Like a Flower in Bloom (11 page)

I sat down in the chair he had just vacated. It seemed the safest thing to do. Talking to him so closely had set my stomach into an odd sort of spin. Probably because we had been speaking at a tilt.

“So it . . . erm . . .” He was squinting at the slide as if he didn’t know what it was. “What you were saying was . . . what you were saying was that it doesn’t have to meet the definition of Ranunculaceae in order to be one.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

I let him ponder the thought in silence for several long moments as I looked into the lens, admiring the view. “I wonder if I might be frank, Mr. Trimble.”

“No.”

No?

“That is, I mean yes. Of course you may be frank.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Are you ever anything but frank?”

I rose and gestured toward the seat. “I’ve taken your place.”

He sat and bent his head toward the eyepiece, though he threw a disapproving sort of glance at me as he did it.

Walking round the table, I took the seat opposite and bent to the other eyepiece to look at the slide as well. “If you were so happy in New Zealand with all those sheep, why did you come back here?” I lifted my head.

He did the same. As he looked at me he seemed quite miserable. “Because I once made a promise, and a gentleman always keeps his word.”

“Then it’s a good thing you aren’t a gentleman, isn’t it?”

That seemed to rouse him from his strange mood. He raised a brow. “I like to consider myself—”

“I meant in the strictest sense. It’s not as if you were born into nobility or carry a title. According to Miss Templeton, those of us who are not can’t ever quite hope to attain so lofty a status. I don’t know that anyone would expect a man like you to be bound by his word. So if your promise has become such a burden, then surely the other party will understand if you explain your second thoughts about it.”

“It would be nice to think so.”

“In any case, if you came back to fulfill a promise, I can’t think that you could do it from here.”

“I’m beginning to agree with you, Miss Withersby. The thing
of it is, I’m quite certain the anticipation of the promise will turn out to be much more satisfying than its fulfillment. Especially for the other party.”

“If that’s the case, then why fulfill it at all? I must return to my earlier statement. Why not simply explain the circumstance and see if the other party will release you from your word?”

“If only it were so easy as that. . . .” He was staring at me with a queer sort of desolation. “If only all people were as understanding as you.”

“I didn’t mean to be understanding, I simply thought that, perhaps . . . Shouldn’t you be on your way back home? Sometime soon?”

He had been staring at my lips as if they might help interpret my words. “Yes. I mean . . . I mean no.”

“Which is it?”

“Which is what?”

“Charlotte? Are you there?” My uncle strode into the room. “Why does no one answer the door anymore?”

A
s the Admiral and I made our way into the concert hall, Mrs. Bickwith hurried over. She surveyed my dress with a stern eye. “I would hurry if I were you, Miss Withersby. That Miss Templeton is liable to take all your beaux.” As soon as she said the words, she bustled away.

Indeed, Miss Templeton was besieged by many admirers. She pulled me into her circle, however, and introduced me around. Then, with a smile and a nod, she pulled me away to a quiet corner.

“They all seem to be quite enamored of you, Miss Templeton.”

She dismissed my words with a wave of her fan. “As soon as they go back to the city, they’ll forget me.” She smiled at a pair of them, however, as she said it.

“What about that one over there?” I indicated a man across the room with a nod of my head. “He’s a handsome specimen.”

“I cannot disagree. But he’s from London, like the rest of them.”

“It seems as if they’re all from London. And if you won’t
have any of them, and if you must be married, then who are you going to choose?”

“Papa has a friend coming to visit in the spring. He has a son who will do in a pinch if I don’t happen upon anyone better before then.” Her lips twisted in a rueful smile. “I don’t know the first thing about him, but they do live in Kent, and I’ve always thought the sea so terribly romantic.”

We surveyed the ballroom for some moments together, and my gaze fixed upon Mrs. Bickwith. “I’m not so sure I like her.”

“Mrs. Bickwith? I don’t. And I’m quite certain of my opinion, for which I have my reason. . . . Shall I tell it to you?”

“Only if you—”

“I hate to speak of it, I really do, but it was just so spiteful what she did to me! I suppose you have a perfectly lovely name, don’t you?”

“It’s—”

“Don’t tell me what it is. Please don’t! Or maybe . . . just say it very quietly.”

I leaned close so that I could whisper. “It’s Charlotte.”

“Charlotte? Oh! I could just about weep.” Indeed, she looked as if she might. “It’s such a lovely name. I hope you won’t mind that I never intend to use it. Doing so would just make me feel so much worse about my own.”

“What is it?”

“What is what?”

“What is your name?”

