Charlotte Ellis
I am in the Petals and Promises studio at six in the morning conditioning stems for the gala's final delivery when my phone rings from a number I do not recognise.
I almost let it go to voicemail. My hands are wet, there is green stem water up to my elbows, and I have approximately four hundred roses to process before noon. But something about the timing makes me reach for it anyway.
"Miss Ellis." The voice is warm. Measured. Familiar in a way that makes my stomach tighten before my brain catches up. "I hope I'm not disturbing you."
Sebastian Ashford.
I set the rose down carefully. "It's six in the morning."
"Early risers, both of us." There is a smile in his voice, the kind that expects to be believed. "I wanted to call as a courtesy. I thought you should know the full context of the commission you've taken on."
I dry my hands on my apron without rushing. "I appreciate that, but I'm not sure what context would change the fact that I have a signed contract and a delivery deadline."
"Of course." He pauses, and I can almost hear him recalibrating. "It's only that there's a legal question about the estate. One that may affect who actually has authority to commission anything on the property."
My chest tightens. The Hawkins and Carr letterhead I saw in Alexander's study. The envelope that made him go still in the ballroom.
"The contract is with Alexander Ashford," I say. "Earl of Bodington. Unless you're telling me he isn't."
"Not yet." Another pause. "But these things can be complicated. Old estates. Old families. Old paperwork that wasn't filed correctly. I simply thought you deserved to know what you might be walking into."
I pick up my rose again. Strip the thorns with more force than necessary. "That's very thoughtful of you. I'll keep it in mind."
"Charlotte." His voice warms further. "I'm not trying to alarm you. I'm trying to help. My brother can be rather selective about what he shares. I imagine there are things he hasn't told you."
"I imagine there are things most people don't tell their florists."
He laughs. It is a good laugh. The kind of laugh designed to make you feel clever for prompting it.
"You're right, of course. Forgive me for overstepping." He does not sound like someone asking forgiveness. "If you ever want the fuller picture, you have my number."
"I do." I do not add that I found his card in my kit bag, where he put it without permission. "Thank you for your concern, Mr Ashford."
"Sebastian, please."
"Thank you for your concern."
I hang up before he can say the next thing he has clearly prepared.
My hands are shaking. Not with fear. With something sharper. I set the phone face down on the workbench and look at my roses, the neat rows of blooms I have been sorting for the past hour, and I think about Sebastian's voice on the line.
He is trying to find out how much Alexander has told you.
Jess's words from the drive back to Oxford. I had not wanted to believe them then. I believe them now.
The bell over the studio door chimes at seven and Jess appears with two coffees and her clipboard already in hand. She takes one look at my face and extends the larger cup without speaking.
Three full minutes pass. She unpacks her bag. Checks the temperature in the cooler. Adjusts a bucket of ranunculus that does not need adjusting.
Then: "What happened?"
"Sebastian Ashford called."
Her head comes up. "The brother."
"He wanted to explain the full context of my commission." I hear the flatness in my own voice. "Something about a legal question. Whether Alexander has the authority to commission work on the estate."
Jess puts her clipboard down and gives me her full attention. The kind of attention that means she is not going to let me deflect.
"He's trying to get to Alexander through you."
"I know."
"He called you at six in the morning to make sure you'd be alone when he said it."
I had not thought of that. But she is right. Jess is always right about people, which is why I hired her and why I trust her and why her next words land harder than they should.
"He's trying to find out how much Alexander has told you," she says again. "Which means Alexander hasn't told you everything."
I think about the ballroom. The envelope that made Alexander's face go still. The way he asked me to stay, not because he wanted company but because he needed it. The eucalyptus stem I handed him because he looked like a man who needed something to hold.
I think about the service corridor, his arm brushing my shoulder as he opened the door, his quiet thank you for staying.
I think about the way he has not called me since I left Ashford House with Sebastian's business card hidden in my glove compartment.
"No," I say. "He hasn't."
The final delivery takes most of the morning. I load the van myself while Jess processes the invoices and handles two enquiries about wedding consultations. By eleven I am on the M40 toward London with the radio off and my thoughts circling.
Sebastian's voice. Alexander's silence. The gap between what I have been told and what I suspect.
The thing is, I understand selective truth. I understand protecting yourself by controlling information. I have been doing it my whole life, building a business from nothing, learning not to rely on anyone, keeping my own counsel because that was safer than trusting people who might disappoint me.
What I do not understand is why it bothers me so much that Alexander has done the same thing.
Ashford House is quieter when I arrive. Mrs Hartley meets me at the service entrance and directs me toward the east corridor, which has been cleared exactly as Alexander promised.
I am moving the larger arrangements through the narrow passage, my shoulders brushing the oil paintings I still do not look at properly, when I hear footsteps behind me.
