7. April Showers Bring May Flowers
APRIL SHOWERS brING MAY FLOWERS
“Well, that was…unexpected.”
Sitting at the dressing table, Verity brushed her hair loose for the night. It’d been ruthlessly pinned into coils and braids for the dinner and even now felt as though each strand was being strained and tugged.
Fifty-six. Fifty-seven…
“I mean,” continued Sephi, the mirror reflecting her lounging on the chaise whilst stroking a ginger cat who picked at his paws, “unexpected in a good way.”
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine…
“No one mentioned we were scarlet or scandalous.”
Sixty. Sixty-one.
“My dinner companions were most attentive. Almost too attentive.”
Sixty-two. Sixty-three.
“And I finally understood why you fell in love with him.”
“I did not…” Verity slammed the hairbrush to the dressing table and swivelled on her stool.
Her bedchamber was excessively large – two rooms knocked into one – with three sash windows, a set of French doors and a high ceiling.
On occasion, one had to shout to be heard.
Especially with Sephi. “Well, I did. But I do not need reminding of it. Or that he is so…so noble and handsome and…” She rose to her feet, voice to a crescendo. “And perfect.”
“I didn’t remind you of any of that.” Sephi stroked the cat beneath the chin till he purred in bliss. “And he is most handsome. If not a little stern-eyed and ill-at-ease within company. And he never talks of his battles.”
Flopping on the stool, Verity groaned. “Such silent heroism only serves to make him even more attractive. Juliet Tait was nigh in his lap when blancmange arrived. In fact, she resembled the blancmange, so wobbly was she over him.”
“They found a common interest in how best to press flowers.”
With a grumble, Verity recommenced brushing her hair.
One. Two–
“Has he changed much?”
Verity closed her eyes to envisage the lad of all those years past. Then the man who’d glared at her this very night.
He’d worn a dinner jacket of dark green with an exquisite waistcoat of a similar hue, shades of forest glades. It clung like moss to a stone, tailored to perfection, daring the eye to linger, to trace the curves of the embroidered gold flowers. Each stitch deliberate, each thread a temptation.
Such a magnificent military bearing and handsome visage had stilled Verity’s lips to silence and caused other ladies at the table to flutter their lashes.
“The determination within his eyes is the same, except as a youth it was for grand plant-hunting adventures and…” And for her.
“Now it seems more nuanced and planned. His manner is also more direct and…” She swallowed.
“Dominant. I expect as a result of being in command of men. When young, his hair was forever tousled and long but now it’s short at the back and fashionable.
He’s also much more…muscular than I’d imagined. ”
“Hmm. Although you’ve never said, I suppose you kissed when you were young?”
“I… Well… Sometimes, he would…”
“Yes…” Sephi leaned forward.
“He would place flowers in my hair.”
“Oh.” Sephi pulled a face like a toad. “Nice but…”
“And we’d recite the Latin names of all the plants in the meadow.”
Sephi scrunched her nose.
“Then he would…would kiss the names from my lips.”
“Thank goodness for that. Was it good? My loathsome libertine kissed like a wet mop.”
Verity closed her eyes.
Miles’ kisses had always begun like spring sunshine: warm and gentle.
Before youthful passion had seized them and they would hurtle to summer: scorched and wild and…
But he would always draw away, eyes glazed, and it had felt like autumn arriving too soon before leaving her in the throes of winter.
“It was…nice.”
Sephi hoisted her brow. “If that man merely kisses nice, I’ll eat my latest hat.”
“Oh, it’s all useless anyhow,” groused Verity, reaching for the hairbrush once more.
“It is past and we have to cease such contemplation. According to Mrs Tait, he is hunting a wife and she clearly believes her daughter is perfect. And she is right. Juliet is kind, pretty, has a large dowry and nothing…nothing disreputable in her past.”
“Hmm. Maybe you should tell him.”
“That Juliet is perfect for him?”
“Goosecap.” Sephi shook her head. “Why you…ahem…jilted him.”
Verity briefly closed her eyes. “For what reason, Sephi? To rekindle his affections? Which I doubt would be possible as I hurt him so.” She pulled at the bristles on the brush.
“He’s an earl now and has a duty to seek a debutante with grace, innocence and pots of money, not a spinster artist whose bloom of youth wilted long ago.
One who is so…so troubled. And he still wishes to travel, to hunt exotic new plants in first Portugal and then the Americas or Brazil.
I overheard him tell Juliet that he’s to the wilds of Wales in the New Year for a month, staying at motley inns and even sleeping in his carriage, if he has to.
” A bristle tore loose from the brush, her throat catching.
