Like a Flower in Bloom (27 page)

“Charlotte, I wish I could—”

“All I wanted was to do my work in peace.”

“You have. You can.”

“Then why have you taken it all away from me?”

Not an hour later, Miss Hansford was sent upstairs to fetch me. “The Admiral’s here, miss.”

Maybe he would take care of the mess he’d created.

I walked into the parlor head held high to find the men gathered around a microscope consulting about something or other. I stamped my foot.

They started, turning about to face me.

“After allowing myself to be talked into this by you . . .” I glared at my father. “After allowing myself to be squired about by you . . .” I turned to the Admiral. “And you!” I stalked over toward Mr. Trimble. “I hope someone has devised a way to extricate me from this impossible situation.”

Mr. Trimble held up a hand as I advanced toward him. “I had nothing, whatsoever, to do with this.”

“You had everything to do with this. You are the one who taught me—
everything
! If I hadn’t been so intent upon being polite and trying not to say what it was that I thought and denying everything I felt, then I wouldn’t be in the situation of having to refuse two proposals.”

“One proposal.”

“What?”

“One proposal. What you ought to have said is that you were in the situation of having to refuse one proposal since you can accept the other one.”

My father began to splutter. “I don’t quite understand . . . is it two refusals we have to come up with or just the one?”

“One.” Mr. Trimble looked at me as if daring me to object.

I decided to ignore him. “Two. I have decided to accept neither.”

“Neither?” My father looked to the Admiral and then to Mr. Trimble. “But hadn’t we decided to back the industrialist fellow?” My father was scratching at his ear.

The Admiral was shaking his head. “I thought we’d decided upon the rector. Least, that’s what I decided after I’ve heard him preach these past months.”

“It doesn’t matter which of you decided what.
I
have decided that I’m not going to marry either man. So how shall we go about rejecting them? That’s what I’d like to know.”

For men who were so eager to push me into marriage, not one of them offered any advice.

“Father, since you accepted the proposals, I think you should reject them.”

“Oh . . .” He sighed. “I don’t know as how I ought to do that. I didn’t really know you’d accepted two proposals, you see, and they might not understand either, seeing as how I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s probably best if you do it yourself.”

I looked at the Admiral and Mr. Trimble in turn, but they both glanced away from me.

“Fine.” I strode to the desk that had once been my own, took up a piece of paper, addressed it to Mr. Stansbury, and spoke aloud as I wrote. “Dear Mr. Stansbury, I won’t be able to marry you after all. Please accept my regrets. Sincerely, Miss Charlotte Withersby.” After blotting the ink, I folded up the letter, shoved it into an envelope, sealed it, and waved it about. “Mr. Trimble, will you please do me the favor of posting this?”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Your letter provides no explanation.”

“And what would you suggest that I say?”

The Admiral and my father were looking at him as if they too were much interested in his reply.

“I don’t know. I simply think the honor of a proposal should be responded to in kind.”

“You mean with a mumble-jumble that doesn’t quite make plain what it is that I mean but leaves it to him to decipher?”

“Well . . . no. I think it best if . . . that is, you might consider telling him the truth.”

“The truth? The truth is that I never had any intention of marrying anyone at all. The truth is that all I really want to do is finish my illustrations for father’s volumes and get my paper published even though no one seems to want it. The truth is that I have been entirely miserable gadding about in slippers and fancy gowns while I waited for father to come to his senses and re-call me to work. The truth is that the only one I have been waiting for is you, Mr. Trimble.”

“Me?”

“Yes! I have been waiting for you to leave so that I can return. The truth is that I have tried my best to fit in with science, for which my sex has apparently made me ill-suited, and I have done my best to fit in with society, for which my passion for botany has made me equally ill-suited. The truth is that I seem to fit neither here nor there, and I deem it best, at this moment, to take myself upstairs. If you will excuse me.”

The men parted to let me through, and I made my way up the stairs. I got to the top before my tears started, and then I saw little use in trying to stop them.

T
he next morning, I put on my boots and walked across the fields to Dodsley Manor. I needed to speak to Miss Templeton.

It only took fifteen minutes for her to appear. She fairly burst into the sitting room. “What is it! It’s only half past nine, and
you
know that I usually sleep until ten, so
I
know you wouldn’t call unless it were really, truly urgent.”

“I need your help. I’ve been offered two proposals, and I don’t know how—”

“
Two
proposals? But I thought you hadn’t meant to receive any.”

