Like a Flower in Bloom (12 page)

“I am defying all expectations of polite society, Miss Withersby, and I cannot be tolerated. You must not comment directly, but you must put me in my place at once or you will suffer all season from my impertinence.”

“I would think your stupidity in doing so provides its own sort of reward.” Then, as if a gift from above, Mrs. Bickwith’s words from the first party I’d attended came back to me. “I don’t believe I have ever met anyone so secure in their expectations that they can afford to flout convention, Mr. Trimble.”

The Admiral sniffed.

Mr. Trimble clapped. “
Very
good, Miss Withersby! You might just do after all.”

When I had first heard those words, I had thought them a compliment, but now I realized that they had been an insult. Perhaps I did in fact despise Mrs. Bickwith.

“Are you quite well, Miss Withersby?”

“What?”

“Is something wrong?” He took the cushion from his head and returned it to the sofa.

“No. I think it safe to say I’ve learned this lesson. I shall endeavor to remember it.”

W
hen I came downstairs the next morning and peeked into the parlor, I opened my mouth in astonishment. Gone were my piles. Gone were the scattered manuscripts and proofs. There weren’t even any specimens on my desk!

Mr. Trimble had looked up at my approach. Now he was standing. “May I help you?”

“What . . . what . . .”

“What?”

“What happened?” And how had we come by a red rug? And that blue chair over in the corner? I nodded toward it. “Is that new?”

“No, I simply uncovered it. It’s quite nice, really. A Robert Adam, if I am not mistaken.” He walked over to the cupboard and opened the door. “I also found this.” He offered me a tin of biscuits. “And this.” He showed me a lacquered box I recognized as my mother’s.

“I’d forgotten all about that!” I took it from him.

“And I found a desiccated mouse in that ceramic jug by the
sofa. It must have fallen in and become trapped by the journals set atop it.

I couldn’t keep myself from shuddering.

“And now, as you’ve just observed, you have a chair that can be put to good use.”

“But where did everything go?”

“If by
everything
you mean the bills and receipts and drafts of papers and illustrations, they’ve been put into their rightful places.”

“Where?”

He looked at me as if he thought I’d made some joke. “In drawers and cabinets, where things like those are usually placed.”

“But . . . but . . . how will I ever find them?”

He bowed. “Just leave it to me. Let me know what you need and I’ll retrieve it for you.”

A swirl of panic overtook me as I glanced around that tidy room. I sat down on a chair. Hard.

Mr. Trimble winced.

“It’s all very well and good for you to put things where
you
can find them, but how am I to know that the bills are being paid and the correspondence is being conducted and—”

“How did you know all those things before?”

“I just . . . I just
knew
. I knew what had to be done.” I had kept up with all of those things in the way that one keeps up with a spinning top. At just the right second, before it topples, a little push is supplied. I had kept a sort of running tally in my head about it all, and now and then my mind would prompt me to tend to something. “And then I did it.”

“Now, it’s quite easy to tell what’s been done and what hasn’t been. So you don’t have to worry yourself about it anymore.”

How could I not worry when I couldn’t see what there was to worry about?

“Besides, as you never tire of telling me, it’s my responsibility now.”

“Yes, but, that doesn’t mean you can just upend everything and—”

“I’d hardly say that I upended anything. I simply put away all those things that had already been upended. By you.”

“That’s hardly fair!”

My father wandered in and over toward his study, but when he got there, he stood in the doorway for a long moment and then turned toward us, blinking rapidly behind his spectacles. “I wonder . . . I thought . . . I could have sworn that I had been working right there just yesterday.” He was pointing at his desk.

“You were indeed.” Mr. Trimble entered the study and strode over to my father’s desk. He opened one of the drawers and took from it a sheaf of papers. “Here you are. Just as you left them.”

“I thought . . . I was really quite certain I had left them just there.” He gestured toward the window ledge with an open palm. Then he glanced at the room anew. “Has there . . . was there . . . Do you think a thief came in the night?”

“Not a thief. It was Mr. Trimble. He tidied up.”

“
Tidied up
?
” My father looked at him, aghast. “Why?”

“I couldn’t find anything.”

“What was there to find? It was all right . . . here.” He said the words sadly as if mourning the loss of the papers and all of the specimens he was used to seeing.

“But I . . . I needed to know what was there. In order to assist you. And I thought I might as well put it all away so that I could find it when you needed it.”

“But Charlotte always knows where everything is.”

“Yes, but she isn’t assisting you anymore.”

“But I don’t . . . I fail to see how . . . How can I work?” His appeal to me was heartrending, but I steeled myself against
it. He’d wanted Mr. Trimble instead of me, so now he had to learn to live with the consequences of his decision. “Couldn’t Charlotte have told you where things were?”

Here, I felt the need to intervene. “No, Father, I couldn’t. Because I’m meant to be finding a husband, remember? That’s what you said you wanted. So now you’ll have to try to fit your work to Mr. Trimble’s new housekeeping scheme.” Victory was close at hand. I could feel it.

Mr. Trimble scoffed. “It’s hardly a scheme. It’s an accepted way of doing business: putting things into the drawers they’re meant to be in in the first place.”

“Be careful, Father. Next he’ll probably be wanting to organize your stockings.”

“My stockings!” Father was looking at the man in horror.

“I plan to do nothing of the sort.”

Father was patting his desk as if to assure himself that it was still there. “You can’t . . . I don’t know . . .”

Mr. Trimble took him by the elbow and helped him into a chair. “It’s just that I can’t assist you when I don’t understand what it is I’m meant to assist with. I think I’m in a much better position to be able to . . .” He kept talking as I left the room. I needed to go on a ramble. To be out in the tangle of the fields. In the natural order of—!

