Beauty So Rare, A (A Belmont Mansion Novel Book #2) (23 page)

From every indication she’d given him, her feelings extended only
to those of friendship. Which was where he needed for his own feelings to remain as well. So . . .

All was proper and befitting decorum. He was safe. And so was she.

He planned on telling her tonight that he didn’t work for Mrs. Cheatham. It was time she knew the truth. Although he would have been more eager to correct her misassumption if his company had been awarded the contract for the opera house. Renovating warehouses didn’t seem nearly as impressive.

It crossed his mind to tell her about his impending departure as well. But—call it selfishness, or maybe wishful thinking—he didn’t want to introduce that factor into the equation at present. He liked their relationship, platonic though it was, and how she treated him. As though he were an ordinary man. And he didn’t want to do anything to change that.

He checked his pocket watch. A little past eight.

He spied the
Selenicereus grandiflorus
and remembered Eleanor’s less than complimentary remark about the cactus. “Don’t worry, you grand old madam,” he said, fingering a spine, mindful of how sharp they were. “Your day is coming.”

And he knew just
who
he wanted there watching with him when it did.

He took a last look through the glass wall of the conservatory to watch the sun as it rested briefly atop the trees in the distance. He stood perfectly still, his gaze fixed upon the highest branch of a colossal cedar silhouetted against the western horizon. And he followed the sun’s determined progress as it inched lower . . . lower . . . sinking softly into night. And into day on the other side of the world.

Since leaving Austria, he’d never once been homesick. But he’d also never felt so far from home as he did right in that moment. But it wasn’t homesickness he was feeling, There was a difference between the two, he quickly decided, a difference he couldn’t define but keenly felt.

He turned to leave, but movement from the corner of his eye drew his focus. He spotted the telling outline of a bell-shaped skirt hurrying by the fountain outside, and would’ve sworn that—despite approaching dusk—the sun had reversed its course.

 18 

I
’m sorry I’m so late, Marcus!”

“You’re not
that
late.” Marcus opened the door for her, noticing a flush in her cheeks—and the look she gave him. “Well, maybe you are.”

“My errands in town took longer than I thought they would. Then I needed to stop by the main house first, and I saw my aunt, and she asked about my day, so we spent a few moments visiting because they leave for Alabama in the morning, and then—”

“Eleanor,” he whispered.

“What?” she whispered back, brown eyes widening.

“Take a breath.”

She smiled and held out a covered plate. “For you.”

“What is it?”

“Open it and see.” She winced playfully. “It got a little crushed on the way here, though. So it’s not as pretty as it was at first.”

He took the dish and removed the flowered cloth. “Pie!”

“But do you know what kind?”

He eyed it. “I can’t say that I do. It doesn’t resemble anything we have in Austria.”

“It’s buttermilk pie.”

He tried to school his initial reaction. But judging from her frown, he didn’t do it swiftly enough.

“Why did you make that face?”

“I’m sorry. I-I’m not overly fond of buttermilk.”

She waved a hand. “The pie has buttermilk in it, but it doesn’t
taste
like buttermilk. It’s sweet and custardy, and you’re going to love it.”

“Yes, madam.” He gave a mock salute. “I trust you completely.”

He escorted her to his “surgical wing,” as Henry Gray referred to it, and found the closest thing he could to a fork.

“A tongue depressor?” She laughed.

He twiddled the wooden stick in the air. “They serve many purposes.”

He managed to take a bite. And she was right. “This is . . .
köstlich
, Eleanor.”

She curtsied. “
Danke
, Herr Geoffrey.
Ich bin froh,
dass es Ihnen gefällt.
”

Marcus nearly dropped the plate.

She laughed again. “I’ve been practicing my German at night. Mind you, it took me an entire evening digging through my father’s crates of books to find my old German text from school.”

“Your father speaks German too?”

