“Your dress, Miss….”
She just needed some air. Some space. She needed to sit among a few flowers that didn’t want anything from her but to bloom. To scent the air. They didn’t even mind if she got a bit sniffly. Ridiculous thing to get weepy over, an empty locket. Rather maudlin, actually. Poor little orphan girl losing her most precious possession, which wasn’t precious at all, except to spies. And her.
Her escape to the garden was probably a mistake. Autumn seemed to have taken hold while she wasn’t watching. Low, thick clouds rolled across the sky, herded along by a chilly snapping breeze that managed to sneak right up under skirts and chill the skin. The flowers were all but gone. She should have known. The bench she sought out sat in isolated splendor in a naked walled garden that already slept. No blooms. No pretty color or comforting scents to remind her that no matter which way she turned after this moment there would still be spring.
And the bench was cold.
She wasn’t certain how long she sat there, her hands clasped in her lap, her head down, thinking nothing. Not how much import she had put on a silly little necklace, not how much she was beginning to put on a handsome man. Not what would happen next or what price she would pay. She just sat, the silence gathering like a clean wall between past and future. Autumn and spring. Experience and possibility or pain. Undoubtedly pain, if past experience counted for anything.
“Miss Chambers! Oh, thank heavens!” she heard.
She snapped to attention, her head up, her mouth open to call out.
“No,” Bucky begged, hand up, face crumpled in distress.
Looking at him now, who could think he was a traitor? He crept around the garden wall like a dog expecting to be whipped, his plump young face creased in distress, his usually perfectly styled Brutus cut gone wild.
“Did you shoot at me, Bucky?” she demanded.
“No!” He stepped closer so that she noticed that his attire was just as crumpled as his expression. If there was one thing Bucky was proud of, it was his sartorial elegance. If his current look was any indication, he was in terrible distress.
“Please,” he begged. “You must have my watch fob. Mary gave it to you, didn’t she? I need it back. You need to give the code to me and the list before both of us are murdered. They won’t take no for an answer.”
Felicity found herself shaking her head. “I don’t have it, Bucky. Would you like to come in and talk to Lord Flint?”
His color went ashen. “Are you mad? They’ll kill me for sure. As it is, I’ll be off for...well, away anyway. But I need to get them the list before I go, or I will be hunted down.”
“Bucky, you cannot mean to help overthrow the throne.”
“Of course not,” he snapped. “It was a game. A...well...just an exercise. How could I know he meant it?”
“He who?”
But he was shaking his head and looking around, even though they were in a walled garden. “Can’t you get it for me? If not the locket. The list.”
“List?” She echoed. “I have no list.”
“Of course, you do. I gave it to you myself.”
“No, you didn’t, Bucky. I only brought along what was absolutely mine. I don’t have anything else.”
She honestly thought he was going to weep.
“Then I have to go. Be careful. They think you have it. They will continue to be after you.”
“They who? Who shot at me, Bucky?”
“Reed. Just tell Bracken it was Reed. He’ll know. Be careful. Reed knows the ins and outs of this place. He visits Lady Winifred because of John Harvester. Bracken will understand. And Miss Chambers? If you do find that list…destroy it. It would be better than letting it get into their hands, truly. Tell Bracken it’s all I can do.”
And before she could think of anything else to say to keep him there, he ran out of the garden. Within a minute, she heard hoofbeats thunder off toward the road.
She sat back down, the air completely taken out of her.
Bucky. She had to tell Flint. She had to get out of this garden, no longer a safe haven, if Bucky was right. But if he was right, nowhere was a safe haven.
She rose to her feet, her knees a bit shaky, and returned through the kitchen door.
“Miss!” the cook protested as she passed. “Your dress! It must be sponged.”
