Like a Flower in Bloom (3 page)

I wished I had not been so hasty in answering, for I feared our cook would have an entirely different opinion of the matter. “I’m not certain Mrs. Harvey will allow it.”

Father took a big bite of his mustache, nearly pulling it into his mouth. “Will you please . . . could you warn her while I show this fine fellow the proofs of my first volume?”

I nodded in agreement. But still, I paused as I approached the kitchen door.

I could hear Mrs. Harvey humming some tuneless song.

Really, I wished I didn’t have to consult with her. She considered the kitchen her private domain, and since the time she had caught me plumping up my dried specimens in one of her kettles, I had earned myself no favors.

As I entered, she was pulling a tray of blackened biscuits from the oven. When she turned to place them on the sideboard, she saw me.

I nodded. “Mrs. Harvey.”

“I suppose you’ll be telling me you want fancies like butter with your biscuits. And after I’ve already cooked up your supper!”

“No. I wanted no such thing.”

She speared me with a look as though she didn’t quite believe me. “Then you’ll be after a cake or hot tea for your breakfast.”

“No. The tea you leave on the stove at night is quite adequate.” I’d become almost used to drinking it cold in the morning. I found the bracing chill of it refreshing. In the summer months, at least.

“Heaven knows you plague me with demands!”

“It’s just that . . . you see, one of father’s correspondents is come, and we were hoping . . . That is, Father is wanting to know . . . if it is at all possible, could the man stay for supper?”

She took the biscuits from the tray, one by one, and slammed them down into a bread bowl. Then she threw up her ash-blackened hands. “Isn’t it enough that I work my fingers to the bone?” She stomped over to the cupboard, pulled forth some salt pork and hacked off several pieces of it with the big knife she liked to stow in the waistband of her apron. “But to be put upon like this? An honest outrage is what it is!”

“I’m truly very sorry. We didn’t know the man was coming.”

“And that’s supposed to make it all fine? I suppose you’ll be wanting to invite the whole town over next!”

“Of course we won’t. It will be just this one man.” I took up the bread bowl and went with it through the other door into the dining room.

The conversation between the men had moved from the parlor to the dining room table, and Mr. Trimble was seated in my chair, with Father across from him. They were still discussing father’s book.

Mr. Trimble stood when he saw me.

I nodded as I put the biscuits down on the table, and then I moved a stack of specimens from a chair and began to draw it toward the table. Mr. Trimble took it from me and set it into place. “Pardon me. I ought to have done that for you.”

I would have replied, but Mrs. Harvey stalked out just then and banged the tray of salt pork and a dish filled with what could only be spinach onto the table. I waited until she left before I sat and helped myself to a biscuit and a piece of pork.

Father took some food as well, and then Mr. Trimble did the same. He brushed a bit of ash from his biscuit and took a bite. When it failed to yield, he looked at it with no little astonishment.

I made a point of lifting my cup of tea and dunking my biscuit into it.

He followed my example, though I noticed he took only one bite before he put it back down on his plate. He didn’t eat his salt pork either.

“Does the food not suit you, Mr. Trimble?”

“The last time I had such fare was on my voyage to New Zealand three years ago. We were blown off course and had to make do with our provisions for an extra month.”

Father smiled broadly. “Mrs. Harvey, our cook, was married to a navy man. She’ll be glad you find the food so authentic.”

“Indeed, I do.” But contrary to his words, he had set his fork down and did not seem as if he intended to use it anytime soon.

I dunked my biscuit into my tea again and ground it against the bottom of the cup to soften it. “New Zealand. What an astonishing land that is. You must miss your sheep. I hope Emilia survived her lambing?”

Mr. Trimble blinked. “Had I known you would be reading my letters, Miss Withersby, I might have phrased things a bit differently. Or written of other things entirely. My stories of life in the colony cannot have interested you much.”

My father choked on a mouthful of biscuit. “It’s
sheep
that you have, then?”

Mr. Trimble looked at him in surprise. “A good hundred of them.”

