She only hoped they hadn’t arrived too late.
A month ago she would have wasted no time removing the lower leaves from the branches and transplanting them to pots in the greenhouse to take root. Now that work would have to wait. She wrapped the cuttings in damp cloth and placed them in a shaft of sunlight for safekeeping. She had more pressing matters to attend to.
A life needed saving. Her own.
She returned her attention to her desk, where her fat, soil-stained ledger noted in row after odious row the impossible sums she needed to save her nursery and the improbable amount of time she had to find them.
Two weeks: the span of time her fate had been reduced to. All her dreams shrunk down into what she could cart three miles down a country road between now and the first of August.
She rubbed her eyes. No matter how she rearranged the numbers, they didn’t add up. The task before her required at least one of two things: labor or capital. But even if she somehow found the latter, the inquiries she’d made to hire temporary laborers had all come back with the same maddening answer: unavailable, due to the renovations at Westhaven. Every able-bodied soul in Grove Vale, if not the entirety of Wiltshire, had been hired away by the Duke of Westmead.
If extra men could not be hired, the nursery could not be moved, and her entire future would be at the mercy of—Stop, she commanded herself. If she let her thoughts wander in that direction, her mind would crater down a whirlpool of increasingly disastrous scenarios. She needed to focus on the tasks at hand. Her only possible salvation was in working quickly.
“Poppy.”
She whirled around. A broad-shouldered man was leaning against her workshop door, lounging against the frame with such a sense of ownership you’d have thought he had built the place himself.
“Tom!” she yelped, clutching her heart like the old crone she was no doubt fated to become. Tom Raridan’s ability to come and go undetected was his greatest talent. That he had been pulling this trick since they were children did little to lessen its ability to startle her.
“Poppy,” he said, running his eyes over her in that way that made her feel too visible for comfort. Never a diminutive man, he had grown broader in the two years he’d spent in town. Away from the summer sun of Wiltshire, his hair was darker—less the flaming shade of carrot from his boyhood, tending now toward auburn. But his smile was the same as it had been when she’d last seen him. A touch too familiar.
“I came as soon as I heard about your uncle,” he said. “You should have written to me. To think I had to hear it in the post from Mother.”
Damnation. He was right. She’d been so plunged into panic by her uncle’s sudden passing, and the chaos it had made of her life, that she’d given inadequate due to the niceties of mourning. Letters had not been sent. Customs had not been properly observed. Her uncle had been fond of Tom, and the kindly old man deserved better.
“I’m sorry, Tom. I’m afraid I’ve been preoccupied. Uncle Charles’s heir is arriving in a fortnight to take possession of Bantham Park. I’ve been in a rush to … arrange my effects.”
“A fortnight?” He whistled at the shelves of plants and cuttings all around them, the walls lined from floor to ceiling with tools and pots and sacks of seed and moss. “What are you going to do with all this?”
“My uncle left me the cottage at Greenwoods—the only part of his holdings that wasn’t entailed. I intend to move the nursery there.”
“Move an entire nursery? How do you expect to do that?”
She sighed. “With a great deal of effort.”
Tom shook his head. “You always did love an impossible task. Never the easy way for our Poppy.”
She sighed again. He was not wrong, but she had grown weary of his proclivity for commenting on matters that were none of his affair.
Not that it was only Tom who commented. She had made quite a reputation out of being impossible, though not because she enjoyed it. It was only that the so-called easy way rarely coincided with her getting what she wanted. The world was not built to suit ambitious spinsters. One had to be a rather demanding and unpopular character if one wanted a chance of success.
But even she would not have taken on such a degree of madness by choice. For years, her uncle had made it clear that he would leave her his private fortune. Only at the reading of the will had it been revealed that for over a decade Bantham Park had been unproductive.
There was no private fortune. The fate of her dreams and her livelihood would fall upon the whims of a distant cousin she’d never met. And her uncle, the dear old man she had loved and trusted beyond anyone, had somehow not found within himself the will to tell her.
“It’s too lovely a day to be in this musty old shed fretting over plants,” Tom declared, flicking her ledger distastefully. “Take a turn in the garden with me.”
She looked down at her ledger and hesitated. She had no time for leisurely strolls. But Tom could be difficult. It was easier to accede to his will and wait for him to grow bored and leave than to provoke his temper with a fuss.
“Very well. But just to the greenhouse. I must finish pruning while there’s still light.”
The path from the workshop traversed her small empire, dazzling in the summer sun. The nursery and walled gardens were bright with the blooming vegetation of July. In the field beyond, groves of fruit trees and her prized exotic saplings grew, along with row after row of English trees. Sunbeams danced from the roof of the small greenhouse, where her forced flowers basked in the afternoon light. She could scarcely believe that in two weeks’ time all this would be lost to her.
“What have I missed in Grove Vale these past months?” Tom asked, moving closer so that his arm brushed hers.
She edged away. “The renovations at Westhaven are nearly done. You should ride out to see the house. They’ve made a palace out of it. I’ve even sold them a few trees.”
He looked at her with interest. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any dealings with the duke? I have a venture that might be of interest to his investment concern. I’d give my right hand for an introduction.” He winked.
“I’m afraid my dealings were with no one loftier than the head gardener. He is quite an imperious fellow in his own right. I shudder to think what the duke must be like if his gardener has such airs.”
She glanced up at the sky. It was growing late. She needed to return to her work. “It was kind of you to come, Tom,” she said, hoping he would take the hint. “Unnecessary, but kind.”
“Poppy. For you, nothing is unnecessary.”
She chose to ignore the catch in his voice and walked more briskly toward the greenhouse, but he stopped her beneath a mature apple tree. Boldly, he took her hand and clapped it in his own.
“Allow me this liberty,” he whispered. He placed a kiss at her wrist.
Horror curdled in her gut. Of course. This was why he had taken the time to come all the way from London when a letter of condolence would have suited.
Now that she was alone, he thought he had his chance.
“Tom, please,” she objected, twisting her hand away. He moved closer anyway.
“You know why I’ve come here, don’t you? I’ve made no secret of my fondness for you. My position in London is secure—I have enough to make a life for us in town.”