Rakes and Radishes

I would like to thank my husband who indulges my passion for writing, chocolate and travel, and who called me from the airport while waiting on his plane to say the heroine should calculate the Orbital Eccentricity. To my lovely children whose laughter and intellectual curiosity spill onto my pages. To a wonderful writer and friend Cathy Leming for her unwavering support and spot-on critique. My gratitude goes out to the mystery writing genius and Mojito Literary Society co-member Tina Whittle for believing in
Rakes and Radishes
since its conception. I am indebted to Nancy Mayer who answered my dumb Regency 101 questions, as well as Abigail Carlton for all those hours she spent on the phone listening to my brainstorms. To the brilliant writer and teacher David Fulmer for making me attend class. And to Alissa Davis for her patient guidance and insight into improving the story.

Norfolk, England 1819

A quick motion in the periphery of Henrietta’s watering eye yanked her attention from her book. Had the mail coach come? She anxiously peered out the window to the cobblestone road just beyond the ivy-covered garden gate.

No mail coach. Just her elderly neighbor standing in her worn, sagging morning dress, shooing chickens off the road with a straw broom. Henrietta’s heart sank. The mantel clock chimed the hour, sounding like two spoons being clanked together ten times. The mail was twenty minutes late! This proved what she always suspected, that the Royal Mail Service held a personal grudge against her.

Nestling back in her chair, she drew the thick woolen blanket about her to shield herself from the ever-present draft in the old parlor, and returned to the last page of
The Mysterious Lord Blackraven.

Henrietta closed the book, wiped her weeping eyes with the sleeve of her muslin gown, and peeked out the window again. A chicken and a few fat, dirty sheep. But no mail coach.

Oh, hang it!

She exhaled, blowing stray black curls off her forehead. In just three days she had gobbled up the novel while waiting on a letter from her cousin Mr. Edward Watson. Now she would have to wait another year for her next book—and pray to God that Edward’s letter would arrive first!

She tossed the finished volume onto the side table with its sisters. She had promised to smuggle the books to the other ladies in the village. They, too, were wild to read Mrs. Fairfax’s latest gothic creation, even if they had to hide the sensational volumes under their beds or in their sewing boxes. Henrietta had no need for such measures. Her father gave little notice to his daughter’s reading habits, too lost in his theoretical world of numbers and space.

She watched the diamond-shaped patches of sunlight shining through the crosshatched panes of the ancient parlor window, exposing every flaw in the newly painted walls. She sighed, frustrated. The clean lines and airy colors of the Greek classical style didn’t translate onto the low timbered ceilings and pitlike fireplaces of Rose House. Henrietta could feel the medieval ghosts of old sitting about some great table, pounding their ale mugs in disgust at the new cool mint walls with delicate faux gilt. This room—this house—was hopeless. No paint, classical vases or Grecian sofa could hide its Tudor quaintness. Her best efforts only looked like an annoyed pig dressed in a silk gown.

She returned her gaze to the window. Outside, spring was barreling in. Little green buds bulged from the rose bushes, all the animals sniffed each other, and the village men walked about encased in dirt, holding hoes, with copies of Lord Kesseley’s latest planting guide in their worn pockets. Everywhere, undeniable signs of spring, but Henrietta’s heart was still stuck in winter, waiting. Why hadn’t Edward written?

Henrietta rubbed her late mother’s pendant as if the tiny ruby necklace could ward off her misgivings. If a letter didn’t arrive soon, she might resort to Arabellina’s tragic example. She closed her eyes, imagining herself weighted with sorrow, stones sewed to her scarlet gown, wading into the rocky oceans of Italy.

Her raven hair flowed loose in beautiful silken curls, not frizzing as it usually did in the salty winds. Her ivory skin glowed, unmarred by the blemish on her chin that had popped up overnight.

“Henrietta, I mean, Arabellina. Don’t do it. I love you!”