“Is that considered a large flock?”

Perhaps I had erred by introducing the topic. “He told us, Father, that he’s starting with a small flock since he’s just begun to establish himself, but he has plans to own many more. The countryside can be quite treacherous, if you recall.”

“You sound almost as if you know it, Miss Withersby.”

“I do not. Of course I do not. But I do read the journals. And an occasional letter from you that Father shares with me.”

My explanation seemed to satisfy him, and he talked at length of that fair land in a way that almost made me wish to forsake my own gentle hills and open glades for the high mountains and steep valleys he described. I had always yearned to see the specimens he’d collected for us
in situ
. And if the colony inspired such passion in a man who had seemed so philosophical in his letters, then it must truly be extraordinary.

We repaired to the parlor after supper, and father went in search of the brandy he kept under a domed glass. It had displayed an orchid before the unfortunate plant had died. He rousted about for his pair of cups before I reminded him that I had last seen them on the mantel. After retrieving and filling
them, he gave one to Mr. Trimble. “You must stop talking, young fellow. If you say any more, Charlotte is likely to send you right back to where you came from with a list of new specimens to collect.”

I felt the need to protest. “I would not. Mr. Trimble has already shown us he is incapable of following our directions. It would be pointless to send him back for more.”

Those distinguished brows of his collapsed and he began to bluster. “Incapable of following directions? I’ve sent half a dozen chests filled with specimens in the last three years! Every chance I had, I beat about the brush in search of those you asked for, Mr. Withersby.”

Mr. Trimble’s outrage had little effect on Father, but why should it? It was I who had posted those lists to New Zealand. And I who had dealt with the consequence of his poor preservation and mislabeling. His carelessness seemed quite out of character for a man who had once proudly described to me the system he had devised for shearing his sheep.

“If I may be so bold as to ask . . . what was wrong with them?”

Though the appeal was to my father, I answered in his stead. “They weren’t labeled. They weren’t attached to your sheets. They weren’t even properly pressed. If you had used the drying-paper we sent to you, then—”

“Paper? I never got any paper! I dried all the specimens I sent you with packing paper I begged from the butcher.”

That explained the unfortunate result. “Most of your early specimens arrived half-decayed, covered in mildew.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. If you make a list of those that were discarded, I will renew my efforts upon my return.”

“I would if I could, but I hardly know what the plants were meant to be. The least you might have done was record what they were and the environs in which you found them.”

“I did for those I collected, but some of the natives gathered specimens for me, and I couldn’t very well write down where they’d come from.” He had given up speaking to my father, who had taken off his boots and was looking forlornly at a hole in one of his stockings. Mr. Trimble instead spoke directly to me.

“And why not?”

“Because a description ‘found down by the great river in the place where the water turns back upon itself opposite the tree that smells of lemons’ wouldn’t fit on those tiny labels I was meant to use.”

“Such an intimate description is not required, but it would have been useful to know if the specimen were found in a woodland or a meadow. In moist soil or dry. The requirements of taxonomy are quite specific and to receive the specimens all jumbled about—”

“Jumbled about! That hardly seems fair. I put great care into the packing of them.”

I rose and went to the chest that had arrived that morning. By a combination of pushing and tugging, I brought it to his side. “We got this one just today, and—”

“Today? But . . . I sent it eight months ago!”

“That only goes to prove my point. If this cannot be called a jumble, then I do not know what can be.”

He leaned over and looked inside. Then he reached in and pulled out a dried stem of something that could not, unfortunately, be easily identified. “When I sent this it was secured to a card.” He picked out another. “And this one. They all were.” He sounded quite surprised.

“Perhaps the paper disintegrated during the voyage.”

He was digging through them in earnest now. “And all of my notations with them? I must apologize. If I had ever imagined
that they would arrive in this condition after so long a delay, then I would have kept them all to bring back with me. I cannot fault you for your outrage, Miss Withersby.”

I didn’t know whether I should thank him for agreeing with me or continue to air my grievances. He seemed to expect some sort of reply—indeed it sounded as if he wanted to fault me for something, which would be absurd.

