Page 121 of A Wicked Kind of Husband

“Of course.” They stood looking at the study and not at each other. “How long do you think you’ll stay?” she finally asked, trailing a finger down the doorjamb.

Ah, he knew that question. When he showed up at a gentleman’s country house, his host’s wife would ask it, and later he’d hear them arguing. Polite-speak for “I don’t want you here.” He never minded. He always had somewhere else to be anyway.

But this was Cassandra, and she did not seem averse to having him around. Maybe she actually meant “I want you to stay,” or maybe she merely needed to know his plans so she could manage the housekeeping, and how did it happen that they spoke daily and he still didn’t know what she was saying and still didn’t know how to ask?

It was a simple enough question. He wasn’t usually too stupid to answer simple questions but all he managed was silence.

So she answered it for him. “You said that you would stay until I…conceived. That was the agreement.”

“Right. Well. If that was the agreement.” It came out brusquely, loudly, despite the wood paneling and thick carpets. “Still too soon to know?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Well. What else have you to show me?”

She guided him through the rest of the house, but she skipped the upper floors, and since upper floors contained things like nurseries and schoolrooms, he was happy with the omission.

* * *

When the tourof the house was done, Cassandra offered to show him the garden.

“I mean, not all of it today,” she added hastily. “But perhaps you’d like to see my private garden…”

Joshua was about to make a bawdy joke about her private garden, but she looked very shy all of a sudden, and so instead he said, “Why not?”

Still looking shy, she rushed him through the main flower garden without comment, even though the crowded beds were spectacular to his city eyes. They bloomed in a profusion of colors, and chattered and buzzed with bees, butterflies, and birds.

The breeze ruffled his hair and his shirt—he had, of course, shucked off his coat and cravat, enjoying Cassandra’s teasing about his difficulty in keeping his clothes on—and he sneezed only three or four times.

“This is all your doing?” he asked.

“It was begun more than a century ago,” she said. “I merely add to it, and I have a small army of gardeners to follow my every command. Oh, look, the Goat’s Beard is in bloom!”

“The what?”

She pointed out a purple flower with long, spiky petals. “Goat’s Beard.”

“What kind of name for a flower is that?”

“A perfectly good name,” she said stoutly, walking on. “Lots of flowers have names like that. There is Goosefoot, Fat Hen, Busy Lizzie. Ah, Devil’s Shoestring, Sneezewort, Nipplewort—”

He burst out laughing. “You’re just making these up now.”

But she wasn’t laughing. She led him around a hedge and into a secluded garden the size of a spacious parlor, and she stood nervously with her fingers tangled together.

This mattered, he realized. So he strolled into the middle and looked around properly. The garden was hidden by high hedges, and a stone path wound through islands of colorful flowerbeds to a small folly with an embroidered seat. Another path led to a fountain: It featured a statue of a curvy, mostly naked woman, standing in a large shell and pouring water from a jug.

“I mean,” she rushed on, “it’s only a little garden and it’s not much compared to the rest, but…”

“How long have you had it?”

“Mama gave us all a garden plot when we were children, but I was the only one who took to it,” she said. “So over time I annexed them all and turned it into my private garden. I started when I was about ten, I think, and I kept adding to it.”

He wandered along the path, letting his hand trail over the flowers as he passed, soaking up the chatter of the birds and the gurgling of the fountain. The beds were generously planted, and carefully nurtured, and were so full of variety and color and life that he could look at them all day. The hedges kept out the world, even kept out time, and teased him with the idea that they were alone in the world.

“Is this meant to be you?” he asked, studying the statue. “She’s rather indecent, don’t you think?”

She whacked his belly. “Stop being puerile. She’s lovely.” A distant look entered her eyes as she wiggled her fingers under the flow of the water. “She’s inspired by Arethusa, the waterer. Mama bought it for me in Leamington Spa. I complained that I never got any attention, and so Mama took me on a special trip, just her and me, and when she bought this, she told me that love was like an endless spring, where the water flowed and flowed and flowed. It will never run out, she said, and no matter how much love you need, there will always be more.”

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