Arabellina turned. Towering high above her on the rocky cliff’s edge stood Lord Blackraven, who looked suddenly like Mr. Edward Watson. A black cape billowed in the wind behind him. His beautiful mahogany locks blew about his face, and the moonlight illuminated those intense, heavily lashed green eyes that made her heart flip-flop.

“How can you say you love me when you never wrote? Every day I waited for a letter that you were safe in London and not robbed by some highwaymen, left to die alone on a deserted road. One small poem of how you dreamed and yearned for me every moment we were apart. But nothing! I’m so devastated. How could you leave me in this barren place?” Arabellina looked at the waiting waves, swirling and foaming about her.

“Stop! Don’t take your life! I wrote you every day. Poems and poems.”

“I never received them.”

Lord Blackraven paused, biting his index finger as Edward was prone to do. Then he said, “It was the Royal Mail Service! That villainous Royal Mail! Why I could crush him—it— with a—a large rock.”

“A large rock?”

“The Royal Mail is quite huge. It carries 500,000 letters a day. They employ 150,000 horses each year.”

“Never mind the mail service! You said to wait, and for weeks I’ve waited and waited!”

“The mail’s come,” interrupted Mrs. Potts.

The rotund housekeeper stood at the parlor entry, drying a large wooden spoon with a rag, an infuriatingly knowing look in her eyes. Beyond the window, the mail coach rattled and crunched up the cobblestones past Henrietta’s house. Passengers clung to the top and edges. How could she have missed it?

Henrietta feigned a bored yawn. “Already? My, how late the morning has grown.”

“Hrmph,” the housekeeper said and left. Cruel woman.

Henrietta willed herself still until Mrs. Potts’s footsteps echoed in the back of the house. Then she flew up to her chamber, threw on her pelisse and bonnet and rushed back down, slowing to a casual saunter as the massive front door thudded closed behind her. All of the neighbors were leaving their homes, as well, and heading up the street. The arrival of the post was the most exciting part of everyone’s day.

The mail carriage paused before a dirty, narrow pub that seemed to sag under the weight of four floors of filthy, shuttered windows. The hunched postmaster, pub owner and sometime barber limped out with the village mail. A young mail boy high up on the perch threw down a knotted yellow bag and waited. The postmaster heaved his small bag into the air three times before an exasperated passenger, hanging off the side, snagged it. The carriage jerked to a start and thundered down the road, kicking dirt and loose cobbles behind it.

Everyone followed the postmaster inside the ancient pub that smelled like a thousand years of bad fish and hops. He dumped the mail onto a battered old table, then held each letter to the tip of his nose, slowly reading each address and putting it into the correct pile. The villagers looked on, speculating which child, grandchild or physician had sent a letter. It was the same conversation every mail day of every year.

Henrietta lingered about the entrance, trying not to appear eager.

The door swung open and the reek of livestock and mud assaulted her nose as her neighbor’s tall form ducked under the doorframe. He wore his usual ensemble of muddy doeskins and a worn green coat. Shaggy chestnut curls sticky with perspiration and in terrible need of a barber fell into his gray eyes. Fuzzy side-whiskers softened his otherwise hard, lean face. Judging from the dirt under his nails, one would think he hadn’t a passel of farmhands and tenants and was reduced to planting crops with his fingers. His hound Samuel, a big boned, thick brown dog of no obvious breed, trotted in behind him, sniffing about the floor.

When Samuel saw Henrietta, he scrambled around his master’s boots and jabbed his nose under the hem of her skirt. She knelt, letting the happy hound give her wet licks on her cheek. She looked up. Kesseley stared down at her, unsmiling. His face wore that tight expression again, chin high, eyes hard—the look she always pretended not to notice. If only he could be a tenth as pleased as his dog to see her.

“Good morning, Samuel, and you too, Kesseley.” She rose and gave him a nervous smile.

“You look like you’ve been enjoying yourself this morning.”

“I was in the fields.”

“Where else would you be but in your beloved dirt?” She chuckled, hoping he would do the same. Instead, he looked down at his mud-caked boots, a frown bending his lips.

