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She wondered how it would affect the way Briggs treated her. And what happened in her bedchamber at night.
She did not wish for that. She wanted to stay in her separate life, and she did not want Bybee House or her past to intrude.
She realised that was vile of her. But she could not help herself.
She waited for Briggs to come to her, but he did not. And finally, after becoming impatient, she went and looked in his study, but did not find him. And it was only intuition that led her down the stairs and out to the garden. Where she could see it. An amber light flickering back where she now knew the greenhouse was.
She had been right. She had been right, in her assessment of the fact that he had been trying to protect something when they had been in there earlier, but that it was not about the flowers.
This was him. There was a key here. A key to him. And she knew it. And so she stepped outside and followed the ambient glow of the light, and through the windows, she could see him. Inside, bent over one of the plants.
She pushed the door open. She did not knock, for fear that he would turn her away.
He might still turn her away, but she was already inside... He stiffened, then turned.
‘Is this where you are? When I don’t see you. I assumed you were in your study working away, but you’re here, aren’t you? William told me that there was a greenhouse in Maynard Park as well.’
‘Not always,’ he said.
‘Briggs, why haven’t you mentioned this?’
‘I learned a long time ago that there are things people do not wish to hear about. It is not a mark against them, it is simply up to me to learn what people are interested in, and stick to those topics.’
‘You like... You like flowers.’
‘Horticulture and botany,’ he said. ‘The more complicated the better. The less suited to the English atmosphere, the better. I find it diverting.’
‘For how long?’
He looked at her, his dark eyes intense. ‘As long as I can remember.’
‘These are your cards,’ she said softly. She looked around. ‘Briggs, do you not know that you’re very like William?’
‘He likes buildings. I like flowers. It is not the same.’
‘It is the same. And that’s why you reacted the way that you did when those boys were mean to him. People have been very unkind to you in the past, haven’t they?’
‘It is no matter.’
‘But it is,’ she said. ‘Your father was unkind to you, wasn’t he?’
He huffed out a laugh. ‘Can you imagine how useless a man like my father would find this?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Because I did not know your father. You will have to tell me.’
‘He hated this. He hated everything that I cared about. And I do not wish to speak further of it.’
‘Why?’
‘It will only bore you, and I reached my limit with how often I can possibly watch a person’s eyes glaze over with boredom while I speak of things that matter to me. I reached the limit with how often I can disgust someone with who I am. I do not wish to do it any more.’
‘I am not a child. I do not mock what I don’t understand. I... I never had the chance to have friends, not when I was young. Maybe I would’ve been your friend.’
‘No, Beatrice, if you had not lived a cloistered existence for you were forced to be different than others, you would not have been any different than the children that accosted William. For that is human nature. It is who we are.’
‘I find that very grim.’
‘Humanity is grim. There is no denying it.’