I know it is him before I turn. My body has developed an inconvenient habit of tracking his presence like a compass finding north.
Alexander takes the other end of the arrangement I am carrying without being asked. We move in tandem through the corridor, past the morning room, past the study with its closed door, and into the ballroom where the suspended arch is finally taking its complete shape.
"You were right about the anemone," he says when we set the arrangement down.
I look at the arch. The white flowers catching the chandelier light exactly as I calculated. The curve of it, graceful and deliberate, like something that has always been there.
"I usually am."
We stand side by side for a moment, looking at what I have built in his house. The silence between us is not uncomfortable, but it is not easy either. There is something in it now. A weight.
"Sebastian called me this morning," I say.
Alexander goes still in the way I have learned to recognise. The complete stillness that means something significant is happening underneath.
"What did he say?"
"That there's a legal question about the estate. That it might affect who has authority to commission work here." I turn to look at him. "That you can be rather selective about what you share."
His jaw tightens. A muscle moves in his cheek. He does not look away from me, which I count as something.
"He's right."
"I know he's right." I keep my voice level. "What I don't know is whether you were planning to tell me yourself, or whether you were going to let me walk into whatever this is without warning."
"I was going to tell you."
"When?"
"When I had something useful to say instead of just a problem I don't know how to solve yet."
I want to be angry. The situation calls for anger. But what rises in me instead is something more complicated, because I recognise that answer. I have given that answer. I have been that person, holding information close because sharing it before I had a solution felt like admitting weakness.
"That's not how this works," I say.
"I know."
"If I'm going to be in the middle of your family's business, I need to know what I'm in the middle of."
"You're not in the middle of anything." His voice is quiet. "That's what I was trying to prevent."
"By not telling me."
"By managing the situation before it affected you."
I want to laugh. I want to reach out and shake him. I want to close the distance between us and make him look at me, really look at me, instead of watching from whatever careful distance he has been maintaining.
Instead I pick up my empty transport crate and walk it toward the door. "I'm going to get the rest of the deliveries. Then we're going to talk. Actually talk. And you're going to tell me what Sebastian meant when he said your authority over this estate might be in question."
Alexander follows me down the corridor without speaking. He takes the crate from my hands when we reach the van and carries it himself, then reaches for the next arrangement without waiting to be asked.
We work in silence through three more trips.
The physical labour is almost welcome, the rhythm of lifting and carrying, the focus required to navigate narrow doorways without damaging the blooms. By the time everything is placed I am sweating through my shirt and Alexander has removed his jacket, and the distance between us feels both larger and smaller than it did an hour ago.
He walks me to the service entrance the way he always does. But when I turn to leave he is standing too close, and neither of us moves.
"Charlotte."
I wait.
"I'm grateful for what you've done here.
For the gala, for the flowers. For staying when I asked you to stay.
" He pauses. The muscle in his jaw moves again.
"I am also aware that I've handled this badly.
That I've been trying to protect you from something without asking whether you wanted protection. "
"I don't."
"I know." He almost smiles. "You made that clear the first time we met, when you told me I was wrong about the ranunculus and then proved it."
I think about that afternoon in the library. The way he sat across from me with his book face down, actually listening instead of performing. The way he challenged my choices and then accepted my corrections with something that might have been respect.
"Tell me about the estate," I say. "Tell me what Sebastian is doing. Tell me why you look like someone is trying to take something from you every time his name comes up."
Alexander is quiet for a long moment. Then he nods once, as if he has made a decision.
"Not here. Not in the corridor." He opens the van door for me the way he always does, his hand resting briefly on the frame. "Come back tomorrow. I'll tell you everything."
"Why not now?"
"Because I need to talk to my solicitor first. And because..." He stops. Starts again. "Because I want to tell you the truth, not the version I've been telling myself."
I get into the van. My hands are on the wheel before I let myself look back at him, standing in the doorway with his sleeves rolled up and his jacket over his arm and something in his expression that I cannot quite read.
"Tomorrow," I say.
"Tomorrow."
I pull out of the courtyard and onto the street, and I do not check my mirror to see if he watches me go. But I know he does. I can feel it the whole way down the road.
When I get back to the studio there is a text from an unknown number waiting on my phone. A photograph attached.
Alexander outside what looks like a solicitor's office, shaking hands with a man in a suit. The caption reads: Ask him who Fairfax Holdings is.
I stare at it long enough that Jess comes to find me, and when she asks what is wrong I turn the screen toward her without speaking.
She reads the caption. Looks at the photograph. Looks at me.
"Sebastian?"
"Who else."
She is quiet for a moment. Then: "Are you going to ask him?"
I think about Alexander in the doorway. The way he said I want to tell you the truth. The way his hand rested on the van door like he was holding himself back from reaching for me instead.
"Yes," I say. "Tomorrow."