Page 29 of Lady Waldrey’s Gardening Almanac for Cultivating Scandal (Love from London #3)

F rom the Quentin Daily ?—

A strange occurrence in North London — many residents of a neighborhood suddenly giving birth to twins! Reports say that the mothers all ate at the same local tavern. One wonders what special ingredient is in the steak pie!

The following day, James looked up from his ledgers to find his son standing in the open doorway of his study.

“Father, I’m hungry.” Arthur said, Seamus at his side.

James smiled and stood. “No doubt Seamus is, too.”

“He’s always hungry.”

James ruffled his son’s hair. “I could say the same of you. Come on, then. Let’s pester Mrs. Taylor for some lunch. Bring Seamus. We’ll ask for a picnic to eat in the garden. It’s too nice of a day to remain indoors.”

“Really?” Arthur grinned up at him .

His butler opened the front door just as James and Arthur headed down the stairs. Two colorful hats entered, and the ladies glanced up, their faces coming into view.

“Candace, Vera,” James greeted. “Lovely to see you.”

He didn’t speak his other thoughts aloud—that though they were the only ladies who’d ever visited him here, he still hadn’t realized it was them at first glance. Instead of one looking fashionable and the other garish, today both ladies were dressed impeccably.

Gone were the mustards, the sullen orange tones, the drab browns and tans—Vera wore a day dress in a fetching peach color that highlighted her great quantity of ash-brown hair. Gathered white lace at her wrists and throat drew the eye to the clear luminosity of her skin.

James had always thought Vera pretty enough, but looking at her was much like trying to discern if something was of value in a second-hand shop—one could never quite be certain of what one was looking at in the dim light amongst all the other rubbish, and squinting at it only made it worse.

It was enough to make a man put the thing back on the shelf and go home completely frustrated.

This dress was the difference between wiping one’s thumb against the grime and hoping the thing beneath was quality, versus having the item presented brand new, on its own, in the window of a shop.

Vera’s beauty was so clear, it made him blink. Well, obviously, his mind seemed to say. You’ve seen her enough times to make a judgement on her appearance. You already knew she was pleasing to the eye.

“Forgive me if it’s bold to say, but you both look particularly fetching today,” he added once he’d gained the ground floor. “You too, Hortense.”

Candace nodded in acknowledgement. Her eyes slid toward Vera, whose cheeks appeared to burn with the unexpected weight of a compliment lobbed in her direction.

“Father, I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about ladies’ appearance?” Arthur asked, scrunching his nose.

“Quite right. Too personal. Forgive me.” He nodded at them, mirth turning up the corners of his mouth. He said, “You too, Hortense.”

The maid arched her eyebrow—in amusement or censure, he couldn’t tell.

Arthur pushed forward and said, “We were just about to have lunch. A picnic in the gardens. Would you like to join us?”

“Or we can eat at a table indoors, if you’d prefer,” James added, hastily.

“Not at all,” Candace said. “It’s a lovely day. A picnic sounds like just the thing.”

The butler led the ladies into a sitting room, Arthur prattling behind them, while James hurried to the back of the house to find Mrs. Klein.

His housekeeper stood in the dining room, one hand holding the watch fob she kept pinned to her trim waistcoat, her chin lifted, her sharp eye trained on the servants cleaning and replacing beeswax candles on the candelabras.

The grand lighting fixtures had been lowered with pulleys to nearly graze the floor.

Even still, several ladders were needed to reach the tops of them.

“Mrs. Klein,” James said, “I’m hoping you can arrange a picnic out of doors for myself, Arthur, Lady Candace, and Miss Ashbury.”

“Certainly, Your Grace. Do you have any particular requests?”

“Only that perhaps the gardeners could lay down some tarpaulins beneath the blankets. The ground is still a little damp, and I’d hate for the ladies’ dresses to be ruined.”

“Of course, Your Grace. Leave it to me.”

“Thank you.”

James glanced once more at the chandeliers before departing.

On any other day, he would have showed Arthur the sight—those pulleys were an impressive and practical feat of engineering.

But he had much more important things to see to today.

A thrill of anticipation and a hint of fear stirred in his gut.

It had been so long since he’d set his mind upon matrimony, he’d almost forgotten the unsettling uncertainty of the task.

