Chapter Thirty-Five

Blythe

September, 1812

Awendown House

There is much to be done at Awendown House.

Mama is busy with nursing Papa, so I’ve taken it upon myself to handle as many of the chores as possible. It’s easier this way, to preoccupy myself with physical movement rather than pause and risk feeling everything I’m trying to suppress. At first, it was a sharp hatred for Briggs, for the unimaginable decision he made for us, but it’s since dulled to an ache that occupies my whole body. A need for him that will never be satisfied. He is in London, no doubt proposing to Sabrina Dixon, and I remain here. The very least I can do is help where I can. So I keep going.

As I travel the main hall, having just finished rehanging some drapes that had been in desperate need of dusting, I pass my father’s study and stop in to take a peek at him. All appears as it was before. My father sits at his writing desk, his spectacles on the tip of his nose, reading from one of his books, and the afternoon sunshine pours in the front window. Everything is just as it was at the start of the summer: my bees, my family, my house, Julian. Everything is the same.

Except me. I’m not the girl who left Awendown in June, and my world feels suddenly so small, so colorless.

I take a deep breath and decide to knock on his door.

Turning to see me, Papa grins. “Come in, child, come in.” He notices that the armchair he usually reserves for guests is covered in his books and paperwork, and he stacks them neatly on the floor beside the bookcase. “What have you been up to today, my dear?”

I shrug. “I won’t bore you with my household chores.” I laugh and then sigh.

“And your bees, of course? Are the hives ready for the long winter ahead of us?”

I shrug again, then feel I need to ask: “Mama told me at the start of summer that you two would take them down come autumn.”

Papa nods. “Well, then you can benefit from how we’ve been preoccupied of late.”

My heart plummets at his words. Not only his health has been preoccupying them, I am sure.

“You needn’t worry yourself,” he adds quietly. “We didn’t lose as much as you probably fear.”

“Anything you lost is likely too much,” I mutter.

“We’ll make it through,” Papa replies. “We’ve made it through worse. Leave the worrying to us. Besides, when was the last time you went with Julian into the village to sell honey? It seems like quite a long time ago. Certainly before you went to stay at Wrexford Park.”

“I think you must be right.”

“Well, tomorrow is market day! Is he going? Why not join him?”

I lean back in the armchair, propping my chin in my hand and staring out the window. “I cannot be spared from my work here,” I tell him.

He snorts at this. “I am the master of Awendown House,” he says with mock authority. “And I say that you can.”

I try to laugh, but lately, nothing is funny. Papa seems to notice this.

“Or maybe you can make some progress with your apiary business. Any new investors on the horizon?”

I am speechless at his reference. “How did you know?”

Papa smiles gently. “Our Julian isn’t exactly the soul of discretion.”

I lean back in my chair and close my eyes. “I asked him not to tell you about our business endeavors. It was a simple request.”

Papa sighs, removing his spectacles. “Perhaps your mother and I were wrong when we told you not to pursue your plans with your apiary business, Blythe.”

I stare at him now, my father who could not be budged about my lofty dreams to one day own my own business. “You were,” I say confidently. I stand and pace the room, full of nervous energy. “You were wrong. I didn’t want Julian to tell you that I was going to do it anyway, but you should know. You should know that I’ve secured some investors. That I have plans to build apiaries on several great estates with my new box and frame construction for the hives. I’ve made solid business plans, and things are going fairly well. I wanted to tell you all summer! But I was so afraid it would embarrass you, to have a daughter who didn’t do the things young ladies are supposed to.”

It all comes spewing out of me, and the knot of tension in the middle of my back unwinds. It’s a relief to finally realize that not all of my sadness was wound up in Briggs Goswick.

“Blythe, my love,” my father says quietly. “I have let you down. And more than once, I’m afraid, so perhaps I should sit with my embarrassment. I am not perfect, and neither are you, although I dare say you come closer than any other human I know.”

I manage to produce a laugh through the tears that prick the backs of my eyes.

“And I am so proud that my daughter is independent, and innovative, and passionate. That she knows what she wants, and there is little that can stand in her way of going after it. I want you to pursue your apiary business. And I want you to use that money to do whatever you’d like. You’ve earned it.”

I clasp my hands together before me, my knuckles turning white as I try to keep from crying. Papa rises slowly from his chair, wipes an errant tear from my cheek, and gathers me into his arms. I cry softly into his chest, tears that are both happy to have my business back and full of sorrow for everything else I’ve lost this summer. When I’m finally finished, I rub at my eyes, offering him a smile and then a kiss on his cheek. I head for the door of his study.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“To my bees.” I smile over my shoulder and disappear out the front door.