“I’m finishing the planting,” he said. “We’re starting a new crop rotation schedule this year.”

“The one from…Flanders?” His head jerked up, a light sparked in his eyes, and Henrietta felt her heart lighten.

“I thought my talk of farming bored you,” he said.

“Still, I remembered every word.” She touched his wrist. A wave of gentle warmth moved through her. She missed the times when it was so easy between them. “I suppose you will be leaving for the Season in a few days.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve made you a little surprise present, but you must come to the house to get it.”

Finally a grin, albeit a tiny one, crossed his face. “Henrietta? A secret? You know you can’t keep secrets. You might as well tell me before you blurt it by accident.”

“That is not true. I keep many secrets from you. You just tend to remember the unfortunate surprise present for your ninth birthday.”

“Just tell me.”

“But I won’t.” She wagged a teasing finger before his face. “I will make you wait in unbearable anticipation.”

“Do you want me to tell everyone how years ago you tried to run away with a traveling production of
A Midsummer’s Night Dream
masquerading as a fairy, and I had to dash off to Ely to save you?”

“You always hold that over me, don’t you?” she cried, in mock annoyance, but then giggled. “Well, I daresay, I would be leading a much more exciting life traipsing around England in gaudy green pixie wings than stuck
here.
”

His eyes flashed. “Yes, you’ve made it quite clear that you don’t care for our village or…” He halted, but even so the arrested words hung in the air, so loud he could have shouted them.
Or me. You don’t care for me.

That familiar, prickly awkwardness filled the air.

“A diary!” she cried, trying to recapture the previous moment when he had been smiling. “I made you one. That’s the surprise.” She opened her palms and shrugged her shoulders. “You are right, I can’t keep secrets.”

“A diary?” He hiked a brow.

“Since you are going to London for the Season to find, well, a wife, I thought that you could write about when…when…” Oh Lud, suddenly her present seemed like the stupidest idea she’d ever had. “When you meet
her,
” she finished.

“Her?”

“Your future wife. So you can capture the moment forever in your heart and never let it fade away.”

The muscles at the back of his jaw twitched. She felt so foolish. She just wanted him to fall in love with a wonderful lady as she had fallen in love with Edward. “I’ve done the wrong thing again, haven’t I?” she said.

“No, it’s nice. Thank you for thinking of me.”

“I always think of you,” she whispered. “You’re my dearest friend.” Why did they have to keep up this nonsense? Why couldn’t he be easy Kesseley again? Edward was making her sick with worry and she had no one to confide in.

“That’s four pence for these letters and a journal, Miss Watson,” the postmaster called out.

Henrietta rushed forward, put her coins on the table and scooped up a large bundle of mail. Surely one letter was from Edward! She started for the door, then remembered and turned back to Kesseley, who still waited for his mail. “Please come by before you leave.”

“Of course.”

She bent down to Samuel, who had rolled on to his side, exposing his belly for a good scratch. She cupped her hand and pretended to whisper in the dog’s ear, but kept her eyes on Kesseley’s face. “You’ll make sure he doesn’t forget, won’t you?”

He yelped.

“He said yes.” Kesseley chuckled. A chuckle! She grinned to hear the comforting sound again.

“I can always count on dear Samuel.” She curtsied and then hurried outside, her mind quickly returning to the matter of Edward and his lack of correspondence.

She eagerly shuffled through the letters.

Then again.

And again.

And one more time to make sure.

Nothing. Just the March edition of
Town and Country.
She turned it over and shook it. No letter from Edward fell out.

It felt like a foot had stepped on her heart and flattened it. Now another dull, useless day stretched out before her like a play seen over and over again: going through the household accounts, sewing for the Foundling orphanage, fighting with Mrs. Potts over supper, discussing her father’s mathematical theories over burnt mutton, and reading Edward’s poems by the candlelight until she fell asleep. She began to trudge home, resigned.