Give a customer a little time to start imagining a flower in her life, though, and she’d take it.
The woman stopped at the violets in a little metal tray filled with water, brushing the velvety green leaves with a single finger, before biting her lip and moving on.
It was November; the wares were much denuded. But then again, it was November, and so was the world. A single forced tulip could bring color to any room these days.
Daisy concentrated on tying ribbons and watched her customer beneath her lashes. The woman removed knit gloves carefully. She glanced at the hothouse rosebuds, looked at the golden lilies with wonder in her eyes, and then gave her head a little shake.
Time now for Daisy to intervene.
“Are you looking for a buttonhole or a bouquet?” she asked cheerily.
The woman jumped. “Oh. I hadn’t thought.”
Daisy pointed to her own buttonhole—a bright pink dahlia, smaller than usual, just over her right breast.
“Me personally, I prefer a buttonhole. They’re not so expensive as a bouquet, but I can carry one around with me all day. That way I always have a little beauty close by.”
The woman looked away. “Pardon me for saying so, but it seems extravagant. Flowers are for…” She gestured outside, at the rest of London. “Not really for someone like me.”
Someone like her.
Maybe it was her conversation with her mother, but Daisy felt a kinship with the woman. This was who she would be in ten years if she didn’t marry. Alone. Cloistered in a backroom, thinking that a halfpenny expenditure was too extravagant.
“Nonsense,” Daisy said a little too sharply. “Whoever said that flowers aren’t for you?”
The woman blinked.
Daisy knew the answer to that question. Everyone said that flowers weren’t for her. The woman wasn’t married and likely wasn’t going to be. She worked for a living. She didn’t have servants. She was supposed to be satisfied living a drab little life, just because everyone thought she was a drab little woman.
Drab women didn’t get flowers. They didn’t deserve beauty.
The woman glanced down. “It’s such a luxury. I don’t see…”
She had stopped in front of the yellow flowers. Daisy reached out and picked out a creation she’d made of a forced tulip that had snapped off its stem—nothing more than the brilliant yellow bud and a spray of green leaves.
“Here,” Daisy said, holding it out. “It’s a halfpenny. Tell me, Miss…” She trailed off.
The woman inhaled. “It’s missus, actually.” Her eyes shut. “Mrs. Wilde. My Jonas passed away five years ago, and…”
“Mrs. Wilde,” Daisy said softly, “is there anyone who believes you’re worth a halfpenny of beauty any longer?”
The woman shook her head.
“Well, then.” Daisy gave her a nod. “Maybe the person who needs to believe it is you.”
Daisy had done this before, convincing a reluctant woman to bring a little beauty into her life. She’d never felt guilty about it—but now she did. She could almost imagine Crash standing behind her, whispering in her ear.
My, you are good at lying to yourself. Listen to you.
She wasn’t lying to herself. She wasn’t. She did bring a little beauty into these women’s lives; if she didn’t, why did they all come back? Why would they bring their friends?
“I shouldn’t.” But Mrs. Wilde hadn’t relinquished the tulip.
“Where do you work?”
Mrs. Wilde sighed. “The apothecary down the way. I weigh and measure for him and track his receipts.” Her mouth pinched. “I keep track of whatever fine remedy is in vogue, make sure it’s ordered and on the shelves. This month, it’s the carbolic smoke ball.”
Those damned carbolic smoke balls again.
“So you help hundreds of people take their medicine and get well,” Daisy said.
“That’s…one way of looking at it.”
“I’d never tell you to spend money you don’t have,” Daisy said sympathetically. “But if you’re saying you don’t deserve this, with all that you do…?”
She let her words hang.
Mrs. Wilde looked at the tulip. She glanced down at her hands, out the door, and then back to the tulip. Then she gave a fierce little nod.
“Here.” She opened her purse and removed a coin. “Take it before I change my mind.”
It was worth it for the smile she saw on Mrs. Wilde’s face as she left the shop. Daisy was selling happiness. Temporary happiness, very likely, but was there any other kind? Poor women deserved flowers as much as rich ones—more so, in fact. They had that much less beauty in their lives.
