Chapter Six
They approached Starling’s Rest from the rear and side.
Seph thought that was appropriate. Rhys Caradoc was always coming at things sideways, wasn’t he?
They climbed the hill past the kennels and stables, and around the path that led to the greenhouse. To her surprise, she saw that a second greenhouse had been erected, a smaller one, with two little coal stoves on the outside, apparently piping warmth into the interior.
“That’s new,” she said, pointing, just as Ruby Little and Errol Cagney emerged from the new structure, laughing together and in step.
“No, it isn’t,” Rhys said, looking at his foster siblings instead of the building. “They’ve always been like that.”
“No, I mean …” she said, trailing off with a wincing pause as both Starling wards caught sight of her.
Errol, the Irish lad who’d lived in the stables for as long as Seph could remember, blinked several times, like he was trying to clear away a hallucination, while Ruby immediately grinned and called, “Foul play?!”
“Probably,” Rhys called back, stomping up the remainder of the stone steps to meet them. “Oh, you’re both well warm. I ought to sleep in there with the vanilla flowers.”
“You’ll mess up the temperature and kill them all,” Errol replied flatly. “Miss Boswell. Tráthnóna maith.”
“Good evening to you too, Mr. Cagney,” she said with a little smile. “‘Vanilla flowers’?”
“Indeed, indeed,” Ruby put in, crossing her arms. “For my perfumes. Though Errol here just added a bunch of new things from the Americas that I suspect will take up real estate.”
“Oh?” she said. “What things?”
Errol suddenly brightened, his blue eyes widening as he looked from Ruby to Seph and back again. “Oh, Miss Boswell, you must come back once they finish waking up,” he said quickly. “You’ll be wanting samples for your shop. The Carolinas grow something extraordinary. It is a plant with a mouth.”
“‘A mouth’?” she repeated.
“‘A mouth’?!” Rhys echoed, sounding disgusted.
Errol nodded excitedly. “They eat insects! Flies and mosquitoes and the like! I’m not supposed to be growing them in winter, but I couldn’t wait.”
“That sounds …” Seph said, tilting her head to the side as she tried to picture it.
“Repulsive?” Ruby suggested.
“Like a trick,” Rhys provided, smirking at her as he watched her expression change into something like agreement. “We’ll both want to see that, if it ever happens, Errol.”
“Excellent,” the other man said. “I’m always trying to get people interested. Shall we go inside? It’s freezing.”
Seph was frowning, trying to picture a toothy plant with a grin and a tongue. “You bought them as seeds?” she asked. “How long will it take?”
“Not seeds,” Errol said to her, conspiratorial and energetic. “Dormant rhizomes, stored horizontally and kept cold on transport. They don’t look like much now, but soon they’ll stir, given the heat in the hothouse. Have you ever seen a hothouse, Miss Boswell? Ours is new.”
“All right,” said Rhys, frowning. “She’s not here for a lecture.”
“No?” Ruby said, taking Rhys’s arm and leaning against him. “Why is she here, oh, brother mine?”
“He’s not your brother,” Errol snapped with a little frown.
“You’re not,” Ruby corrected, squeezing Rhys, who grinned like a smug little boy, closer. “But Rhys is. Just ask him.”
“It’s true,” Rhys put in. “And you’re all the poorer for it, Cagney.”
Errol mumbled something under his breath, but Seph could not quite make it out. She suspected she knew exactly why he didn’t want to be Ruby Little’s brother, though.
It had been an open suspicion since they had all been very young, even if Errol and Ruby themselves were none the wiser.
“We’ve grown the most spectacular turnip,” Ruby was saying behind them. “Errol is going to carve it up for All Hallows’.”
“You are?” Seph said, surprised yet again. “Stingy Jack? Did the baroness allow such heresy here?”
“Willa loved heresy,” Ruby said, which got her shushed by both of the men.
“She liked folklore,” Rhys corrected. “She was a godly woman.”
“She was a good woman,” Errol corrected with half a smile. “I don’t know about godly. But yes, she always encouraged us to embrace all the odd, little nooks and crannies of our histories. Jack o’ the Lantern was one of our favorites.”
“For most of us,” Ruby corrected. “Malcolm doesn’t like it.”
“Malcolm is easy to scare,” Rhys replied. “Remember the banshee?”
Errol sighed.
“What banshee?” Ruby asked, echoing Seph’s thought exactly.
“It wasn’t a banshee,” Errol told them, opening the side door to the Rest and ushering them all inside.
“Not a believer, Mr. Cagney?” Seph asked, curious despite herself.
“It’s not that,” Rhys told her with a snicker.
“It wasn’t a banshee,” Errol said again, knocking the door shut. “It was a boggart.”
Seph was not certain how to respond to that. So, she simply said, “Oh.”
