Rose (Flower Trilogy) (2 page)

Trentingham Manor was known for its gardens, thanks to Rose’s father and his passion for flowers and plants. But it was a warm, sunny day, and Rose feared for her creamy complexion, so she opted to stay indoors. She wandered the crowded drawing room, sipping from a goblet of the new and frightfully expensive champagne that her parents favored for celebrations. Although she enjoyed sharing a word or two with various relatives and neighbors, she was generally feeling at loose ends.

Until, that was, she caught a snatch of her father’s conversation and turned to see him talking to Kit Martyn.

“. . . one of those newfangled greenhouses,” Lord Trentingham was saying. “On the east side of the house, I’m thinking, to catch the morning sun. Since autumn is almost upon us, I’d be much obliged if you could start immediately.”

Rose hurried to join them, unable to believe her ears. She was half tempted to ball up the lacy handkerchief that was tucked in her sleeve and stuff it into her father’s mouth instead. “Mr. Martyn builds things for the
King,
Father!

Palaces, for God’s sake. He hasn’t—”

“Well, not quite palaces,” Kit corrected her. “Renovations to palaces, additions to palaces, but I’ve yet to build an entire—”

“See?” Rose met her father’s deep green eyes, speaking slowly and loudly to make sure he could hear her over the hubbub of the celebration. “Palaces. He hasn’t the time to build you a greenhouse.”

Kit sipped from his own goblet of champagne, then grinned at Rose’s father. “Oh, I think I might find the time,”

he disagreed, his words infused with a hint of laughter. “In exchange for a dance with your beautiful daughter.”

He shifted to look at Rose, making it clear which daughter he meant. His green-brown gaze swept her slowly, almost as though he were mentally undressing her . . . and if his expression was any indication, he plainly liked the results.

Lord Trentingham frowned. “My bountiful bother?”

Kit looked confused, and Rose knew she should remind him that her father was hard of hearing at the best of times—and in a crowded room, he was all but deaf.

But she couldn’t seem to speak. The audacity of the man, thinking he could trade a building for her company. Surely her father would never—

“I will be most pleased to build your greenhouse,” Kit reiterated, “if your lovely daughter will oblige me with a dance.”

“Oblige you with advance?”

Understanding dawned in Kit’s eyes, and he raised his voice. “A dance. May I have the honor of a dance with Lady Rose?”

“Yes. Of course,” her father said. “Now, about that greenhouse—”

“I’ll do a preliminary design before I leave,” Kit practically bellowed.

“Excellent.” Lord Trentingham turned a vague smile in Rose’s direction. “Run along, dear. Enjoy yourself.”

Her mouth dropped open, then shut again when she found herself propelled from the drawing room by a warm hand at her back. Then she was stepping out onto the covered portico, which had been pressed into service as a dance floor.

Three musicians in one corner were playing a minuet, a graceful dance that facilitated conversation. The wedding guests chatted and flirted, their shoes brushing the brick paving in unison. Though the dance was already in progress, Kit handed both their champagne goblets to a passing maid, then took Rose’s hands and swept her into the throng.

She’d never touched him—certainly not skin to skin—

and the contact reminded her just how attractive she’d thought him the first time they met. The mere sight of him had set her blood to singing inside her. But that, of course, had been before she’d discovered he was a plain mister.

Since then, seeing him had had no effect on her at all.

So it was disconcerting to find that touching him now seemed to make the champagne bubbles dance in her stomach.

“Lovely Corinthian capitals on the columns and pi-lasters,” Kit noted, ever the architect. “Do you know who carved them?”

She pliéd and stepped forward with her right foot at the same time she finally found her tongue. “Edward Marshall, who also carved the Ashcroft family arms in the pediment.

And in future, please keep in mind that there is no need to ask my father’s permission for a dance. Ashcroft women make their own decisions.”

Kit breezed over the implication that she might have refused him. “So Rand has told me.” They rose on their toes, and when he pulled her closer, she caught a whiff of his scent, a woodsy fragrance with a base of frankincense and myrrh. She wondered if she could duplicate it in her mother’s perfumery.

“Your family is an odd one,” he said. “I do not allow my sister to make her own decisions. Not the important ones, in any case.”

