“What do you see, precisely?” he asked.
She frowned, as though he had posed a complex and important scientific problem. “I see…plants. Definitely plants. And if I might offer my expert opinion?”
“Please do.”
“They are…green.”
“They are very green,” he agreed solemnly. “It seems I have nothing left to teach you.”
She traced the leaves of a nearby palm, ran those irrepressible fingers down its stems.
“My ignorance should thrill you, for it grants you considerable opportunities to educate me,” she said. “When I was a child, the only green patch around was the scum on the horses’ watering trough outside the Red Lion Inn.”
“Your family never went to the countryside?”
“I remember going to a park to see a hot air balloon. I had never seen so many trees. I imagined them full of fairies.”
“Did you enjoy the balloon?”
“It terrified me. When they released the ropes and the basket was no longer anchored to the earth, I cried.” A troubled look crossed her face, chased away by a smile. “Ma and Pa considered buying a country estate, but they find the countryside unnaturally quiet and they prefer London.”
“And you?”
“Of course,” she said absently. “London is my home.”
Precisely. London was her home. He must not forget that.
“Where are the orchids?” she said.
“They have their own room.” Rafe headed for it, listening to her footsteps behind him. “They are notoriously difficult to grow, but English gardeners fail to respect the complexities of their origins. They think only that their countries of origin are hot and wet, so they create conditions that are hot and wet, and the poor plants are essentially stewed. I shan’t save all of these, but perhaps a few will survive.”
In the small alcove, he stood back to let Thea pass. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the same flowering plant that had caught her attention the night they met.
She caressed the air around the yellow and purple petals.
“It still blooms,” she whispered.
“They only bloom about once a year, but the flower lasts a month.”
Shaking her head, she stepped back. “I had forgotten how astonishing these flowers are. No wonder people want them.”
“Some say orchids will become as valuable as tulips were a couple of centuries ago, if we can grow them reliably.”
“Hence Lord Ventnor’s interest, I suppose. ‘By George,’ he says, ‘here’s something rare and beautiful. Better put a price on that.’ Is that why you wanted them? Or do orchids have medical properties?”
“Not that we know of. They’re just beautiful.”
“Beauty is healing too.”
Her dark lashes were lowered as she studied the plants, and locks of hair curled around her ear. Rafe studied the line of her jaw, the shape of her lips. Healing. He didn’t need healing. But nevertheless he said, “Yes.”
She glanced up, caught him studying her. Something flashed across her face, but her eyes did not leave his. Her openness to the world made him ache and yearn. That openness was the source of her miracle, the source of her pain. He wanted to capture that life, that verve, keep it close, shield it from hurt.
Something stirred in him, like a long-buried bulb that sensed the warmth of spring and turned itself upright, to punch through the earth to the air. Something fierce and potent and wondrous that threatened to engulf him.
He pivoted away and pushed back into the main room, where he narrowly avoided colliding with a bench.
“What do you want to know?” he said brusquely. “Their names? Temperature? Humidity? Acidity?”
“You. I want to understand you.”
His heart thumped harder. “Hmm?”
“You’re an earl. You can do whatever you please. Yet you spend your time growing beautiful plants, to make medicines to ease people’s pain. And you don’t even like people.”
“I like them well enough. In theory.”
Her lips parted as if to protest, but she said nothing. She merely breathed out, audibly, like an echo of a fledgling laugh. Her eyes roamed over his hair and forehead, and down over his cheeks, which burned with the imprint of her palms. Then down his throat, down, down, and he felt her anew, still, again, forever, her face pressed to his chest, her breasts soft against his front, her hands spread over his back. Her gaze flicked up, veered away. She wrapped one hand around her throat and absently shifted her fingers into a row, as if measuring her own pulse.
“Well. I’m sure I can find something interesting here,” she said.
Her voice was too bright and breathy. The short sleeves of her summer dress made him think it would be no task at all to slide them down her arms.