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Lydia surveyed the crowded benches. “I find that difficult to believe.”

Samuel nodded. Henry had set the chair near the doorway, where the air moved freely. He held it while Lydia sat, then placed her case on the bench. “I shall tell Mother where you are,” he told her. “And come back before you decide to explore anything.”

“I am not going to explore.”

Henry glanced at Tristan, his gaze lingering for a moment longer than the joke warranted. “She generally means that when she says it.”

Then he left. Samuel brought a low wooden box for Lydia’s foot. Tristan moved it until she could rest comfortably, then straightened. “You have acquired a great many attendants.”

“I would trade all of you for a sound ankle.”

“So would your attendants.”

She gave him a brief smile before turning to Samuel. The gardener selected a pot from the far end of the bench. Lydia leaned forward as he placed it within reach. “May I?”

He nodded. She touched a leaf, then lifted her fingers toward her face. “Apple mint?”

Samuel nodded. “It will spread if you let it.”

“We have the narrower-leaved kind at home. I have wanted to draw this one.”

She examined the rounded leaves and the soft growth along the stem. Samuel turned the pot so she could see it better, then went to fetch another. Tristan stood beside her chair. “You knew it by the smell?”

“I suspected. I wanted to be certain.”

“Do you test everything that way?”

“No. Some plants are best left alone.”

She rubbed the leaf between finger and thumb as she spoke, then lifted the scent toward him without quite offering her hand. Earth marked the base of her thumb. He had seen her hands bare often enough to recognize the evidence of her work: graphite on her fingers, pigment beside a nail, now the green stain of crushed mint. He wanted to know what the leaf smelled like on her skin.

He moved a pot to give her room for the sketchbook. “Does your finger still trouble you?”

“Only when I press too hard.”

She tested her grip on the pencil, then opened the sketchbook. Samuel returned with a shallow tray of cuttings. For several minutes, the two of them discussed where each had been grown and which would survive being taken to London. Tristan listened until the gardener asked Lydia about the flower she had brought from the wood.

She showed him her sketch. Samuel studied it with one soil-darkened finger held just above the paper. “More petals than I usually see.”

“That was what caught my eye.”

“Not something I have grown here.”

“Then I am glad I brought a specimen.”

In her drawing, the leaves stood clear of one another. He had seen the flower in her hand and later on his desk without noticing how they joined the stem. Samuel returned the book. “If you leave me the place where you found it, I shall take a look.”

Lydia described the bank and the fallen branch. Tristan supplied the track nearest it. The gardener glanced between them, then nodded and returned to his work at the other end of the greenhouse. Lydia began drawing the mint. At first Tristan watched her hand. Then he tried to see what she chose to see. The first line looked too spare; the next made the stem recognizable. Her attention altered an object without flattering it.

She studied the plant until the greenhouse fell away. Tristan thought of their encounter in the corridor, and the uncomfortable accuracy with which she had seen through him. A woman who examined the world with such care was unlikely to have misjudged him by accident.

She paused.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You have been looking at that corner rather severely.”