Page 10 of The Nature of a Lady
He chuckled. “All right, so you’re too proud to ask. But you no doubt want to know.”
No. She didn’t. Though she couldn’t unclench her jaw long enough to tell him so.
“He’s in London now. Says that’s where all the writers of any substance gather. His first book of poetry was published about six months ago.”
So he wasn’t here. No risk, at least, of running into the person she least wanted to see. Or catching a glimpse of him at a pub or in a gig or walking hand in hand with—
She turned her face away, wishing she could unknot her shoulders. Wished she could summon the polite words to her lips that would prove she didn’t care.I wish him well.Or maybe,Your mam must be proud of him. But when she opened her mouth, what came out instead was, “I hope the critics rip him to shreds.”
She never was any good with polite.
4
There. Libby squinted at the drawing, finally satisfied that she had the storm petrel’s webbed feet drawn proportionately. And the distinctive bump on its beak too. According to the guidebook that sat open beside her, its pages weighted with rocks to keep it open, theHydrobates pelagicusshe’d been sketching must be an adolescent, given the narrow white bar on its upper wing.
She smiled, remembering its awkward shuffle when it had landed briefly on the shore and the fluttering, nearly bat-like movement of its wings as it flew. It didn’t hold a place in the hierarchy of nature as a strong bird, a fast bird, or a particularly beautiful bird.
But it was hugely migratory, the book said. That small fellow—or lady, one couldn’t tell gender at a glance—would see South Africa. Mauritania. Turkey. It would dive in waters she’d never touch, feast on jellies and small fish round the world, and somehow find its way back here again next year.
How lovely it must be to know your place in the world without ever having to think about it. To feel no need to defend yourself to your peers just because your flight wasn’t soaring like an eagle’s or your dive as deep as a murre’s. To simply eschew walking on land most of the time when your feet weren’t suited for it.
How lovely to just be who you were meant to be.
Who God made you to be. That’s what Mama would have said. Libby sharpened her pencil to a fine tip, leaned close to her page, and added the small claws at the tip of each web. Satisfied with the addition, she sighed and looked up. The last thing in the world she ever wanted to do was disappoint her mother—and even worse, make her worry for her immortal soul. But much of what the vicar at the village near Telford Hall espoused from his pulpit made no sense to her. It contradicted the things her own eyes observed.
She didn’t see creatures in need of a God to form every claw and beak and feather and dictate to them how they must work. What she saw were creatures capable of adaptation—creatures that evolved to fit whatever environment they were in. Creatures that fought and killed and ate and were eaten, that mated and reproduced and defended their young.
Breathe the wordmatedaround the ladies of society, though, and one would be shushed with horrified glances. Which she knew firsthand. Their husbands may talk of breeding horses and dogs, but a lady wasn’t to speak of such matters.
Libby pushed aside the rocks holding down the guidebook’s pages and snapped it closed. Mama said each person was designed by the loving hand of God too, fashioned in their mother’s womb, known before they were born. But if so, then why—why—had she been made to be so ill-fitting an addition to the world in which she’d been placed? Why was she strapped with expectations that chafed so terribly?
Asking her to dance and flirt and attend musicales and teas was like asking a storm petrel to walk confidently on land or dive a yard beneath the surface. She wasn’t suited for it.
And now she’d ruined her lovely morning with the very thoughts she’d hoped to leave behind her on the mainland. Frustrated with herself, she closed her sketchbook. She’d put down images of two birds and three beetles as well as a detailed diagram of the flower to her right that she’d yet to identify. The birds she’d found in the guidebook, so she’d been able to write their Latin names, their common names, and her own descriptions of them. The beetles she’d look up when she was back at the house, where her entomology book was stillin her trunk. The flower ... she didn’t yet have a book to teach her about the flora of the Scillies. She’d poke about the shops in Hugh Town sometime in the next few days though. Surely there would be a bookshop that had something. Or a local who could teach her.
What she needed was a botanist. Her lips tugged up a bit as she stacked the guidebook on top of the sketchbook. Perhaps oneparticularbotanist. The man who had quite literally stumbled upon her in the gardens of Telford Hall two years ago, while she’d been flat on her stomach, watching a caterpillar spin its chrysalis on the underside of a leaf. She didn’t know his name—there’d been no shortage of people coming and going in those days, offering their condolences to the family after Papa’s death.
Comfort, for her, had only been found out of doors. Away from the mourners. The guests. The black dresses and veils. The whispers of what a shame it was that Lord Telford had lost the ongoing battle with consumption at that particular time, when it meant postponing her coming out. As if she could care about presentations and balls and gowns when her father lay dying. As if she ever would have cared anyway.
So, she’d been hiding from them all, as she did every chance she got, in the gardens. Mabena had only just been hired, and she’d won a place in Libby’s heart by covering for her and helping her slip out. She’d hunkered down to watch the caterpillar, her sketchbook under her hand and the Latin names flowing from her fingers.
When she’d heard the startled footsteps behind her, she’d thought for sure she’d be in trouble—there she was, the daughter of the house, lying on her stomach in the gardens. But instead of a horrified gasp or a quick rebuke, polished black shoes had come into view seconds before the owner of them had crouched down beside her.
He must have been a friend of Bram’s, given his age. But her brother hadn’t called her in for any introductions, which meant he wasn’t of a society that he deemed acceptable for her. Probably a school chum who had heard about his loss and been in the neighborhood. She didn’t know. And it hadn’t mattered.
All that had mattered was that he watched the caterpillar with herfor five silent minutes. And then had touched a finger to the leaf and told her how the plants in the Brassicaceae family were the favored food source of thePieris rapaewhen they were in their larval stage. He’d answered her questions about the mustard plant’s reproduction. Then told her about the neighboring stalks and stems too, while she sat up and took frantic notes.
She didn’t know who he was. But he’d brightened an otherwise miserable time in her life, and she thought of him every time she wondered about a plant whose name she didn’t know. The Botanist—her version of a fairy godmother ... or godfather, as the case may be. Or perhaps godbrother, if such a thing existed, as he was far too young to be a parental figure.
Were he here, he’d tell her about the flowers nestled among the grasses. He’d examine her sketch of them and perhaps correct a small detail she’d gotten wrong. He’d provide the Latin names and tell her about the cycles of blooming and seeding. Probably then enlighten her about the commercial flower trade that she knew provided much of the Scillies’s livelihood and how each bloom had made its way here.
But he wasn’t here, of course. So she’d have to settle for finding a book.
Her fingers traced the debossed design on the cover of the other book she’d brought out with her. Certainly not a treatise on flora. No,Treasure Island. She’d glanced through it yesterday afternoon but had been too aware of all the people about to really look overlong. Now she had it all to herself.
Handwritten notes were all throughout the pages. In the margins. Occasionally between the lines, or circling words. The script was feminine, leading her to guess that it was another something left behind by the Other Elizabeth, whose things were scattered through the house.
It took only a few minutes of note reading, however, to realize that she had no context to make sense of all these scrawled words. They certainly had nothing to do with the story. Well, the little sketch of a pirate vessel, fully rigged, could have been, she supposed. And the treasure chest. But the words made no sense at all in that context.