My father had peeled his stockings off and draped them over the back of his chair. Now he slumped, feet toward the hearth. “In fact, the Admiral and I have been discussing Charlotte of late.” He spoke in such a placid manner, of such an incongruous topic, I wondered if he’d heard my conversation with Mr. Trimble at all. “As much as I have appreciated her assistance, it seems I have been remiss in not allowing her to partake of society.”

The Admiral’s words still rankled, and I had no desire to hear them repeated. “I wish you wouldn’t speak of me as if I were some specimen to be fixed to a sheet of paper and admired.”

“But you are. At least according to your uncle.” He shifted to speak to Mr. Trimble directly. “She’s a specimen in her finest flower in need of a young man. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Mr. Trimble looked me over as if I were a species of noxious weed. “I couldn’t say, really.”

My father returned his gaze to the fireplace. “That’s what the Admiral thinks, and as I’ve pondered the thought, I realize that I’ve been too selfish, keeping her closeted here with me. She’s nearly twenty-two.”

“I
am
twenty-two. And I am
not
closeted.”

Mr. Trimble flashed a smile. “For my own part, I could think of nothing finer than to be shut up with the renowned Andrew Withersby.”

“Good. I see you agree with me.” Father sighed as if in great
relief and leaned his head back against the chair, closing his eyes. “It’s settled, then.”

Mr. Trimble looked at me as if expecting me to say something.

I shrugged.

He turned back to my father. “What, exactly, is settled?”

“You will be my assistant so that Charlotte can go find herself a husband.”

M
r. Trimble blinked his eyes wide.

I heard myself gasp. “You . . . you cannot just
command
me to marry! I have illustrations to finish for your book. And there are papers to write and notes to transcribe. And mother’s old publisher just asked me to write a book on how to make wax flowers. There’s no end to the—”

Father opened his eyes. “But you don’t make wax flowers. Do you?”

“I can learn. And we need the money. You’re months away from turning in the manuscript for your next volume.”

Father turned to Mr. Trimble. “Can you make wax flowers?”

“I’ve never made one in my life.”

Father was frowning again. “Why would anyone want to make a
wax
flower? Why wouldn’t they just go and pick a real one?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I’d already written books on crafting dolls from flower blossoms and making flower-scented footbath salts. I’d even done a compilation of rose-themed poetry. “You can’t just expect this man to drop his plans when he’s only just returned from the colony. I’m sure he has other things to do—don’t you, Mr. Trimble?”

“Not really. Nothing that I’m anxious to do, in any case.”

“You must have family. Friends. Someone, somewhere, must be expecting you.”

“The voyage from New Zealand can take unexpectedly long, as you’ve seen. . . .” He nodded toward the chest of moldering specimens. “So I didn’t warn any of them of my coming. In truth, I’m not so certain anyone I know would want to see me again.”

He was no help. I appealed to my father instead. “You never, in fact, asked him, and he never actually agreed.”

“He just did.”

“He didn’t. He said he wasn’t expected anywhere else and that no one ever wanted to see him again.” Which seemed to beg the question that, if the people who knew him didn’t want to see him, why in heaven’s name should we want him either? Perhaps he wasn’t a fine fellow after all.

My father straightened as he turned to look at our guest. “Will you?”

“I can think of no greater honor than to work beside you, Mr. Withersby.”

He’d done it again! “He didn’t actually say yes, and—”

The man sent me a dark look. “Yes. I’ll do it. And thank you, kindly, for the offer.”

“But we can’t pay you.” I gave my father a stern look. “We can’t pay him.”

“I’m a . . . well . . . it would be an honor to work beside you, Mr. Withersby, for the simple pleasure of it.”

But I didn’t want him to say yes. He couldn’t. I didn’t want to find a husband, and I didn’t want to go out into what the Admiral called
society
. I saw all those people at church on Sunday. Wasn’t that good enough? I didn’t want to do anything other than what I was already doing.

