A Bloom in Winter (8 page)

She gnawed on her lower lip. That was the only part of her plan that hadn’t checked out. Katie hadn’t written back to say whether Victoria could stay with her, but Victoria knew that it would be fine. It had to be. They were friends, after all. And if, for some reason, she couldn’t stay, Victoria would just go to their solicitor and request enough money to stay in a hotel for the rest of the week. But she was sure she wouldn’t need to do that.

The little boy started gurgling and Victoria furrowed her brows at him for interrupting her thoughts. He quieted for a moment and then began gurgling even louder. She shrugged and looked out the window, watching the fallow fields go by.

She wouldn’t let anything depress her now. She could imagine how proud her father would be of her. She would show everyone that she was an adult, an emancipated woman. Let Rowena mope until she wed and let Prudence run off and marry someone the moment things got rough. She, Victoria, was going to be independent. Perhaps after she got a job with
The Botanist’s Quarterly
she would move into town and get her own flat. She would live in London until she had enough experience to go do field studies or something exciting like that.

The brakes on the train gave a high-pitched squeal, causing the mother with the baby on her lap to start so violently that the baby almost toppled over. Cambridge, that austere, magical kingdom of spires and castles, looked more forbidding than ever in the cold gray winter’s day. Victoria stuck her tongue out at the buildings, condemning the entire place with her childish scorn. As a woman, she knew she wasn’t much welcome there.

Seeing the city now emerge from the fog outside the train window, a flood of memories came back. Of playing tag with Prudence and Rowena in the park. Of the good-natured arguing among the many artists, intellectuals, and politicians her father called friends. During one memorable dinner, she, Ro, and Pru had watched wide-eyed as Walter Sickert had drawn an illustration on their dining room wall to prove a point to the other guests. Mrs. Tannin had been aghast, but their father had laughed and laughed and wouldn’t let the wall be washed for weeks. She smiled at the memory, forgetting her anxiety.

But her nerves returned by the time the train screeched to a stop in Paddington Station. She had no sooner stepped off the platform than Kit wrapped her into a giant bear hug.

“I thought you would never get here,” he told her.

“I told you when I was coming, you twit.” She smiled up at
him, noting his suit, impeccable as always. He was almost but not quite a dandy, but as Victoria enjoyed a well-dressed man, she didn’t much mind.

They linked arms and dodged throngs of people as he led her to where men were unloading the luggage. He handed a porter some money to carry the two trunks Victoria had brought with her. Then he led her out of the station. “Here now, why don’t you skip this boring meeting thing and let me show you the sights?”

She swatted his arm, laughing. “I was born and raised in London. I’ve seen the sights.”

“You haven’t seen them with me, though. Think of how much fun we could have at Kensington Gardens or Big Ben. I bet you could get one of the Queen’s guardsmen to talk if anyone could.”

“I am going to the meeting! Now, where is your car?”

“My driver will meet us out front. How about if we go see if London Bridge is falling down yet, or we could visit Dickens’s birthplace, or go to Madame Tussauds, or even go to Harrods and see if we can’t find the proverbial looking glass.”

He opened the door of a large silver touring car for her and then ran around the other side and hopped in.

“You’re being a goose! No, we are going to 197 Lexington Place.” She reached forward and gave the driver the address. “Sorry it’s so crumpled,” she said, her face heating. “I’ve been hanging on to it for a bit.”

“That’s all right, miss. I can read what it says.”

Victoria gave him a brilliant smile and Kit pulled her back.

“Stop trifling with the driver and pay attention to me,” he commanded.

“Oh, pooh, you don’t need my attention. You can go to one of your girls for that.”

“Who told you about my girls? No, don’t tell me. Tell Elaine they are a figment of her imagination. And even if they weren’t, I’m with you now, and my best friend is looking quite fetching today.”

“Do you think?” she asked, a bit more anxiously than she wanted to. She’d chosen a taupe corduroy gored skirt and matching jacket with an Astrakhan collar and braid trim. On her head she wore a black velvet chapeau, with one simple black feather on the side. On the one hand she didn’t want to dress too severely, in case Hairy Herbert (stupid Kit anyway) detested suffragettes, but on the other hand she needed to look serious and not young.