Behind me, I can hear him laugh under his breath and say with a sigh, “My sweet girl.”

I pass Amy in the kitchens as she sneaks a wedge of apple covered in cinnamon and sugar that had been waiting to go into Cook’s pie, and she glances up and squints at me. “Where are you going?”

“Out to my bees. Do you want to join me?”

She skips to my side, offering me a wedge of my own, and I crunch down, letting the spices coat my tongue. “What are we doing at the apiaries?” she asks.

“I think we’ll harvest some honey and get ready for the market tomorrow,” I reply.

Once we gather my supplies from the barn, we trudge up the hill to where my hives sit, and I make sure to give Amy her bee bonnet. She takes it from my hands slowly, then points to the main road that’s just visible through the line of gold-tinged trees ahead of us.

“Look there,” she says. An errant breeze blows her long brown tresses across her mouth. “That carriage is even more grand than Uncle Henry’s.”

I shade my face with my hand, trying to recognize who this could be. “Come, let’s go and find out, shall we?” We trot down the hill together, rounding the side of the house and sending our flock of geese scurrying to get out of our way.

The carriage follows the road around the bend, now camouflaged by the canopy of remaining leaves and cloaked in the dappled golden light of late afternoon. Behind us, Mama and Papa emerge from the house, Mama wiping her hands on her apron.

Papa places a hand on my shoulder. “Were you expecting guests, Blythe?”

“Not at all.”

When the carriage finally slows to a stop, one of the grooms hops down from his perch and opens the door, extending his hand for the passenger inside to grasp.

“Lady Tisdale,” I say, my jaw falling open in surprise.

Mama, Amy, and I drop to a curtsy, and Papa bows.

“Miss Rowley, Miss Amy. How pleasant to see you again.” Lady Tisdale wears a bright green pelisse, and she grins widely at me. “These must be your parents.”

I stammer, almost forgetting their names. “I-Indeed, this is my father, Sir Anthony Rowley, and my mother, Lady Lucinda Rowley.”

“A pleasure,” says Lady Tisdale.

“Won’t you come in, my lady?” Mama offers. “We could have tea in the front drawing room.” She eyes Amy warily, silently asking her to run inside and make sure the front drawing room is acceptable for guests.

Amy dashes away as Lady Tisdale replies, “That would be lovely. And I apologize for the unexpected visit. I was just headed home from London, where I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Briggs Goswick, and he mentioned that Miss Rowley had returned to Awendown House.”

Briggs’s name hasn’t been spoken since our return from Wrexford Park. Purposefully, I suppose. My family can’t be certain exactly what had passed between us, but we were suddenly apart. I haven’t been the same, and I’ve missed him, I realize. I’ve tried so hard to convince myself that the best course of action was to erase him from my mind. Then I wouldn’t have to imagine him getting down on one knee and proposing to someone who isn’t me. I wouldn’t have to imagine him kissing someone who isn’t me, bringing someone home to Mistlethrush who isn’t me. Spending the rest of his life with someone who isn’t me.

Lady Tisdale continues, “When I realized you were right on the way, I knew I had to pay a visit.”

“How very gracious of you, my lady,” says Papa.

“Miss Rowley,” says Lady Tisdale. “Before we join your family for tea, perhaps you would take me out to your apiary and show me? I am certain that you will be constructing one on my property next spring.”

I squeak, reaching out for my father’s arm behind me because I fear I may drop from surprise. Having Lady Tisdale build an apiary on her property would mend everything that happened in London at Lady Clifford’s ball. “Oh, my lady, I’d be thrilled to. Please, follow me.”

Taking her back up the hill, I’m surprised when she hooks her arm through mine. “I am truly sorry to have just dropped in on you like this, Miss Rowley, but I felt that what I’d like to discuss with you could not wait another moment.”

I feel somewhat dizzy with this, hoping that her mention of Briggs Goswick earlier has nothing to do with what she’s about to say now. I know he would have proposed to Sabrina Dixon by now. I know it, and yet I can’t speak it out loud. I don’t want to hear about it, and I don’t want her to ask me what happened or why it happened. I want to live the rest of my life pretending that Briggs Goswick never existed and that whatever feeling of emptiness he’s left me with, it’s not mine. I don’t have to claim it.

It agonizes and bolsters me all at once to think that whatever intimacy Sabrina shares with him, it will never be what we had. I press my lips together to hold my shaky breath in.

Lady Tisdale, however, doesn’t seem to notice my trepidation on this subject. “When last you were in London,” she begins, “you were telling a group of us at Lady Clifford’s about your apiary enterprise, and you were maligned most egregiously before I could ask you any more questions.”

