Page 49 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

Not until the screeching wind overpowered the sounds of the horses’ stomping hooves did Hyacinth Bell pull back the window coverings in the jolting carriage. Though impatient for her arrival, she wondered what a wind so powerful could be doing to the landscape.

As it happened, almost nothing. The moors of central Cornwall were completely barren as far as she could see, and the wind could blow unimpeded across miles of fields without paying any attention to the earth, searching for something—anything—that stood higher than a sheep.

Hyacinth’s carriage, for instance. The wind seemed determined to surround it on all sides at once. Nothing else marred the horizon as far as she could see. Not a building in sight. Hardly a tree.

The thought that she was riding in the highest point across the entire countryside made her laugh, a sound made slightly unhinged by nature’s accompaniment of wailing wind.

Unsettled by the gale, she hummed to herself. As the noise outside the carriage pressed against her, humming was not enough. She sang. Even at the top of her voice, she was drowned by the volume of the storm. Was this what it felt like to go mad?

The wind roared, screeched, and rattled around her, giving her the feeling that even within the walls of the carriage, the very atmosphere sought to attack her peace.

She knew the wind was not whipping her hair about her head like a ghost in a penny dreadful illustration, but she felt as though both her rationality and her hairstyle were holding on by a mere thread. Or a miracle.

Not that anyone but the driver would see her hair, or care if they did.

Not until the stop in Suttonsbury village.

Not until her meeting with Ashthorne Hall’s temporary orchid caretaker, an elderly man who managed a village greenhouse.

Hyacinth had agreed to go to his shop to pick up the last packages of soil preparations and instruments that Mr. Whitbeck had ordered.

He would also give Hyacinth any final instructions before she made her way through the gale to Ashthorne Hall and her new position. Her new life.

The horses’ whinnies carried on the wind, another layer of shrieking adding to her unease.

Hyacinth wondered how the driver fared in this monstrous wind, if he held his perch up on the driver’s box by the strength of his will.

For a moment, she considered pounding on the wall and calling out to him, but even if she could get his attention, he would not be able to hear her ask after his safety or comfort, so she pulled the window coverings tight and hummed again.

The almost inaudible sound of her own voice was less than reassuring.

She lifted the potted orchid from the seat beside her.

“Eleanor,” Hyacinth said to the orchid in a voice of warm confidence, “if you could see outside, you’d not recognize anything growing here. None of our hothouse friends could survive a night like this.”

She did not raise the window cover to give Eleanor a peek at the moor; that would be silly.

The roaring autumn wind, she knew, could not last forever.

At least, she thought it could not. In fact, she was aware she knew very little about the weather patterns of Cornwall, to say nothing of its residents or their feelings about visiting botanists.

Once she arrived at Ashthorne Hall, she vowed, she would never again leave.

A hundred years would be too soon for another carriage ride like this one.

How grateful she was that most of the hundreds of miles she had traveled from Herefordshire had been by train.

Only since Plymouth had she been inside this carriage, and only for the last half hour had she felt her excitement turn to anxiety.

And that she could mostly blame on the infernal wind, which had alternated in pitch between a roar and a wail.

Hyacinth looked down at the note from Mr. Whitbeck in her right hand.

Replacing Eleanor on the carriage seat beside her, she clutched the letter in both hands, the paper grown soft from dozens, perhaps hundreds of openings, followed by careful reading and refolding.

After months of seeking employment and waiting, she was finally on her way to Ashthorne Hall.

She envisioned the stone edifice rising out of a grove of trees, chimney pieces streaming warm smoke and window glass reflecting surrounding sunlight.

Having never seen the manor where she would soon live, she had created an image of her own devising by compiling the best parts of elegant houses she knew: rooflines and landscaping, trees and ponds and driveways, stones of warm golden hue.

How much of Ashthorne would match her imaginings?

And what of the people living inside? She had little more than Mr. Whitbeck’s note and seal to recommend her to the housekeeper and the caretaker.

And it was possible they would be the only other inmates of the manor.

The rest of the staff had either removed to India with the family or been let go to find other employment.

