The Last Garden in England(59)
He would be in attendance that evening, along with some of Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, and Oxfordshire’s finest families. At dinner the night before the ball, I met three couples—all prominent men of industry and their wives—who had come down from London, necessitating three trips to collect them from the station. This morning, when I went to the village bookseller’s, I’d heard several women chatting excitedly about what they would wear.
As I approached the house, I gave one last tug to my sleeve and adjusted the white gloves that stretched up my arms before stepping through the French doors off the veranda. Mrs. Creasley was occupied helping a group of four guests with their wraps and hats, so I left my shawl on a sideboard and slipped in unnoticed. My invisibility was not to last, however. A mere three steps into the drawing room, Mrs. Melcourt rushed forward, her hands outstretched.
“My dear Miss Smith,” she said, all smiles and light, “you are just the woman I wanted to see. Lady Kinner, may I introduce Miss Smith?”
I curtsied and looked to the other woman, hoping for some prompt that would help me understand why Mrs. Melcourt had dropped her usually frosty manner. Lady Kinner was clearly a woman of distinction. She bore herself as though graciousness and good manners were as fundamental to her being as blood and bone. She wore her carefully styled silver hair in a cloud of curls, and her dress was an understated mauve covered in a black net overlay. Despite her diminutive height, her eyes shone with an uncommon intelligence. I liked her immediately.
“Miss Smith, when Mrs. Melcourt told me that you were the woman Mr. Melcourt had selected to transform Highbury House’s gardens, I was delighted. My dear friend Mrs. Bartholomew has not stopped singing your praises about the magic you performed on Avenlane,” said Lady Kinner.
I gave a little laugh. “Thank you, Lady Kinner. I appreciate Mrs. Bartholomew’s accolades, especially considering Avenlane’s situation.” I spared Mrs. Melcourt a glance. “The house sits high on the Dover cliffs, and the sea wind whips across the garden. Many plants will never thrive in that sort of environment, so it was vital to select each one carefully. We also created wind breaks of walls and tree lines across the property, and none of them obscured the views of the sea from the house.”
Never mind the exacting nature of Mrs. Bartholomew herself. A stubborn woman who was unafraid to speak her mind, she knew nearly as much as I did about native British trees. We also argued fiercely at various points during the project, and by the end, we’d both received a stellar education in coastal flora, if only to prove the other wrong.
As though reading my thoughts, Lady Kinner said, “I’m certain that Mrs. Bartholomew proved to be a spirited client.”
“One might say that,” I said.
“Laura has been that way since we were girls,” said Lady Kinner with affection. “Did you back down?”
“Not when I was right. Our most strenuous fight was over a row of great hedges of ‘Common Lavender.’ I told her that they would make no sense in a coastal garden, but she insisted, so we planted one to see how the lavender fared. It died after five weeks.”
“What did she do?” Lady Kinner asked.
“She asked if I was happy I had proven my point. I told her yes, and she threw up her hands and said, ‘The problem, Miss Smith, is that you and I are far too alike, and that means I can’t hardly dislike you.’?”
All through this exchange, Mrs. Melcourt watched us, her head cocked to one side as though weighing how far up the social ladder this easy conversation with Lady Kinner should put me.
Now the lady inserted herself, saying, “Lady Kinner, it is such a shame that your niece was not able to come. It would have been a delight to have such an English rose at our little dance tonight.”
“Theresa was very sad to miss the occasion, but she does not return from Boston for another three weeks. She has been spending time with her maternal aunt,” Lady Kinner told me.
“Matthew will miss her. I know that he enjoyed her company greatly when they met last autumn,” said Mrs. Melcourt.
Whatever Lady Kinner thought of that, I was never to know, for Mrs. Melcourt received the signal that dinner was ready to be served, so she took the hand of the highest-ranking gentleman—Lady Kinner’s husband, Sir Terrance Kinner—and led the way to dinner.
All around me, gentlemen paired off with the ladies Mrs. Melcourt had no doubt discreetly informed them they would be escorting into dinner. I stood there, smoothing my skirts and feeling more than a little lost, when Matthew appeared at my side.
“Miss Smith, I believe I have the honor of taking you in,” he said, elbow outstretched to me.
I bit my lip and slipped my hand into the crook of his arm. “That is very kind of you, Mr. Goddard. Thank you.”
As we approached the dining room, I ventured, “I would have thought that, as the brother of our hostess, you would have been paired with a woman of greater repute. Perhaps Lady Kinner’s niece?”
He huffed a laugh. “Helen has been pushing Miss Theresa Orleon, a woman fifteen years my junior and with no more interest in me than I in her, for a full year now.”
“Is she not a good match?”
His hand covered mine just before we passed through the doors and into the view of all of the guests. “She is an excellent match, but I do not have the same ambitions as my sister.”