We stop at the top of the hill, far enough from the apiaries that I know my guest won’t be startled by the bumbling flight of a buzzing bee, and I stare out at the neighboring farmland. “Yes,” I agree. “I was.”

“You did not deserve Miss Dixon’s vitriol. I am sorry you had to endure it, and I’m sorry no one spoke up for you. Most of all…” She turns to me, clasping both my hands. “I am truly and heartily sorry that I did not speak up for you, Miss Rowley. As a lady of some standing, and one who respects you, I should have said something. I apologize, and I would like to make amends.”

“My lady, please don’t feel badly about what transpired at Lady Clifford’s. It was no one’s fault.”

“I insist upon making amends,” she repeats, squeezing my hands with her gloved fingers. I’ve never owned a pair of gloves so soft. “I want you to close your eyes.”

A strange request, but I’ll oblige her. I close my eyes, allowing her hands to be my only anchor to what’s happening outside my own thoughts.

“You mentioned that night of wanting a location for prospective customers to come and visit. I want you to picture that place now. A place where you would invite potential customers in order to show them what an apiary is. In order to show them why it matters. Can you see this place?”

My throat feels suddenly tight, and one of the tears I was trying so desperately to avoid escapes past my eyelashes and streams down my cheek, but I cannot help picturing the gardens of Mistlethrush, the hanging wisteria, the overburdened fruit trees, the bees and butterflies, and Briggs standing at the entrance of the drawing room, drenched in golden sunshine. It was the place he promised me.

At the beginning of the summer, my mother told me that she could never imagine loving a place as much as she did Wrexford Park, the home where she grew up. Until she found Papa, until he brought her to Awendown House. I knew she implied that someday my heart would find a place to call home that wasn’t Awendown, and it felt preposterous. But now? Mistlethrush is the only place I can imagine the rest of my life. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I know the place.”

“What would it take to make that place your own?”

My eyes spring open. “What?”

She touches my face gently with her soft hand. “Tell me what it would cost, Miss Rowley, and it will be yours. I wish to invest, but I don’t take my role lightly, I hope you understand. I want a say in the business, and I want to help you. My late husband left me with far more than I could ever need, and we were never blessed with children.”

I take a step back, stumbling on nothing except my disbelief. She cannot really mean what she says. She cannot mean that she wishes to give me the money to purchase Mistlethrush Hall. “My lady,” I say hoarsely. “This is too much. I could never ask this of you.”

“I see quite a lot of myself in you. And therefore, I trust your instincts,” says Lady Tisdale gently. “I trust you. I want to invest in a thoughtful, kind, luminescent young woman—and you’re her. Tell me how I can help you.”

Through the pounding of my heart, realization floods my thoughts. “It’s too late,” I say. “The place I pictured. It’s someone else’s now. He’s someone else’s.”

Lady Tisdale offers me a small little smirk and gestures for us to return to the house. “Do you know that when I was in London, I attended a birthday celebration for Mrs. Phyliss Goswick, a dear friend of mine from childhood. Do you know her?”

I follow her, confused. We’ve gone from bees to investments to gossip, and I can’t make the connection. “Only by name, my lady.”

“Well, at her party, everyone who attended was certain that Mr. Briggs Goswick, her nephew, was going to make a proposal of marriage to Miss Sabrina Dixon.”

My stomach clenches at the mention of both their names. I want to tell Lady Tisdale to stop, that I have no desire to hear this gossip, but I cannot find a way to say so without being extremely rude. My silence must invite her to continue.

“But no proposal ever came. The evening ended, and they were not to wed.”

I’m frozen at the top of the hill, unable to follow her back the way we came. She cannot possibly mean what I think she does. She cannot be implying that Briggs never proposed marriage to Sabrina.

“And only a few days later, we all discovered that Miss Sabrina Dixon had eloped shortly after! With a gentleman named Mr. Sebastian Lambert. They had made their way to Gretna Green, and now they are man and wife. Isn’t that the most delicious piece of gossip you’ve ever heard?”

There are no words that can express my thoughts. I want to feel elation, relief, hope, but I’m still too dumbfounded to process it all.

“Miss Rowley?” asks Lady Tisdale. “Are you coming to have tea with me? Or do you need a moment with your thoughts?”

“I—I need a moment with my thoughts.”

“I expected as much. Well, when you’re ready, I’ll save you a biscuit.”

She saunters back down the hill while I try to stop my hands from shaking.

Briggs Goswick never proposed to Sabrina Dixon.