Page 6 of My Own True Duchess
“Heather is for admiration,” Seraphina said, “or solitude. I’m not sure about the hydrangeas.”
Diana had finished the toast and was watching this exchange with the alertness of a child who knew when something out of the ordinary had occurred.
“Hydrangeas are for thanks for understanding,” Theo said. Not a romantic sentiment, but a gentlemanly one.
“What’s in the basket?” Diana asked.
Williams retreated into the corridor.
“Sweet pea means thank you for a lovely time.” Seraphina sipped her tea, her expression much too adult. “Sister, have you been indiscreet?”
“Of course not.” Though I was tempted. I was so, so tempted. “The gentleman who sat out with me had been pestered by presuming young women, and they left him in peace while I was at his side.”
Seraphina set down her tea cup. “Those hopeless ninnyhammers think you’re fast. Merely because you’re a pretty widow, they think bad things about you.”
“Mama is good,” Diana said. “Are those peaches?”
Williams had brought in a sizable wic99ker basket, a quantity of peaches stacked within.
“And chocolates?” Seraphina echoed. “He sent you a box of French chocolates for sitting out with him?”
“He sent three different kinds of cheese too,” Williams said, as if cheese were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. “I do believe that’s a box of gunpowder from Twinings.”
“Flowers and chocolates from a ducal household,” Seraphina said, tracing a finger over the curve of a fuzzy peach. “And ripe fruit, good tea… For sitting out with him.”
“I barely know the man.” Theo had known of Mr. Jonathan Tresham, because with Seraphina approaching a presentable age, keeping an eye on eligible bachelors had become prudent. “I’m off to do battle with the ledgers.”
Leaving the room and getting away from Mr. Tresham’s considerate gesture had become imperative, lest the flowers make Theo’s eyes itch.
“May I have another chocolate?” Diana asked. “They’re quite small.”
“Not now,” Theo said. “One treat with breakfast is more than enough. Williams, please take the basket to the kitchen. Cook can prepare us all a compote of the peaches for dessert tonight. We’d best use the fruit before it becomes overripe.”
Williams, usually a staunch advocate of decorum, flashed a smile. “Cook will be at her recipes all afternoon, finding us the very best treat. I had a peach once. They’re wondrous lovely.”
The flowers were lovely too, and Theo was tempted to take them with her to the study. Mr. Tresham was grateful to her, and well he should be, for Dora Louise Compton was a trial to the nerves, and she’d nearly succeeded in awarding herself a tiara.
“Foolish girl,” Theo muttered, unlocking the study door. Her funds were kept in this room, as were the mementos of Archie she’d set aside for Diana. The rest of Archie’s possessions—books, boots, shaving kit, his cherished collection of pistols—had been sold. Theo had made it through the winter without pawning his watch, but that was next on the list of lines she’d promised herself she’d never cross.
“Mr. Tresham mentioned blackmail,” Theo announced to the empty room. “Said the word aloud. I nearly clapped my hands over my ears.”
A widow who watched polite society closely learned many secrets—Dora’s older sister had gone to Italy not with a lung fever, but with a child on the way. Lord Davington was rolled up, as he’d confessed to his paramour last week in another library where Theo had been lurking.
“But I cannot become the thing I loathe,” Theo said, taking the seat behind the desk. She unlocked the right drawer and hefted the ledger book onto the blotter, then allowed herself a moment to acknowledge the hurt.
Pain ignored didn’t go away. Pain embraced head on didn’t either, but it sometimes subsided from heartbreak to mere heartache. Mr. Tresham would soon be married, a stolen moment with him meant nothing, a basket of peaches—and tea, and cheese, and chocolates—simply meant he was a gentleman.
The flowers were the problem. Every bloom had more than one meaning, and while hydrangeas might mean gratitude for understanding, they also meant good-bye.
Theo opened the ledger, picked up a pencil, and set the abacus at her elbow. Winter was over, but the social Season brought with it a host of expenses, and she really did not want to sell Archie’s engraved gold watch.
Chapter Two
* * *
“If I had my way, you’d be sold to the nearest coaching inn for use as an offside wheeler,” Jonathan said. “But you’d gobble up their profits, slobber all over the common, and frighten the maids.”
Debutantes, being three parts iron determination and one part guile, weren’t put off by Comus. They and their chaperones fussed and cooed over the dog as if he were a spaniel puppy rather than fourteen stone of rambunctious mastiff.