Her imagination gave her comfort, but she realized she might have to let go of her preconception.

Her father had taught her that the ability to hold on to an idea was a very important skill for gaining knowledge and understanding, but he emphasized that an even more crucial skill was the ability to let a faulty thought go.

She had trained herself to treat her thoughts like precipitates, the solids that separate from a chemical solution: With a bit of agitation, things settle. Once they do, an observer has something to look at, to study, and to hold on to or reject as evidence suggests.

She hoped the housekeeper at Ashthorne did not hold too tightly to any false ideas about her.

Nothing in Hyacinth’s bearing or stature identified her as either an expert botanist or a genius gardener.

She looked rather like a tall schoolgirl, if one with a more than usual amount of dirt beneath her fingernails.

But Hyacinth Bell was no child, and she had learned from the greatest scientific minds of the day.

Her father, a viscount, had early in his peerage grown weary of days filled with receiving complaints and reporting them to the earl.

In his leisure time, he gathered to his home men of science, and as he learned of ways to improve farmlands, increase crop productivity, and strengthen plants, he passed on all his understanding to his youngest daughter, who took to the lessons and the experiments with a passion and a consideration he had not expected.

He was delighted.

Hyacinth soon outstripped her father in her understanding, and with his blessing, she continued to study plants and propagation, flowers and seeds, and the maximization of crop yield.

Before many years had passed, she had grown from a precocious child with a gardening hobby into a highly respected young lady, eager to share her knowledge and understanding with the farmers in her father’s care.

After the death of her dear mother five years prior, Hyacinth took over care of the lady’s orchids, and there found a gift and talent she had not anticipated.

She soon became masterful in her work with tropical blooms. Many people thought orchids were difficult flowers, but Hyacinth soon realized that they had few needs: soil conditions, water, light, and air.

Once you understood these, the care came rather easily.

Hyacinth’s father recommended her to all who would listen as one of the greatest orchid experts in the country. She knew he spoke far too highly of her talent but appreciated the acclaim that surrounded her in English botany circles.

Mr. Charles Whitbeck, a magistrate and orchid enthusiast, had written to Hyacinth upon occasion, seeking advice for his impressive orchid collection.

Mr. Whitbeck had plans to travel to India, and he invited her to come to his home at Ashthorne Hall and look after his hothouse in his absence.

“There is not much I shall miss while I am away, but I will rest easier if my treasured orchids are in your capable care.”

Hyacinth had grown more excited by the day about the possibility, and her father believed the adventure would be a wonderful interlude before she settled down as the brilliant wife of some worthy man or other.

And now, after months of preparation, Mr. Whitbeck was off in the tropics, and Hyacinth drew near Suttonsbury village, the town nearest to Ashthorne Hall.

Traveling through the ominous and unsettling storm, Hyacinth felt the minutes drag, as though the wind pressed her ever farther from the town.

Just as she became certain she’d crawl out of her skin if she had to sit another minute in the jostling coach, she both heard and felt a knocking at the wall of the carriage.

“We’re approaching Suttonsbury now, miss,” the driver said. At least, that is what Hyacinth thought he said as the wind tore half the words from him and carried them away to crash against the cliffs and rocks of the wild coast.

A few more minutes brought them to the village’s greenhouse, and at the horses’ halt, Hyacinth threw open the carriage door, eager to escape the tight confines of the vehicle, even if it meant a drenching from the rain. She lifted Eleanor’s pot from the seat and stepped down.

The wind had slowed enough that she could stand in front of the garden shop without her hair blowing completely loose from its knot. She looked up at the sign swinging from two metal chains attached to the roof: Gardner’s Paradise.

At her knock, a man opened the shop’s front door, and Hyacinth’s first instinct was to back away. His shirt, covered with an open brown vest, was filthy. He looked at her sideways, squinting an eye, and a muscle jumped near his mouth, pulling his lip into a sneer.

“Closed,” he said, as if she did not deserve a complete sentence. He began to shut the door. Was this the man Mr. Whitbeck wanted her to communicate with?