Chapter Fifteen
Daisy rose early the next morning, dressed in an India-cotton dress printed with bluebells and carried a broad-brimmed sun hat in preparation for an outing. She appeared in the breakfast room to find that the other guests who were staying had the same idea: to be out and about in the splendid weather. One of the earl’s friends arranged pairings for a game of lawn tennis, another mounted a ride to the ruins of a nearby abbey, and several ladies insisted on a personally guided tour of the gardens. When the duke appeared, it was with his uncle, who steered him away from her. The old coot. She smiled sweetly and sipped her coffee.
As expected, the duke chose to enjoy the gardens, with the earl and Lady Regina as guides. The ladies who had insisted on the tour chatted eagerly about the wonders to come. There were “ah’s” aplenty and questions about the designs and names for the various plants and parts of the gardens. “The Moroccan,” a great rectangular planting designed to look like a Persian rug, was Lady Regina’s declared favorite. As they walked, each person picked out a part that spoke to them. For the duke, it clearly was the butterfly garden.
With the earl’s encouragement, he followed the stepping stones into the midst of the flowers and brushed the plants gently to stir a flutter of wings. Butterflies rose in a cloud around him and he raised his hands and laughed at the sensation of wings brushing his skin. Daisy watched his joyful response with pleasure that was dimmed seconds later by the sight of his uncle Bertram’s narrowed eyes. He must have felt her watching him, for he quickly turned that glare directly on her.
Nothing could have put steel in her spine quicker than that arrogant look, a warning if she’d ever seen one. From that moment, she looked for a chance to part the duke from his uncle. It wasn’t long before she found one.
The maze loomed in the distance and the group neared it. She worked her way toward Arthur, caught his eye, and nodded in a way that suggested he step aside and wait for her. He slowed his pace and soon they were at the rear of the group fast disappearing into the maze.
“Come with me,” she whispered, taking his hand and heading along the edge of the maze.
“Where?”
“Everywhere,” she whispered loudly. “There is so much to see here.” She pulled him into a run, laughing, and he followed self-consciously, looking over his shoulder. He kept pace as she hiked her skirts and led him through the arboretum, past plantings of holly and berry bushes and through groves of dogwoods, cherry trees, and exotic flowering almonds. They emerged from a planting of pines to more floral plantings centered on fountains and then to a long, rose-covered arbor that arched like a perfumed tunnel above the path. It was strangely pleasant, walking with him, saying little, sharing the beauty of the place.
After a time, they arrived back at the butterfly garden and she stopped just inside the opening in the brick wall that surrounded it, motioning him in ahead of her.
“After you, Your Grace.”
“This . . . this is remarkable,” he said, once again using the carefully positioned stepping stones among the flowers, hands out at his sides to gently stroke the blossoms and send the butterflies hovering. “Adonis Blues, Pearl-bordered Fritillaries, Painted Ladies, Swallowtails, Red Admirals—it’s a compendium of the best species seen in England.”
“I thought this part would be your favorite,” she said, clasping her hands behind her and skirting the edge of the flowers as she circled the garden. “I believe those lovely tall, blue flowers are delphiniums”—she pointed them out—“and I heard the earl name these allium and those daylilies. Those he called snapdragons, and those”—she waved toward a stand of stalks bearing bracts of stunning flowers—“lupines.”
“It’s a banquet for butterflies,” he declared, grinning at her. “I tried to plant some of these same varieties and create a butterfly garden, but my flowers don’t thrive like this, and only a local species or two of butterflies visit them. This is magnificent.”
“We’ll have to ask the earl his secret, then,” she said, enjoying the wonder in his expression. Standing there in the middle of the garden, drenched in sunshine and buoyed by excitement, he seemed taller than she recalled. His smile was broader and his eyes shone in a way she had never seen before. It struck her that he was a man as well as a duke, and if she were to make good on her determination to marry him, she would have to see him that way. What was it Ashton had said about his brother? He had a good heart and a sound intellect. She could see now that was true. He just had not been required to use that brain and those talents in productive ways.
“If you had the chance to do anything you want,” she asked, lifting her skirts to step on the stones that led to him in the center of the garden, “what would you do?”
He paused for a moment, looking around him as if searching the flowers for an answer. He turned to her as she neared.
“I would want to be a good duke, of course. It’s my duty. I owe it to my family and my tenants and the uncles and aunts who raised me.”
She studied him. “And if you didn’t have to worry about your ‘duty,’ what then? What would you do simply because you love to do it?”
“I believe, Daisy Bumgarten, that I would do exactly what you have done: travel.” He offered her his arm and she took it. He led her to the brick wall at the edge of the garden and picked her up bodily to set her on the wall.