She felt sorry for his sister. “Our family motto is
Interroga Conformationem.
”

He looked at her blankly.

“Question Convention,” she translated. What sort of educated man didn’t know Latin? Certainly not one she’d ever consider husband material.

’Twas a good thing he wasn’t in the running.

They dropped hands to turn in place, then he grasped her fingers again. “Is it true, as Rand said, that your father allows his daughters to choose their own husbands as well?”

She noticed Lily and Rand dancing together—much closer than the dance required. Surprisingly, envy didn’t clutch at her heart this time. She only smiled. “Yes.”

“In future, I’ll keep
that
in mind,” Kit responded with a disarming grin.

Ignoring his impertinence, Rose gazed across the wide daisy-strewn lawn toward the Thames. Suddenly Rowan raced onto the portico, looking like a miniature version of their father in a burgundy suit, his long midnight hair streaming behind him.

A quite ordinary-looking man followed more sedately, but as he wore red and white—the King’s livery—he attracted more attention.

The musicians stopped playing, and the dancers ground to a halt.

“There he is,” Rowan said, pointing to Kit in the sudden silence. “Mr. Christopher Martyn, the man you seek.”

“ If I may speak to you in private, sir,” the messenger said. “I bring word from His Majesty.”

Kit nodded and stepped off the portico, silently leading the way to the summerhouse he’d spotted earlier. He felt the eyes of the other wedding guests following him and heard their speculative murmurs, but the sudden appearance of the King’s man didn’t intrigue him as it did them. After all, he was completing several royal projects. Likely Charles simply wanted a change.

As Kit crossed Lord Trentingham’s celebrated gardens, he thought instead of Rose, vaguely wondering where he’d found the nerve to imply he might be interested in marriage. He’d been attracted to her when they first met, but dismissed it when she failed to respond to any of his advances. He was, after all, a man—feelings of attraction toward a woman were no novelty.

But today she’d sipped champagne, and he’d noticed her lips were made for kissing. And he’d taken her hands and felt something like a punch to his gut. And she’d challenged him verbally, and those words had jumped out of his mouth.

Ludicrous words. As a man who had never wanted for female attention, he was frustrated by Lady Rose’s obvious disinterest, but pursuing her was an absurd waste of time. It didn’t matter that she was everything he wanted someday in a wife. Although he thought her lovely and intelligent—

he’d watched her decipher a coded diary weeks earlier and been nothing short of astonished—he had no illusions of winning Lady Rose. Or, for that matter, any lady at all. He knew his place in the world.

Untitled.

He was determined to change that. He knew that, social perceptions aside, he was damn well as good as anyone else. But in the meantime, he was well aware that he wasn’t considered good enough for an earl’s daughter.

And wishing things were different would never make them so.

The circular redbrick summerhouse was a small building with classic Palladian lines. He ushered the King’s man inside. Owing to the admirable design—large arched windows over each of the four doors—it was bright beneath the cool, shaded dome.

Bright enough to make out the seriousness in the messenger’s eyes.

Apprehension suddenly soured the champagne in Kit’s stomach. “Yes?” he asked.

The man’s words were anything but reassuring. “This concerns one of your projects. I’ve been sent to advise you that the ceiling at Windsor Castle is falling—”

“Falling? Has anyone been hurt?”

“I should say chunks of plaster have fallen—not the ceiling itself. But it is sagging, and there are many cracks.

There have been no injuries, but His Majesty wanted you to know—”

“I understand.” Kit understood Charles’s underlying message all too well. If he failed to complete this project on time and satisfactorily, his dream of being appointed Deputy Surveyor—a step toward someday becoming Surveyor General of the King’s Works, the official royal architect—would be as good as dead.

And without that, the rest of his dreams—his plans to obtain a title for himself and marry his sister Ellen to a nobleman—would die along with it.

He yanked the door back open. “I will depart for Windsor posthaste.”

“Sir.” The man bowed and preceded him outside.

