She did not expect to turn a corner between the orchid house and the fernery and find the Duke of Ashworth standing in front of a Nepenthes pitcher plant with his hands behind his back, studying it the way men usually studied maps before battle. He looked up when she appeared. She looked at him. A full 3 seconds passed in which neither of them acknowledged that this was strange. "Miss Calloway," he said. "Your Grace," she said. She walked in the opposite direction.
That was Tuesday. On Thursday, Rosie asked with elaborate casualness whether Eleanor had enjoyed the gardens. Eleanor put down her tea, looked at her sister across the breakfast table. Rosie was eating toast with the focused innocence of someone who had absolutely orchestrated something. "How did you know I went to the gardens?" Eleanor asked. "I didn't," Rosie said. "Did something happen at the gardens?" Eleanor picked up her tea again. "Nothing," she said.
The second time was Mrs. Hartwell's Thursday lecture on medicinal herbalism, which Eleanor attended every month and had attended for 3 years without incident. It was a small gathering, 12 women, sometimes 14, in Mrs. Hartwell's narrow Bloomsbury parlor, with decent sherry and very good conversation about plants that most of London society would have found dull beyond endurance. Eleanor loved it unreservedly.
She arrived to find the parlor rearranged. Mrs. Hartwell was flushed with excitement in the particular way she reserved for distinguished guests. And at the far end of the room, standing beside the bookcase with a glass of sherry he had not touched, was the Duke of Ashworth. He saw her the moment she entered. She was certain of it. She took a seat on the opposite side of the room.
Mrs. Hartwell made the introduction. The Duke, it transpired, had funded the acquisition of three rare botanical manuscripts for the Hartwell collection. He was here, Mrs. Hartwell announced, to present them in person. He had particularly requested a private gathering rather than any public ceremony. He was apparently very generous with money and very uncomfortable with applause. Eleanor found this unexpectedly difficult to dislike.
The lecture began. She kept her eyes on her notebook. She wrote things she did not need to write. At one point, she noted down the Latin name of a plant she already knew by heart, in handwriting slightly worse than her own. She was aware the entire time of where he was in the room. Not looking, just aware. The way you are aware of a window in winter, even with your back turned to it.
Afterward, when the conversation broke into smaller groups and the sherry began moving more freely, he crossed the room and stood beside her. "You're annotating," he said, looking at her notebook. "I annotate." "You wrote Valeriana officinalis twice." She looked down. He was correct. She closed the notebook. "Were you following me?" she asked. She kept her voice pleasant. Academic even. The way she spoke to students who had made errors in identification.
He looked at her with those unhurried gray eyes. "I have been coming to Mrs. Hartwell's lectures for 2 years. I have never seen you here." "I sit at the back," he said. "I don't like being introduced." Eleanor considered this. It was, she admitted to herself privately, a more satisfying answer than she had wanted. She had been prepared for arrogance, for a duke's casual assumption that his presence anywhere was welcome and unremarkable. She was not prepared for a man who attended botanical lectures quietly and sat at the back to avoid the fuss.
"And Q," she said. Pause. Small. Almost undetectable. "I go on Tuesdays." "So do I." "I know," he said. And then, before she could construct the response she deserved to give him, "Your paper on Drosera adaptation, the one published in the Linnaean correspondence last spring. I read it." Eleanor's mouth opened, then closed. This was not the conversation she had been having in her head.
"You read it," she said flatly. "Twice," he said. "I disagreed with your conclusion about moisture retention in elevated altitudes." The heat came back to her neck. But this time it was not embarrassment. This time it was something that lived right next to argument, so close you could barely see the boundary between them. "You disagreed," she said.
"The sample population was too narrow." "The sample population," Eleanor said with great precision, "was entirely appropriate for a preliminary study, which I stated clearly in the third paragraph, which suggests you either read it hastily or" "I read it thoroughly," he said. "I simply think you drew a larger conclusion than the data warranted."
"And I think," Eleanor said, "that dismissing a preliminary study because it does not provide final answers is exactly the kind of thinking that keeps half of botanical science standing still." He looked at her. She looked at him. Something moved through the air between them, quick and electric and gone before she could name it properly.
"That is a fair point," he said. She had expected him to push back. She had her next sentence ready. The concession landed wrong, unexpected, and she lost her footing in the argument without him having to do anything at all. "Yes," she said, slightly wrong-footed. "It is." The ghost of that almost smile returned to the corner of his mouth. She was beginning to find it insufferable, that almost smile. The way it appeared and then didn't, like a word he kept deciding not to say.
She left shortly after. Not fleeing, she was specific about this in her own mind, simply finished. Outside on the pavement, the evening air was cool and smelled of rain that hadn't fallen yet. She stood for a moment before flagging a cab, her notebook pressed against her chest, the city moving past in amber and gaslight. She thought about the way he had said "twice." She thought about the narrow gap between their shoulders when they had been standing at the bookcase, close enough that she had been able to hear him breathe. She pressed her lips together. Went home. Did not think about it further. Except that she did, in the small traitorous hours of the night, when the house was quiet and the only honest company left was the one inside her own chest. She thought about it quite a lot. And found, to her considerable irritation, that the thought was not entirely unwelcome.
It was Rosie's fault. It was entirely, completely, catastrophically Rosie's fault. She would address this in the morning. She did not address it in the morning. On Saturday, Rosie asked whether Eleanor had seen the Duke again. Eleanor said no. Rosie nodded slowly in the manner of someone who already knew the answer and was simply verifying. "He seems interesting," Rosie said. "He is," Eleanor said before she could stop herself. Rosie's smile was small and devastating. Eleanor left the room.