An odd look flashed across her face. “No, he . . . he doesn’t. The book I was looking for just happened to be packed with all of his, and—” She crossed to the table where he’d placed plants selected for grafting. “I only speak a little of the language, mind you. German was among my studies at the Nashville Female Academy. For only two years, though. I practiced that sentence for
days
, hoping you would like the pie. If you hadn’t”—she shrugged, managing to look both charming and alluring at the same time—“I would have improvised.”

“I bet you would have.” Marcus took another bite, enjoying the pie. And her.

He finished chewing and pointed to the plate, tongue depressor in hand. “This truly is excellent, Eleanor. My compliments to Cordina when you see her next.”

Her mouth slipped open. “Cordina? She didn’t make it.” She raised her chin.
“I
did.”

He smiled and waited for her to do the same, knowing she was teasing.

“No, really, Marcus. I baked it. Earlier today.”

He searched her gaze. She was serious. “I beg your pardon, I . . .” He knew to phrase an explanation carefully, not wanting to offend. But in his experience,
servants
prepared food. Not rich nieces from well-to-do families. “I didn’t realize that women of your . . . social status knew how to cook. Much less like
this
.”

To his surprise, her expression softened with gratitude. A far different response from the one he’d feared.

“Thank you.” Her voice came softly. “I appreciate that . . . very much.”

The utter openness in her eyes—as though he were seeing straight
through to her heart—stirred him, and he grew more aware of how alone they were. And of how “not good” that was at the moment.

Silence framed the passing seconds, and though he knew such a thing was out of the question, he wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her, and wondered what her response would be if he did. Even more—this next thought kicked his pulse up a few notches—what would it be like for this woman to
want
him to kiss her? In his past, he hadn’t been a patient man in that regard. Granted, the women he’d met as archduke hadn’t been the patient type either. They’d had agendas. Aggressive ones. But then, so had he.

Eleanor Braddock, however . . . She was different. She was—

The images of her that filled his head completely undermined everything he’d told himself earlier.
Friends
. A bitter tang tinged his mouth. She saw him that way, but he couldn’t claim the same. And yet he needed to.

She offered the briefest of smiles, then turned to study the plants, which allowed him to study her.

In the eyes of this intriguing, lovely creature, he was an under gardener. But, he reminded himself, if she knew him as Archduke of the House of Habsburg—the man he wanted to leave behind, even as he knew he never could—her opinion of him would certainly not be the same. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

What once had been his greatest advantage was now his greatest disadvantage.

She pointed to a bandaged root of a daisy. “What is this?”

Appreciating her interest, he came alongside her. But not too close. No need to tempt fate.

“It’s something I’ve been working on for over a decade. My grandfather had a fondness for flowers. There was a certain wildflower, an oxeye daisy”—he leaned against the table—“that grew under an elm tree in his garden. He used to pick them for my grandmother. She appreciated them, but she was a woman who enjoyed the
finer
things of life, shall we say.”

“Like someone else we know?”

“Indeed.” He smiled. “My grandmother wished the wildflower was less gangly. Better suited for a garden.”

“So you made one that was.”

“It wasn’t quite that simple. Nor am I that intelligent.”

She gave him a look saying she doubted that, which endeared her to him more than any subtle squeeze of a hand could ever have done.

“When I was young,” he continued, “I took an interest in botany, then later had the great fortune of being tutored by a scientist whose brilliance in the field of biology is, in my opinion, unsurpassed. He’s especially gifted in the studies of heredity, which is what interests me most. Plant
breeding
,” he said more delicately, “as it’s called by some.”

Eleanor nodded, not seeming the least offended by the word.

He sighed. “Unfortunately, the significance of my mentor’s work has yet to be recognized by most of his peers.”

She studied him. “But you admire him very much.”

“I do. Gregor Mendel taught me more than all of my other professors combined. Only last week, I received a letter from him answering more of my questions, in extensive detail, as always. So he continues to teach me, even now.”

“And my guess is that you learned to keep extensive notes too.” She nodded toward stacks of notebooks on the table, then raised an eyebrow as if to say,
“May I?”

