Like a Flower in Bloom (23 page)

“Here.” He took it from my hand, spread it out on the table, and added a flurry of strokes to my outlines, softening the edges of my sepals and rounding it about the petals. It seemed as if he were adding movement, if that were possible. “There. See?”

I did see. I saw that even a colonial sheep farmer was better at my job, and was a more talented illustrator than I. In five minutes’ work he could create a drawing, perhaps not more accurate, but more evocative than one that took me hours to complete. “You really are quite good at this.”

“As I said, it’s nothing. Just a parlor trick meant to amuse ladies.”

He had done that too. Even Miss Templeton, always so cheerful and winsome, had shone even brighter in his presence.

I wondered what it would be like to be Miss Templeton and have everyone leap to fulfill my demands. It would be quite nice, probably. There was something about her that made one hesitate to disappoint her. Could that sort of nature be cultivated? Could I, perhaps, turn myself into a Miss Templeton?

No.

That is, I could. Isn’t that what I had been trying to do? But I felt as if I were playing at something.

“Please don’t think this a slur on your friend’s good name, but the repartee we shared was a simple amusement.”

“An amusement?”

“Of the most effortless sort. I said what was expected, she said what was expected, and we carried on in good fashion. It was rather like being handed the script to a play I had already memorized. I had forgotten how easy it is to speak without having first to think.”

I looked directly into his blue eyes. “I find it troubling that you don’t always do so.”

“When I speak to you, it’s completely different. I have to think what I mean and mean what I say, and it’s both exhilarating and utterly exhausting.”

I glanced back down at the drawing. “If you don’t like it, then you don’t have to converse with me anymore.” I took the paper from him. “I’m sure I won’t mind.” It would be much less annoying on my part.

“But that’s just it. I think you enjoy this as much as I do, Miss Withersby.”

“Enjoy what?”

“Talking.”

I had to think on that a moment. Most of the relationships I had consisted, primarily, of me listening. I was always the writer, taking notes. With my father. With the rector. With Miss Templeton. Perhaps I didn’t write notes for her, but as I observed her, I registered my observations just the same. “I suppose I do enjoy it, Mr. Trimble. Upon reflection, I have just discovered that most of the time, I only listen.”

“That, my dear Miss Withersby, is a very great shame, for I have found that most of the time, quiet people have more to offer.”

“Do we?” At his words it felt as if something deep within my heart had taken wing.

“I believe so. I might go to Miss Templeton for amusement, but I would come to you for thoughtful commentary. And for observation.”

I found myself ridiculously pleased with the compliment.

He had been leaning toward me, but now he sat back with such abruptness that I might have said he scrambled to do so. “How is your campaign for marriage coming?” he asked. “Do you anticipate receiving any proposals?”

I blinked. “Proposals? I . . . don’t think so. . . .” Proposals? Proposals! “I mean, yes. Yes, I do think so. Soon.” And then Mr. Trimble could go away. That was the whole idea. To make him go away.

He smiled one of those bland, perfunctory smiles that I had come to realize meant nothing at all. “All men should be so lucky.”

“Why?”

He froze under my gaze as if trapped. “Why what?”

“Why should they be so lucky?”

He blinked. “It’s uh . . . It’s just a saying. Just . . . something one says.”

“You mean without thinking? But hadn’t you just got done saying that when you talk to me you
do
think about what you’re saying?”

He was looking at me with an odd sort of curve to his brow, as if I were a weed that had begun choking out his prized plants. “I really should get back to your father’s notes.”

“But I don’t understand. You—”

“Some things are not worth understanding, Miss Withersby.” He had taken on the manner of a lecturer once more. “In polite society when one is paid a compliment, one generally accepts it without peering beneath it.”

I followed him to his desk. “You mean you simply said something because . . . because
why
? I didn’t ask you for a compliment.”

“No.”

“I wasn’t expecting one.”

“I never thought you were.”

“So then why did you feel the need to give me one? And a compliment that was so obviously ill-thought at that? Why didn’t you say something you actually meant?”

“I did mean it.”

“But . . .” My head was starting to hurt. “But what did you mean by it?”

“I . . . I do not have the right to say.”

“But I thought . . . I mean I thought we . . .” I thought we knew each other better than that.

“If you would . . .” He gestured me over to the other side of the desk. “You’re blocking my light.”

Blocking his light? I might like to block his head instead. I decided I didn’t like polite society. There was something mercenary and decidedly lacking in it. I took his hand intending to move the pile of papers beneath it into the light. “I think you might find it easier if you—”

He snatched it from my grasp. “I think I might find it easier if you left.”

I
decided to speak of my confusion to Miss Templeton the next day when we saw each other at another parish function. “Why would someone pay you a compliment they didn’t mean?”

“To be polite.”

“But Mr. Trimble and I have been quite impolite to each other since we first met.” There really was something I wasn’t understanding about what he’d said the previous afternoon.

“Mr. Trimble? He paid you a compliment?”

“He did. At least, I think he did. And I think he might have meant it, only I suspect he didn’t want me figuring out exactly what he meant by it.”

