"Our flowers are among the finest in this part of Cornwall," he said. "What could they possibly object to?" His smile was equally as disarming as Lady Amanda's, with an absolute lack of pomp and circumstance in his general appearance, one of work-worn denim and a frayed sweater. There were wood chips clinging to his sleeve — I imagined him cutting up broken trees for firewood somewhere on the estate, as Geoff Weatherby had described.
"Nothing at all," I said, shaking my head. I admitted defeat at this point, and asked Pippa to let the gardening staff know that I wanted as many white lilies as the hothouse had available.
"Don't you want to see them yourself?" asked Pippa. "Take a geek at the place and pick them out for your own?"
"She means 'look it over,'" supplied Gemma, who was polishing one of the vases. "But she'll be glad to do it for you if Ross is there."
Pippa didn’t argue with her, glancing back at me. "Well, don't you?" she asked me, trying to banish the traces of a saucy grin which Gemma's words had inspired.
"No need," I answered. "Just white lilies."
I knew that the gardeners would know who wanted them and why, so there was no need to explain. Thankfully, whoever the gardener was who had ordered me off the heath the other day, I hadn't introduced myself as part of the staff. He would imagine me safely gone as a rude tourist.
When the lilies arrived the day before their scheduled arrangement, something else arrived with them, in a white florist's box unlike the lilies' basket. Pippa read the note taped to the top, then handed it to me.
"For you," she announced. "Looks like you've got an admirer already."
"Who?" I asked, with total shock. I opened the box and found a sheet of pale green tissue paper folded around blossoms — roses in a shade of deep, violet-pink.
"Oh, they're gorgeous," said Gemma. "Who're they from?"
I pulled out a card tucked near the blossoms. I apologize for being rude to you. You were correct before — no visitor to Cornwall deserves a welcome less than warm. With my sincere wishes for your success here, Matthew Rose.
I read the words aloud despite the faint blush on my cheeks for the episode in my memory. A little gasp of shock came from Gemma. "Ross sent you flowers?"
"Heavens, did he really?" Even Dinah was listening now, even though she was busy poring over a recipe for tea cakes, a row of spices lined up before her like soldiers.
"What — here four days and you've hooked him already?" said Pippa, with amazement. "Ross never pays any attention to anyone — how on earth did you manage it?"
"Hold on," I said. "Who is 'Ross'? The card says it's from someone named Matthew Rose."
Gemma's jaw dropped. "What, you don't see the resemblance?" she asked. "Everybody sees it when they look at him."
"Sees what?"
"You know, the television programme. Poldark? Ross, the main character?"
"I've never seen it," I answered.
"Never? Not even once?"
"I don't watch PBS?" I said, meekly. Both of the girls exchanged glances once more — this time, of pity for my ignorance.
"Does he really look like this — Ross guy, I take it?"
"Dead ringer," said Pippa. "Why do you think all the women about go a bit soft in the knees whenever he comes by?"
He was handsome. No denying that. And in a way that Donald Price-Parker was not, which was precisely the reason I had found myself staring at him a few days ago in the railway station.
"Why was he apologizing to you?" Gemma asked.
"Oh, that." My blush was back, for reasons besides Matthew Rose — or the mysterious Ross's — good looks. "I, um, sort of ... stepped on his plants the other day."
From her place by the stove, Dinah let out a peal of laughter. "Dear me, I would have loved to have seen that," she said.
"Why?" I asked. "He was completely rude about it. And it wasn't intentional, what I did. Obviously."
"Ross is that way. Part of his charming manners." Pippa flashed me a grin.
"He's not rude," retorted Gemma. "He's nice. Funny and smart, if you know him well enough, I've heard. Trouble is, he's hard to get to know. He's a slave to the dirt, he likes to say, and that's no lie. Hardly ever goes out from that cottage he rents, except to the village to buy groceries."
"Leave him alone," scolded Dinah. "He's a grown man. He knows well enough what he's doing. At least he's not acting silly with his head in the clouds, or mooning about over some personal troubles the way so many others do." A look in her eyes made me curious to know exactly what she meant by this, but I hated to ask.
