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“You needn’t trouble him. Trouble me instead.”

Laura surveyed the overgrown beds, the cracked stone path, the fountain gone dry and choked with leaves, and felt something in her settle.

This, at least, is a problem I understand.

Growing things did not require her to know how to be a duchess. They only required patience and dirt under her nails.

“I would like to help, if you’ll let me. And I know someone else who might enjoy it.”

“Enjoy what?” called a small voice.

Laura turned to find Iris standing on the path behind her in a pinafore already stained green on one knee, though the day had scarcely begun.

“Digging in the dirt,” she quipped. “Getting filthy. Growing flowers.”

Iris’s face lit up like a struck match. “Miss Borden says I’m not to get dirty before luncheon.”

“Then it is fortunate,” Laura said in a playful whisper, “that I outrank her.”

Iris laughed and ran up to her. They set to work and spent the whole afternoon on their knees in beds nearest the east wall. Mr. Whipp said the soil was best there, and the sun lingered longest.

Laura had never planted anything in her life, and it showed. Iris, who apparently enjoyed playing in the dirt, took great pleasure in correcting her.

“Not so deep,” she said, watching Laura bury a primrose root nearly to its leaves. “It’ll suffocate.”

“That’s right, Lady Iris,” Mr. Whipp concurred.

“Mr. Whipp says you must leave the crown peeking out, just like this.” She patted the soil around a small tuft of green with two grubby hands.

“How do you know so much about it?” Laura asked.

“Mama used to garden with me, too. Before,” Iris said lightly. “She liked flowers better than jewels. She told me so.”

“She sounds like a sensible woman.”

“She was.” Iris sat back on her heels and looked at the row of primroses, uneven but determined, marching along the border like a small crooked army. “Uncle Nathaniel says I look like her. Do you think so?”

Laura made a point to study the girl’s face—the same dark brown eyes, the same stubborn chin she’d seen on Nathaniel a dozen times. “I think you do, yes.”

Iris beamed and went back to digging with enthusiasm, humming something tuneless under her breath.

As she watched her, Laura felt her chest go tight and warm at once. While unfamiliar, she knew it was the ache of loving something faster than was reasonable. The girl was simply adorable.

They were most of the way through a bed of tulip bulbs, hands black to the wrist, when Iris suddenly went still and pointed across the lawn.

“Look,” she cried. “It’s Uncle Nathaniel! He never comes outside at this time of day.”

Laura followed her finger, and there he was, far out past the old orchard wall, mounted on his black gelding and moving at a hard gallop along the ridge that bordered the eastern fields.

Even from a distance, she could see the ease with which he held himself in the saddle, all strong shoulders and confidence. His coat had come open and was snapping behind him like a dark flag. His linen shirt did nothing to disguise the muscular planes of his chest.

Laura simply watched, struck by something she didn’t have a polite word for, something warm and tingly. Then she caught herself staring and turned back to the tulip bed, shoving a bulb into the earth with her thumb.

Get a hold of yourself.

“You were looking at him funny,” Iris observed.

“I was looking at the horse,” Laura countered. “Fine animal.”