Back at the house, Kit looked around for Rand, but his friend was nowhere to be found. He went instead to give his apologies to his hostess. “Forgive me, Lady Trentingham, but I must take my leave. There is a problem at Windsor Castle. I cannot seem to locate Rand—”

“He and Lily have a habit of disappearing,” she told him with a suggestive twinkle in her eye that took him by surprise. She was, after all, the girl’s mother. Then her brown eyes turned sympathetic. “I’ll explain,” she added. “He’ll understand.”

In no time at all, Kit was settled in his carriage, rubbing the back of his neck as the vehicle lumbered its way toward Windsor.

Could he possibly have made an error in designing Windsor’s new dining room? Had a flaw in the plans gone unnoticed? He unrolled the extra set he always carried, spreading the linen they were drawn on over his lap. But he couldn’t seem to concentrate. Especially when his carriage jostled past the village of Hawkridge, where he’d been raised.

Toying with the small, worn chunk of brick he carried in his pocket—a chip off his first building—he found himself staring out the window as memories assaulted him. Nights whiled away in his family’s snug cottage, he and Ellen playing on the floor while their mother read by the fire.

Days spent with his father, learning carpentry and building.

Afternoons fishing with the local nobleman’s son, Lord Randal Nesbitt, both of them starved for companionship of their own age.

That felt like a lifetime ago. Rand was married now, a man who declared himself in love. As for Kit, love was not high on his list of priorities.

A luxury, love was, and one Kit felt quite capable of living without. After all, love had done his parents no favors.

They’d been happy together, content with their simple lot in life—and both ended up in early graves.

That wasn’t going to happen to Kit or his sister.

For twelve years—through school, university, and a quickly rising reputation—he had dedicated himself to one goal. The Deputy Surveyor post was almost within his grasp.

He couldn’t fail now.

“You look melancholy,” Chrystabel Ashcroft said. Standing with Rose in her perfumery, she picked over the many flower arrangements on her large wooden worktable, plucking out the marigolds. “Why the long face, dear? Are you sad to see your creations destroyed?”

“Of course not.” Rose added a purple aster to a pile of flowers and some ivy to a bunch of greens. She looked up and forced what she hoped sounded like a romantic sigh.

“The wedding was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

“Made more so by your lovely flowers.” Rose had filled the house with towering creations made of posies cut from her father’s gardens. “Which is why,” her mother added, “I thought—”

“I do not care what becomes of my flower arrangements.

Honestly, Mum, it makes no sense to let the blooms wither and die when we can turn them into essential oils for your perfumes. I don’t mind in the least.” With a bit more force than was necessary, Rose tugged two lilies from the vases and tossed them onto the table. “Whatever happened to Kit Martyn, do you know?” she asked in an attempt to change the subject.

“That messenger brought news of a problem with one of his projects. He had to leave.”

“Which project?” Rose asked.

“He didn’t say. Or perhaps I just don’t remember.”

Chrystabel fixed her with a piercing gaze. A motherly gaze.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course not. ’Twas only idle curiosity.” A headache threatened, pulsing in Rose’s temples. “Why should I care what happens to the man’s projects?”

“You danced with him—”

“Father traded that dance for a greenhouse. It meant nothing.”

Her mother nodded thoughtfully, beginning to pluck petals from a bunch of striped snapdragons. “You just look melancholy.”

If Rose weren’t already suffering from a headache, that swift change back to the original subject might have prompted one. She lifted the lid off the gleaming glass-and-metal distillery that Ford had made for her mother while he was courting Violet. “ ’Tis nothing, Mum.”

“It doesn’t bother you that your younger sister is wed?”

“Why shouldn’t I wish her happy?” She was chagrined to hear her voice crack. “I do, Mum, I vow and swear it.”

“ ’Tis no failing of yours, dear, that Lily found love first.”

“Stuck as we are in the countryside, ’tis a wonder she found a man at all, love or not.” ’Twas an ancient complaint, but in her present mood Rose had no compunctions against dragging it out again. “We hardly ever get to London, or anywhere else we might meet eligible—”

“You have a point,” Mum interrupted.

“Pardon?” Rose blinked.

“You heard me. You haven’t much opportunity here to meet men.” Chrystabel tossed the pink petals into the distillery’s large glass bulb. “I am thinking that we—you and I—should attend Court.”

“Court?” Rose decided she couldn’t be hearing right.