“I think you’d better tell me what he said.” She squared her shoulders as though she expected to hear something distasteful.

“He said . . . Well . . . we were talking about proposals and whether I thought I might be getting any, and I said—”

“Of course you said that you would be.”

“I said that I would be, and then he said that all men should be so lucky.”

“And . . . ?”

“And that was it.”

“Well . . .” She hesitated as if she sensed some sort of trick, and then she frowned. “That was actually quite kind of him. I hope you thanked him.”

“I . . . well . . . I didn’t. I asked him why.”

“Why what?”

“Why all men should be so lucky.”

“And he said . . . ?”

“He said he didn’t have the right to tell me.”

“Didn’t have the right . . . ?” Her mouth pursed as she gave Mr. Trimble’s words some thought. “Perhaps . . .” She gasped. “Oh! Perhaps he’s married!”

“But why, then, would he have gone to New Zealand by himself?”

She thought some more. “Well . . . perhaps he’s gotten himself engaged.”

“In New Zealand? Then why did he come back here by himself?”

She sighed. “That doesn’t make any sense either. What do you know about him?”

Nearly everything. At least everything about his life in New Zealand. “He’s a sheep farmer who—”

“I know that. What else?”

“There really isn’t anything else. He’s got that terrible family. That’s all I know.”

“That’s it then. He doesn’t have the right to tell you because of his terrible family.”

“Why should they matter?”

“They
must
matter, otherwise . . . why would he have gone to New Zealand?”

“Because he likes sheep?”

“Miss Withersby!” She was shaking her head. “The only
reason he would have gone abroad was to run away from something.”

“So . . . ?” I still didn’t quite understand.

“So the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that he was running away from his family, trying to establish a new life for himself. It’s best not to look too far into these things.”

“That’s what he said.”

“It’s enough to know that he thinks quite highly of you even though he’s in such a humble position that even you could not deign to consider him at all.”

“Consider him as what?”

“As a
suitor
! Really, Miss Withersby, haven’t you been paying attention? Poor man. I should think he might make something of himself if he didn’t have that dreadful family of his hanging about his neck like a millstone. The sooner we can get him out of the way, the better. For everyone concerned.”

I didn’t quite know what to make of Mr. Trimble’s sentiments or Miss Templeton’s explanation, so I finally decided that what I needed was an hour or so to ramble over God’s green earth . . . though it was looking rather brown this late in the year. Collecting my bonnet, the shooting jacket, and my vasculum, I took myself straight out the back door and out towards Cats Clough. As I went, I wondered why father hadn’t yet called a halt to my search for a husband. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t been speaking enough about the rector and Mr. Stansbury. Maybe he wasn’t acting with any urgency because
I
hadn’t been displaying any sense of urgency.

Clapping my mitts together to warm my hands, I stooped to look at some thistle seedpods that were standing near a fence.

They
were displaying the proper sense of urgency. The seeds
had already allowed themselves to be blown away against winter’s coming. I stood and looked about the field for specimens. But, I reminded myself, I wasn’t to be looking for flowers. I wasn’t to be thinking of my research or of writing papers. What I really needed was the exclusive attentions of a suitor.

Off in the distance came a chorus of hunting horns.

It was difficult to locate flowers at this time of year when their seedpods tended to blend in with the dead grasses. And now, with the tootling of horns and the barking of dogs, I found myself distracted.

A fox darted beneath the fence, past my feet. I saw them often in the fields, but they weren’t usually on the run. So panicked did he seem that I doubted he even noticed me. Hardly a moment later, the fence was beset by a pack of hounds that brayed in their mournful voices as they dug frantically to widen the gap between the ground and the fence. If it wasn’t enough that the fields were regularly being trampled by amateurs and hunters, now they were being dug up by dogs!

The thud of horses’ hooves came up the lane. A hunter. He left the path for the field in which I was standing. Aiming his horse for the fence, he yelled at me. “Get out of the way, you daft woman!”

“I am not daft!” In fact, I suspected I was probably much smarter than he.

Behind him came a thundering of hooves, and horses began to jump the fence in an unceasing procession.

I sunk to the ground and threw my arms up over my head as they bounded past. “I must protest!” But I made my complaint to no one in particular, as the riders had already passed, leaving a mess of torn and muddied grasses in their wake.

I did manage to locate some lady’s tresses, only they had been mashed into the mud by a horse. Or perhaps by the paws of one
of those hunting dogs. As I was bent over them, mourning their destruction, I heard the sound of another horse approaching and turned my head toward the noise.

“Get out of the way!” Its rider was gesturing wildly for me to move.

Was he yelling at me? I straightened, putting a hand to my waist as I looked around. He
was
yelling at me. There was nothing but grasses and open fields about, and the rest of the pack of horses had already thundered by. I didn’t see why I had to move when he could just as easily go some other way. I turned round to say so and was surprised to find that he was already quite close.

“I said,
move
!”

The last thing I remember was thinking that horses were quite extraordinarily large when you got up right next to them.

