Page 11 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms (Tales from Honeysuckle Street #4)
He nodded. ‘This week, we can start right here on Honeysuckle Street with a hidden London treasure.’ He offered his elbow. She reached out to take it, then hesitated. Something flitted across her face, an uncomfortable emotion he couldn’t quite read. The look sank him all the same.
‘I am sorry if my sketch offended you,’ he blurted. ‘My folder normally just has ideas for carvings, or things I see that are inspiring. I did not realise that one had sneaked in. It should not have been amongst my sketches, and—’
‘Are they all drawn from life?’
Her question caught him like a punch, so blunt and unexpected he could only stammer, ‘Some of them… I mean, occasionally I… A gentleman should not talk about such things.’
Just one corner of her lips turned into a smirk.
Mischievous, that’s what that look was. Her eyes sparkled as she stifled a giggle.
‘I have been married, Mr Hempel. I am no na?f.’ And she sidled up to him and tucked her small hand into the crook of his arm.
Her fingers rested so lightly on him she barely indented the fabric of his coat, their weight hardly enough to place pressure on his skin.
And yet, the little movement made his heart sing like the robins overhead.
‘Although for all that independence, I scarcely know who I am in this city. I was my own woman for a time, in charge of my own home. Now I have returned to living with my parents. I am practically a girl again.’
‘I know how you feel,’ he said, as he directed their walk along the path, and then across the street to the vacant block that had once been Number 6.
‘I can’t tell if I am my own man now I am employed, or if I’m still a child with set dinner times and rules about making my bed and cleaning my shoes.
After Rosie moved out, I thought I might get my own room, but my other sister Beatrice was too fast. Both Elliot and I are in employment, and yet we still share a bedroom like we are barely out of nursery. ’
He paused at the gates to Number 10 to call between the bars. One of the caretakers crossed into the grounds. He took a key and unlocked the side gate, then ushered Mrs Murray through.
‘Forgive my disbelief,’ she said. ‘But it is much easier for a man. If your family bothers you so much, why not take rooms in a boarding house?’
‘That’s the other side of the coin, isn’t it?’ he confessed. ‘For all the disruption and noise, I’d be lonely without them. I can’t imagine coming home to empty rooms.’
‘Mr Hempel, I feel we understand one another too much.’
A wisp of wind that shifted a curl, a rueful smile, a scrunch of skirts…
and in a flash he saw that, just like him, she was balancing on the edge of life.
Her eyes met his, as pure as confession, the same shade as an exposed blueprint, only misted over a little.
She appeared every bit as hesitant as him, the two of them little boats drifting from the pier, both feeling the pull of the current but lacking the courage to untie the rope.
He stopped beneath one of the large oak trees and shoved the parcel at her before he could hesitate. She grasped it in a fumble. ‘I made you this. You can call me Johannes, if you like. Mr Hempel feels too formal.’
‘I would like that. And call me Florence. Although perhaps not in front of my mother. She would ask too many questions that I do not have the energy for.’ As she was talking, she pulled on the string and pushed back the paper.
He caught it before it could drop to the ground.
She turned his gift over in her hands, tilting it side to side and top to bottom.
‘It’s a drawing folder. I stiffen one side with card.
It’s light enough to carry for a long time, but you can lean against it, if need be.
’ He took it from her and opened it, then knocked a knuckle against the board.
‘I have one that you already saw… and… and… it’s very convenient if you see something you’d like to remember.
’ He closed it, clasping his hands around it.
‘I didn’t know all your initials, so I only stamped the one. I can add more, if you like.’
Her hands remained open and in the same position they’d been in when he’d grabbed the folder, so he shoved it straight back into her grasp. She turned the folder over before lightly tracing the F in the corner. ‘I think it’s perfect. Just as it is.’
His heart stammered. There was space after her name for more letters.
If she had any middle names. And maybe, in time, for a different surname?
A different letter instead of her current M?
With an extra bold step, perhaps a little too animated, he offered out his arm once more, and the two of them continued up the drive to the Duke of Osborne’s London residence.
Johannes had only been beyond the gates a few dozen times, and not at all since the launch of Spencer and Co.
the year before. Leafless trees, a few sprouting eager buds along their dark branches, threw a dark web over the short gravel drive.
It was no more than a hundred feet from the gate to the front door, but the house remained almost completely obscured until they were upon it.
He could feel the very moment she saw it for the first time.
When it gradually revealed itself, and her step slowed without stopping.
When she leant into him, and her breath caught.
The two-storied sandstone villa was one of the oldest houses in the street.
Double front doors were set back from the tall portico, flanked by arched windows and crowned by a grey slate roof.
When Johannes had followed the duke around and asked impertinent questions, he had thought the place might be a hundred years old, maybe a hundred and twenty.
It had been built in classic regency style by one of the earlier dukes of Osborne, who took his parliamentary duties seriously and entertaining during the Season even more so.
They moved under the portico, and Johannes clapped the knocker on the door.
‘Who lives here?’ Florence asked.
‘No one. I believe they are still looking for the heir to the estate. I wrote to the last duke’s mother to ask if I could show you the ballroom.
There are other places in the city that are grander, with ticketed entry, but I thought you might like to see something that was otherwise off-limits. Something special.’
The door opened, and they stepped inside.
Florence untied her bonnet and placed it on the sideboard.
Thin braids threaded with black ribbon caught the light, the dark fabric beautiful against the auburn of her hair.
He helped her out of her coat and passed it to the doorman before divesting himself of his own winter warmth.
Then he led the way down the hall. They passed the parlour with all its furniture shrouded in white canvas and sheets and a number of other closed doors.
The air shifted as if their presence disturbed it, like they unsettled the cold stillness of a dormant sleep.
They continued past the staircase, its carpet lush with inactivity, and down the reception hallway.
Johannes took hold of the two handles on either side of the double doors, and turned to Florence, relishing the moment prior to the revelation.
But then he paused. Even paler than before, she was worrying her bottom lip with her teeth and twisting her fingers against one another.
‘Is something the matter?’ he asked.
‘What happened to him?’ she asked softly, her voice cracking at the edge of her words.
‘Happened?’
‘To the duke. His poor mother. She must be heartbroken.’
He was the stupidest man in England. He’d only thought of the house.
Of the grand ballroom and the beauty of the design that he wanted to share with her.
It hadn’t occurred to him that their conversation might gravitate into death and loss, that it would remind her of her own grief.
A cord of jealousy tried to string him up tight, but even then, it could not hold firm.
After all, he was here. Her dead husband was not.
Johannes opened the door without theatrics.
He took her hands to pull her into the ballroom, walking backwards.
He checked the hallways were clear, then shut the door.
‘It was a trick,’ he whispered. ‘He didn’t want to be the duke anymore.
We aren’t supposed to tell anyone, because… Well. For obvious reasons.’
‘He pretended to… to die?’ She searched his face. Johannes could only hold her blue gaze and hope his sincerity showed. ‘He lied? That is a momentous secret to share with me. What if I go to the papers or gossip?’
‘You don’t strike me as the sort of person to use a secret against someone if they were doing no harm. He was never happy here. Not really. Isn’t that something? To be happy in life, instead of staying stuck?’
Head tilted, she continued her silent evaluation through narrowed eyes.
Not for the first time, Johannes weighed the cost of the duke’s decision, both for the man himself and for the weight it placed on others.
Finally, she huffed a laugh and shook her head.
‘Australia is full of secrets and liars. No one wants to admit their parents or grandparents were convicts, so many people move town and give themselves a new name. If you swear he’s causing no harm, I shall keep your duke’s secret. ’