“It’s so dreadfully old-fashioned that I can only attribute it to my mother dying as I was born. She was quite a stylish woman, so it couldn’t have been her idea. I just know it wasn’t. And Mrs. Bickwith was the only other person in her room when she expired. I feel for that woman the closest thing I can to hate without it actually being a sin.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“You may be quite certain that I shall always think of you as Charlotte, though you’ll know now why I can never bring myself to say it. You will have to remain Miss Withersby so that I can remain Miss Templeton. That’s why I despise the woman, but why do you?”

“I wouldn’t say that I despise her, exactly, but she seems to think we ought to be rivals, competing for the same men. Of course, she doesn’t know I don’t have any intention of marrying, but—”

“How I wish I didn’t have to either. But it’s time I accepted my fate, which is not an easy thing to do, I assure you. It’s difficult to admit to myself that I shan’t be here much longer.”

“Are you going away, then?” Who would I talk to at these parties and dinners and concerts if she wasn’t in town?

“Quite soon I imagine. Least it will be soon once I marry, for I am not long for this world. I am going to die.”

“Pardon me? Perhaps I didn’t hear you correctly, but it sounded as if . . . did you . . . did you say
die
?”

“I cannot help it. I am the picture of my mother who was the picture of her mother who was the picture of . . . Well, I’m sure you understand. The point being that they all died in childbirth. It’s our hips, you see.”

“Your
hips
?”

She nodded quite decidedly. “Our hips. They may look round and full with all the petticoats I’m wearing, but I must tell you the shame of my existence: I might as well be a boy for all the good they’ll do me. They’re not meant for having children.”

But she was a vision of health and vigor. “You must be mistaken.”

She shook her head gravely. “I may be young, Miss Withersby, but I am not stupid. I’m simply not destined to be long-lived.”

“That’s . . . that’s dreadful knowledge to live with!”

“I can, perhaps, put off the inevitable for several more months—your example has given me great hope. Perhaps longer if I could manage to work myself into some sort of scandal. But scandals are tricky sorts of things. I’ve noticed that sometimes they seem to
require
marriage instead of prohibiting it.”

“I just . . . I don’t . . . I really don’t know what to say.”

“That’s truly the best thing about you, Miss Withersby. I can always count on you not to know what to say. And I can’t tell you how much it’s lifted my spirits since I’ve known you.”

“I’m glad.” I was beginning to suspect that most people thought quite the opposite.

“If I can find someone completely besotted with me to marry, someone who can truly mourn for me after I am gone, then it won’t be so bad, will it? If I’m not going to live long, then I really want to do it in style. Do you think that very dreadful of me?”

“I wish you didn’t have to marry at all.”

“My father insists upon it. He can’t bear to think that I would have no one to take care of me once he’s gone. And what else am I to do? I’m not like you. I have no talents and no passions, and I find it so difficult to interest myself in causes.” She sighed. “It is my burden, and I shall bear it.”

“But—”

She squeezed my hand as she looked into my eyes, and then she turned her head away as she put a smile on her face. “I rather think our new rector
has
taken a fancy to you.”

“He’s taken a fancy to my illustrated field guide.”

“Come!” She gave me a chiding look. “You must do a better job at pretending if you’re going to be convincing. And just think of being a mother to eight children. I must confess that, when I think of our visit to the rectory, I’m rather glad I won’t be given the chance to look after any for myself.”

“I hardly think—”

“Oh, look. He’s coming to speak to us, and he’s hardly spared me a glance in his approach. Really, I think it’s to
you
he’s coming to speak.” She patted my hand. “So I’ll leave you alone to enjoy the benefit of his exclusive attention.”

“Miss Templeton, don’t—!” But she’d already flitted away.

“Miss Withersby.” The rector bowed.

“Mr. Hopkins-Whyte.”

“I hope you don’t mind entertaining a question of botany, but I happened upon a curious plant during my rambles.”

The hitch in my stomach settled as I realized he was only interested in my knowledge of plants. I had Miss Templeton to thank for putting the thought of matrimony in my head.

Upon our return, my father asked, “And how did it go, Charlotte?” as if he were afraid of my answer.

“Splendidly, if you judge such things on the music. Appallingly, if you wish to judge on the true merits of the conversations before and after and in-between.”

My father looked to the Admiral.

He sighed as he put a hand to his neck and loosened his cravat. “There is not much scope for conversation when Charlotte seems to take great pains to say things nobody expects to hear.”

“I don’t understand the purpose for conversation if no one wants to hear anything unexpected. Isn’t that the reason for conversing?”

The Admiral took my father’s flask from beneath its glass dome. “These things are so scripted, my dear. That’s what everyone takes pleasure in—the idea that at a dinner or a dance or a tea, everything goes according to plan.”