“Ohhh!” She was almost as surprised by where he had put her as she was by the fact that he had easily manhandled her. Then he pulled himself up on the wall, twisted neatly, and settled to a seat beside her. “Well, that was a surprise,” she said, laughing.
“I like sitting on walls,” he said with a mischievous grin. “It gives one a change of perspective—a different view of things. We have quite a few walls at Betancourt.”
“Betancourt?”
“Our family home. I was always climbing the roofs and walking the walls as a boy. Gave Uncle Bertram and Uncle Seward palpitations. I still do it when no one is watching. It’s a way to be alone and collect my thoughts.”
She studied him for a moment, struck by his need to escape to the tops of walls to have some peace in his own home. His uncle’s vile, controlling behavior seemed even more despicable.
“So, if you were to travel, where would you go?” she asked. “Paris? Rome? Florence?”
“Egypt,” he said with a firm nod. “I would love to see pyramids and camels and rug and spice markets. Then, there’s the rest of Africa, too. There is an intriguing theory, you know, about what happens to many of our birds and butterflies in winter. It has been proposed that they go from England all the way to Africa and back, with the seasons. Migration, it’s called. I’d love to go with them someday and be the one to confirm it.” He clasped his knees, seeming not to know what to do with his hands.
“As it is, I’ve studied and catalogued a hundred local species, but there is so much more to do. If I could only . . .” He sighed and was silent for a moment. “You need to discover something important to be invited into the Royal Society.” He halted for a moment. “And I would love to go to America and see the buffalos and the mountains and the cowboys. And China. The temples, palaces, and Great Wall there are more than a thousand years old.”
“You’ve read about these places?”
“I have. Wonderful places with such thrilling sights.”
“Then why don’t you go? At least to one or two of them. Egypt or America.”
“I have . . . obligations.” He frowned, seeming uncertain whether or not to reveal: “Travel takes money. Everything takes money. Repairing walls and replacing roofs, repointing brickwork and restacking chimneys. Not to mention keeping the staff—whom you actually have to pay these days—and buying comestibles and coal for the fires and hay and oats for the blessed horses. Don’t ask me why we have to keep so many horses. Don’t see why they can’t just walk most places. I do.” He sighed and his shoulders rounded. “Money. They talk of nothing else, these days. Apparently it is not exactly in great supply.”
His odd opinions and quixotic jumps of topic would have been amusing if she hadn’t realized they came from his ignorance of society and even of his own situation. He showed not even a glimmer of recognition that she thought of him as a matrimonial prospect, which meant he had no idea that she and his family elders were locked in a battle of sorts for the right to his hand in matrimony.
“Arthur, surely there is a way to remedy such a situation for—”
“There you are!” Uncle Bertram’s voice crashed through the hedges outside the wall and Bertram himself quickly followed. The duke was startled, swayed, and looked over his shoulder at his panting, ruddy-faced chaperone. “What the devil are you doing up there?”
“Oh, Uncle, I—I was ... I just wanted to . . .” Arthur was suddenly fifteen years old again, clammy-handed and stammering.
“His Grace wanted to see the butterfly garden again, and I knew the way and offered to show him,” she asserted, struggling to keep her tone respectful. “Butterflies are his passion, after all.”
The minute she uttered the word “passion” she knew it was a mistake.
“His Grace does not have passions, young woman. He has mere enthusiasms.” He speared poor Arthur with a glare. “Come down this minute, Your Grace. That is most undignified.”
Daisy watched the duke’s jaw clench, but he complied with his uncle’s order and slid from the wall. He delayed departing to reach up for her, and she let her hands linger on his shoulders a moment after he set her on the ground. As she thanked him, she could see Uncle Bertram struggling to contain his indignation.
She watched them stalk back to the house and could imagine the dressing-down his uncle was giving him. But then she saw them jerk to a halt, saw Arthur square his shoulders and speak, and then watched him stride away, leaving his uncle standing on the path.
“Good for you, Arthur,” she muttered as she took another turn around the butterfly garden before setting off for a long walk to vent the steam in her blood.
Visions of Arthur’s life at Betancourt, under Uncle Bertram’s and Aunt Sylvia’s hostile regard, weighted her steps. She was beginning to understand Ashton’s view that elevated rank has more obligations and constraints than privileges. Poor Arthur had been isolated and deprived of a broader vision of the world—a prisoner of his own importance. She stopped on the path, thinking of the way—after so short an acquaintance—he’d named her his inspiration and confided his heartfelt hopes and dreams in her.
Sweet Heaven Above.
The duke didn’t just need a wife, he needed a savior!