Page 5 of Snowy and the Seven Doves
Aunt Aurelia was convinced Margaret would not be happy until she had a husband. Margaret knew she would be miserable married to anyone who didn’t want to understand her or who tried to control her.
Which took all of her current suitors off the list of possibilities.
*
Lotus, Holly, andPetunia arrived from the farm at mid-morning several days after Lady Charmain’s visit. It wasn’t often that all six of the surviving founders of the House of Blossoms got together, and it had been seven years since the last time all the founders, even Petunia, met here in London.
Snowy had been touching up the dye he used on his hair—a weekly task since he first went away to school; he didn’t find out they were coming until they were already upstairs in Lily’s private sitting room, with the door shut, and everyone else told they were not to be disturbed.
Fortunately, not many were awake in the house. The last of the gentlemen who stayed overnight had breakfasted and departed, and the girls and serving staff had gone to bed. But Snowy found a few kitchen servants excitedly discussing the instruction to prepare trays to be taken up to Mistress Lily’s rooms. He hovered just outside the door listening to them gossip.
“Place settings for seven,” the assistant cook commented.
One of the scullery maids whimpered, “Do you think Mistress Iris will be there? I don’t want to carry up a tray if Mistress Iris will be there.”
“Don’t be more of a fool than you can help,” the assistant cook snapped. “Mistress Iris has gone to her maker. She has no need for plates and cutlery. The seventh place will be for Mr. Snowy, of course. Now lift that carefully. The sooner we get these upstairs, the sooner we can all go to bed.”
Snowy retreated to his office, wondering what was going on. He was interrupted not five minutes later when the assistant cook knocked on the door. “Mistress Lily wishes you to join the ladies upstairs, Snowy.”
Snowy gulped. Was he in trouble? He suppressed the reaction. He was no longer a boy to tremble at a summons to Lily’s room. He hoped he showed none of his inward reaction to the assistant cook. “Thank you for bringing the message. Sleep well.”
Her eyes were alight with curiosity, but she asked no questions. He couldn’t have answered them if she had. He might be a man, but he would be devastated if he had done something to upset the women who had been his family since he was a small child.
Their meeting seven years ago had been because of him. He had finished his one year at Winchester College with excellent marks and a deep resentment of the upper-class boys who had done their best to put him back into the place they thought he belonged.
He had flatly refused to take up the scholarship to Oxford he’d earned, and the ladies gathered to persuade him to change his mind. Even Iris, so sick that she had to be carried from the carriage, made the trip from the farm where she had gone to die.
She told him that university would extend his horizons, showing him a way of life he had not experienced. Lily said it would win him valuable contacts. Jasmine waxed lyrical about the books he would read and the ideas he would encounter. Lotus suggested that a university-educated man would find a better job; one with greater prospects.
Poppy declared it was time he enjoyed himself with other young men, since he lived with women, had been educated by private tutors and knew few people his own age. Holly said that he would not be alone, as he had been at school, for people from many different walks of life went to Oxford. Even Petunia said he should try, “–for you are gentleman, Snowy, and gentlemen go to university.”
Snowy had not been able to stand against the seven of them combined. He couldn’t bear to disappoint them. They had been right, too, as they always were when they all agreed on something. He had loved Oxford. He had enjoyed being a student, both the life of scholarship and that outside of the books. His opinion of arrogant upper-class idiots had not changed, but he’d made friends among the serious scholars, and kept many of them to this day. One or two of them were even gentry, though neither arrogant nor idiots.
No doubt the ladies had some new plan for his life, but this time, he was an adult, with a plan and a set path. This time, they would not have their way. He mounted the stairs and knocked on the door to be admitted into Lily’s sitting room, where the six women sat around a table laid for seven.
Petunia jumped up to give him a hug and a smacking kiss on the cheek. “Snowy! Hello, Snowy! I love you, Snowy.”
Snowy returned the hug. “I love you too, Aunt Petunia.” When he was a child, he’d called them all “aunt”, but he had abandoned the affectionate title after that memorable meeting before he went off to university. He had demanded to know his family origins and Lily had outright refused to discuss the matter, but only after Lotus disclosed he was not related to any of them.
For Petunia, who was confused by change, he made an exception.
“Hello, Lotus,” he said now. “Hello, Holly. Did you have a good trip up from the country?”
“The roads are worse than ever,” Lotus grumbled.
Holly, who talked more to her plants than to people, just smiled.
“Sit down, love,” Poppy told him. “Load your plate, duckie. Eat first, talk later.”
Talk about what, Snowy wondered, though he wasn’t going to ask. Indeed, they did talk around the table as they ate. Jasmine, who managed the House, did most of the talking.
The news went the other way, too. Lotus, who managed the people at the farm, and Holly, who only ever became voluble when talking about her garden, had plenty to tell their friends and business partners about the market garden and associated barnyard they called the farm.
The farm had been the ladies’ first investment outside of the House of Blossoms. Lotus had proposed buying the farm as a refuge for Petunia, who had been badly beaten by a client and had never been quite the same since, Holly, whose shy nature made the work abhorrent to her, and Snowy, because—Lotus said—boys did better with fresh air and lots of space.
“And others,” Lotus had said. “It will be a place for us and the girls to go for a break from the work.” From the beginning, the House of Blossoms had only employed the willing.
In the fifteen years since they purchased the place, girls had gone there to have babies, to recover from an illness or injury, or to retrain for other work. The farm also made a profit. It not only supplied produce for Poppy’s kitchen, but also a number of other commercial eateries in London. Brothels and gambling dens, initially, but now it supplied other places, including a gentleman’s club.
