Flood’s lips thinned. “Some keepers think so. For myself, I find that bees do best when left to govern themselves as much as possible. A keeper is there to provide help, not to impose a human’s notion of order. Because as much as it looks like a monarchy, a hive does not depend on any individual bee, not even the queen—on her own, without her attendants or her drones or her daughters, she is nothing. And she keeps nothing for herself. The colony shares everything.”
“But surely the queen is needed to make more bees,” Agatha said. “Even I know that much.”
Flood’s grin was a revolutionary slash. “On the contrary: if a queen dies, the workers will simply raise themselves another. The lineage may be broken, but the colony endures forever.”
Agatha stared at the hive, and all its miniature architecture on display. Brown and ochre, spring green and bright gold—after she counted the tenth different shade in the cells of the comb she was compelled to ask: “What do the different colors mean?”
Flood looked up from her notebook, where she was penciling observations of the leaf hive. She smiled to see Agatha all but pressed up against the glass. “The colors tell you what kind of plant the bee visited,” she explained. “Different plants make different kinds of honey.”
Agatha could only stare at all those tiny hexagons, brilliant and beautiful as a church window. “How do you keep them separate?”
“You don’t. The bees do, when they find something that’s blooming well. Cherry and plum trees, heather, raspberries. They take as much as they can from one plant before moving on to the next.” Her smile widened. “It’s a good deal more fun if I show you.”
That was how Agatha found herself in Penelope Flood’s honey larder, sitting at the low table with a half dozen jars of honey awaiting her pleasure. “Start with the wildflower,” Flood urged, and held out a spoon.
Agatha took it warily, careful not to let her fingers brush Flood’s. The metal was warm from her hand, though, which was almost as bad for Agatha’s peace of mind. She took up the jar of wildflower honey and spooned up a small dollop: light amber, very clear.
It tasted, as she’d expected, like honey. Sweet and delicious. “Very nice.”
Flood’s smile turned impish. “That was from one of the hives near Backey Green,” she said. “Now: this is from Mrs. Stowe’s garden.”
This jar was slightly darker amber, with a mist of crystallization. Agatha scooped up a bit from the still-liquid part and put it on her tongue—and stopped. Still sweet, still honey—but the flavor was now a darker floral, almost perfumed, with notes underneath that were almost bitter. “Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, it’s so different.”
“Your mother-in-law grows mostly roses and thyme,” Flood said. “You see how it affects the flavor?” She talked Agatha through more varieties: heather honey and apple blossom and a strong, herby one that came from the deepest part of the woods. “Honey is never all one thing,” Flood explained, while Agatha curled her tongue into the bowl of the spoon to get the last layer of sweetness. “It’s lots of little bits, which together make something unique.”
Agatha licked her lips. “Which honey is yours?”
Flood blushed a little and slid forward the darkest jar, almost ruby in color. “The woods near here are full of blackberries, so that’s mostly what my bees bring home.”
This time, Agatha filled the entire spoon. Flood gazed avidly as she raised it to her lips and opened her mouth.
Agatha swallowed, thick honey sliding lazily down her throat. She closed her eyes, sparks bursting against the back of her eyelids as one lush flavor after another poured through her. Sharp greens and deep purples and the tang of berries. The sweetness lingered on her tongue and clouded the air around her as she breathed out on a helpless, hungry sigh.
She opened her eyes just in time to see Penelope Flood’s throat work as she swallowed, hard.
Agatha wondered what it would taste like if she and Penelope—
No. Mrs. Flood was a married woman. Agatha clung to her respectability by the thinnest of threads. “Thank you,” she said instead, and hated how stilted it sounded to her own ears. “I had no idea that the location of a hive could make such a difference.”
Flood’s blue eyes cut to Agatha, sly and suggestive. “Would you like to see the oldest hives in Melliton?”
And that was how Agatha came to see the gardens of Abington Hall.
“The skeps are replaced as needed, of course,” Flood said an hour later, barely out of breath even though Agatha was still panting from their quick ascent up the hill path. “But the boles have been home to bees for who knows how many hundreds of years. So I like to think of them as the same hives, in essence, if not in actuality.”
Agatha could only nod, her voice not yet trustworthy. It was one of the first truly hot days of the season, hissing with crickets. She sucked in lungfuls of sweet, apple-and-herb-scented air while Flood walked the small enclosure, sweeping clear the doorways of each of the hives. The bee garden was pleasant enough—but the tall windows of the hall looming up beyond it were dark even in the daylight.
Agatha couldn’t shake the feeling those windows were watching her.
Flood caught the direction of her gaze and shook her head. “Viscount Summerville has gone north for a bit of shooting,” she said, “and his lady has gone to London, so is not here to trouble us. Not that I don’t have a duty to see to these hives, considering Isabella left them to my care.” She cast Agatha a sidelong glance, and even beneath the bee veil the curve of her lips made Agatha go breathless all over again. “So it’s also a perfect time to show you what else Lady Summerville inherited.”
The metal of the side gate latch was far too hot to touch barehanded: Agatha felt it even through the thick leather beekeeping gloves, before she swept the muslin veils away and bared her face to the sun. She followed the beekeeper through the gate and around the first few bends of a hedge maze Agatha hoped she wouldn’t have to navigate out of on her own.
By the third turning she was breathless again, and so disoriented that she was glad the bright heat of the sun in the sky above told her for certain which direction was up.
They turned one more corner and found themselves in the middle of an orgy.
Agatha wasn’t prudish; she’d been a wife and was mother of a son, and Griffin’s had occasionally taken commissions for the sort of private engravings that banished one’s prudery forever. But it was one thing to consider licentious poses on paper, from behind the safety of the frame—it was quite another to stand inches away from a sculpted satyr who was life-size in all ways except the one where he was enormously larger than life.