“Nothing has changed, Sephi. I am no longer the girl he knew.”
“I’m sorry.” A pad of feet before gentle arms enveloped her. “It was thoughtless of me.”
“He told me…” She stared up into Sephi’s kind eyes.
“That night, after I said I was to marry another, he told me I had snapped his heart in two. That he could not stand to look at me. And his expression… Oh, you should have seen it, Sephi, all of my own making. The sudden distaste and hatred he had for a girl swayed by a large botanical garden; it pierced me like a bayonet. And then what does he go and do? Buy a commission in the deuced army. You heard him at dinner. It can only have been my fault that he left. That he gave up his dream of botany.” She allowed her lids to fall closed.
“The least I can do is to leave him alone and let him marry his perfect bride. Juliet said she’d be thrilled to visit Portugal and sip their famed port on the slopes of the River Douro. ”
“Love is the very devil.” Sephi hugged her hard. “We are better off without it. Better off without the heartache.”
Verity drew slightly back. “Cousin, you must not allow that libertine to corrupt your own heart, or let cynicism rule.”
“How can I not?” Lids closed over glittering blue eyes.
“All those words of love he spoke. All those lingering touches and…” She swallowed hard.
“I was distraught when he declared he’d not marry me, in front of everyone, but it wasn’t just that…
He…he laughed at me, Verity. When I told him I loved him so, he laughed.
And it was that laughter which hurt so deep and broke my heart. I fear, irredeemably so.”
“Oh, Sephi… But I believe time can heal, if we can let it.” Yet her own lips trembled.
“A fine muddle of emotions we are. And now we have this dratted fair to attend.”
Verity bit her lip. “We could tender our excuses?”
Yet Sephi shook her head. “I think not. Because tonight, for all its prior apprehension, was a success. You were not troubled in the conservatory, and I was not laughed at. In fact it was me who laughed and conversed and we both survived. And besides, this fair could’ve been worse.”
“How?”
“It could’ve been Astley’s Amphitheatre.”
Mirth and hugs diluted the melancholy and softened the past, like a perpetual river wearing down the sharp stones. Both of them held hurt within but they had also learned to laugh again.
And this Michaelmas Fair would be no different.
“Well, that was…unexpected?”
Sat within his study chair, Miles issued a vague grunt whilst cradling his glass, the evening’s events playing like a revolving set of vignettes within his mind.
“I mean,” continued Alasdair, “not as unexpected as the second act of Mrs Harlow’s Nymphs of Delight theatre show on Princess Street but…we survived.”
Miles kept silent.
Dair did not. “Miss Juliet Tait seemed quite taken by you. As did her mother.”
Sipped his liquor.
“And I finally met Miss Seymour.”
Miles’ head shot up.
Sprawled on the chaise, his cousin had the habitual whisky in hand, cravat abandoned, boots on the silk upholstery.
“Remind me why I tolerate you?”
“No idea.” The fine-cut crystal glass was recklessly wafted. “The rest of the family despise me. Mother bemoans my very existence, Jeremy isn’t allowed any company except Mother, and Father likely turns in his grave whenever my name is mentioned.”
“Alasdair, why did your father–”
“Pretty woman, Miss Seymour,” his cousin prosed on. “Exotic eyes. Most comely proportioned. Silken hair. Nice teeth.”
“A woman is more than just her looks, Dair.” And loath though he was to admit it, Verity was a hell of a lot more than pretty in his view, with hair as black as the tar they’d used on the cannons. Perhaps not the words a poet would use but he was a soldier.
“Pray do tell?”
“Well… If one happened to be talking of Miss Seymour specifically, it would be her skill at botanical art, for example. You should’ve seen her drawing of a spatulate leaf skeleton.”
“Er…”
“She would never miss the vein pattern at a leaf margin.”
“That’s as maybe but–”
“The manner in which she concentrated on a pinnately lobed leaf of the Crataegus monogyna was astounding.”
“Perhaps if I knew–”
“A hawthorn tree. And the way her hand moved as she painted its ribs. I used to sit behind her…” Miles’ lids slipped closed. “Watch her fingers move back and forth. Imagine them…” His eyes snapped open. “Anyhow, she–”
“No, no. Glad to know it also had an, ahem, earthiness to it. I was all a-fret. But you never told me how you first met. Or, in fact, how it all ended.”
“I don’t recall. We were both very young.”
Dair snorted. “Dish it up, Miles. There’s plenty of whisky left.”
There won’t be at this rate.
“There’s naught to tell.”
“Miles…”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
Confirmed by a shake of head.