Page 16 of Lady Waldrey’s Gardening Almanac for Cultivating Scandal

Perhaps he’d gone slightly awry on the paint color, however. He frowned. Instead of his customary black, he’d opted for a daring midnight-blue color that was only very nearly black. In the sunshine of morning, one could clearly see that it wasn’t. He pressed his lips together and briefly wondered if any passerby who saw it would attribute his deviation to an early-onset midlife crisis.

It was a lovely day, and there were plenty of people out. Though the blossoms on the trees had not yet burst open—due to a lengthy unseasonable chill that toyed with the emotions of all hopeful hostesses of garden parties—the trees were leafing out with that particular bright green that heralded spring. The color would have been garish under any other circumstance—it was precisely the color Lady Ashbury would choose for a head-to-toe ensemble—but the hue was readily forgiven since it announced the arrival of warmer weather to the winter-weary denizens of London.

Thoughts of Lady Ashbury slid into thoughts of her daughter, Vera, which inevitably led to thoughts of Candace. It seemed all his thoughts led to her lately—though after the terrible scene that played out the night before in the Balewicks’ ballroom, he was certain that he was not the only one thinking of Candace today.

He pressed his lips together in disgust. Shelbourne was nothing but a knave in an expensive, well-cut coat. James didn’t know whether to be grateful that the man had finally proven as such to Candace. While James believed she’d follow through with her intention to break the engagement, it was difficult to celebrate a circumstance that brought her so much pain.

The carriage bounced gently over a dip in the road, and James smiled wistfully. This had been his late wife, Jane’s, favorite time of year. She’d loved the in-betweens—the transition of one season to the next, where she might need a coat and fur muffler in the morning and only a light pelisse in the afternoon.

His lips thinned at the dull grief that inevitably rose when he thought of Jane. Except the grief was now also tinged with a familiar guilt. He thought of Candace far more than his late wife—the mother of his child, no less. One would think that his son would be a constant reminder of his late bride, but as Arthur had arrived on the same night as Jane’s departure, it was sometimes hard to tie the two separate seasons of life together in his mind.

Jane never had a chance to mother Arthur; they’d whisked the precious infant away in the frenzied attempts to save his mother’s life. James never even saw them together—it was a regret, one of his many where his late wife was concerned.

Chief among them was that, though he’d loved Jane, he hadn’t been in love with her, at any point. They’d shared friendship, common beliefs, and a united commitment to furthering the title of Canterbury, but he’d never been consumed with her. Never noticed how, when the light from the drawing room window was just so, it lit her hair like a halo worthy of one of Botticelli’s paintings.

No, fanciful thoughts such as that had been the furthest thing from his mind when he chose his first wife. Back then, he’d been well consumed by duty and honor and the “shoulds” of life.

Jane’s death had been a stark change for him. All he could think, that long, long night—as he’d tried to console a squalling newborn who was as alien to him as a stray dog in the lane—was that he’d done everything right. James had done everything he was supposed to do.

So had Jane.

That knowledge was a comfort as cold as his lovely young wife’s corpse.

Perhaps a casual onlooker wouldn’t see that much had changed since that night, he thought, looking over at Arthur, who sat across from him in the carriage. But James had changed on the inside.

His son’s dark head was bent over a puzzle, an interlocking set of iron rings that a talented London blacksmith had fashioned. Arthur was fond of riddles and puzzles, and James made a point to bring him a new challenge whenever he could. Arthur had been working on this one for three days straight, his focus easily marked by the jingling of metal.

“Are you any closer to solving it?”

Arthur looked up, his hazel eyes so like his late wife’s that James rethought his earlier position about forgetting her. He never would; not when eyes inherited from her watched him so closely every day.

“I think so, Father. It’s a tricky one.”

“Have you let Philip have a try yet?”

Arthur scowled. “No.”

James chuckled. Philip, the head groomsman, had a knack for solving these types of puzzles. If Arthur ever became desperate with the belief that a riddle couldn’t be solved, he handed it off to Philip, who quickly proved the puzzle wasn’t broken.

“Are we nearly there?”

James arched an eyebrow. “You’d know the answer to that if you bothered to look up every once in awhile.”

Arthur lifted his head and straightened his spine to peer out the carriage window. Finding that they were at the end of the driveway, he set aside the interlocking rings and wrestled his jacket back on, buttoning it up properly with his pudgy fingers.

James smiled. It was a new development—Arthur working his own buttons—but his son was determined to grow up as quickly as possible. Though it sometimes made James wistful, that desire was a good, healthy one for a young boy to have.

However, thinking of his son naturally led to the boy’s want of a mother. Candace would make an excellent mother—that is, if she wanted to be one at all.

“Are you going to be married, Father?” Arthur said, his face solemn.

James blinked at the uncanny echo of his own errant thoughts. “Where did you get that idea?”

“Philip said so. He said that’s why you went away to Paris.”

“Philip’s a gossip. I’ll have a word with him about filling your head with such things.”

“So it isn’t true?” Arthur pressed.