Page 17 of A Convenient Fiction

Henrietta’s pout softened. “Are you? To see that odious solicitor of yours? I can’t begin to fathom why he won’t attend you here.”

Laura felt the weight of Mr. Archer’s gaze upon her. She ignored it. “Mr. Weatherwax is a very busy man. He hasn’t the time to come to Lower Hawley.”

“When will you return? Not until the following morning, I daresay. Which means I shall have no one to chaperone me all day.”

Laura refrained from pointing out the many other ladies in Lower Hawley who might be willing to play chaperone. “I shall be home by Wednesday afternoon. You may send someone for me then. Or come to Bramble Cottage yourself if you’d like to call on my aunt.”

“I may at that,” Henrietta said. “Perhaps we all shall.”

Two hours later, as dusk settled over the Surrey countryside, Laura was conveyed home in a one-horse gig driven by an aged groom from Squire Talbot’s stables.

It was but a short distance by carriage—past the boundary of Edgington Park, along the border of Talbot’s Wood, and to the gate of the ramshackle cottage which housed the remaining members of the Hayes family.

After climbing down from the gig and bidding the groom safe journey, Laura stood at the gate for a moment. The garden was woefully overgrown, the warm evening air heavy with the perfume of summer roses. They were everywhere. An explosion of fragrant yellow and orange blooms ran wild along the walls, framing the windows and arching over the front door.

She inhaled deeply.

Perfume was in her blood. The redolence of roses. The exotic sweetness of jasmine. And the clean, wholesome bouquet of lavender.

She wasn’t her father. She couldn’t create new fragrances—and didn’t aspire to. But she knew the importance of scent. It was love, and loss, and memory. A single sniff was all it took to bring the past alive.

But there was no future in it. Not for her, and not for Teddy. Not so long as Mr. Weatherwax held the reins.

A candle flickered from Teddy’s third-floor window. He was still awake—and still drawing, no doubt.

She made her way inside and up the creaking stairs. A short rap at his bedroom door was enough to announce her presence.

“I saw the gig from the window,” Teddy said as she entered. He was hunched over his desk, the candle sputtering beside him. “Good thing Aunt Charlotte didn’t.”

Magpie was stretched out on Teddy’s bed. Laura gave him a scratch on the head as she passed. “Where is she?”

“Gone down the lane to look in on Mrs. Pole’s baby. She said she’d be back in a quarter of an hour.”

Laura leaned down to brush a kiss against her brother’s temple. With his inky black hair and gray-blue eyes, he might have been her copy. But there was no fire in him. No vibrancy. As a boy, he’d had more strength of will. Now, however, on the cusp of reaching his majority, Teddy seemed to have given up. In the past month alone, his face had grown thinner, his shoulders narrow.

“What have you been working on today?” she asked.

“Preliminary sketches of the birds.” His face was pale in the candlelight, his complexion sickly for lack of sunshine. “I’ll begin painting tomorrow.”

“Outside?”

He didn’t answer.

She pulled up a chair beside the desk and sat down. “This won’t do, you know.”

“I’m not in any mood for a lecture. I’ve already had enough of them from Aunt Charlotte.”

“I’m not lecturing.”

He cast her a baleful look. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t do what makes me happy. You’re always running away to the pond. No one stops you from going.”

“I wish you’d come with me.”

“In this?” He made an impatient gesture at his wheeled chair. “No, thank you.”

“Yardley can carry you down, and then we—”

“Don’t be daft. Yardley can barely carry himself up and down the stairs. He’s pushing seventy.”