Mr. Trimble put up a hand. “I would like to assist you, but
I don’t wish to cause a family argument. I’ve been involved in quite enough of those already.” He stood. “Why don’t I look through this chest and see if there is anything in it I can salvage?” He picked it up as if it didn’t weigh four stone and carried it off to a clear spot in the center of the room while Father followed behind him.

Knowing that Mrs. Harvey would likely ignore our dishes until morning, I returned to the dining room and piled the utensils on the plates and put the plates atop the serving bowls and the bowls atop the platter before taking them to the kitchen. Afterward, I returned to the parlor to experiment with forming petals from accumulated dribs and drabs of candle wax as Father and our guest worked through the chest of specimens. Mr. Trimble finally begged off work in order to be allowed to search for a room to engage for the night. “I was so intent upon renewing our acquaintance that I came here straightaway from Liverpool.”

“And why shouldn’t you have?” Father seemed to take the very suggestion as an offense. “But you’ll stay here, with us, of course.” He extended the invitation as if he didn’t know that the spare room had been taken over by our stores of gum arabic and sulphur and quires of drying-paper.

I finally gave up on wax flowers, squeezing all my drooping, misshapen petals into a ball. “I don’t actually think that we have the—”

But Mr. Trimble was already refusing. “I wouldn’t wish to inconvenience you.”

Unfortunately Father wouldn’t hear of it. “How could it be an inconvenience? If you’ll be working with me, you ought to stay with me. Charlotte can take you up to the room.”

Mr. Trimble hesitated as he looked at me, and then he squared his shoulders and nodded. “Then I accept your kind offer.”

With great resignation and no little frustration, I took up a lamp and led him toward the stairs. “You’ll need to skip the fourth one because there’s a leak just above it in the ceiling. Water comes in through the roof, and it’s fairly rotted the stair right through.”

Mr. Trimble paused and put a hand to the doorframe, as if testing its sturdiness. “Forgive me for asking, but what do you do when it rains?”

I pushed at the edge of a tin pail with the toe of my boot. “That’s the purpose for this.”

He made no reply but simply stepped over the pail and then waited in the hall upstairs as I took the drying-paper off the bed, pulled some specimens out from underneath the mattress where they had been drying, shoved the chemicals into the corner, and fluffed up the pillow a bit.

He took a step into the room. “Are you certain this isn’t a bother?”

“Having you stay here or having you take up my position?” I took a look in the pitcher sitting atop a wash basin and realized it had long since gone dry. I lifted it. “I’ll get you some water.”

As I moved toward the door, he failed to step aside. “I didn’t mean to be the cause of trouble, though sometimes it seems I do nothing else.”

His tone was glib, but I didn’t think he spoke an untruth. “It’s not you who caused it. I have my uncle to thank for that, although I can’t understand why a man so recently returned from the colony would wish to seclude himself here with us.”

A corner of his mouth rose. “You would if you knew my family.”

After filling Mr. Trimble’s pitcher with water from my own, I left it in front of his door and returned to the parlor. My father
was bent over Mr. Trimble’s specimens, although he straightened when he heard me. “Such a shame there aren’t more here we can use.”

I joined him, feeling quite angry that so many of them would have to be discarded and rather testy at his discarding me like some improperly pressed plant. Had I not taken up where my mother had left off? Had I not kept us on our feet? And now he’d asked a stranger to take over for me as if anyone could do all those things that I had done. “You can’t just steal the man away from his life. I’m sure he didn’t come all the way from New Zealand intending to stay here and take up my position.”

“He volunteered.”

“He did not. You volunteered him.”

Father blinked. “He agreed to it. If he had something else to do, I’m sure he would have said so. He’s a fine young fellow.”

“But the man’s just returned. There must be some reason he’s come home, and it can’t have been to stay here with us and write books about wax flowers.”

“I don’t know that I’ll ask him to do
that
exactly.”

“If he doesn’t do it, then you’ll have to. I already signed the contract, and we’ve been given the advance.” I hated to press my point, considering the dark circles under his eyes, but I had to make him see that such a hasty, ill-thought decision would have grave consequences.