“Go wait in the parlor,” Rhys told her. “Ruby, will you take her to the parlor? I need to get something from my room. Where is Hattie?”
Ruby scoffed. “When did I become your lady’s maid?”
“Hattie’s probably in the dining room,” Errol said gently, placing a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “I’ll take Miss Boswell to the parlor. Might I get you some tea to warm up while you wait for … well, for whatever it is Rhys is doing?”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Cagney,” Seph said, tossing a little smile at Rhys’s affronted expression. “How lovely it is to encounter an actual gentleman.”
She hadn’t been to this house since the baron and baroness’s wedding some four months prior, and very much enjoyed this peek behind the curtain into the more private halls in its belly. She had always loved Starling’s Rest, gray and glinting on its green hill.
Every room of it she’d gotten to see had lived up to her fantasies of what it must have been like on the inside.
Willa Selwyn had decorated in bold colors and flowing patterns, and every trinket on the walls was fascinating enough to be a centerpiece in her shop. Once she’d been deposited in the parlor, there was so much to busy her mind with that she could have been content for hours.
The upholstery on the armchairs featured long-legged ibis birds in varying powdery shades. Their knees and the tips of their wings glinted silver against the fire in the hearth, rimmed with what she suspected was real metallic thread.
On the little table between the chaise and the sofa was a book of fabric samples, likely left there by Monica Thresher, the ward who had become a modiste. Seph was tempted to rifle through it but knew that might be impolite.
Instead, she drifted toward the hearth, where several little figurines were placed between fat, ivory candles and a hand-drawn vellum card that sat in the center, propped against the bricks.
She picked up the card and considered the charcoal sketch of the shore and the shingles of the Brighton beach.
It was a very clear impression, even in broad and undetailed strokes.
Brighton, it read.
Home, she thought.
She sighed, placing it back on the mantel.
It was that kind of thinking that had pushed her family away, after all.
“Welcome, Seph,” came a warm and soft feminine voice, bringing her attention back around to the arch leading into the parlor.
The Baroness Selwyn, once little Miss Hattie French, was smiling in the frame, carrying a tray with teacups and biscuits.
“Hattie,” said Seph, smiling. “Did Errol give you his errand?”
“He gives me whatever I request,” she answered with a thoughtful, little gaze to the side. “Yes, he always has. He’s a good man, our Errol.”
Seph gave a soft chuckle and moved to take the tray from the other woman, whose pregnant belly had been partially supporting the thing.
It wasn’t what she’d meant at all in her comment about Errol, but Hattie had always been a little odd that way. She had always deciphered languages that weren’t primed for her ear. It was her talent.
Behind the baroness, the silhouette of a compact, bouncing pig bounced down the hallway, trotting off to some destination in the house with purpose.
Seph did not comment upon it. An odd choice of pet, yes, but these were odd people. Everyone knew that.
“Will you sit with me?” Seph asked, setting the tray next to the fabric book and taking a seat on the chaise. “I was hoping you would be here. Rhys and I have something to show you.”
“Of course,” Hattie answered. “That is why there are three cups, isn’t it? Did you bring cashews? Or the citrus drops?”
Seph paused, cursing herself for not doing exactly that. “I forgot,” she said, frowning. “But I will set some aside for you the instant I get back to the shop.”
“I’ll give you money before you go,” Hattie said, waving away Seph’s immediate argument against it. “Foreign things are expensive. I should know.”
Rhys reappeared then, popping into view so suddenly, it appeared that he had sprouted from the Ottoman carpet in the hall. “Hattie!” he cried, like he hadn’t seen her in years. “You’re here!”
“I am,” she agreed mildly, pouring her tea. “But no cashews.”
“No?” he said, as though this were a normal declaration. “Which are those, then? The little candies? Or the nuts?”
“They are not nuts,” Seph said immediately. “They are seeds.”
“Are they, indeed?” Hattie said, clasping her hands together under her chin. “From a flower? Or a fruit?”
“A fruit,” Seph told her. “But the fruit doesn’t export. Too delicate. Drives me crazy knowing I can’t taste one.”
“If they are seeds,” Hattie said thoughtfully, “perhaps Errol can grow one. He grew a lemon tree in my bedroom, you know.”
“They’re cooked first, I’m afraid,” Seph said with a little frown. “Roasted. That’s why they’re so shiny. I think they’re poisonous if the coating isn’t burned off.”
“Heat kills the poison, does it?” Rhys said smugly, like he’d just proven some unspoken point to himself. “Did you show her the invitation?”
“Not yet,” Seph replied, patting her sides until she felt the crinkle of paper against her ribs, reminding herself which pocket it was in. “We got an odd missive, Lady Selwyn. We were hoping you could help us decipher a part of it.”