The grounds were proof of Matthew Rose's devotion to his work, anyway. I had seen both perfection and wild beauty in the tumbling foxglove and periwinkle, and carefully-tended roses, and marveled at whoever produced it. "Looks like his hermitage has paid off for Cliffs House," I remarked.
Maybe this was the sort of fantasy they were writing about in those gothic novels. A mysterious, brooding, dark-eyed gardener in the wilds of Cornwall, tending beauty while living in a tumbledown, ivy-covered cottage —
"I guess I owe Mr. Rose an apology, too," I said. "Maybe I missed the sign he mentioned. And it was my fault his plant got a little crushed. I just thought he could have been nicer about it."
"Sent you flowers, didn't he?" said Dinah. She gave me a look that made me feel self-conscious again — this time for the impossibility of myself paired with this mystery man of a gardener whom half the village was tracing.
I shrugged it off. "I didn't say he doesn't have good apology skills," I answered. My fingers stroked the soft petals of the roses. I hoped he hadn't taken them from one of the estate's rose plants, since I was pretty sure that would get him into trouble.
I put the lilies into a cool, dark closet so they could 'rest' for the hours before they were arranged. I put the roses in a vase on my desk. From my window, I could see Ross — or Matthew Rose — trimming the hedges in the garden. A blue shirt untucked beneath his wool pullover, a pair of faded jeans with hand shears tucked in his back pocket. It was sunny today, so he wasn't carrying the wool cap I had noticed the other day, when it had been slightly rainy in the morning.
A moment later, I crossed the lawn to where Matthew was working. For a moment, he pretended not to see me approaching — I could see it from the way his eyes twitched in my direction, then focused harder than ever on the hedge. But I stood there until he finally looked at me.
"Thanks," I said. "For the flowers."
He gazed at me for a long moment, studying me intently. His eyes were as dark as coffee — almost black, but with little glints of something lighter in them. My knees threatened to tremble ever so slightly, but I resisted by locking them firmly upright. It was silly of me to have that reaction to a stranger.
"You're welcome," he answered. He went back to trimming the hedge.
There was a touch of Cornish in his accent, I could hear that much, only it had softened over the years, and mixed with something else. A little of London, or maybe a little of something closer to home for me. Was it an American accent? New York, maybe?
I tilted my head. "Where are you from?" I asked.
"Here," he answered, snipping away more green branches.
"Yeah, but ... somewhere else, too. Are you from America?"
"Briefly," he answered. "I spent some time there, once."
I hesitated. "Is that why you sent me the roses?" I asked. "Because I'm a fish out of water? A foreigner from familiar shores?"
"No. I sent them to you because I felt you had a point," he said. "If you had been a visitor to Cliffs House, I would have given you a poor impression of its hospitality. If you had been a visitor," he clarified. "And not, let's say, the newest member of the staff. Who should have been able to read the sign by the path, for instance."
"In English or in Cornish?" I asked. This time, I wasn't irritated, but smiling. I wasn't flustered anymore, but bold enough to joke with him a little.
"Both," he answered. For a moment, I thought he was
n't going to smile. At last, however, that serious countenance broke a little with the faintest proof of a smile. "Regardless, I learned my lesson, thanks to you. I'll be nothing but politeness itself to the next rude tourist who wanders off the beaten path."
Victory. I tucked my hands in the pockets of my pea coat. "Well, as the newest member of your staff, I concede your point about the native flowers," I said. "And I hope your heath plant recovers."
"As someone wise pointed out — it is a resilient plant," he said. "Even if it is a protected one. It should be fine, given a day or two." He smiled, this time for real. It was worth the wait for that smile, I decided.
"So why are you cultivating it along the pathway?" I asked. "Doesn't it grow there naturally?"
"Not really. We're trying to introduce it to more regions in Cornwall by propagation, part of a botanical program at work locally. There was an errant cigarette fire along that part of the pathway not long ago and it cost me the first part of my work," he said. “I'm trying to hurry along the recovery process with a few transplants."
