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In a moment, she’d rise and reenter the maze, slip back into Harcott House.

But not yet.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Neal finished checking over the labels on the new specimens, then walked through the palm house inspecting the pipes. Mrs. Buddington, a longtime Varnham client, was showing her grandchildren the giant bamboo. Neal greeted her and scooped up the youngest child so that he could pick bananas for his siblings.

“Especially hot, isn’t it?” Mrs. Buddington sat on a bench, beaming mildly as the youngsters wrestled with their fruit, and Neal bowed his way out, with the excuse of seeing to the vents.

Before he turned into the hallway, an economic botanist attempted to draw him into conversation. What he wanted was after-hours access to the Elaeis guineensis.

“Certainly. Arrange it with the manager.” Neal’s eyes kept drifting over the man’s shoulder. Pointless. The palm house was a construction of brick, steel, and green glass panels. He couldn’t see out to the lawn.

When he did manage to exit the building, the view discouraged him. He waited, of course. Pretended to occupy himself with the herbaceous border of the main walkway.

But he already knew.

She wasn’t coming.

Over the past two weeks, Lavinia had kept but three of their agreed-upon meetings. Her mourning occupied nearly all of her time. The funeral and related functions. No inquest, thank God. The Duke of Cranbrook was known to have suffered angina pectoris. His death in the early days of marriage to a young bride occasioned smirks, not suspicion.

Neal didn’t like to think of those smirks. He’d too strong an urge to wipe them off the offending faces. Nonetheless, he was sensible of the good fortune. London didn’t buzz with speculation about Lavinia’s disappearance in Cornwall. Everyone who knew she’d been gone had kept quiet.

Last Sunday, she’d used the pretext of a walk in Hyde Park to visit him in the gardener’s cottage at Umfreville House. She’d looked pale in black silk, demure and oddly distant, but once she’d shed her widow’s weeds, once they were skin to skin, flooded with each other, everything rushed back. Her color. His certainty. The bed was narrow. They fit just barely on their sides, cramped and sweaty, but neither wanted to disentangle. They conversed mouth to mouth. Her news tumbled out.

The will had been read. No special provisions. Under the law, she was entitled to a dower’s share of income from the ducal properties. Enough to finance a version of the life to which she was accustomed. The next Duke of Cranbrook was already preparing to move into Harcott House with his family. Lavinia’s mother had found apartments near Grosvenor Square.

“I have my own money.” She’d breathed it. At such proximity, he could only stare into her eyes, whirlpools of blue that could drown a man. “And I’m going to publish my novel, soon. Mr. Watt, he wants to run it in serial parts, in a weekly magazine, which means I need to write the rest as fast as I can.” Her laughter blew lightly on his face. She had found time to meet with Alan’s friend, the syndicator, but Neal couldn’t begrudge her that.

She’d sobered and spoken with peculiar intensity. “I am becoming a legendary widow, wouldn’t you say?”

“Legendary,” he’d agreed, and hesitated. “Of course, you don’t need to be a widow to be a legend. It’s my hope that you’re a widow for a legendarily short period of time.”

She’d smiled in answer, a smile that looked so fragile he’d decided to support it with his own lips.

As his wife, she’d lose her title, and her deceased husband’s income. She’d slide down the rungs of rank and, legend or not, she’d become common. Did that fact give her pause? Something had kept him from asking.

Sometime later, she’d pressed her face against his neck. “Do you know what else I am?”

“Besides a legend?” He’d put his chin on the top of her head.

“An orphan,” she’d whispered. “Parents disown their children. I’ve disowned my parents. In my heart, they’re dead.”

He’d heard her rawness, the hurt inside the defiance. So, he’d bottled his first response. Eventually your anger may ease. And if you’re lucky, your mother and your father will still be alive, and you’ll say the things to them you need to say, and maybe you’ll be heeded. And maybe something will change. In you. In them.

He’d said instead, “Whatever you are, you’re not alone.”

He’d meant it. He meant it still.

He was in love with the woman. If he had to make a case, argue points—why Lavinia and not Muriel, why Lavinia and not anyone else—he’d fail to convince. It exceeded the rational, the well reasoned. Upset his understanding of cause and effect. It was based on everything and nothing.

It proved that science needed faith.

Yes, these weeks had been trying. He’d stayed in London longer than he’d intended, meddling in matters his managing director was already adeptly handling; in essence, making more work for himself, and his employees, to justify his continued presence.

He’d stayed for her.

Every time she wrote that she thought she could slip away, meet him here or there, he went to that place and he waited. Most often in vain. He understood. She discharged a solicitor only to be besieged by a countess. Society was eager to condole with her in the hopes of extracting some delicious morsel of gossip. Perhaps, on some level, she enjoyed the attention. Much ink had been spilled in the gossip columns when the Duke and the Duchess of Weston paid not one but two visits. Lavinia had been cut from Society because of her father’s malfeasance, the wrongs he’d perpetrated against the duke’s family. Now that Weston himself showed Lavinia favor, her detractors couldn’t use that old scandal against her. She’d been rid of the noxious Duke of Cranbrook and remained a duchess. He didn’t fault her if she was enjoying the attention. A series of domestic upheavals had cast her down and then returned her to the peak. Such a dizzying trajectory was bound to produce a mix of emotions.