Page 12 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms (Tales from Honeysuckle Street #4)

His shoulders relaxed as he exhaled. He had been right about her.

He swept his arm across the grandeur of the ballroom.

‘When we first moved into the street, the townhouses weren’t here.

Just our little cottage at the far end and Mrs Crofts’s at the other.

My sister Rosanna and I would play in the street.

We visited all the other houses and met everyone, but the gates to this house were always locked.

We couldn’t see anything through the gardens.

So one day, Rosie and I climbed the fence. ’

He crossed the wide ballroom to the glass doors and peered out into the gardens. Whether to find his own memory or to try and illustrate his story for her… he could not tell.

‘We landed just over there. I fell in a puddle.’ He laughed. She took hold of her skirts and followed. ‘Rosie landed on both feet. We sneaked through the gardens, hiding behind bushes, but when we came upon the house, it was… I don’t know how to describe it. It was the most astounding thing.’

It had been a rare sunny day, blue skies streaked with white, full of running and laughter and treasure and all the beautiful joys of childhood. Just weeks before baby Garnet had left them, when the world was still a place full of wholes and circles, rather than holes and broken chains.

‘We got caught,’ he said, as he banished a disobedient tear.

‘We ran, but the duke was faster. Can you believe it? A duke running after us? He caught us, but he wasn’t angry.

He said we could play in the gardens if we didn’t make any noise or fuss.

I told him I liked his house. He asked me if I had any questions.

And that was it.’ Johannes laughed and shook his head at the memory.

The duke had barely been an adult himself, but to Johannes he’d appeared as wise as a sage because he knew everything about the house.

‘I must have asked him a hundred questions that day alone. Years later, when I started my studies, he’d let me bring my notes so I could work in peace and quiet.

It always amazed me that all this was here.

Hidden, yet still at the heart of things.

A bit like the duke himself, I suppose. I fell in love with houses the moment I saw this one. ’

Florence traced the rectangular shape of one of the windows, then stepped back into the ballroom, her skirts whispering across the parquet.

‘It was nothing so grand for me.’ She turned in a full circle as she inspected the room from ceiling to floor, her eyes darting between windows and carvings before they lingered on the ceiling frescoes and the chandeliers.

Yet she seemed to look past all of it, to somewhere far beyond.

‘Father had designed a town hall for some small place. I don’t even remember the name.

They invited him to the opening. Mama had been unwell and didn’t want to travel.

Father took me with him so that she could rest. It was before the railway line had been built, so to get there from Melbourne, it was a full day in the sulkie.

I imagine a ball in here would be quite the spectacle.

Far grander than the party in the town we went to.

But the people danced, and they sang, and they laughed.

How they laughed.’ And she did, too, a new laugh—at least to him.

One that bubbled forth from her centre and echoed against the walls, bouncing off them into infinity.

‘The women made cakes and tea, and the children scampered through it all. They had already scheduled half a dozen meetings for different societies. One couple was going to have their wedding breakfast there so they could invite the whole town. And I realised it then… Father had put lines on a page, and they’d come into physical being, but not only that…

These people were going to live their lives in the building he had imagined.

It was like magic. A magic for mortals.’

While she had been talking, she’d crossed the room, with Johannes pivoting on the spot to keep her in sight, like he was a needle on a compass and she was his north.

When she reached the far wall by the main entrance, she spun in a circle.

She raised her skirts higher than she should, then placed her heel against the toe on her other foot, and again, heel to toe, heel to toe.

She paced the distance of the room by her own feet, muttering to herself as she traversed it.

Johannes had measured this room a dozen times.

He could have told her its breadth, length, and width by heart, but instead, he walked at a slower pace beside her.

Hands outstretched, as if she was balancing on a tightrope, Florence whispered each ascending number until she reached the other side, then spun, triumphant. ‘Forty-one feet!’ she called.

Johannes nodded like an imbecile. The warnings from his sister and Benton grumbled a little louder in the back of his mind.

She unfastened her folder and beamed with delight when she discovered paper and pencil inside.

She dropped to the floor, her skirts billowing, and patted them down with a soft annoyance, then settled the folder against her knee.

She examined a plaster moulding, and bent over to move her pencil across the page.

He should, but he did not even want to deny it.

He was enamoured.

He was lost.