Scandal in Spring (Wallflowers #4)(45)

“May I?”

Daisy wasn’t certain what he was asking, but she found herself nodding anyway. Swift lowered himself to the floor in a cross-legged posture identical to hers. She had never sat this way with a gentleman, and had certainly never expected to with Matthew Swift. Companionably he handed her a small glass filled with rich, plum-red liquid.

Receiving it with some surprise, Daisy held it up to her nose for a cautious sniff.

“Madeira,” she said with a smile. “Thank you. Although celebration is a bit premature since the baby still isn’t here.”

“This isn’t for celebration. It’s to help you relax.”

“How did you know what my favorite wine was?” she asked.

He shrugged. “A lucky guess.”

But somehow she knew it hadn’t been luck.

There was little conversation between them, just an oddly companionable silence. “What time is it?” Daisy would ask every now and then, and he would produce a pocket watch.

Mildly intrigued by the jangle of objects in his coat pocket, Daisy demanded to see what was inside it.

“You’ll be disappointed,” Swift said as he unearthed the collection of items. He dumped the lot into her lap while Daisy sorted through it all.

“You’re worse than a ferret,” she said with a grin. There was the folding knife and the fishing line, a few loose coins, a pen nib, the pair of spectacles, a little tin of soap—Bowman’s, of course—and a slip of folded waxed paper containing willowbark powder. Holding the paper between thumb and forefinger, Daisy asked, “Do you have headaches, Mr. Swift?”

“No. But your father does whenever he gets bad news. And I’m usually the one who delivers it.”

Daisy laughed and picked up a tiny silver match case from the pile in her lap. “Why matches? I thought you didn’t smoke.”

“One never knows when a fire will be needed.”

Daisy held up a paper of straight pins and raised her brows questioningly.

“I use them to attach documents,” he explained. “But they’ve been useful on other occasions.”

She let a teasing note enter her voice. “Is there any emergency for which you are not prepared, Mr. Swift?”

“Miss Bowman, if I had enough pockets I could save the world.”

It was the way he said it, with a sort of wistful arrogance intended to amuse her, that demolished Daisy’s defenses. She laughed and felt a warm glow even as she recognized that liking him was not going to improve her circumstances one bit. Bending over her lap, she examined a handful of tiny cards bound with thread.

“I was told to bring both business and visiting cards to England,” Swift said. “Though I’m not entirely certain what the difference is.”

“You must never leave a business card when you’re calling on an Englishman,” Daisy advised him. “It’s bad form here—it implies you’re trying to collect money for something.”

“I usually am.”

Daisy smiled. She found another intriguing object, and she held it up to inspect it.

A button.

Her brow creased as she stared at the front of the button, which was engraved with a pattern of a windmill. The back of it contained a tiny lock of black hair behind a thin plate of glass, held in place with a copper rim.

Swift blanched and reached for it, but Daisy snatched it back, her fingers closing around the button.

Daisy’s pulse began to race. “I’ve seen this before,” she said. “It was part of a set. My mother had a waistcoat made for Father with five buttons. One was engraved with a windmill, another with a tree, another with a bridge…she took a lock of hair from each of her children and put it inside a button. I remember the way she took a little snip from my hair at the back where it wouldn’t show.”

Still not looking at her, Swift reached for the discarded contents of his pocket and methodically replaced them.

As the silence drew out, Daisy waited in vain for an explanation. Finally she reached out and took hold of his sleeve. His arm stilled, and he stared at her fingers on his coat fabric.

“How did you get it?” she whispered.

Swift waited so long that she thought he might not answer.

Finally he spoke with a quiet surliness that wrenched her heart. “Your father wore the waistcoat to the company offices. It was much admired. But later that day he was in a temper and in the process of throwing an ink bottle he spilled some on himself. The waistcoat was ruined. Rather than face your mother with the news he gave the garment to me, buttons and all, and told me to dispose of it.”

“But you kept one button.” Her lungs expanded until her chest felt tight on the inside and her heartbeat was frantic. “The windmill. Which was mine. Have you…have you carried a lock of my hair all these years?”

Another long silence. Daisy would never know how or if he would have answered, because the moment was broken by the sound of Annabelle’s voice in the hallway. “Daaaisyyyy!”

Still clutching the button, Daisy struggled to her feet. Swift rose in one smooth movement, first steadying her, then clamping his hand on her wrist. He held his free hand beneath hers and gave her an inscrutable look.

He wanted the button back, she realized, and let out an incredulous laugh.

“It’s mine,” she protested. Not because she wanted the dratted button, but because it was strange to realize that he had possessed this tiny part of her, kept it with him for years. She was a little afraid of what it meant.