Page 26 of The Duke’s Suspicion

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Inside the conservatory, the air steamed and the scent of peat filled Erica’s nose. Her attention darted from one pot to the next. Plants she had known only through careful pen and ink drawings and pale watercolors burst into life around her: thick vines, delicate blossoms, sharp thorns.

Despite the dreary skies beyond, the glass-walled room was almost painfully bright, as well as deafeningly loud. Raindrops pounded against the roof and chased one another in erratic races down leaded window panes. She cowered against the assault on her senses, fighting the impulse to cover her ears, narrowing her gaze against the light and discovering as she did so that there were tears in her eyes.

At that very moment, Tristan turned to say something to his sister and glimpsed what she would have given anything to hide. “Are you all right, Miss Burke?”

“Yes, yes.” She lifted one hand to dash away the evidence of her foolishness.

The movement drew Lady Viviane’s attention. “You are disappointed by the conservatory?” she asked, her own expression less skeptical, more pained.

Disappointed? What a pallid word to describe the inconvenient emotions welling to the surface at this moment.

Erica looked from one to the other, and a hiccup of panic rose in her chest. What right had she to feel disappointment? Her lifelong dream was about to be realized. What did it matter that she stood in a greenhouse in Westmorland, where all had been arranged for easy perusal, like creatures in a menagerie: clipped, cataloged, and tamed?

And how ridiculous of her to feel grief—or was it guilt?—at the notion that Henry’s fond promise was about to be fulfilled by the Duke of Raynham.

Erica shook her head and blinked away the last persistent tears. “Not disappointed—never that.” As she drew in deep lungfuls of the humid air, a sort of peace dripped into her veins, keeping time with the drumming rain. This was her element—or as close to it as she would likely ever get. “I am grateful. Your brother has been…” Some other word. Any other word. “Kind.”

Tristan still watched her with furrowed brow, as if he suspected her of being not entirely truthful. But before he could speak, they were interrupted by the approach of a man wearing a heavy apron. His face was weathered, his head bald but for a fringe of white above his ears. “Miss Burke, allow me to introduce Mr. Sturgess, the head gardener. Miss Burke is something of an expert on plants.”

Mr. Sturgess’s frown rivaled his employer’s. “That so?” His eyes flickered over the journal she clutched in her arms. “Suppose you want to make a few pretty pictures of flowers ’n the like?”

“We will not interfere with your work, sir,” she promised, with a tip of her chin to include Lady Viviane.

The word we visibly increased the man’s discomfort with the plan. Clearly, he had not anticipated the double threat of having his greenhouse invaded by two women. Still, he conceded with a nod, and she laid her notebook on the empty corner of a nearby table. Beside it, Tristan made a neat stack of the textbook, the pens, and the ink bottle. The knuckles of one long-fingered hand brushed the spine of her journal, and for some reason, she had to quell a shiver.

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

“Will I show you around?” Mr. Sturgess’s posture was a curious mixture of resentment and pride as he gestured with one arm toward a long row of potted plants and watched warily as Erica preceded him.

In the center of the rectangular room, under the very peak of the glass roof, stood a stone circle filled with orange trees and ringed by wrought-iron benches. She and the gardener walked toward it between two rows of waist-high tables, past the bright colors and heady scents of gardenias and orchids, while Tristan and Viviane passed between two more sets of tables covered by ferns and even a few cacti. Beyond the miniature orange grove, four more rows of tables formed three paths to another door. “To the kitchen,” Mr. Sturgess explained, as she noted the various vegetables, herbs, and medicinal plants nearest the exit.

Heedless of her gown, Erica knelt and touched her fingertips to the stone floor. “How is it kept warm?”

“Well, now, that’s down to a fancy bit o’ Roman engineering. A fire’s kept burnin’ at that end”—Mr. Sturgess nodded toward the door through which they’d entered—“and the heat passes through channels underground. Comes up through vents in the floor.” He pointed to small, periodic openings beneath the tables. “We keep the plants that like it hottest nearest the fire.”

Her mind reeled at any attempt to calculate the window tax on a room made entirely of glass, or the price of the coal required to keep it temperate. Tristan was watching her, his gaze hooded. Perhaps he was performing similar arithmetic. She half expected him to decry the extravagance.

But of course, some one of his ancestors must have ordered the conservatory built, and his father must have seen to it that it was stocked and maintained, perhaps to please his mother. And with more than half its space taken up by plants that benefitted the estate in some manner, either as food or medicine, no one could call it an entirely useless expenditure.

“Ingenious.” She stood and dusted off her hands.

Tristan turned to his sister. “I should go. But I leave you in Miss Burke’s capable hands,” he told her, “and you”—his gaze lifted to Erica—“under the watchful gaze of Mr. Sturgess.”

Erica’s knee bent in a curtsy. “And who will keep an eye on you, Your Grace?” She hardly knew from whence the teasing words had come.

Tristan’s expression tightened. What had been open became opaque, and despite the room’s heat, a chill tickled along her spine. Mr. Sturgess looked away, uncertain what to make of Erica’s presumption. Viviane, however, laughed. “Miss Pilkington, I daresay,” she teased.

Something like a smile twisted across Tristan’s lips. But he said nothing, merely bowed to them both and gestured for the gardener to accompany him to the door, speaking low as they walked away. In another moment, he was gone.

Viviane asked, “Where shall we begin our study, Miss Burke?”

“At the warmest end of the room,” Erica said as soon as Tristan’s broad shoulders disappeared through the doorway. “We shall imagine ourselves as far away from this cold, wet day as we can. Somewhere on the banks of the Amazon should do it, I think.”

One arm upraised, the girl forged her way across the conservatory, a dauntless explorer. As she followed, Erica sent an apologetic glance at Mr. Sturgess. She expected him to ignore them and resume his duties now that the duke was gone. But he approached them with shuffling steps. “In case you have questions,” he said.

He was relishing this moment in the spotlight, she realized. Had Tristan known he would? “I did hope you might tell us the history of a few of these more unusual specimens, Mr. Sturgess.”