It was the pounding in my head that woke me—that and the cadence of Mr. Trimble’s voice. I put a hand to my temple and gasped as my touch set off a new sort of throbbing. “Do be quiet. My head hurts insufferably.” I cracked open an eye.

Miss Templeton came into view. She had a handkerchief pressed to her nose, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. She gasped. “Oh! We didn’t know if you’d ever wake.”

Mr. Trimble appeared beside her. “Of course we knew you’d wake.” His tone was faintly disapproving. “The only question was when.”

“But the doctor said that she might not—”

Mr. Trimble knelt beside me and put his fingertips to my jaw as he searched my eyes. “He said that you’d taken a good blow to your head and a thump to your ribs and the best thing to do is to rest.” His hand had moved to my hair, which he stroked away from my face.

Rest. That was a good idea. If I slept, then maybe I wouldn’t feel the ache in my head, and if he kept stroking my hair, then maybe I would be able to breathe easier as well.

When I next woke, the room had gone dark, save for a fire in the hearth. I could smell the scent of it and I could see its glow. But the it didn’t seem to be in the right place. Where was I?

I put an elbow to the . . . What
was
I lying upon? I tried to peer around, but the effort made my vision go hazy, so I decided the best thing to do would be to try again for another look in a little while. But . . . was that Mr. Trimble? Why was he . . . wherever it was that we were? And why had he fallen asleep in his chair?

I closed my eyes to rest for a moment. The next time I opened them, there were five people looking back at me.

My father, Mr. Trimble, Miss Templeton, the rector, and Mr. Stansbury.

I tried to smile, but the effort made me wince.

Mr. Trimble held up a hand. “Don’t move.”

I hadn’t been planning to.

Miss Templeton blinked her eyes wide. “You’re not . . . you’re not going back to sleep, are you?”

Had I been sleeping?

My father stepped close and knelt as he picked up my hand. “You were knocked over on your ramble by one of those . . . those . . .” He was trembling with something quite like rage.

“Those asinine, self-absorbed, pitiful progeny of our kingdom’s finest families.” Mr. Trimble supplied the words.

“I was?”

“But don’t worry.” Miss Templeton was smiling as if that alone might cure me. I was more interested, however, in the idea that she thought I ought to be worried. If that was the case, then why . . . ? “The doctor said you
should
be fine.”

The rector passed her a handkerchief as her smile was overcome by tears. “We’ve all been praying for you.”

They had? I closed my eyes as I tried to remember if anyone had done that for me before.

“Is she . . . ?”

Miss Templeton’s whisper made my eyes fly open. “Is who, what?”

“Oh! I was worried you were going to sleep some more.”

“Sleep if you want to.” Mr. Trimble’s words were more like a command than a suggestion.

Mr. Stansbury was a holding a . . . “Is that an Italian orchid?”

He glanced down toward his hands as if surprised to find himself holding it. “Yes. It is. For you. I’ll just . . .” He held it out before him, glancing about the room.

I sought my father’s gaze. “Why am I in the parlor?”

He brushed my cheek with his mustache as he pressed a kiss to my forehead. “It’s because you were run into by that horrid man—Lord Harriwick’s son. And do you know what he did?”

“He ran into me?”

Miss Templeton took over the narrative from my father. “He left you there—in the field!—until after the hunt. You were so long in coming back from your ramble and—”

My father wrested the dialogue back. “And I knew you didn’t like to be out when the bats start flitting around.”

Mr. Trimble cleared his throat and took over the telling of the tale. “We were worried about you but had no idea where to start searching until Lord Harriwick’s son finally thought to send a messenger round to apologize for knocking you off your feet.”

Miss Templeton gave a tremulous cry as her brow collapsed. “And that’s when Mr. Trimble rode out to the Harriwick estate and—”

“And I demanded to be taken to the place he’d run you over.”

Miss Templeton gave Mr. Trimble a pat upon his arm. “And he carried you back here and then went for the doctor and—” She threw herself into Mr. Stansbury’s arms and began to weep, which was just as well, for I’d become quite dizzy from keeping up with the conversation.

Mr. Trimble came to kneel before me, tucking a corner of the blanket back underneath me. “The doctor said you shouldn’t be moved, so we’ve kept you here. And now you’ll have to rest for a while.”

A while. “How long would that be?”

“Three weeks? A month?”

“No dancing?”

“No dancing. No fieldwork. In fact, very little walking.”

“But what about . . .” What about all the things I was supposed to be doing?

The rector reached down to pat my hand. “I won’t do anything with my collections until you’re recovered.”

Mr. Stansbury scuffed a boot against the floorboards. “And I’m still waiting to hear from my correspondent about those plants you suspected were mislabeled, so don’t worry yourself about that.”

Miss Templeton had ceased her crying, and now she was trying to smile again. “It will be fine. Everything will be fine.”

Mr. Trimble’s hand slid from my temple down to my cheek. “Don’t worry. I have everything taken care of.” As much as I had been trying to rid myself of Mr. Trimble, somehow his words gave me great comfort. So I let my head sink down into the pillow, and I willed myself back to sleep.