Resolute, she dipped her quill pen into the ink and began to write.
Chapter 19
Two nights. Two nights had passed and Thea still hadn’t left and Rafe still hadn’t talked to her. Now he was sick of his greenhouse and his plants were annoying him. Useless plants, just sitting there, doing nothing, silent and smirking and smug.
The greenhouse door opened and Martha came in.
“There are meant to be new plants arriving,” he grumbled, before she could speak. “Why are they not here yet? How difficult can it be? They put the plants on the boat, they put the boat on the water, they send the boat over here. Yet here we are. No plants.”
“You said the new shipment was due in September.”
“So?”
Martha spread her hands. “So it is August.”
“How is that relevant?”
“You are unreasonable.”
“I am not.”
Two nights. Two nights of lying in bed, tangled in his sheets, his argument with Thea repeating in his mind like a particularly bad play whose ending he couldn’t change. Rafe had cleverly filled the previous day by demanding the land steward take him on a tour of the estate to discuss the upcoming harvests, but now he had another day to fill. And there would be another day after that, and then another. Day after day after day. With all these blasted plants. Useless, silent, sulking plants.
“Would you call me a pessimist?” he asked Martha. “Would you call me a grumpy, miserable, villainous beast?”
“No,” Martha said. “I would call you things in Spanish instead.”
“You’re as helpful as these blasted plants.”
“You know what are these blasted plants? They are hope.” She indicated them with a sweep of her arm. “It is an act of great faith, to plant a seed, to nurture something fragile, yet you do that every day. Also when I use these plants to make medicines, crude as they are, in the hope I can cure the sick. We are ignorant, clumsy, but still we try, and every attempt is an act of hope.”
“You make hope sound like a kind of madness.”
“Sí, but a madness we need to live. You have lost a lot, I know, but I think you have not lost hope.”
Two nights. Two nights of staring at the dark, never daring to hope. One and a half days, staying away from Thea, because she belonged to a world where he did not. They said she passed her time in the library, writing a very long letter to her friend. They said that, and Rafe knew it was true, because he had peered through the library door. As he watched, she had paused to stare out the window, absently sweeping the end of her quill pen over her cheek, then she had laughed softly and started writing again. If he were a different man, he would have crossed that library floor, slid his hands over her shoulders. She would have tilted back her head so he could drop a kiss on her lips and ask her about her letter.
“Anyway, you have a visitor,” Martha informed him
“I never have visitors.”
“Never, but this week, you have two. First that horrible viscount, now this amusing bishop. I did not like the first visitor, but this one, I like. This one, he can stay.”
Rafe sped back to the house, pausing only to send a maidservant for Sally, to ensure Nicholas would have everything he needed, but when he reached the doorway to the drawing room, he lingered, unnoticed.
Thea and Nicholas sat with a plate of cakes and a pot of tea, chatting like old friends. He’d forgotten how airy and appealing the drawing room could be, with its blue and white decor catching the light from the courtyard garden. Something about the scene stirred a nostalgic yearning inside him, something in the way Thea smiled at the bishop as she poured his tea. It was an odd feeling, as though Rafe had brought the greenhouse inside with him and glass walls separated him from the rest of the world; his fists clenched with an unfamiliar urge to smash them, chased by the chilling realization that he did not know how.
He stepped into the room and they saw him. Perhaps Thea was no longer angry with him, or she had forgotten she was angry, because she smiled, a smile of delight. The glass walls melted away and Rafe felt that here, he belonged.
Strange notion, considering that “here” was his own blasted house.
Then she must have remembered that she despised him, for her haughty mask came down. Before, she had donned that mask in a game that included him, but now she used it to keep him out, and he minded that. He minded very much.
“Rafe, my boy, come join us,” the bishop said. “Miss Knight and I are having a delightful time.”
“So I see.” Rafe wandered across the blue carpet, his appetite stirred by the fragrance of the tea and fresh cakes. “What brought you here, Nicholas?”