No, Olive was beginning to doubt she’d cracked the surface. “How familiar are you with your father’s business?”
He gave a dramatic shudder. “Intimately.”
“You understand the care of horses?” she pressed.
He lifted a shoulder. “Relevant to the southern half of the country, as you’ve made clear.”
“The feeding of horses?”
He tapped his chest. “Plant scholar.”
She glared at him in consternation.
He’d allowed her to believe him useless in all of the things that mattered most to her, when in fact their talents were complementary.
“You wouldn’t ruin our farm,” she said, forced to revise once again everything she thought she knew about Elijah. “You still can’t have it.”
“I don’t want it,” he assured her. “I was ordered to come here by both of our fathers, remember?”
They were on the same side.
How was a woman supposed to fight against that?
“Olive!” A group of her friends spilled out of the castle door.
The le Ducs talked over themselves to fill her in on everything that had happened since she’d last seen them four short days ago, and to beg her to join them on the activities they had planned for the next week.
“I wish I could,” she laughed, careful to cover her mouth with her hand. “Papa needs me at home. I’ll have two new horses to train. It will be chaos.”
“Don’t believe her,” Sébastien said to Elijah. “The last time I raced against one of her ‘untrained’ horses, I could barely see the track through all of the dust she left behind.”
“I promise to avoid races,” Elijah murmured.
As the group continued on their way down the street, Mr. Thompson, the castle solicitor, waved from just inside the archway. “Miss Harper! Have you a moment to discuss the hacks?”
Olive slid a glance toward Elijah. She’d rather not deal with business in front of him.
“I can call in this afternoon around four,” she offered.
“Splendid.” The solicitor beamed at her. “Happy Christmas!”
Olive started to give him her usual close-lipped smile, then remembered she’d smiled at Elijah and the world hadn’t ceased turning.
She hadn’t been brave enough to smile at a big group of friends all at once, but Mr. Thompson was one person. Just like racing horses: the only way to win was to try.
“Happy Christmas.” She gave a tentative, full-toothed smile.
“And to you, too, sir,” Mr. Thompson said to Elijah, without seeming to notice Olive’s teeth at all.
With that, he disappeared into the castle.
“Er,” said Elijah. “Should we follow him?”
Olive’s smile widened. The castle hadn’t crumbled down about her. Perhaps she had grown into her features.
Or perhaps, to the right people, they didn’t matter.
“We’re not going in,” she informed Elijah. “We’re going around. Follow me.”
This was an even bolder risk than smiling at the solicitor. She was leading Elijah not to the ice-skating pond or the crowded amphitheatre, but to the enormous glasshouse at the rear of the castle.
“A conservatory?” He stopped inside the doorway, his expression as delighted as a child on Christmas morning. “This is spectacular!”
Of course it was.
Olive hadn’t feared Elijah wouldn’t like it.
She’d been certain he would. And by showing it to him, she was giving her lifelong enemy a reason to spend more time in Cressmouth.
A decision she would live to regret if their fledgling friendship ended in disaster.
“Are those strelitzia reginae?” He dashed over to inspect a plant shaped like a tropical bird.
Olive had meant to introduce Elijah to the glasshouse and leave him there, but his exuberance was contagious. She let him drag her from pretty pink plant to funny orange plant, showing off a hydra-something here, and a horte-something there.
If she’d been impressed by his grasp of equine musculature, she was bowled over by the depth of his knowledge about... apparently every leaf and stem in the entire conservatory.
He intercepted a passing footman. “Why are the polypodiopsida nearest the windows, and the cactaceae furthest from the sun?”
“I’m a footman,” said the footman. “I just shower them with water once a day.”
“Water a cactus once a...” Elijah gave a very good impression of sudden heart failure. “Who is in charge of the conservatory?”
“No one is in charge of it,” the footman explained. “Half is where fruits and vegetables are grown for the kitchens, and the other half is where there are pretty things for guests to clip and carry away.”
“Clip and carry away an orchid,” Elijah said. “Or nightshade. Excellent planning.”
The footman edged away to his next station.
Olive turned to Elijah. “You hate our glasshouse.”
“I adore your glasshouse,” he corrected. “It is as wild and unbroken as one of your stallions. It needs me.”
She couldn’t suppress a giggle. “If you like botany so much, why not dedicate yourself to horticulture instead of your father’s horses?”
His smile dimmed. “Because according to the marquess, ‘idle hobbies’ are worthless. I have no legal trust. My inheritance is dependent on my father’s good will. I would do whatever it took for an opportunity to further my research, but the one thing I cannot risk is my father’s ire.”
Olive had seen how the marquess treated a stranger. She could only imagine how much more stringent the marquess’s standards must be for his heir.
Elijah turned in a slow circle and frowned. “Where is the physic garden?”
“Er,” said Olive. “The what?”
“The medicinal garden,” he explained. “The healing plants and herbs. Is it in a different area?”
“I can ask Mr. Thompson,” she said doubtfully, “but as far as I know, this is the castle garden, at least in wintertime. Any special plants would be in here.”
“Maybe there are,” he murmured. “Right between the overwatered cacti and the creeping thistle.”
“Clip some if you like,” she said sweetly. “A trinket to take home and remember me by. Mind the thorns.”
He narrowed his eyes, then stalked past her to edge between two rows of green plants. She stifled a choked laugh when she saw what he was doing.
“You carry shears in your waistcoat pocket?”
He knelt over a plant. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“Horses are not the danger,” she scolded him. “You are the danger.”
He rose to his feet and presented her with a delicate golden-brown flower whose soft petals boasted beautiful amber and gold streaks. “Alstroemeria.”
“It sounds like a sneeze,” she mumbled, but accepted the flower. Her skin felt flushed. She lifted the petals to her nose and breathed in deeply. It didn’t smell like anything.
“Alstroemeria have no scent,” Elijah explained.
She frowned. “Then why...”
“For their beauty. They come in many colors, but these are my favorites because they remind me of your eyes. The petals are almost as beautiful.”