Page 9 of Lady Waldrey’s Gardening Almanac for Cultivating Scandal (Love from London #3)

F rom the Quentin Daily-

Pigeon pie, or a more dubious meat? Guests at the Hampshire and Hound public house were recently sickened by a meat pie that they claimed was made from stewed rats!

“I spooned one out right onto my plate!” Marta Bushwick said.

“Tail and all!” One hopes that the Hampshire and Hound owners will remember this is England, not France!

There were many advantages to being wealthy, but the Duke of Canterbury possibly enjoyed a luxurious carriage above all the rest of them. His new coach was a pleasure to ride in—the springs comfortable and lively, without so much as a squeak.

Perhaps he’d gone slightly awry on the paint color, however.

He frowned. Instead of his customary black, he’d opted for a daring midnight-blue color that was only very nearly black.

In the sunshine of morning, one could clearly see that it wasn’t.

He pressed his lips together and briefly wondered if any passerby who saw it would attribute his deviation to an early-onset midlife crisis.

It was a lovely day, and there were plenty of people out.

Though the blossoms on the trees had not yet burst open—due to a lengthy unseasonable chill that toyed with the emotions of all hopeful hostesses of garden parties—the trees were leafing out with that particular bright green that heralded spring.

The color would have been garish under any other circumstance—it was precisely the color Lady Ashbury would choose for a head-to-toe ensemble—but the hue was readily forgiven since it announced the arrival of warmer weather to the winter-weary denizens of London.

Thoughts of Lady Ashbury slid into thoughts of her daughter, Vera, which inevitably led to thoughts of Candace.

It seemed all his thoughts led to her lately—though after the terrible scene that played out the night before in the Balewicks’ ballroom, he was certain that he was not the only one thinking of Candace today.

He pressed his lips together in disgust. Shelbourne was nothing but a knave in an expensive, well-cut coat.

James didn’t know whether to be grateful that the man had finally proven as such to Candace.

While James believed she’d follow through with her intention to break the engagement, it was difficult to celebrate a circumstance that brought her so much pain.

The carriage bounced gently over a dip in the road, and James smiled wistfully.

This had been his late wife, Jane’s, favorite time of year.

She’d loved the in-betweens—the transition of one season to the next, where she might need a coat and fur muffler in the morning and only a light pelisse in the afternoon.

His lips thinned at the dull grief that inevitably rose when he thought of Jane.

Except the grief was now also tinged with a familiar guilt.

He thought of Candace far more than his late wife—the mother of his child, no less.

One would think that his son would be a constant reminder of his late bride, but as Arthur had arrived on the same night as Jane’s departure, it was sometimes hard to tie the two separate seasons of life together in his mind.

Jane never had a chance to mother Arthur; they’d whisked the precious infant away in the frenzied attempts to save his mother’s life. James never even saw them together—it was a regret, one of his many where his late wife was concerned.

Chief among them was that, though he’d loved Jane, he hadn’t been in love with her, at any point.

They’d shared friendship, common beliefs, and a united commitment to furthering the title of Canterbury, but he’d never been consumed with her.

Never noticed how, when the light from the drawing room window was just so, it lit her hair like a halo worthy of one of Botticelli’s paintings.

No, fanciful thoughts such as that had been the furthest thing from his mind when he chose his first wife. Back then, he’d been well consumed by duty and honor and the “shoulds” of life.

Jane’s death had been a stark change for him. All he could think, that long, long night—as he’d tried to console a squalling newborn who was as alien to him as a stray dog in the lane—was that he’d done everything right. James had done everything he was supposed to do.

So had Jane.

That knowledge was a comfort as cold as his lovely young wife’s corpse.

Perhaps a casual onlooker wouldn’t see that much had changed since that night, he thought, looking over at Arthur, who sat across from him in the carriage. But James had changed on the inside.

His son’s dark head was bent over a puzzle, an interlocking set of iron rings that a talented London blacksmith had fashioned.

Arthur was fond of riddles and puzzles, and James made a point to bring him a new challenge whenever he could.

Arthur had been working on this one for three days straight, his focus easily marked by the jingling of metal.

“Are you any closer to solving it?”