“Perhaps I can write to them and return the money.”

“It’s already been spent.”

He sighed as he chewed on his mustache. “
Wax
flowers? I just don’t see why—”

“It shouldn’t be very difficult to write. If I can do it, anyone can do it. Isn’t that what you’ve meant to say?”

“Charlotte, you’ve done so much for me these past few years. I simply wish to relieve you of—”

“I’ll say good-night now. Good night.”

“Charlotte, I didn’t mean—”

I neglected to hear what it was he didn’t mean because I was already on my way up the stairs.

I vowed not to give up my position as easily as that and endeavored to press my case the following morning on our ramble. Our habit was to be out of the house and down the road some distance by the time the church bells rang six. There was no reason why a good day’s worth of specimens could not be collected before the sun rose high enough to burn off the dew.

We stepped from the pot-holed road onto a rutted country lane and then wandered through a field into the wood. I held a branch aside so he could pass without trouble, and then I warned him about a patch of churned-up mud that lay ahead. His rheumatism was decidedly worse this year. Normally I would not have been quite so concerned about it, but the hunters and stalkers had descended upon our countryside from London and everything was in upheaval.

As we walked out of the wood and into a meadow, I spied a rosebay willow herb, its wine-colored stem and purple spike of blossoms bent from a horse’s passing. Stooping, I propped it up between two twigs. “I still don’t think it right that a complete stranger should be welcomed into our work while I am put out into society as some bloom in full flower, ready for the plucking.”

“I rather think we should advertise you as a girl ready for marriage.”

“I’ve no
time
to get married. And we’re only five pounds away from the poorhouse! Unless . . . have you solicited any new subscribers for your volumes on orchids?”

His sudden attention to the top of his cane let me know that he had not.

“At least I have that wax flower book contracted. And you have a memoir on lilies due to the Society, which you might use to gain some more subscriptions for your books. But you still need to write it and I still need to finish illustrating it.”

“I’ll ask Mr. Trimble to write the memoir. Maybe he can do the illustrations as well. And if he could manage to write about wax flowers—”

“It’s not an easy thing to write a book.”

“But neither of you knows how to make wax flowers, so whether you write it or he writes it, I fail to see how it could matter.”

“But there are so many things that must be done, and—”

“And now he can be about the doing of them instead of you.”

“But I’ve helped you for years, and you’ve only just met
him
. He doesn’t even know how to press a proper specimen!”

“He’s a fine young fellow. I’m sure he can learn.”

“Well, you can’t expect him to transcribe your notes for you.” My father’s handwriting was atrocious, but besides that, if he did, Mr. Trimble would soon discover my secret.

“I suppose I shall have to do that myself. But how difficult can all the rest of it be? If you were able to do them for all those years, then . . .”

I felt my mouth drop open. Even now after eight years, if I wasn’t very careful, if I wasn’t extremely diligent, everything was liable to come crashing down upon our heads. “If that’s the way you feel, then I suppose you’ll be happy to be rid of me.”

It would serve him right if Mr. Trimble bumbled it all.

“The Admiral said most girls your age are engaged by now, if not married. I honestly didn’t realize you are as old as you are. I can’t think how . . .” He let out a great long sigh. “I ought
to have let you go years ago.” He gave me a keen-eyed glance. “How did you get to be so old? And why haven’t I noticed before now?”

He hadn’t noticed much of anything, not for a long time, after my mother had died. But what point was there in recalling to him such misery? I held another branch for him and helped him over a fallen log.

“You’re certain you’d rather have him than me?”

“Of course I am. Consider yourself freed of all your responsibilities. You shouldn’t give us a second thought.”

I shouldn’t? Well then, I wouldn’t. I’d let them muddle about on their own for a while. And when the first bill went unpaid, and his correspondents’ specimens stopped being delivered, and that bucket on the stair overflowed, it wouldn’t take long for Father to show Mr. Trimble the door and beg me to return.