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Lydia followed beside her mother. The house looked different from this distance. The windows reflected the sky, concealing the rooms where she had spent so much time wondering what to say. Beyond the gardens, the ground rose toward a belt of trees. She could see pale flowers growing near the edge. She had brought her sketchbook and a small collecting case.
“You will not have time to draw everything,” her mother said.
“I know.”
“You said that in the carriage yesterday.”
“Three days ago.”
“Did I? It seems longer.”
Lydia smiled and bent to examine a leaf beside the path. The group continued slowly, stopping to admire a view of the house and then to discuss whether a climbing rose would do as well against a north-facing wall. Lydia listened until she realized none of them required an answer. A white flower stood among the grasses farther along the bank.
She crouched beside it. The first specimen had been damaged. A petal hung against the stem, and the leaves beneath it were folded together. A second grew a little farther back, where the ground dipped beneath the trees. Lydia glanced toward her mother. Lady Pembroke was speaking to the Dowager Duchess, while Clara and Anne Bellamy lingered nearby with Lady Wetherby and two other guests, their baskets resting against their skirts.
Lydia stepped off the path. She would look at the second flower and come straight back. But that one had lost its lowest leaves. Beyond it, a pale cluster showed through the undergrowth, and she went nearer, lifting her hem clear of a fallen branch. Her curiosity had always been stronger than her sense of caution, particularly where an unfamiliar plant was concerned. The air cooled beneath the trees. She knelt where the light reached the flowers and opened her book. If it was the plant she thought it might be, she had never found it growing herself.
She drew the arrangement of the leaves before touching the stem. One flower would be enough to compare with the illustration. She selected it carefully, recorded what she could see of the others, and wrapped the specimen in a piece of paper. When she stood, the voices were gone. A small flutter of unease stirred her stomach. She searched for the gap through which she had entered.
A beech trunk obscured the path. Or perhaps the path lay beyond the next tree. She had turned while following the flowers, and the slope looked different now that she was facing it. She closed the sketchbook. There was no need for alarm. She listened before choosing a direction, but birdsong covered any voices. The house lay to her left. Probably. She had not gone far enough for confidence to be entirely foolish.
She took several steps, then stopped. Damp leaves softened the ground beneath her shoes, and the air smelled of bark, crushed fern, and the faint mineral coolness that gathered where sunlight rarely reached.
Hooves sounded on the other side of the trees. A horse appeared along a narrow track, and Lydia’s heart gave an unexpected little leap when she recognized the rider. Tristan drew rein when he saw her. She had not expected to meet him again before luncheon. He seemed equally unprepared to find her standing there with a flower wrapped in paper. “Lady Lydia?”
“Your Grace.”
“Ladies do not usually wander this far from the path,” he said.
“Ladies are rarely given the chance. It is difficult to stray when one is never let out of the shrubbery.”
“The shrubbery has its admirers.”
“The shrubbery is where gentlemen put us so they may shoot in peace.” She lifted her chin toward the trees. “I wished to see the wood.”
He searched the trees behind her. “Where are the others?”
“On the path.”
“Which path?”
She glanced behind her. “I was about to find out.”
He dismounted. Lydia wished she had given an answer that did not sound so much like a request for rescue. That some small part of her was relieved to see him made the embarrassment worse.
“Are you lost?”
“I know where the house is.”
“Where?”
She indicated the direction she had chosen.
“That is the lower meadow.”
“Oh.”
“The house is behind you.”
