Included was an elegant card providing Lee’s full name and an address on Harley Street.
Saffron set the card and the note on the table with the flowers with a sigh. First Alexander, and now Lee. What was the world coming to?
Still, she was unable to resist the riddle Lee had created for her, so she went to the bookshelf for the well-worn floriography dictionary she’d refused to return to the university’s library. It was a memento of her most recent adventure, one that was still useful, apparently. She quickly decoded the flowers.
Ivy: friendship
Verbena: regret
Hollyhock: ambition of a scholar
Her fingers smoothed over the pointed tips of balsam, puzzling over its inclusion, until she realized that Lee had likely meant balsam,Impatiens balsamina, rather than balsam fir,Abies balsamea. The mistake made her laugh despite herself. She understood his meaning, however—“impatience.”
Saffron was not impatient at all to see Lee. With far too many problems nipping at her heels, she would be avoiding her former study partner for as long as her conscience would allow.
It wasn’t long after the flowers arrived that the front door was unlocked, opened, then violently slammed shut. Saffron called out to Elizabeth, who didn’t answer.
Warily, Saffron peered around the corner, only to be nearly bowled over by Elizabeth storming into her bedroom. She didn’t close her door, so Saffron followed.
“Whatever is the matter?” Saffron asked her when she found her flatmate throwing her shoes into her wardrobe.
“I cannotbelievehim,” Elizabeth snarled, starting on the buttons to her suit jacket. Her red varnished nails flashed with each button before she tore the jacket from her shoulders. “The sheer nerve!”
Saffron withheld a sigh. Colin Smith had no doubt done something romantically stupid. “Whatever it is—”
“And after so long!” Elizabeth’s volume was steadily rising, along with the pinkness in her cheeks. “Years, he’s waited!”
As Elizabeth and Colin couldn’t have been stepping out for more than two weeks, Saffron asked, “Who, Eliza?”
Elizabeth’s rambling became ranting as she shed her skirt and blouse. She only paused to detach her stockings from her garters and carefully roll them down, avoiding snagging them. When she was barefoot and in her camiknicks, she finally rounded on Saffron and exclaimed, “And he’s coming here! He’s just going to waltz in here like it hasn’t been fivebloodyyears since I’ve had more than a telegram from him wishing me happy birthday weeks late.”
Saffron set her hands on her friend’s shoulders, which were significantly higher than her own. “Who are you talking about?”
Elizabeth inhaled, and with the disgust she would display for a moldy potato at the back of the larder, she enunciated, “Nick.”
Saffron blinked. “Your brother?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth brushed Saffron’s hands away and bustled over to her dressing table, where she removed her earrings and rings.
“He’s coming to London to see you?”
“That is what his note said,” Elizabeth replied before half disappearing into her wardrobe. She came out with a man’s union suit, which she pulled on. The long-sleeved undergarment could mean only one thing.
“And he’s coming here, to the flat?” Saffron guessed.
Elizabeth did up the buttons and pulled a pair of denim overalls from the wardrobe, slipping them on over the cotton of the union suit. Saffron opened a dressing table drawer and extracted a plain scarf to hand to her friend. She knew better than to try to talk her out of what she would do next.
Elizabeth wrapped her perfectly set sandy waves with the faded pink fabric. “He said he’d be here in four hours. Four. Hours.”
An unexpected visitor would likely put off any homemaker, but an unexpected visitor of this caliber meant that the cleanliness-obsessed Elizabeth was moments away from panic. All Saffron could do was stay out of her way and hope that she didn’t wear through their floors with frantic scouring.
By seven in the evening, Saffron was more than happy to get out of the flat. It was spotless and redolent of bleach, dinner, and stress. She’d dressed alone for her dinner with Alexander, though she would have preferred preparing with Elizabeth to keep from thinking in circles about how things would go between them. She’d imagined everything from grand romantic gestures to a formal letter of termination, presented by Alexander on behalf of Dr. Aster. She’d known she was being ridiculous, but she couldn’t help it. If the continued ranting floating down the hall was any indication, Elizabeth was equally on edge. She’d disappeared into her own bedroom to prepare to receive her brother.
The moment Saffron stepped into the street, where she was greeted by dreary dampness, she began rethinking her acceptance of Alexander’s invitation altogether. She could have pressed Elizabeth harder about staying home, though her friend had seemed utterly resolute she’d greet her brother alone.
Though Saffron had grown up with the three Hale children, who’d lived on the property adjacent to the estate where she’d been raised, Nick was eight years older and had never had much time for Elizabeth and, by extension, Saffron. He’d tolerated the girls scampering after him during school holidays, but he’d joined the army right after school, and Saffron hadn’t seen him since. She’d heard from Elizabeth and Mrs. Hale about his meteoric rise through the ranks but knew little about his service during the war, other than he’dreceived a medal of some kind. He hadn’t returned to Bedford for the funeral services for the middle Hale child, Wesley, after he fell at Flanders.
Saffron guessed that was perhaps the crux of Elizabeth’s problem with Nick—that he hadn’t been present to grieve for their lost brother. Saffron, who’d been as much in love with Wesley as her fifteen-year-old heart had been capable of being, couldn’t hold that against Nick. Even if he was as high ranking as she recalled, few men had been given leave to mourn their family members.