“Yes, you do. And who cares what Hairy Herbert thinks anyway?”

She sniffed. “I do. It’s important I make a good first impression. I would like to earn enough money so that I can do what I like.”

“Uh-oh, you brought up money. Surely you know that’s forbidden among our set?”

“I do think that is silly, don’t you? Especially when it’s all anyone thinks about.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “That’s why I love you, Victoria, you say things no one else will.”

There was an awkward moment when the word
love
hung between them, but Victoria carried on as if she hadn’t noticed. “For instance, I’m not supposed to talk about the way my uncle basically controls all our money until I’m twenty-five or until I get married—”

Kit sat up straight. “He what?” he interrupted. “That’s not possible. Especially not with Rowena—she’s twenty-two, isn’t she? She could actually protest that in court.”

Victoria shook her head. “I don’t know all the legalities of it. We’re certainly well-off, but our uncle is to be our money manager until we are age twenty-five or married to a suitable young man. I believe my father was afraid we would become the victims of treasure hunters.”

“So that’s why you and Rowena moved out to Summerset.”

Victoria nodded. “It’s not as if we don’t love it there, but we were hardly accustomed to that sort of life.”

The car stopped in front of a tall brick building and Victoria felt a wash of cold pour over her. It was now or never. She found herself gripping Kit’s hand, desperately wishing he could go in with her. But no. How would she ever stand on her own if she kept relying on other people to help her? The driver had come around and opened the door. Suddenly she felt a slight tightening in her chest and her heart almost stopped.

Oh, dear God. Please not now. She willed herself to remain calm. For once, Kit had no funny jokes or sarcastic remarks to make; he merely held her hand until the tightness eased. She gave him a bright smile as a reward and stepped out of the car. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be,” she told Kit. “Perhaps an hour?”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go in with you?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. I’ll be fine.”

A little bell on the door rang as she opened it and stepped into the dark offices of
The Botanist’s Quarterly
. Victoria had expected the headquarters of such a serious and scientific journal to represent how important the journal was to the scientific community. Instead, they seemed rather small and dreary, and the glass cases on the walls enshrining dried plant specimens
from all over the world could have used a good dusting. An older woman with iron-gray hair and a severely cut black dress looked up when she entered. If she was surprised to see Victoria, she didn’t show it, but then, Victoria suspected that the watery blue eyes underneath the wire spectacles rarely showed any emotion whatsoever.

Victoria took a deep breath and marched up to the desk. “I’m here to see Harold L. Herbert, please.”

The woman didn’t even bother to look down at the ledger in front of her. “I’m sorry. Mr. Herbert is in a meeting. If you are here about the transcriptionist position, please leave your references . . . ”

Victoria drew herself up to her full height, which admittedly wasn’t very tall, and tried to look as old and self-possessed as possible. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I actually have an appointment with Mr. Herbert. My name is V. Buxton, and I’m a . . . a botanist,” she told the woman, wishing she hadn’t stumbled on the word
botanist.

The woman shot her a look that told Victoria she’d been found out, but the woman looked at the ledger, made a notation, and excused herself. “I will be right back.” She disappeared down a narrow hall and Victoria heard the clicking of a door opening and shutting.

Victoria stood at a standstill, half afraid to breathe. Her eyes took in a dozen dark filing cabinets standing against one wall and the dozen or so issues of
The Botanist’s Quarterly
arranged across the desk in front of her. The woman came back and ushered Victoria silently down a narrow hallway into an equally narrow office.

Victoria barely had time to take in a small wooden desk with a chipped top before being attacked by a short, balding man in
a long black coat. It crossed her mind that Hairy Herbert wasn’t hairy at all.

“What is the meaning of this, young lady?” The gravel of his low voice grated on her ear. “What kind of joke are you playing?”

