Page 8 of Finding Love at Roseford Blooms
‘Confetti’s off, then?’ Lucy said in amusement. Simon knew she was enjoying teasing him, but the thought of thousands of paper petals, no matter how biodegradable, put the deodorant he’d definitely applied that morning to the test.
‘We’ll be lucky if we can have it on the estate at all, let alone outside the chapel.’ Simon sighed. ‘Do you think Serena will be OK with that?’
‘It’s not Serena you should be worrying about,’ Lucy said, smiling. ‘She’s not the demanding one of the partnership, remember?’
Simon shook his head. ‘Well, I’ll leave it to the actual wedding planner to break that news. I’m just the intermediary, thank goodness.’ He took the latte that Lucy had prepared and said goodbye, smiling as Lucy wished him luck. It was a real coup, having such a high-profile wedding as the first one at the Roseford Hall chapel, but it hadn’t come without its headaches. Much as he loved still being involved in the running of what had once been his family’s estate, the whole property having been taken on by the British Heritage Fund several years ago, there were times when he wished he’d just walked away from it all, bought a house with his share of the proceeds from the sale and started a whole new life. But, he’d conceded at the time, as the tenth Lord of Roseford, walking away from Roseford Hall would’ve been tantamount to burning it down. He just didn’t have it in him to rise from the ashes of four hundred years of history and ignore the metaphorically disapproving gaze of the portraits of the ancestors on the walls of the Great Hall.
Heading back out onto Roseford’s main street, he could see ahead of him the woman who had scuttled out of Lucy’s café. She didn’t appear to be in such a hurry now, and as she turned left and through the door of Roseford Blooms, the local flower shop that was handling the decorations and bouquets for Serena’s wedding, his curiosity was piqued. Deciding to pop in and see Bee, who had been so incredibly helpful with this wedding, Simon wondered if she might be able to come up with an alternative for the confetti that the British Heritage Fund had so effectively vetoed. He’d heard of rose petals being used instead, but wondered if the cost would be too prohibitive. Then again, it wasn’t as though any expense was being spared for Serena and Montana’s wedding, so he figured it was worth asking. At least then, if Serena came back in screaming hysterics or, indeed, Montana did, he would have an alternative plan that might well just go some way to placate them.
The brass bell above the door of the florist’s jangled merrily as Simon stepped into the shop. It was a tiny place really, he reflected, and felt like a throwback to a far earlier time. Bee had placed a couple of buckets of flowers outside the front door, but had saved her best blooms for the stepped shelves inside the shop, painted green and rising like a miniature Quantocks to the ceiling. Despite the lack of floor space, Bee managed to make the place feel airy and welcoming, and that irresistible combination of freshly cut flowers and their scents and earthy, ozony compost where the rooted blooms sat in various pots, made the whole experience seem like stepping into a summer meadow.
‘Simon!’ Bee’s voice called from the counter as she caught sight of him. ‘How are you today?’
‘I’m well, thanks,’ Simon replied. He paused to bury his nose in a nearby bunch of strong-smelling pink roses, and wondered if his mother would like a bunch of them for her hall table. Deciding that they could wait, he headed up to the counter.
‘How are the preparations for the wedding of the year going?’ Bee asked. She was pruning the stems of a deep red bundle of roses, stacked up on the counter, and her fingers worked with cool efficiency, stripping the bottom two inches of each stem and removing any inconvenient leaves or thorns, before they went out on display in the shop. She was so practised at this that she barely needed to look, working by touch alone. Seeing Simon’s admiring glance at the blooms, she added, ‘These came over from your head gardener this morning – Phoenix Rosa, he called them.’ She paused. ‘Supposed to symbolise the estate rising from the ashes, apparently.’
Simon smiled, remembering his own thought processes of a few minutes ago. ‘Yes, the British Heritage Fund commissioned Henry to create some new hybrids for the garden. Glad the first one’s come out so well.’ Although, he thought, if the Roseford Hall estate was rising from the ashes, he himself sometimes felt mired in the bog of history and tradition.
Briefly, he filled Bee in on the confetti conundrum. As he was recounting the story, she nodded, still paring the roses as he talked.
‘Well, it’s not the end of the world,’ she said. ‘Even if bird-friendly or biodegradable confetti’s off the cards, I’m sure the BHF can’t object to dried rose petals. Most of them’ll be gone on the summer breeze in a day or two, anyway.’
‘That’s what I was hoping you’d say,’ Simon replied, feeling relieved. ‘And can you get hold of some?’
‘Shouldn’t be a problem. Have you discussed this with the wedding planner and the happy couple, or shall I hang fire until you have?’
‘Better make sure it’s all OK with them,’ Simon said. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’ How had it come to this? he thought. He wasn’t much more than a messenger boy for the BHF these days. A go-between. A middleman.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ Bee asked gently. She’d obviously noticed the look on his face.
Forcing a smile, he replied, ‘I’m fine,’ a little too quickly. What else could he expect, these days, after all? A lord without a manor was about as much use as…
‘Oh, Lizzie, darling, thank you so much.’ Bee’s voice brought him back from another melancholy thought, as did the smell of coffee that gradually overlaid the sweet scents of the blooms in the flower shop.
Simon glanced up from the Phoenix Rosa that Bee had nearly finished paring, and noticed, with some surprise, that the other woman behind the counter appeared to be the tourist who’d exited Lucy’s café so summarily.
‘Simon, this is my niece Lizzie Warner,’ Bee said brightly. ‘She’s come to stay with me until her blessed arm gets better.’ She turned Simon’s way. ‘Lizzie, this is Simon Treloar, Tenth Lord of Roseford and resident of Roseford Hall. I’m not sure if the two of you ever met when Lizzie and her sister, Georgina, used to come to stay with me.’
‘And wedding planner’s assistant at the moment,’ Simon said, still not quite able to keep the trace of irony from his tone. He regarded the other woman behind the counter, and found himself smiling. The bruising on her face didn’t detract from her direct green eyes, her long, thick almost black hair that fell to just below her shoulders and her statuesque, straight-backed figure.
Bee turned from Simon to Lizzie, smiling. ‘The pair of them used to come over during the school holidays, so it was quite a while ago!’
Lizzie did look rather familiar, Simon reflected. Perhaps their paths had crossed when she’d stayed with Bee before? But then he’d been preoccupied during the holidays helping out on the Roseford estate, and hadn’t really taken much notice of what other people were doing.
‘It’s nice to meet you, Lizzie,’ he added quickly, realising that she might misconstrue his staring. ‘I hope your arm feels better soon.’
Lizzie, he observed, must have been on some pretty strong painkillers, since she barely seemed to register what either he or Bee had said. Eventually, she seemed to zone back into the moment.
‘Th-thank you,’ she stammered. ‘It’s, er, nice to meet you, too.’
She turned back to Bee. ‘I think I might go back to the cottage for a bit, if you don’t mind, Aunt Bee. I’m not feeling so great.’
‘Of course, darling,’ Bee said. ‘Did you want me to run you back up the hill in the van? You look a little pale.’
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ Lizzie replied. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘All right, then. See you later.’
