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“I was given to understand, in no uncertain terms,” Jemima said, “that if I loved my brother, I must leave him to his choices, the joys and the sorrows of them.”
“Yes, I understand that here”—Tabitha pointed to her head—“but not here.” She laid her hand on her heart.
“And has your heart been claimed, ever, during your investigations?” Jemima’s smile was naughty. “For clinical purposes?”
“Not once. Not for my brother’s lack of trying, nor my own, when I was young enough to think there was a future in it.”
“Find aversipellisfor a husband, Tabitha. I hear you are spoiled for choice as far as suitors are concerned. Would you not consider it?”
The door swung open, and Mary entered with intent. She’d clearly had ambitions of parceling up the Barrington mending, for she scowled at the package Tabitha swept into her arms.
“I must go,” Tabitha said, and Jemima smirked at her transparent excuse to flee. “Mary, I am all that is grateful for your hard work.” She’d have to figure out how to get those coins to her.
“I look forward to meeting again, Miss Barrington,” Jemima said, “and furthering our discussion of your wealth of things to consider.”
***
Would she consider it? How would she have answered Lady Cole—Jemima? As a personage or as a friend? Likely the former, awash with platitudes; she could not do otherwise when she did not know the answer herself.
Would she consider aversipellianmatch? Why should she? Surely at the age of five and thirty, there was no point. Her fertility was waning, and wasn’t offspring the point of marriage?
Had she the company of the Italian cat, she would play devil’s advocate and dispute that straightaway. For if thevera amorisbond was meant between two souls, procreation had little to do with it.
She was thrilled that Felicity’s life was everything her friend desired. Having seen how happy and ebullient the stoic Beatrice had become upon her marriage to Osborn, Tabitha could not have wished anything else for her. She could look at their lives and be joyful for them, but she was sure it was not her path.
Why would the duke choose her, despite his compliment to her figure and his sniffing of her person? She ought to have asked Jemima about that—oh, but that would open Pandora’s box!
Should she talk to Timothy? He had far greater experience than she at giving his heart.
When had her heart come into it? Her heart had nothing to do with it.
Nor the duke’s heart, nor any heart. For the love of, of Palu, this was ridiculous. Swept off her feet by proximity and bergamot? Unlikely.
The frog and the goat, as pleasant and kind as they were, did not suit her preferences. The bee was the closest she thought to encouraging if she was to give it any thought at all.
Mrs. Tabitha Beckett—oh dear.
Tabitha ap Lewin—
She almost stepped on something left on the doorstep as she charged through the door.
“All right?” Timothy looked up from his marking, still glowing from his day’s work. She slammed the door behind her. “Not all right,” he murmured and shuffled through the litter of foolscap on the dining table.
“This was on the porch.” She held up a bunch of basil, roots exposed and tied imperfectly with string. It had not been dug up with a trowel. In her fanciful way of gauging the efficacy of plants and such, the stalks smelled hopeful and happy, the essential sunniness of the herb in no way dimmed by its English provenance.
Timothy hummed under his breath. “It was not meant for me.”
“Basil is a common enough herb. What it is meant to signify, I do not know.” Was she supposed to repot it? She set it aside with the parcel of mending and unraveled herself from her garb.
“I suspect it refers playfully to your plant searching the other evening.” Timothy sighed. How Tabitha loathed that sigh of his, that long-suffering gust that despaired of her seeing past the nose on her face. Any intention to ask his advice went out the window. Especially when he continued, “Which on the night itself had appeared to have been unsuccessful. As regards herbaceous discovery, at the very least.”
If she made faces behind his back, no one was to know but her. “Here is our mending, parceled by no less a personage than Lady Jemima Coleman.”
“Had she made you feel your difference in rank?” Timothy removed his glasses and gave them a careful polish with a cloth.
“Not at all. We are to be friends. She resided in France for many years and is only lately returned to England.”
Timothy donned his spectacles and blinked at her. “Is she as annoyed to be back as you are?”