Though he was only a bit taller than she, his anger made him seem larger and more intimidating. She stepped back. “I don’t understand. I am V. Buxton and I have an appointment to discuss my writing with the managing editor. Are you Harold Herbert?”

“Of course I am, but you are not V. Buxton!”

The trembling began in her toes and spread throughout her body. No one in her entire life had ever shouted at her. Prudence and Rowena would occasionally get into terrible rows and scream at each other like banshees, but no one had ever, ever raised his voice at her. “I most certainly am. If you would care to sit down, we could look at some other articles I have penned—”

“I’m not looking at anything. If you are indeed V. Buxton, then you have committed a terrible fraud.”

“How can I have committed a fraud by being who I say I am?”

“I expected V. Buxton to be a man. I wanted to buy articles from a man, not from a chit of a girl!”

“But you did accept and pay me for an article. You can’t denounce the quality of my work and the thoroughness of my research—you thought it was good enough to put in the magazine! I came here today to discuss writing more articles for you, as you yourself requested!”

“That was when I thought you were a man. And your article will not be appearing in
The Botanist’s Quarterly
. You can keep the money rendered to you.”

Her mouth fell open and tears gathered behind her eyes.

Mr. Herbert cleared his throat. “I will speak plainly, Miss Buxton, if that is indeed your name, so there will be no further doubt. There is no room for women in the sciences, my dear young lady, except perhaps as a help to their husbands. Women just are not suited for such work. Their brains are not made for it. And quite frankly, it will be a cold day before
The Botanist’s Quarterly
accepts the contributions of a woman over those of a man who may be a husband and a father needing to earn money to take care of his family. I don’t wish to be cruel, but that is the truth.”

At some point during this speech, the tears she’d tried so hard to hold back overran her efforts and fell down her cheeks. The urge to stomp her feet or throw something was strong, but the days when she could get her way by throwing a fit were long over, and she would just be feeding this man’s low opinion of women if she did so.

“Do you have any daughters, Mr. Herbert?” she asked him suddenly.

He looked surprised. “I have one. She is a good girl who stays at home and helps her mother and will do so until she is married.”

Impatient with herself, she scrubbed at her cheeks with her hands so she could face that despicable man dry-eyed. “I wonder if she would be proud of you today. The way you wouldn’t even discuss a young woman’s writing because she was not the man you expected her to be.” He started to bluster, but she quieted him with a hand. “I was extremely proud of my father, Mr. Herbert. My father would have never done what you did today; he understood that women could be just as passionate about science as a man could be.”

“Maybe that’s because your father wasn’t a scientist, Miss Buxton. Now, I bid you good day.”

He turned and Victoria reached for the door. “Oh, but he was a scientist, Mr. Herbert. His name was Sir Philip Buxton and he was not only a noted botanist, but was recognized and knighted for his scientific work. Now I bid
you
a good day.”

She swept out of the office with her head high, but that composure only lasted as long as it took for her to pass the receptionist and out the front door. What a fool she was. Had she really believed that just because she had been raised in an atmosphere where women were valued that everyone would feel the same way? Hadn’t Madame Curie herself once discussed the lofty attitude of some of her fellow scientists? But she hadn’t listened. Instead of just writing incognito, she wanted to be acknowledged for her work. What silly pride she had shown. She saw Kit’s car waiting for her and she burst into fresh tears, knowing she would have to share her humiliation and stupidity. She passed the car and heard the door slam moments later.

“Victoria, what happened? Did he hurt you? Do you want me to challenge him to a duel?”

“No! Why don’t you just say I told you so? You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”

“I don’t even know what happened. How could I possibly when you haven’t told me?”

“I was ordered to leave unless I was interested in the transcription position! They aren’t even going to publish the article he’d already accepted.”

“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.”

The sorrow in his voice made her want to hit something. Hit
him
. She slammed her valise into his chest and he grabbed it.

“But you knew it was going to happen like this, didn’t you? You knew! How did you know?”

“I didn’t know. I just guessed. Most men aren’t ready for women like you and Rowena.”