Eliza blinked up at him, feeling a familiar tightness loosen in her chest.
“I must firmly disagree with you about one point though,” Benedict added. “You aren’t in the shadows. If Sophie is the sun… then you are the moon. Quiet, constant, a light to banish the darkness.” Benedict delivered the speech with such naked sincerity, paired with a hint of desperation.
Eliza could read nothing of artifice or guile in his face, only urgency. Dark eyes had trapped hers, searching for something she couldn’t name, but it left her heart sputtering.
“Say you believe me,” he demanded.
“I believe you,” she whispered, compelled.
Benedict’s gaze snapped down to her lips and back. He longed to kiss her, Eliza knew it, felt it—she was more certain of that fact than she had been of anything that came before. And she wanted nothing more. Her lips positively ached for the caress of his mouth.
Unthinkingly, her tongue dipped between her lips. Benedict’s head rolled back toward the sky with a sharp exhale. When his gaze returned to her, he had clawed his way back to respectability. Eliza couldn’t help but lament it a little, even as she took his offered elbow.
“Show me your other flowers? Tulips?”
“Tulips,” she agreed as she tipped her heard toward the bed that housed them. “I bred that varietal.” Eliza pointed to a purple tulip so dark it was nearly black with crimson feathering toward the tips of the petals.
“You bred them? How? Did you pour them a glass of inexpensive wine and snuff out the candles?”
A laugh bubbled up from her chest, mixing with his own into a pleasant symphony. “Cross-pollination, though I may try your method next time.”
“I wouldn’t. You’re just as likely to find yourself with an aching head and regrets as you are a bouncing baby bulb.”
“Good to know,” she replied in a feigned, serious tone.
“Wildflowers?” he asked, gesturing to one of the last beds. There, every conceivable bloom sprung from a lush carpet of green. A riot of color swirling in a beautiful, cultivated chaos.
“For my pollinators.” Eliza explained before she drew him toward the final garden. Violets. Concentric rings of violetsin every imaginable shade—the standard blue-purple, white, yellow, burgundy, orange, and pink.Thiswas her showcase. “I told you they were my favorite.”
“I had no idea… It seems such a simple, unassuming flower...”
“Oh, they’re an absolute menace. You plant them in one place, and they take over everything until all that’s left is violets. Of course, I wouldn’t mind that, but everyone else does. Violets aren’t showy like the roses or as celebrated as the tulips, but they’ll wind their way in and you’ll be powerless to stop them. Sophie calls them fancy weeds.”
“Who could see what you’ve done with them and call them weeds?”
“Anyone who knows anything about them, I’m afraid.”
“They’re lovely. All of it is. You’re an incredible talent.”
Eliza’s cheeks heated once again; she was unused to such compliments.
She glanced at her violets. There, in between one of her neat rows, was a sprout of chickweed. She dipped down and ripped it out by the stem before remembering that the basket she kept to dispose of such intruders remained tucked away in the shed. Now she stood beside Benedict, holding a weed with nowhere to put it.
A smile played at the corner of his lips before a soft chuckle escaped. “What do you usually do with them when meddlesome suitors do not interrupt your day?”
“I’ve a basket,” she admitted, her smile a mix of pleased and sheepish.
“Where?”
With a dip of her head toward the back fence, Benedict set off to retrieve her basket. He returned at a gentle loping pace, basket in hand. Once at her side, he presented her wicker basket on both palms, bowing. “Your receptacle, my lady.”
She dropped the chickweed in her basket, following it with an affected curtsy. “Thank you, kind sir.”
“Show me?” he asked, tipping his chin to the violets beside them.
“Show you what?”
“Teach me to garden, Eliza.” A pair of worn gloves hung over the side of the basket, and Benedict handed them to her. His grin was boyish and bright as the corners of his eyes crinkled with delight.
