Bruxley, then charmed flowers won’t make a lick of difference.”
The lady took another fortifying sip before speaking. “But what if it’s not meant to be?”