Though Candace seemed to have recovered from the initial shock of being untethered from Shelbourne, James wasn’t sure she was ready for anyone else to declare their intentions.

He didn’t want to rush her into anything—the very last thing he wanted was for her to wake up a year into a marriage and feel trapped.

This was uncharted territory for him in many ways.

He was a widower with a son. She was emerging from a disastrous engagement.

And James wanted love—for both of them. So much so that he was willing to step aside if she could better find that love with another, though even the thought of it had his hand curling into a fist at his side.

He paused in the hallway to take a deep breath.

This time together was a chance, and he would make the most of it.

Candace wouldn’t hide away in Devon forever—she was too bright a star for that.

James was determined that by the time she left, at the very least, their friendship would be much deeper than before.

He took another deep breath, smoothed his face and went in to greet his guests.

Hours later, he watched Candace laughing, several tendrils of her red hair escaping her once tidy arrangement. He and Vera lingered on the picnic blankets, though the remains of their meal had long been cleared by a bevy of servants.

A way off, Arthur climbed a tree to retrieve his paper kite, with Candace supervising from below out of concern. James sincerely hoped that if Arthur was foolish enough to fall from the tree, at least he’d have the sense to miss Candace on the way down.

“How is she really, do you think?” he asked Vera, his voice low.

Vera tilted her head, considering. “I think she’s well enough. It’s the loss of society that bothers her far more than the loss of Shelbourne.”

He nodded.

She continued, “I’m unconvinced there was ever any real connection between them.”

The carefully casual way in which she stated the words nearly made James flush. Vera kept her eyes forward on Candace and Arthur for a few moments, then finally met his gaze, offering him a small, knowing smile.

There was no mocking or pride of discovery in that smile.

It wasn’t a smile that inferred James should be embarrassed, or that she knew a dark secret of his and intended to leverage it against him.

It was just a smile—one that told him that Vera had been paying far closer attention than he’d realized all along.

He cleared his throat. “That’s for the best. He wasn’t worthy of her.”

“Agreed. She needs someone who truly cares for her. She needs someone steady, dependable.”

James frowned. There was that word again— dependable . An excellent quality in things like tools, plow horses, and stairs, but hardly the type of thing a beautiful young lady gravitated toward when looking for a spouse.

“Do you think she realizes that?” he found the courage to ask.

“I think what happened with Shelbourne reordered her thinking about marriage. Given the chance, I think she’ll make a much better choice the second time around.”

Vera glanced at him. Her look was full of meaning, and he nodded, catching the unspoken words. Candace needed understanding; she needed patience. James had already come to the same conclusion.

“There’s no rush in such a matter.”

“Isn’t there?” she said. At his questioning glance, she added, “A rush, I mean.”

“ Is there?”

“Candace believes that no one will have her. That might make her vulnerable to accepting someone less than worthy of her.”

He frowned. “I don’t think?—”

“She’s already had one proposal by post.”

James sat up. “She has?”

Vera lifted a shoulder. “Granted, it was from a man who keeps his teeth in a glass of vinegar water on his bedside table at night—or so goes the rumor—but I’ve no doubt that in time, others will come sniffing.”

“What’s your meaning?”

Vera turned to him. “I think she’s mourned her broken engagement as much as she ever will. I think she’s far readier to move on than even she knows. I’d hate to see her form an attachment to someone else before she realizes all the options that are open to her.”

James pressed his lips together and watched Candace and Arthur attempt to wrangle the kite in the distance.

“I have been told that patience may have been my failing in this instance,” he finally admitted.

“I think the time for patience is over. If she’s not settled before she leaves Devon, I’ve no doubt she will be shortly upon returning to London.

Don’t you agree?” Vera nodded her head in her friend’s direction.

“Don’t you think there are plenty of gentlemen who know what Shelbourne is?

Don’t you think there are plenty of men who’d be delighted to overlook their engagement—especially when everyone knows the geographical distance that lay between them for the entirety of it—in order to marry a lady such as she? ”

As if on cue, the wind plucked the kite from Candace’s fingers and she laughed in delight as it soared upward—the silvery sound carried across the field.

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Any gentleman would be happy—and beyond lucky—to have her as wife.”

Vera nodded as if satisfied and looked forward once again. The kite fluttered in the sky, and Candace ran to Arthur’s side.

“What of you, Vera?”