Hence my memorization of cabbage facts.
A man of science devoted to increasing the crop yield of his land by producing the heartiest vegetables in the most fertile soil, Mr. Holcroft has identified cabbage as essential to his agricultural goals.
I know of his interest because his oldest and dearest friend, the man with whom he attended Oxford and who rescued him from the relentless abuse of the bullies who tormented him during his early days at the university, Sir Dudley Grimston,mentioned it when Sebastian and I visited him in his office. Master of the rolls, he insisted we join him for tea and biscuits and conversation, and while we were enjoying what Ithoughtwas a comfortable coze with an honorary member of the Holcroft family, Grimston was arranging our demise. His only interest was in delaying our departure to provide his henchman with sufficient time to arrange our murders in a squalid room in Snipper Lane. Unbeknownst to us, Grimston was at the center of the Chancery scandal we were about to expose and killing us was preferable to his own ruination.
It was an inconceivable act of betrayal of Sebastian, whom Grimston has known since infanthood, but the villain’s treachery does not make the information he provided about Mr. Holcroft’s cabbage fixation any less valid.
Cabbage, which has been cultivated for four thousand years and is used in China to cure baldness and resides among members of theCruciferaefamily.
You noticed, I trust, how my prior statement subtly reveals a familiarity with Linnaean taxonomy. That is what I mean by “airy nonchalance.” You would never suspect from the blithe way I discuss these terms that I was not even aware they existed three weeks ago. I practiced how to pronounceCruciferaeandBrassicaceaeso that I could present myself as the sort of endearing young person who knows a thing or two about taxonomical classification.
All that work, all that effort, only to run headlong into clover.
Clover of all beastly things!
We are in the drawing room, an assortment of Holcrofts and the Hyde-Clares gathered together, and the chamber is ridiculously large, all towering ceiling and massive tapestries.
And the tapestries areancient.
I cannot say why their age makes everything worse, but you must trust me when I say it does. Sitting there, on the stiffcushion of the settee, I know with absolute certainty that my mortification would be less acute if it were observed by morose ancestors glaring down in high-minded, self-important poses in gloomy portraits rather than exquisitely rendered gardens from the fifteenth century.
But I am where I am, and I cannot be somewhere else.
Do I want to jump up and run from the room?
With all my being!
But beating a hasty retreat is cowardly, and I am resolved to be courageous.
It would just be so much easier if I could say something about cabbage, not stupid clover.
“I perceive its great potential,” Mr. Holcroft explains of his new favorite crop.
Of all the rotten turns Sir Dudley has done me, this is the most despicable.
Frantically, I try to recall what I know about clover.
Recall!
As if I know anything aboutanyplant that is not cabbage. (Or roses. I know several things about roses, including but not limited to the warm golden feeling they engender when a bouquet of fresh-cut blossoms arrives at your home from a gentleman with whom you danced the quadrille the evening before.)
On the verge of smoothly dropping one of my well-noted cabbage facts into the conversation—a bon mot about its root system, which is shallow and fibrous—I stare in bewilderment, unable to devise a coherent response.
But my mouth is open!
It is open because twelve seconds ago, I knew precisely what I would say, so now I look like a fish gasping for air out of the water.
Mrs. Dowell, the eldest of Sebastian’s three sisters and mother to three of his four nephews, tilts her head with curiosity and begs me to speak freely. “You do not have to parse your words with us, Miss Hyde-Clare. We are a most broad-minded family.”
Fiddlesticks!
The Holcrofts, the whole lot of them, are intolerant snobs.
In the twenty-one hours since we arrived at the Bedfordshire estate, at approximately four in the afternoon, my parents, Russell, and I have been subjected to the sharp edge of the family’s contempt conveyed through quaint insults.
That is to say, every comment we make is deemed quaint.
Mama gushes over the quality of the marble floor in the entry hall—a quaint observation.
