One
MAY1900
WASHINGTON, DC
Annabelle Larkin hadn’t meant to offend the world’s leading spice tycoon with her bold request, yet it seemed she had. The letter he’d written in reply made that clear, but she read it a second time, searching for a shred of hope in its prickly text.
Dear Miss Larkin,
I am in receipt of your letter asking me to donate my plant collection to the Smithsonian Institution. I spent two decades searching the world to gather those rare specimens, during which I sacrificed, sweat, and nearly died. Please be assured I have a better track record of nurturing plants than the feeble assortment I’ve seen at the Smithsonian, most of which are dead and mounted for display. I must therefore decline your offer to take the collection off my hands.
Gray Delacroix
Owner, Delacroix Global Spice
She dropped the letter onto her laboratory worktable with a sigh. Winning the donation of the Delacroixs’ plant collection had always been a long shot, but desperation gave her few options.
“Dare I ask?” Mr. Bittles inquired from the opposite side of the table.
Mr. Bittles was her supervisor and had had nothing but contempt for her since the day she began working at the Smithsonian only two months earlier. Fresh from Kansas and needing a tourist’s map to find the famous research museum, Annabelle didn’t really belong in Washington, where she felt as green as a newly sprouted hayseed. While everyone else at the Smithsonian had studied at places like Harvard and Princeton, Annabelle’s diploma came from Kansas State Agricultural College. She was not the most glittering ornament among the scientists at the Smithsonian.
“Mr. Delacroix declined our offer, but I still have hope,” she said, refusing to take his blunt refusal as a personal insult. She was merely the latest in a long line of botanists who’d tried and failed to make headway with Gray Delacroix.
The lab where she worked with Mr. Bittles was tiny, and she needed to nudge her way around him to reach the office typewriter. She pecked out a brisk response.
Dear Mr. Delacroix,
I meant no disrespect in my previous letter. Everyone at the Smithsonian is impressed by your remarkable collection, especially given the challenge of transporting exotic plants to America while they are still alive and fruitful. The rarity of your accomplishment is why we hope you will share the plants with world-class scientists who might build upon your success for the betterment of the nation.
Should you donate your collection to us, the Smithsonian would be prepared to name a wing in your honor.
Sincerely,
Miss Annabelle Larkin
Botanical Specialist,
The Smithsonian Institution
The promise of a wing was genuine, for the director of the Smithsonian had already authorized it, and everyone knew that Dr. Norwood would barter his own grandchildren to get his hands on Gray Delacroix’s plants. Dr. Norwood’s main interest was the orchids, but he’d asked her to go after the entire collection. She didn’t understand his zeal, but she would do her best to get it for him.
This task was especially important, for her job here was only temporary. She’d been hired for a six-month position to preserve and catalog a large shipment of plants from Africa and Australia, but in a few months she would be out of work. Dr. Norwood had dangled the prize of a permanent position if she could persuade the famously reclusive Gray Delacroix to donate his extraordinary plant collection.
As she set her letter to him in the outgoing mailbox, she silently prayed for success. It was an honor to work at the Smithsonian with scientists who sought to explore and understand the world around them, and she desperately needed to keep this position. Even if it meant cooperating with people like Mr. Bittles. Her supervisor didn’t like any woman unless she was bringing him coffee or ironing his shirts. He’d been appalled when Dr. Norwood appointed her to be his assistant, but Annabelle was merely happy to have the job.
“Come, get back to work,” Mr. Bittles ordered, setting a new crate from Australia before her. The box was filled withgrasses, moss, and seedpods, and it was her job to catalog them for posterity. Each plant would be dried and preserved on a sheet of parchment, its seeds packaged in an accompanying envelope, and then stored in oversized metal filing drawers. She liked to imagine that hundreds of years from now, scientists would consult these specimens, fascinated by this glimpse into the botanical treasures of the past.
“Why do you suppose Dr. Norwood is so anxious to get inside the Delacroix collection?” she asked.
“It’s all about the vanilla orchid,” Mr. Bittles replied. “He doesn’t give a fig about the other plants, only that original vanilla orchid. I don’t think it even exists anymore.”
Annabelle had already heard about Dr. Norwood’s quest to hunt down the progenitor of the modern vanilla orchid. The Spaniards came upon it when they encountered the Aztecs in the sixteenth century. They smuggled it into monasteries and overseas to the eastern spice islands, where over the centuries it had been crossbred with other varieties of vanilla and was now believed to have been hybridized out of existence. No one had seen a living example of the original vanilla orchid in over a hundred years.
Despite herself, Annabelle was intrigued. “Do you think Mr. Delacroix has one?”
“Dr. Norwood does. Gray Delacroix collects all types of vanilla orchids, but he keeps them under lock and key, which is stoking Dr. Norwood’s curiosity. You may as well give up. I think that original orchid went extinct long ago. No more dawdling. Get that crate unpacked.”
Annabelle nodded and reached for another cluster of grass from Australia. Most of the grasses she cataloged looked similar to what they had in America, but tiny differences in a plant’s biology could alter its flavor, fragrance, or hardiness. Indeed, those tiny differences were causing her family’s wheat farm to fail after years of drought. Her parents had gone into debt tobuy her train ticket to Washington, and she couldn’t afford to lose this job.