“Then I wish they would share what the plan is.”

Mr. Trimble put down my favorite pen with a sigh. “If I may?”

My father and the Admiral both nodded.

Mr. Trimble drew out a chair and motioned me to it.

I sank into it, and immediately picked up a foot and pried it out of one of the flat-bottomed blue-kid shoes Miss Templeton had lent me.

“The plan, Miss Withersby, is to do exactly the thing people expect in exactly the way they expect you to do it.”

I wriggled my toes. It was heaven, being freed from that shoe! “I believe it’s safe to say that I have no idea what is expected of me. Perhaps that’s the problem.”

He pursed his lips as he stared into my eyes, seeming to search for something to say. “Perhaps we should discuss instead what people do
not
expect you to do.”

“You mean to say what I ought not do instead of those things that I should be doing? Yes . . . yes, that might be best.” I picked up my other foot and peeled the shoe from it.

“You are
not
expected, for instance, to show your ankles.” He yanked down my skirts, took the shoe from my hand, and set it quite firmly on the floor.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not meant to have them.”

That seemed a silly sort of rule to me—everyone had ankles. People would not be able to walk if we did not. “My feet wouldn’t work if I didn’t.”

“Then perhaps the better way to phrase it is: I’m not meant to notice them.”

“Then don’t.”

“Believe me, I am trying my best not to.”

For some reason his tone made me feel as if I ought to apologize.

He turned his back on me. “You are
not
expected to make
allusions to wearing anything but gowns and bonnets and you are
not
expected to speak of botany as if you know anything at all beyond, perhaps, acknowledging a pretty flower when you come across one.”

“Here, I must protest! You cannot—”

He held up a finger. “And you are
not
expected to protest. Anything!”

“You mean I’m to say
nothing
if—”

“If it is an objection or a complaint, then no, you must not say it.”

“In short, I am to say nothing of my life before this autumn? Or what I truly think about anything?”

He turned round to face me, with a nod. “Exactly.”

“One might go so far as to think it would be better for me not to speak at all.”

“One might.”

“Which would lead me to ask what I am doing in society in the first place.”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell us?”

Who knew it would be such an unbearably bothersome business to pretend to find a husband? But I had to keep up the fiction that I was trying to do so. Otherwise, I would never be rid of Mr. Trimble. I smiled, but not overly so, as I folded my hands atop my lap. “I am trying to find myself a husband as I ought to have done long ago. It is only right and fitting that I should do so.”

Mr. Trimble was looking at me with a suspicious slant to his brow.

“You wouldn’t fault me for trying to maintain the natural order of things, would you?”

The Admiral gave me a stiff pat on the shoulder. “There now. Exactly so. That’s the way to do it. I knew you could make a good go of it.”

Mr. Trimble didn’t look convinced. I wondered anew where he had come by all that knowledge he loved to spout. His familiarity with fashion could be explained away by his sisters, but what of his command of dinner parties? A dissolute family couldn’t be credited with partaking in such amusements, could they? I rather thought not. And neither could a sheep farmer in the wilds of the colony.

I had tired of speaking of my failings, so I addressed myself to Mr. Trimble. It was time for
his
failings to be made plain. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from the Botanical Society about Father’s memoir yet?”

Though I had been hoping for prevarication and the look of anxiety that comes from a project forgotten, Mr. Trimble did not oblige me. “As a matter of fact, we have.”

I constrained myself from asking what their response had been. I could search for it after he and Father had gone to bed.

“But let us not be swayed from our lesson, Miss Withersby. You must learn not to directly say what you’re thinking.”

“To first determine what it is I want to say and then try to find the best way not to say it requires quite a bit of effort, Mr. Trimble. I find it dreadfully inefficient.”

“Inefficiency is just another word for
politesse
, Miss Withersby. Now then, pretend I am wearing . . .” He glanced about the room and then reached for a cushion and set it atop his head. “Pretend you have just been introduced to me and I am wearing this cushion on my head.”

“Are you quite mad?”

“Tut, tut. That will never do. I’ve just said you must not say those things you first think.”

“Even I would never do such a thing.”

“You’re an intelligent woman, Miss Withersby. I’m sure you can come up with a more clever retort than that.”

“And now I must be clever too? You ask too much.”

The Admiral and Father were looking on with much concern.

“To survive in Overwich’s dining rooms and ballrooms, you must sharpen your wits. Elsewise, you are bound to become fodder for the town’s gossips.”

“Perhaps. But what is it to me if you decide to walk around with a cushion on your head?”