I stopped in the front hall, turned around, and went back into my father’s study. “Even God himself didn’t find it necessary to put fences round His meadows or plant His flowers in geometrical arrangements!” Once done, I exchanged my shoes for my sturdy boots and went out into the wilds of Cheshire.

But when I reached my favorite field, I stood gazing at it, wondering what there was to do. I’d left so quickly that I hadn’t grabbed my vasculum, but even had I done so, there wouldn’t be any point in picking anything. I wasn’t to do fieldwork anymore.

I felt as if I ought to give Mr. Trimble a good cursing, only it wouldn’t have been very charitable of me, and he’d taken up enough of my thoughts as it was.

Several miles away, I could see the tips of Dodsley Manor’s towers, so I decided to visit Miss Templeton. She would sympathize with me. She would support me. And then she would help me decide how to move our plan along.

“It’s quite simple, really.” She sounded surprised that I had even put the question to her.

“What is?”

“You’ve only to start undermining his organizing scheme, and then it will be sure to fail.”

“
Under
mine it?”

“It’s like when I leave my fan in the music room or my bonnet in the parlor. The next time I ask for it, my maid can’t find it and then she goes into a panic and then I go into a panic and then we’re both in quite a state of hysterics until I can remember what I’ve done with it.”

“So you’re saying that I should . . . do . . . what, exactly?”

“I’m saying that his arrangement works only so long as things stay wherever it is that he’s decided they’re supposed to. So the quickest way to ensure his failure would be to make sure things
don’t
stay where they’re supposed to.”

“And how am I to do that? When I’m not supposed to be sorting through the papers?”

“I don’t know. You asked for my advice, and I’ve given it. So now you must return the favor.”

I squared my shoulders. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Good!” She lifted a bell from the table beside her and began to ring it. Soon a maid appeared at the door, bobbing a curtsey.

“I’d like you to dress my hair in the ways we spoke of.” She turned to me. “And you can help me decide which style I’ll wear to Lord Harriwick’s ball.”

“I’m not very proficient in the dressing of hair. I don’t think I’m qualified to judge.”

“Which is specifically why I want you to tell me what you think is most becoming. Since you have no idea what you ought to think, then it seems to me that I’ll be able to trust what you say. You’ll give me your complete and utterly honest opinion, won’t you?”

“What else would I give you?”

“Exactly.” She seated herself in front of a table that had a mirror attached to it. Beyond it stretched the rest of her bedchamber. A large floral rug in pale greens and golden yellows lay on the floor. Atop it were placed a half-dozen chairs and a sofa with scrolled arms, all upholstered in a deep red that had since faded to a rosy pink. Her bed was every bit as magnificent as the house and had been hung with brocade curtains. My own room was a plain and simple buttercup to her frilly, multilayered peony.

It seemed to take a terribly long time just to comb through the length of her hair and then to pin it all up again and attach something she called a fall that had curls stuck to it. Frankly, it didn’t look much different than when I had first come. Finally, the maid stepped back and Miss Templeton turned to face me. “Now. Here is the first one.”

“How many of them are there going to be?”

“Just two.”

“Two? That’s three all together if I count the way you were wearing it when I first came in?”

She nodded.

“Why don’t you just wear it the way you always do?”

“Why should I when there are so many ways to dress it? Don’t you ever change your style?”

“No. I just pin it back and then put things on top of it.”

She broke out into gales of laughter. “Things! Like lace, for instance? Or ribbons?”

“Both. And of course that flower that Mr. Trimble pushed behind my ear.”

“He put a flower in your hair? That’s rather bold of him, don’t you think?”

“He had to do something since he took away my bonnet.”

“He
took it away
from you? The beast! He’s quite in danger of overstepping his place, in my opinion.”

“He’s far past overstepping.”

“Ha! He’s leaped right over it, hasn’t he. All right. Now then. You’ll have to tell me what you think of this next one.”

For that one, her hair was once more combed through, and arranged to fall toward her jaw in great swoops that reminded me of a hound’s ears before being gathered into a knot at the back. “I like the first one better.”

“The first? Truly? How disappointing. I was really quite hoping for this one.” She looked at me expectantly as if I might say something further.

“Be that as it may, I like the way you normally wear it.”

She sighed. “There’s no help for it, then. I’ll just wear it the same old way.” She looked at me through the mirror. “Don’t you ever get tired of doing things the same way you’ve always done them?”

“I find particular comfort in routine.”

“Not me. I want to do everything and see everything and experience everything.”

“Then maybe you should try the last one, even though it makes you look like a hound.”

“It makes me look like a hound? I don’t think I’ve ever looked like a hound before. At least not on purpose. I’ll have to think on it.” She turned and leveled a most direct look at me. “Now then, why don’t we see about you.”

“Me?”

An hour later I was sitting in front of her mirror with my hair twisted and pulled and curled into what I could only call a torturous departure from my normal style.

“It’s magnificent!”

“It feels rather . . . tight.”

“Don’t worry. It’s supposed to.”

“Are you sure? Because I’m quite afraid it might give me a headache.”

“I hope so. Then you’ll know it’s been gathered securely enough.”

I couldn’t imagine going about all night with my head pounding.

She frowned. “Oh, don’t look like that. Please don’t. It ruins the effect.”

“But the effect is meant, it seems, to ruin me.”

She clapped her hands. “It looks so very stylish. Promise me you’ll try it out tomorrow night.”

“Of course I will.” And I would. I would have to now that I promised. I just wouldn’t try very hard.