Marcus nodded.

She picked one up, and as she leafed through it, he briefly considered inviting her to join him outside in the field garden, thinking she might appreciate the significance of what was planted there. But there was nothing impressive about the leaves of a potato plant. What might someday be impressive—once the plants matured, and
if
the grafting proved successful—was still hidden deep in the earth, yet to be seen.

She lifted her gaze. “You are very detailed! ‘Diagram of Tree Grafts’,” she read aloud. “‘Record of Blooming. Record of
Budding’
?” She looked up. “You keep track of everything.”

“I have to. It’s the only way to remember all the various combinations of grafts and the outcomes of each.”

She tilted the notebook at an angle. “You’re also very good at sketching.”

“Thank you, madam. I’ve had a great deal of practice.” Already having decided to tell her the truth about his real occupation, he saw his opportunity. “There’s something else I’d like to talk to you—”

“Ah!” she said, lifting a hand. She pointed again to the daisy. “Finish telling me the rest of this story first.”

He stared, amused at her feistiness. “You came here to see the tunnel, not to talk about plants. Even though I know how interested you are in them.”

“I
am
interested.”

He leveled a stare, enjoying the way she wrinkled her nose.

“Well, maybe I’m a little more interested in what you do to the plants to change them and create new ones, rather than just how they look. If that makes sense.”

Never before had a woman shown this level of interest in this part of his life. Well, other than his mother. She always had been his greatest advocate. The few times he’d tried to speak with the baroness about it, she’d quickly changed topics, wiping her hands together as though scraping off imaginary dirt.

“After I discussed it with Dr. Mendel, we envisioned the perfect daisy as having larger flowers of purest white, and a longer blooming season. In addition, the flower needed to do well as both a cut flower and a garden flower, so we started first with the
Leucanthemum vulgare
—
the oxeye daisy,” he added. “And we cross-pollinated it with the English field daisy,
Leucanthemum maximum,
which had larger flowers than the oxeye. We then pollinated the best of these hybrids with pollen from the
Leucanthemum lacustre
, the Portuguese field daisy, and we bred their seedlings selectively for six years.”

“Six years?” she repeated.

He nodded. “And they bloomed nicely. But I wanted whiter, larger flowers.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Competitive at heart, are you?”

“Maybe a little.” He winked. “But the success we’d had merely gave me the desire to succeed again.”

“Make the flower stronger, more beautiful.”

He looked at her,
really
looked at her, and was glad when she didn’t look away. “That’s right. But that didn’t happen until I arrived here and discovered that Mrs. Cheatham had a
Nipponanthemum nipponicum
in her collection.”

Eleanor exhaled a
pfft
sound. “Doesn’t everyone have one of those?”

He laughed. “Do you know what it is?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“It’s a Japanese field daisy, a species with small, pure-white flowers. I took the most promising of the triple hybrids and pollinated them with that. And ended up with—”

“The prettiest and strongest flower in the history of the world!”

This
woman . . .
intelligent, witty, and possessing a beauty he’d failed to truly see—much less fully appreciate—until now.

How could he have ever agreed to share a future with a woman like the Baroness Maria Elizabeth Albrecht von Haas, when there was such a treasure as Eleanor Braddock in the world?

Hesitating for only an instant, he offered his arm, same as he would have done for any other woman. “Allow me to show you the resulting flower, madam? Quickly . . .” He looked up through the glass ceiling to the purpling sky. “While we still have some light left.”

She slipped her hand through. “I’d be honored, sir.”

He led her past the line of cabinets to a door around the corner.

“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t see this door when—”

She paused as though having caught herself, and he wasn’t about to leave well enough alone.

“When I caught you snooping in my surgical wing?”

She peered up. “That’s what you call it?”

“That’s what Mr. Gray calls it.” He briefly covered her hand on his arm. “
I
call it my haven.”

Her eyes warmed. “I can see why.”

His hand on the latch, he focused on her, anticipating her reaction when she glimpsed what was beyond the door.