“I hadn’t. But I did. In the same day. Within an hour of each other.”

“Then you’ll simply have to refuse them.”

“Apparently I have already accepted them.”

“
Both
of them?”

I nodded.

Her hands flew to her mouth.

“So what am I to say?”

“Well . . . you can’t refuse them now that you’ve accepted them.”’

“I’m going to have to refuse at least one of them!”

“But how did this happen? This is all the fault of Mr. Trimble, isn’t it? If he would have done you the favor of leaving, then none of this would have happened. And I’ve just been told where he . . . Oh! I’ve half a mind to—”

“It father’s fault. He never asked me to stay.”

“I wouldn’t let Mr. Trimble go as easy as that! Not after what I have to tell you about . . . ” She stamped her foot. “Oh! I still haven’t forgiven him for being so handsome. And neither should you!”

“I’m not going to. But all and still, I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far as I did if he hadn’t taught me about conversing and dancing and . . .” And everything else. Perhaps he
was
the one to blame. I wouldn’t have been nearly as attractive a candidate for marriage if he hadn’t taken it upon himself to tutor me.

Miss Templeton was looking at me as if waiting for something.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s just not done, refusing a proposal you’ve already accepted. I mean, I suppose it has been done, although it was probably due to dire circumstances. I suppose Mr. Stansbury’s fortune is in no danger of a collapse . . . ?”

“Probably not.”

“And the rector isn’t already married . . . ?”

“No.”

She sighed. “I just don’t know, then.”

“I am a menace to polite society.”

“I wouldn’t say you’re a menace exactly. I’d just say that you’re always saying the most unexpected things.”

“I suppose the best thing to do would be to . . . ?” I looked to her hoping for guidance.

She simply looked back at me.

“What would
you
do?”

“I wouldn’t have accepted the proposals in the first place.”

“That isn’t very helpful to me in my current situation.”

“No.” She sighed again. “I suppose you have no other choice. You’ll just have to tell them both the truth.”

“That’s what Mr. Trimble said.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I hate him even more now.”

I turned to leave.

“But Miss Withersby, I have to tell you what I learned about—”

I walked out the door without another word. Whatever it was would have to wait until I became unbetrothed.

Tell
the truth.

It was so much easier said than done, because the truth was not very flattering. In spite of what I had shouted at my father and the Admiral and Mr. Trimble, the truth was that I had toyed with Mr. Stansbury and the rector, employing their affections for my own gain. And that’s exactly what I told Mr. Stansbury as I spoke to him later that afternoon.

“For my own gain. Do you see?”

“Yes. And I see something more as well. I see that I have done the same to you, trying to woo you with orchids and stumperies so that you might make my solitary life a little less lonely. We could say I was using you in the same way that you were using me.”

“I didn’t realize we were both so mercenary. Did you?”

He laughed.

“Are you very disappointed?”

He looked at me for a long moment. “I am. But not, perhaps, in the way a jilted bridegroom should be.”

I didn’t know whether to be offended or very grateful.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do without you now.” He gazed around his glasshouse with a sigh.

“Just because I won’t marry you doesn’t mean I can’t help you, does it?”

His face brightened. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

“Although . . . I probably shouldn’t do it right this minute, because I still have to refuse Mr. Hopkins-Whyte’s proposal.”

“Two proposals to refuse? In the same day? That might just be a county record.”

“I know.” The words came out quite as miserably as I felt about the whole thing.

Mr. Stansbury’s brow arched as a smile tilted his lips. “Then I’ll have to compliment myself on courting the belle of the season.”

I walked from Overwich Hall down the road toward the rector’s, pausing frequently to admire a variety of seed stems on the way, and eventually I found myself on the rectory’s doorstep. I knocked and received a muffled response to enter. Opening the door, I gasped when I saw the rector. He was sitting on the floor, specimens strewn about him.

“Miss Withersby! I hadn’t expected you until later in the afternoon.”

He started to rise, but I joined him instead, kneeling on the floor. “I know. I’m sorry, I—”

“Which is not to say that I’m not delighted to see you. There’s no way that you can fail to see that I need you.”

“I do realize that, and I certainly don’t mind trying to help you . . . but I wonder if you really, truly need a wife.”

“I assure you that I do. With eight children and—”

“Your children may need a mother, and you may need some help with your botanical collections, but forgive me for asking when I wonder if you really need
me
.”

