Page 59 of Lady Waldrey’s Gardening Almanac for Cultivating Scandal

The butler led the ladies into a sitting room, Arthur prattling behind them, while James hurried to the back of the house to find Mrs. Klein.

His housekeeper stood in the dining room, one hand holding the watch fob she kept pinned to her trim waistcoat, her chin lifted, her sharp eye trained on the servants cleaning and replacing beeswax candles on the candelabras. The grand lighting fixtures had been lowered with pulleys to nearly graze the floor. Even still, several ladders were needed to reach the tops of them.

“Mrs. Klein,” James said, “I’m hoping you can arrange a picnic out of doors for myself, Arthur, Lady Candace, and Miss Ashbury.”

“Certainly, Your Grace. Do you have any particular requests?”

“Only that perhaps the gardeners could lay down some tarpaulins beneath the blankets. The ground is still a little damp, and I’d hate for the ladies’ dresses to be ruined.”

“Of course, Your Grace. Leave it to me.”

“Thank you.”

James glanced once more at the chandeliers before departing. On any other day, he would have showed Arthur the sight—those pulleys were an impressive and practical feat of engineering. But he had much more important things to see to today. A thrill of anticipation and a hint of fear stirred in his gut. It had been so long since he’d set his mind upon matrimony, he’d almost forgotten the unsettling uncertainty of the task.

Though Candace seemed to have recovered from the initial shock of being untethered from Shelbourne, James wasn’t sure she was ready for anyone else to declare their intentions. He didn’t want to rush her into anything—the very last thing he wanted was for her to wake up a year into a marriage and feel trapped.

This was uncharted territory for him in many ways. He was a widower with a son. She was emerging from a disastrous engagement. And James wanted love—for both of them. So much so that he was willing to step aside if she could better find that love with another, though even the thought of it had his hand curling into a fist at his side.

He paused in the hallway to take a deep breath. This time together was a chance, and he would make the most of it. Candace wouldn’t hide away in Devon forever—she was too bright a star for that. James was determined that by the time she left, at the very least, their friendship would be much deeper than before.

He took another deep breath, smoothed his face and went in to greet his guests.

Hours later, he watched Candace laughing, several tendrils of her red hair escaping her once tidy arrangement. He and Vera lingered on the picnic blankets, though the remains of their meal had long been cleared by a bevy of servants.

A way off, Arthur climbed a tree to retrieve his paper kite, with Candace supervising from below out of concern. James sincerely hoped that if Arthur was foolish enough to fall from the tree, at least he’d have the sense to miss Candace on the way down.

“How is she really, do you think?” he asked Vera, his voice low.

Vera tilted her head, considering. “I think she’s well enough. It’s the loss of society that bothers her far more than the loss of Shelbourne.”

He nodded.

She continued, “I’m unconvinced there was ever any real connection between them.”

The carefully casual way in which she stated the words nearly made James flush. Vera kept her eyes forward on Candace and Arthur for a few moments, then finally met his gaze, offering him a small, knowing smile.

There was no mocking or pride of discovery in that smile. It wasn’t a smile that inferred James should be embarrassed, or that she knew a dark secret of his and intended to leverage it against him. It was just a smile—one that told him that Vera had been paying far closer attention than he’d realized all along.

He cleared his throat. “That’s for the best. He wasn’t worthy of her.”

“Agreed. She needs someone who truly cares for her. She needs someone steady, dependable.”

James frowned. There was that word again—dependable. An excellent quality in things like tools, plow horses, and stairs, but hardly the type of thing a beautiful young lady gravitated toward when looking for a spouse.

“Do you think she realizes that?” he found the courage to ask.

“I think what happened with Shelbourne reordered her thinking about marriage. Given the chance, I think she’ll make a much better choice the second time around.”

Vera glanced at him. Her look was full of meaning, and he nodded, catching the unspoken words. Candace needed understanding; she needed patience. James had already come to the same conclusion.

“There’s no rush in such a matter.”

“Isn’t there?” she said. At his questioning glance, she added, “A rush, I mean.”

“Is there?”

“Candace believes that no one will have her. That might make her vulnerable to accepting someone less than worthy of her.”