He chuckled and smiled in a way that deepened the shallow wrinkles lining his eyes. “I suppose you’re right. Well, I won’t be the poor soul to dare disturb a lady’s slumber. It’s a shame she won’t be able to come along, but I suppose there will be time for future luncheons during your ladies’ stay. Shall we begin our excursion, then, Miss Sterling?”
Yes!Her heart sang, and she hurried to retrieve her hat, parasol, and coat.
“And, Terence, please—” she started as she fumbled with her coat. He perked at the sound of her voice, like a dog after its name had been called. “Just call me ‘Jane’.”
“Anyplace you wish to see first?” Terence asked as they steppedoutside and up to an awaiting cab. Beside it was a man younger than Jane, thin and boyish, fair-haired, and wearing working clothes underneath an overcoat.
The boy gave Jane a curt nod and tight-lipped smile. His narrow chin was patched with pale stubble. He was stroking the muzzle of the sturdy white mare pulling the cab. Along his bony jawline, Jane noticed faded bruises, brown and jaundiced with healing.
Jane returned the gesture, and answered for Terence, “I know not a single thing about this city. I am a stranger here, a puppet, and I permit you to become my puppet master, Mr. Hayes.” She held her arms up and offered them limply to him as if he was indeed in possession of those marionette strings.
“Wonderful, then.” His grin was wide enough that she caught a flash of his front teeth that crossed over one another ever so slightly, a pinch of his eyes, an assured arch of his brows as he opened the door for her. He offered her his hand, which she used to hoist herself into the velvet-lined box.
Is that what confidence looks like on his face?She thought with a tingling heat at the tips of her ears.He should wear it more often—it makes him quite handsome.
“Take us to the university gardens, please, Ruben,” he said to the boy whilst giving him a good clap on the arm, as though he were speaking to a brother or son, then joined her in the carriage.
“Oh, university gardens?” Jane breathed. Then paused. “But it’s November. Surely such gardens would be spent by now.”
“Thank God for greenhouses, I say,” he said from where he sat across from her. He braced himself, allowing her space, as the cab lurched forward. “And pardon for neglecting to say so sooner, but your dress is lovely, Jane. I quite like the pearls.”
Just as Jane anticipated, the gardens were gray and brown. The grass possessed the faintest sheen of the morning’s frost melting beneath the sunlight. Unfortunately, the moment she and Terence stepped from the cab, the sun had become muted, hiding under the thin coverage of clouds that threatened afternoon rain.
Other people visiting the garden were as drab as the gardens themselves, wrapped in bleak hues that Jane sniffed at. Terence himself dressed in all gray and purple, like a bruise. It made Jane’s dress all the greener, and she held herself a little higher as she adjusted her hat.
Although she couldn’t deny the practicality of their clothes, layered in coats and cloaks, must they wear their garments so shoddily? She shivered and nuzzled her nose into the mink-fur collar of the pink coat that matched the color of her gloves, her lips. At leastshecould balance an act of utility and flair.
When Terence offered her his elbow, she took it with a grateful sigh and practically hugged his arm as a way to absorb his warmth.
He led her across the chilled lawn, past half-shriveled plants, and greenery that tried desperately to cling to their last living leaves, branches, and flowers before the autumn air took them. Trees that circled the lawn wore seasonal orange-brown leaves, but they weren’t beautiful, at least not to Jane. To her, the trees just lookeddead. A light gust of air sighed across the lawn, disrupting the leaves, and prompting Jane to press into Terence with a shiver.
Terence cleared his throat as he tensed beneath her. Hisusual tremor remained.
“Are trees like this at this time of year in America?” he asked, and Jane thought it would’ve been condescending if it were coming from a different mouth, but he seemed to have been asking out of a genuine curiosity—and also an eagerness to fill silence with conversation. “Forgive me for asking something so simple. It’s just I’ve never traveled across the pond, so I wouldn’t know.”
Jane shook her head. “These trees are so… sad.” She didn’t hold back a disappointed sneer. She lightly scuffed at the ground with the end of her parasol. “It’s nothing like in America. I live along the Great Lakes, and the trees there are just… Well, they’rewonderful. You go to the north, toward Canada, and the maples shine gold and bleed sweetness.” She recalled images of the labyrinthine tanglings of tubing often strung, with the intricacy of a spider’s web, between the towering monoliths that were gilded northwood maples as they collected that coveted syrup. Did they have anything like that in England? “And you’re never quite as alone as you’d think, y’know, in the woods. There is always the company of foxes and bears and deer and squirrels, and so, so many lakes that reflect foliage like a mirror—oh, you wouldloveit, Terence! And I mustn’t leave out the blue jays. They scream and scream, but I cannot help but love them. They’re the anthem of autumn, you know.”
“Hmm…” Slowly, he nodded, licking his lips with a savoring sigh, as if he were desperately trying to experience the foreign memory for himself. When his eyes met hers, they held the deference of a dog tethered to its kennel, never meant to experience such awe for itself, and having long since been submissive to that fact. “Yes… Yes, I think I would rather like that. I’d like that very much, Miss Sterl—Jane.”
Jane mustered a grin to combat the rising sadness his gazesuddenly inflicted upon her. She dug her fingers into him as she let him continue guiding her to the large greenhouse at the edge of the circular lawn.
The greenhouse was a castle of glass and iron. It was a single-story structure, wide and squat and ornate, with white metal framework that arched like a fin whale’s rib. A creature in its own right.
It was considerably warmer inside, enough so that Jane detached herself from Terence’s side to wander along the gravel path. She paused before a patch of ferns, a frond reaching out with a natural elegance to kiss at her skirts. She rifled around in her purse until she found her spectacles, and, keeping them folded, brought them up to her face just enough so she could read the plaque.
“Athyrium filix-femina,” she hummed aloud, hoping that it made her sound smart.
“Lady fern,” Terence mumbled beside her, hands held behind his back. He nodded to her glasses. “Bad eyes?”
“Only when reading,” she said and hastily put them back in her purse. As she never seemed to find a way to properly accessorize glasses, she’d never been fond of them, utilizing them as little as possible. And, as petty as it was, she never viewed glasses as attractive—on any sex, but especially not on her. Clearing her throat, she gestured to the plants. “Fond of plants, are you?”
He shook his head, then lightly tapped at the plaque again, where both the fern’s scientific and common names were placed. “Merely observant.”
“Oh,” Jane blushed.
He winked with a hint of a smirk. “But I suppose I find their quiet company comfortable, on occasion. Ruben is the one who takes a liking to plants and animals. I prefer to think of myselfas a naturalist—by hobby, of course—not a gardener.”
She opened her mouth to speak but shut it with an audible clack of her teeth as a flash of color flitted through her vision, followed by the tickle of legs against her cheek. She gasped and held her breath, going still as she withered beneath the butterfly’s mercy. The daughter of a botanist—or, well,paleobotanist—she may be, but a friend of insects she was not.