"Oh." Now I felt worse about stepping on his plants. "Um, sorry, then."
"Where are you from in America?" he asked. This complete change of subject bumped me from my thoughts back to the present.
"Seattle, Washington," I said. "Before that, Idaho. A very sleepy spot in it called Molehill." My hometown's name tended to garner snickers from anybody who heard it. It hosted a yearly festival that involved whacking moles in carnival games and a puppet that looked like a groundhog popping out of a paper-mache volcano painted green.
Matthew didn't crack a smile, oddly enough. He looked thoughtful. "Did you know there's a village close by called Mousehole?" he asked.
"Mousehole?" I echoed.
"Exactly so." He turned back to his hedge, although he glanced over his shoulder at me. "If you feel homesick, you can visit its road sign." He winked at me. No smile this time, but there was something almost flirtatious about that brief movement of his eyelid, and the expression in his dark eyes.
I felt a little shiver pass through me. "I'll keep that in mind," I said, as I turned back to the house. I couldn't help glancing over my shoulder one more time before I went inside. That glimpse of his good humor, the smile that brought warmth into those dark eyes. That must be the charming side that Gemma had mentioned, and I could see what she was talking about.
"Julianne," I said. "Morgen. That's my name, in case you didn't know it." Lame, since obviously someone on staff had told him about me and described me well enough that he knew I was the woman from the path.
"I know," he answered.
He was completely absorbed by his hedge trimming once again. Since he didn't look at me as he spoke, I went inside and went back to my own work.
***
No more thinking about Cliffs House's gorgeous gardener, I had resolved. I had work to do, and only a day before the big champagne luncheon for Donald and Petal's wedding. In a sudden switch, we transformed the main dining hall into a champagne buffet so we could throw open the glass doors to the terrace and garden just outside. Once, the room had been some sort of receiving hall or something like that, I had read in my Guide to Cliffs House, courtesy of Lady Amanda, but it had been transformed by Lord William's grandfather into a beautiful, modern room that still had the original stone archway and buttresses on display. The view was perfect, and so was the dining table, a long, elegant cherry one that I covered with a white linen cloth.
The press would arrive early, no doubt, on the day of the event; the family would be cloistered for privacy until the party begin, in one of the spare bedroom and dressing room suites upstairs: one that felt like a spacious apartment compared to my beloved two-room cracker box when I first graduated from college.
Today we were arranging the flowers while Dinah was putting the finishing touches on the tea cakes, the last item made for the buffet. She had outdone herself — as Geoff Weatherby and Jackson, the apparent head gardener — had declared upon tasting the castoff pieces of sponge when she cut the perfect orange rectangles from it. Now they were lined upon baking sheets, waiting for their platters: ten dozen orange saffron cakes wrapped in Cornish tartan-printed fondant.
"They turned out lovely," she declared. "That was a clever thought you had," she told me, although she was shouting a little over the noise outside the window, where two repairmen had come to make building repairs to the outside wall. "Using the Cornish print to add a bit of local color — especially to saffron-flavored cakes."
"I just don't want my first big clients to be disappointed — in me or in Cliffs House," I answered. I felt a surge of pride for her compliment. Sure, it was only a design for little tea cakes, but it was the first step in a hopefully-successful, elegant wedding that I would coordinate into perfection. "Besides, you're the one who brought them into reality, so they're as much your creation as mine. And I didn't think of that creative geometric twist you put on some of them."
Dinah had altered the Cornish tartan pattern with a pattern of diamonds and stripes in the same colors as the tartan. It was a simpler, lighter design, and provided a visual contrast that made the tartan's lines stand out.
"Touch of a chef, that's all," answered Dinah, mildly, as she checked off the number of spicy ginger-orange snaps she had made, cooling on the platters before her. It was her way of accepting my compliment, I realized, smiling as I lifted the buckets of lilies from their cool storage space.
"So why did you leave Seattle to come to Cornwall?" Gemma asked me. She and Pippa were helping me arrange the flowers in the parlor. Beautiful white lilies peered over the buckets full of cool water and the special preservative secret I remembered from Design a Dream — a dash of carbonated lemon lime soda pop.
