“Thank you,” she finally said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
• VENETIA •
FRIDAY, 8 MARCH 1907
Highbury House
Rain overnight; overcast
This morning, I borrowed a horse from Mr. Melcourt’s stables and rode to Wilmcote after overseeing the final marking of the lime walk. The trees were delivered yesterday, and I’ve already written to Adam to ask him how he had possibly found thirty-six four-year-old limes in such short order. He will only tease me and remind me that he can work his own magic with paper and a pen.
I will admit that I am finding my employers as challenging as much of their ilk, but not so much that I cannot abide them. I dine with the Melcourts every night unless I beg off with a headache. However, Mrs. Melcourt remains high-handed. Just two days ago, she spent both the soup and fish courses espousing her brother’s virtues.
“Mostly he is a collector, but he sometimes sells plants to a very select group of gardeners, such as Mr. Johnston,” she told me, the diamonds on her fingers glinting in the candlelight as she dipped her silver spoon into broth. “Do you know Mr. Johnston?”
“I don’t have that pleasure,” I said.
“He is a wealthy American who just purchased a house near Chipping Campden, although the rumor is his mother gave him the funds. I can’t imagine how Matthew met him.”
“Has Mr. Goddard ever considered going into the horticultural business?” I asked.
Mrs. Melcourt looked up sharply. “My brother is a gentleman, Miss Smith. He has no interest in trade.”
She did not, I noted, look to her husband, whose fortune had been built on the back of his father’s business acumen that was so shrewd there is a bar of Melcourts Complexion Clearing Soap in my bath back in Wimbledon.
I spent most of my ride to Mr. Goddard’s home this morning thinking about how the younger Mr. Melcourt and his wife seemed intent on washing the newness from their money. I was so engrossed I nearly missed the sign for Wisteria Farm. However, when I looked through the gate, there could be no mistaking I had arrived: a huge wisteria clambered over the front of a two-story farmhouse, ready to explode into leaf and bloom.
“Miss Smith!”
I twisted in the saddle to see Mr. Goddard emerge from a gap in the hedgerow some hundred yards away.
“The entrance to the nursery is just a little further down the road. Shall we walk?”
I let him hold my horse’s reins so I could slide down. We walked the animal to a wide wooden gate that led into a yard lined on two sides with greenhouses, with a barn squared off to the lane. Everywhere I looked were roses. Climbing up the wall around the yard, their bare stems waiting for the spring. In terra-cotta pots large enough to hold three plants at a time. In a border leading to another garden. In the greenhouses, where long rows of plants sported neatly wrapped grafting joins.
“Welcome to my laboratory,” he said with a smile. “It’s a shame it isn’t later in the year so you could see the roses in bloom,” he said.
“The yard alone must be spectacular in June.”
“It is, if I might be so bold. Still, I think there’s something beautiful about a garden in winter,” he said.
“Everything is stripped back and exposed. You can see the structure of the garden,” she said.
“Precisely. Although that also means there’s little to hide a garden’s flaws.”
“How did you come to grow roses?” I asked as we walked into one of the greenhouses, a rush of seductive warmth washing over me.
He passed a hand along the back of his neck and looked around him at the tables filled with lines of plants in various stages of growth. “Like many young men, I had something of a feckless youth. My mother and father always hoped I would amount to something, but I seemed determined to prove that aspiration wrong. I intentionally did little at Cambridge except for irritate my tutors. And one night I was caught in a rather embarrassing state,” he said.
“How embarrassing?” I asked.
“Enough that I’m not certain my sister would approve of my speaking to a young lady about it.”
I raised a brow. “I’m a confirmed spinster of thirty-five, Mr. Goddard.”
“Surely you’re not—That is to say, you don’t look—”
I put the poor man out of his misery with a smile. “Thank you, but I’m quite happy with my age. It is rather liberating. For instance, today I was able to borrow a horse from your brother-in-law and ride it several villages over to visit a gentleman to discuss roses. No blushing debutante could do the same.”
He nodded and then stopped in front of a row of pots to check the place where he’d grafted a scion stem to a rootstock. “This is ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’. Do you know it?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a bourbon rose that throws off exuberant flowers in blushing white that almost seem to overwhelm the bush that they grow on, and the scent… it’s sweeter than perfume.”
“Sweet enough to be a welcome accompaniment as a group of ladies take tea outdoors together?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” he said with a smile before moving to the table behind us. “Or maybe you’d like a shot of crimson for dramatic effect. ‘Madame Isaac Pereire’ could be just what you need.”
I thought of the lovers’ garden I had planned to create directly to the west of the tea garden. I wanted to shock a visitor walking from the calming, feminine plantings of pale purple heliotrope, light pink echinacea, and creamy peonies into a room almost obscene with color. Rich red roses, deep purple salvia, and the red flowering spikes of persicaria. Banana plants, Japanese maples, dahlias, tulips—I wanted it to make people gasp.
“Maybe it will be easier to start with what I need,” I said, drawing out my notebook from my skirt pocket. It fell open to a bird’s-eye view of the entire garden.
“And what would that be?” he asked, turning the notebook so that he could get a better look. The very edge of his littlest finger brushed the side of my hand. Heat flushed my cheeks, and I cleared my throat.
“I need jewel tones for the lovers’ garden, the palest pinks for the children’s and tea gardens, and pure white for the bridal garden.”
He tapped the page where I’d written “Poet’s Garden” and said, “A clever homage to my brother-in-law’s hobby. I think you’ll find Arthur is always most amenable when he believes the person he’s speaking to fully appreciates his place in the world.”
“Are you not fond of Mr. Melcourt?”
Mr. Goddard laughed. “Quite the contrary, I think he’s the perfect match for my sister. Helen can be one of the most stubborn, determined women I’ve ever met. She has certain ideas of how the world should be, and she finds it very irritating when all of us don’t fall neatly into line.”
“She seems to expect great things from all those around her,” I admitted.
“I will confess that it becomes tiresome sometimes. I’m rather set in my bachelor ways, so I sometimes chaff when I’m summoned to Highbury House for long dinners. I dare say you’ll have seen it for yourself: never a quiet night of cold meats and simple wine at my sister’s table.”