Arthur looked up, his hazel eyes so like his late wife’s that James rethought his earlier position about forgetting her. He never would; not when eyes inherited from her watched him so closely every day.

“I think so, Father. It’s a tricky one.”

“Have you let Philip have a try yet?”

Arthur scowled. “No.”

James chuckled. Philip, the head groomsman, had a knack for solving these types of puzzles. If Arthur ever became desperate with the belief that a riddle couldn’t be solved, he handed it off to Philip, who quickly proved the puzzle wasn’t broken.

“Are we nearly there?”

James arched an eyebrow. “You’d know the answer to that if you bothered to look up every once in awhile.”

Arthur lifted his head and straightened his spine to peer out the carriage window. Finding that they were at the end of the driveway, he set aside the interlocking rings and wrestled his jacket back on, buttoning it up properly with his pudgy fingers.

James smiled. It was a new development—Arthur working his own buttons—but his son was determined to grow up as quickly as possible. Though it sometimes made James wistful, that desire was a good, healthy one for a young boy to have.

However, thinking of his son naturally led to the boy’s want of a mother. Candace would make an excellent mother—that is, if she wanted to be one at all.

“Are you going to be married, Father?” Arthur said, his face solemn.

James blinked at the uncanny echo of his own errant thoughts. “Where did you get that idea?”

“Philip said so. He said that’s why you went away to Paris.”

“Philip’s a gossip. I’ll have a word with him about filling your head with such things.”

“So it isn’t true?” Arthur pressed.

James considered his answer carefully. The truth of the matter was, he had been thinking of marriage, but only because of a certain redhead who plagued his every waking thought.

Not that such thoughts mattered; she was unavailable.

Though the ashes of her betrothal even now blew across London, Candace would never look at James romantically.

He kept telling himself that, but his subconscious hadn’t yet deigned to listen to logic.

Thoughts of her naturally led him back to that bastard, Shelbourne. The way he’d treated Candace, in front of everyone... James’s hands curled into fists on top of his thighs. It took all his focus to return his attention to the conversation at hand.

“What would you think of me marrying again?” James asked to relieve the pressure of the silence.

Arthur’s bottom lip disappeared into his mouth as it always did when he was thinking. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether she’s kind. Whether she likes me.” He sat on his hands as if he’d admitted too much.

“Arthur, I would only marry an intelligent woman, so of course she’d like you. She’d love you.”

A picture entered his mind, like a sudden flash of sunlight through the leaves—he and Candace and Arthur around the breakfast table, laughing. The image was so real, so tangible, for a moment James felt as if he were there. He could almost smell the bacon on the breakfast platter...

“Ugh! What is that?” He clamped a hand over his nose and his eyes flew to the huge form of his son’s dog, Seamus, sprawled between them on the carriage floor. “Have you been sneaking him cheese again?”

“No.” But Arthur looked guilty as he slapped his own small hand over his nose, pinching it firmly.

The carriage bumped to a stop. James flung open the door and bounded down, gasping for fresh air. Arthur hovered in the doorway until James held his arms out. His son jumped into them with all the desperation of one escaping a raging fire.

Seamus lifted his head in mild inquisition, as if wondering what the sudden fuss was about. Finding a dearth of treats, he lay back down with a small grumble.

“Promise me, Arthur—no more cheese for Seamus.”

“I’m sorry, Father. He was hungry. He was staring at my sandwich.”

James knew the power of that look well—soft puppy eyes, emoting eyebrows, jowls twitching in hope …. He’d fallen for it more than a few times himself.

“He’s as big as a calf. He can miss a meal once in awhile.”

“All right, Father. I’m sorry.” Arthur levied a look at him that was so similar to Seamus’s in both expression and effect that James had to stifle the urge to laugh.

“Fair enough. But remember—apologies aren’t worth the words used to speak them if they’re not followed by a change in action.”

“Yes, Father.” The boy nodded solemnly.

“Off with you now. Politely ask for some tea and sandwiches to be sent to the morning room, then meet me there and we’ll eat together.”

“What about Seamus?” Arthur nodded at the dog, who was even now trundling down the special wood ramp the footmen had set at the carriage door. The mastiff was too large to bound down from the heights of a carriage; it might hurt his joints.

“He can come, too.”