I sucked in a quick breath. "I don't know," I said. "There's no one reason. It was just such a great career move, being in charge of coordinating and planning events on my own. I couldn't believe I'd been given the chance, so I just snapped it up."
"And flew all the way across the pond to Ceffylgwyn?" said Pippa, sounding amazed. "Sorry, but I don't think I'd be tempted by a job that dropped me in the middle of some tiny American village with no proper spa or entertainment to speak of."
"Unless you like Troyls," piped up Gemma. They both giggled as Pippa stifled a snort in response. Her shears clipped off the excess greenery at the base of a lily's stem.
"What's 'Troyls'?" I asked. I had a feeling this was definitely a Cornish thing.
"It's a dance," said Gemma. "Old-fashioned. Not like going to a club in London, or the like."
"Folk dancing," added Pippa. "Some people 'round here get dressed up in the tartan or the black kilts to go. Fish wife's costume, even."
"That's more for festival than for Troyls' night," argued Gemma. "Anyway, not exactly rich entertainment unless you like that sort of music."
I imagined bagpipes, then realized this image must be all wrong.
"Ross used to go — I'll bet he wore a proper kilt and everything," said Gemma. "Just imagine," she said to me, and both girls had saucy grins as heat crept into my face.
"I think I'm better off not imagining any of my fellow employees in kilts," I answered, hoping to change the subject. I stepped away from the table, dropping my trimmed leaves and stems into the waste bin.
"Those shoes," gasped Pippa. "Where'd you get them?"
"These?" I glanced down. I was wearing a pair of red Jimmy Choos, the same ones I'd worn to Nancy's office when she lectured me on dressing the part of an underling. "I got them from a Seattle boutique — marked down, but they were still pricey."
"Gorgeous," she moaned. "I've wanted a pair like that ever since I saw that movie about the shoe designer — you know the one. Can I try them on?" she asked.
"Sure." I slipped off my heels, watching as the girl kicked off her clogs and slipped them on. She stood up, wobbling a little as she walked across the carpet in stiletto heels. "How do you wear these all the time?" she asked.
"I got
used to it," I answered. "At Design a Dream, wearing silk and heels was all part of the image. Classy was encouraged — only you had to be careful not to dress better than the boss or her favorites."
"Around here, the only person wearing designer clothes for casual is the model whose flowers we're arranging," said Gemma. "I saw the dress she wore when she met with you yesterday. Sells for four hundred pounds in London. I read it online."
"It didn't look like it was worth it," said Pippa over her shoulder, who was walking with more confidence in the heels now.
I had to agree. The dress's impression, like that of Petal herself, fell flat after a moment or two. Without makeup and an artful hairstyle, she looked less glamorous and more like the cute-but-pouting sort. Her smile for everybody at Cliffs House felt like a practiced one, and unless she was surgically attached to her fiancé, she seemed more interested in talking about New York and London than any sort of Cornish traditions for her wedding. Without him, Cornwall apparently held no interest for her.
"What do you think?" Pippa asked, posing dramatically with one hand behind her head. "Do I have a future as stunning as Petal Borroway's in Milan?"
Before either of us could answer, the sound of a tremendous crash and a wail caught our attention — coming from the direction of the kitchen hall. Without a word, we took off running from the parlor, me barefoot and Pippa teetering in my heels.
We halted in the kitchen doorway. There, on the table, was a disaster beyond the proportion of any I could imagine. Shattered glass covered the floor, the table, and the newly-finished tea cakes. What had survived of them, that is — because the ladder which had crashed through the window had landed in the middle of Dinah's creations, creating a pile of sponge and marzipan mush.
"Sorry," said the workman, meekly. Dinah moaned again.
***
"Okay," I said, forcing my reeling mind to work. "Okay, we can fix this."
"Ten dozen sponge tea cakes?" Dinah whipped her head to look at me, incredulously.
Wedding in Cornwall Page 4