Daisy went back to making bouquets, but bouquet-tying was delicate work, and her fingers jerked the twine a bit too hard. She wasn’t lying to herself, and she hadn’t lied to Mrs. Wilde. She hadn’t. Rich women were taught that their every wish would be granted. Women like Daisy? Like Mrs. Wilde? They were allowed nothing. They weren’t even supposed to properly wish, not for anything worth having. They were allowed to subsist, and then only if they were lucky and useful.
Daisy wasn’t lying to herself. She was just making it possible to get through one day and then the next, to find the little moments that made it possible to not dread her future.
That future loomed closer than ever.
Sunday. She’d promised her mother to start encouraging gentleman on Sunday. The very idea left her cold. No wonder she was wasting time submitting applications for a charity bequest. She wanted to believe she had a chance to get away.
She wasn’t that naïve.
Daisy stared at her violets. They were just as pretty and just as purple as they’d been a few moments before.
“I don’t lie to myself,” she told them. “I know the truth all too well.”
They looked up at her. Purple petals faded to white in the center, with a dot of yellow. Flowers couldn’t really look. They didn’t have eyes. So why did this batch seem to glower at her in disapproval?
She switched from making bouquets of violets to working with tulips. Putting a good face on things wasn’t lying. She told herself the truth with scrupulous regularity. She was running out of time.
Running out of time to establish herself, running out of time to save her mother, running out of time to be anything except another drab woman in a drab occupation telling herself she didn’t deserve so much as a halfpenny flower.
So she took a moment to make sure her dreams were well and thoroughly crushed before accepting the inevitable. What of it? Crash was wrong. She didn’t lie to herself.
But then Crash had said that she’d lied about him. That was what rankled. She’d thought of that moment when everything had gone wrong between them over and over.
It had been after…after…
No, if she wasn’t lying to herself, she could use the proper words.
It was after they had sex.
Speaking of stupidity. What sort of idiot was Daisy? He’d told her he needed to leave town. He’d said he would be gone to the continent for months. She’d thrown herself at him.
She was a first-class fool, and her face burned in memory.
But he’d been sweet, and it had been lovely, and… And then it had been over. They’d been in bed together, holding each other. She’d been naked and vulnerable and too much in love to realize she ought to have been scared.
“You know, Daisy,” he had said. “I told you, you shouldn’t have a thing to do with me. Look here. I’ve corrupted you.” He’d kissed her.
“You never told me any such thing. Not seriously.”
“True.”
She’d kissed him back. “I don’t mind being corrupted, if it’s by you.”
Now, she could flinch at her gullibility. Then, she’d leaned into him with complete trust.
He had sat up in bed. “I haven’t explained to you why I’ll be gone yet. I’ve a plan to turn…well, not respectable. But.” He had shrugged. “Something like. I’ve take
n risks, but I can’t keep doing that, not with a wife and a family.”
Her heart had thumped wildly at those words. Wife. Family.
“I need to go to France,” he told her. “There’s a craze building there for velocipedes.”
“What are those?”
“They’re metal vehicles. With foot-pedals.”
“With what?”
“One pushes the pedal with one’s foot, and it turns a wheel…” He’d gone on.
It turned out there was no way to describe a velocipede, not with any number of words. She’d stared in confusion.
“It will all make sense when you see one.” He’d given her a cocky grin. “They’re on the verge of becoming a phenomenon in France. Give it five years, and they’ll be the rage here, too. I’m going to have the premiere velocipede shop in all of London. But I’ll need to visit factories, learn how to repair them… I’ll be gone a while. Months, at least.”
Her hands entwined with his.
“The way I see it,” he said, “you could marry me and come with me.”
She had inhaled.
“Or we could wait two months for me to go in order to be certain that nothing comes of what we just did. I would return to you as soon as I could.”
That dose of reality had made Daisy stop and think.
“Crash.” Daisy had leaned her head against his shoulder. “I can’t leave my mother for months on end, and I can’t see her traveling to France.”
He’d kissed her. “Wait two months it is, then. That is, assuming you’ll marry me despite my terribly checkered past. Will you?”