Page 123 of Lady Waldrey’s Gardening Almanac for Cultivating Scandal

“Lady Candace?” Benson said. “Are you quite all right? Would you like me to fetch the doctor?”

“That won’t be necessary. Will you please get discreet word to Vera that I’m not feeling well and have retired for the evening?”

“Very well, my lady. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Not at present. I’m going to enjoy the air in the gardens. I’ll be in shortly.”

After those people are gone. She didn’t say it but thought he might have heard it anyway.

“Very well, my lady.”

The heavy click of the door closing left her blessedly alone once more. She didn’t know when the tears had started, but they rained freely down her face, dripping from the tip of her nose and chin as if she were a statue in a storm. She lurched to the gate set into the stone wall that separated the gardens from the drive and fled into the greenery.

CHAPTER 35- CANDACE

From Where the Birds Sing: A Gardening Primer-

Pruning is essential to the health of a garden. Though possibly the most tedious and seemingly counterintuitive task of the gardener, it encourages new growth, prevents rot and disease, and is crucial to plants. A garden where pruning has been neglected is easy to spot—dense thickets form from previously beautiful vines, and pests nest comfortably in the overgrowth.

The next morning, after breakfast, Candace wandered the house listlessly. Though she stared at paintings in the hallway, she barely saw them. She opened doors at random and trailed through rooms without noting where she was or what she was doing. Eventually, she opened a door to a narrow room wedged between an unused study and an inconveniently placed sitting room.

It appeared to be a storage room of some sort. A painting with a tear in the canvas rested next to an empty gas lamp missing its glass hurricane. A single straight-backed chair with broken caning rested in the dusty corner. However, what caught Candace’s attention were the neat bundles of papers tied with twine.

They were carelessly tossed into a pile upon the floor as if they were trash, but something about them snagged her eye, bade her look closer. She bent and inspected them, frowning.

She gasped and dropped to her knees, tugging at the twine knots. These were all the copies of the Quentin Daily and the other scandal sheets that she’d requested from London! But why were they here, in this room? Hortense had said there was a back-up with the post...

Hortense.

Her maid had kept them from her, no doubt in some kind of protective gesture. Candace shook her head and finally freed the first stack with one last, desperate pull. The twine slipped; the stack of folded pamphlets scattered around her. Dreadful headlines splayed out before her, each worse than the last.

She plucked several from the pile and read the top one.

Missing! Shamed, or dead? Which is worse?

“Oh, dear,” Vera murmured from the doorway. “Candace, leave those be.”

She turned to her friend, her hands still crinkling the papers. “You knew about this?”

Vera winced, then nodded. “I told her to burn them, but Hortense didn’t feel right about it—you’d paid for them, after all.”

“But why—” She turned back to the sheets and flipped to the next one.

Put Back on the Shelf! From Desirable to Discarded!

Candace wrinkled her nose at the sentiment.

“At first, it was to keep them from you.” Vera twisted her fingers together. “After a while, however, it didn’t seem like you cared any longer. You became absorbed with other things.”

Candace swallowed deeply. Vera was right. It had only taken a week or so to get out of the habit of reading the gossip sheet’s pernicious lies, their wicked inventions.

She’d thrown herself into the garden design, buried her grief beneath shovelfuls of dark soil, planted her hopes amongst the bulbs, watched them sprout again like the tender green shoots of flowers that sent fingers toward the spring sun.

All to see a freak hailstorm bash them to bits once more.

She pushed herself up from her knees, letting the copies in her hands flutter to the floor like the last leaves of fall.

“You’re right,” she said grimly. “I don’t care what they say any longer. As if any of their lies matter against the truth.”