“But I am so happy and . . . and honored that you consented to—”

“And there’s that as well. I didn’t really understand that I was consenting, yesterday, to anything at all. At least nothing of a matrimonial nature.”

He blinked his surprise, eyes widening. “But I assure you that I—”

“You asked me to help you with your collections. What I agreed to was that.”

“But I meant—”

“I wonder, Mr. Hopkins-Whyte, if you actually meant anything else at all.”

“What is it that you’re saying, Miss Withersby?”

“I just think it quite clear that your needs include a botanical assistant and a mother to your children, but they don’t really include an actual botanist. And that is what I am . . . and what I will probably always be, no matter how contrary to the designs of God and nature.”

“When you say . . . What
are
you saying?”

“I’m saying that I think it best if we don’t marry. I think you should, when you find the right woman, but that woman is not me.”

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and swabbed his forehead. “I must say, I am quite relieved.”

“Relieved?” That wasn’t quite the sentiment I had expected.

“Oh! I didn’t mean to offend. Not relieved that you’re not going to marry me, but I am relieved that I won’t have to keep up with this collection.”

“Keep up with . . . ?”

“Not that I wouldn’t, you understand. Of course I would keep up with my rambles, but I might not . . . I mean, since you wouldn’t expect it of me . . .”

“You mean to say that you would have married me in order to feign an interest in something in which you really have no interest at all?”

“I wouldn’t say I have
no
interest. I am a rector, you understand. And I should be delighting in God’s creation as a part of the job, you might say.”

“But must we all be spoken to through flowers? Why could not some of us, like you, find inspiration in actual words? What needs illustration to the rest of us, is revealed quite plainly to you. I should think you ought to take some pride in that.”

Appreciation shone from his eyes.

“Is it any shame to your Creator if you do what you do best? Would it not be an affront if you did not?”

“Are you saying I do this poorly?” He was looking around at the specimens that overflowed his parlor.

“Quite frankly? Yes.”

He smiled.

I smiled.

And then we both began to laugh.

Sometime later, as we both wiped tears from our eyes, he offered me a hand and helped me to standing. “A rector who isn’t enamored of botany? Do you really think that proper?”

“If he’s a rector who preaches wonderfully stimulating sermons and has eight children, he has plenty enough to do of a day. Those who would criticize you for not seeing to your collections would be churlish.”

He glanced round at the papers and specimens that littered the floor. “What a mess I’ve made of everything. I suppose there’s nothing worth saving . . . ?”

“I don’t believe so. No.” At long last I was free to express my true opinion.

“Then if I can stuff it all back into these drawers, I will burn it for kindling. I daresay it should last me until spring.”

“I don’t mind saying that I think it for the best.”

He gazed into my eyes for a long moment. “Thank you, Miss Withersby. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your honest words. I might have just kept on doing what I thought I ought to. How liberating it is to realize that I don’t have to anymore.”

When I returned to the house, it was with a clear conscience. But though I went to sleep in peace that night, I woke at five the next morning and couldn’t return to my slumber. I tossed about for a while before I gave up. What I needed was a good ramble. At that early hour in the morning, I navigated by old habit. It wasn’t until I’d left the house and was on my way down the lane, trying to button up my shooting jacket that I noticed it was my new one.

“Miss Withersby!” Mr. Trimble hailed me from the grasses beside the road.

“Mr. Trimble, I had not known you to rise so early.”

“After working these weeks with your father, it’s become a bad habit.”

We walked along in silence for a while, and then I noticed him glancing at me. And quite frequently. But then why should he not stare? I knew enough about fashion now to know that I was quite singularly dressed. “This new shooting jacket is abominable. I had no idea it would turn out the way it did.” It was cut entirely too close to the body for my comfort. I suppose that’s what one got when one went to a dressmaker for a jacket.

“It’s quite . . . it’s truly . . . It’s very fetching.”

“It is?” I glanced down at it. “I wish it had deeper pockets. What I really need is a coat that will carry a flask and a pocket glass.” I held them up for his view.

“Would you like me to carry them for you?”

I was about to demur and then decided to let him. He owed me that at least. And then I decided he owed me a little more, so I asked, “How is it that you know so much about so many things? The command of servants, the rules of conversation, and the vagaries of fashion?”

“I grew up among people for whom those mattered very much. It’s the reason I left them. One of the things I like most about New Zealand is that a man is measured by his own character rather than that of his family.”

“Perhaps I shall go there someday. It sounds like a place I would enjoy.”