Page 61 of Lady Waldrey’s Gardening Almanac for Cultivating Scandal

“Indeed. Luckily we both have all the company we could want, right here.”

He smiled at her in agreement. He didn’t mind that Vera knew his feelings for Candace. They’d both danced around the issue in such a way that he was convinced of her discretion. He hadn’t lied to her—James considered Vera a friend.

She obviously felt the same—she’d confided some personal things to him, too. The unrequited desire she held to be a wife, her feelings of loneliness within the social swirl—those weren’t small things for an unattached lady to confess to anyone, let alone to an unmarried man. He gave her another smile, one that spoke of their shared understanding, and she smiled and gave a single nod of meaning in return.

It was several moments before they looked up to find Candace standing at the edge of the blanket, looking back and forth between them. James leaned back and blinked—how long had she been there? He mentally retraced their conversation, wondering if anything incriminating had actually been said, where Candace was concerned. He didn’t think so, but a slightly awkward silence descended in the interim while he thought about it.

“You must come to dinner,” Candace said abruptly, lacing her gloved fingers together tightly. “Next week. We’re going to invite the baroness as well, aren’t we, Vera?”

Vera nodded, but her shaky smile told James that this was the first she’d heard of it.

“That sounds wonderful. Thank you for the invitation.”

“Well, then. I should get back to helping Arthur with his kite. I’m glad you’ll join us for dinner, James.”

She hurried off toward Arthur, who didn’t appear to be having any issues he needed assistance with.

“I’m sure the baroness is a wonderful dinner companion,” he said to fill the beat of silence.

“I’m very fond of her. I don’t know her very well yet, but we dined with her a while back. Do you know that she collects wounded animals and nurses them back to health?”

“How interesting.”

“Candace nearly sat on a hedgehog. She thought it was a decorative pillow.”

James laughed and glanced over in time to see Candace looking their direction. She whipped her head back toward the kite when their eyes met.

“I’m glad the hedgehog was saved.”

“The baroness also has a rabbit and a mole. And a fox.”

“How does she keep track of the animals? I’ve only been there once, while her husband still lived, and I remember it being a rather large house.”

“She keeps them in her morning room, which opens onto a walled garden.”

“A charitable exercise, albeit an inconvenient one.”

“There’s a maid assigned to the room. All she does is clean, replace shavings, and let the animals in and out when they stand on either side of the door.”

James hid his smile. Vera spoke of the baroness’s eccentric behavior with near reverence; it was clear she looked up to the lady.

“It’s admirable she’s devised a system to rescue both the animals and her floors.”

Vera laughed.

CHAPTER 19- CANDACE

From the Quentin Daily⁠—

A great sea serpent was seen swimming up the River Thames! Witnesses say that the beast is nearly twenty feet long and as big as three wine barrels lashed together. “Farmers up-river have reported missing sheep for weeks!” Meyer Millerson, a local man, said. “Doubtless this beast is to blame!” Hopefully the creature won’t develop a taste for men, instead!

The next day, Candace stood in a shed. Dim light filtered in from three small windows, illuminating dust motes in their feeble rays. The building smelled of a hundred years of layered history—rich loam, decomposing wood, the mold creeping up the back wall where wood wicked a rain puddle upwards.

When Candace had inquired about replacement bulbs for the pot that Seamus had destroyed, she’d been directed here. Mrs. Penn said she’d have a footman see to the crates, but Candace wanted a project and set out alone, a thick apron borrowed from the housekeeper over her wool dress.

Thankfully, the lid of the nearest crate had already been pried open and divested of its nails. Candace still fumbled with the heavy thing as she peeled it off and set it aside. She inhaled the clean smell of cedar and rummaged through the first layer of wood shavings. If the words daubed onto the side were to be believed, this crate alone contained two hundred hyacinth bulbs.

Percy, you romantic idiot.