“I don’t believe my mother even knew my father’s given name,” he said, putting her hand down.
Jemma handed the rest of the violets to a footman. “These and another bunch, please, James.” Then she tucked her hand through Elijah’s arm. “I’m quite sure she did. Likely she simply chose not to use it in your hearing. Do you suppose that your mother might pay us a visit? Or—” She hesitated. “—ought I to have paid her one? I suppose I have been a sadly neglectful daughter-in-law.”
“If my mother wished to see you, she would have sent you a command, informing you of her decision,” Elijah said. “What are all these white ones?”
“Apple blossoms!” Jemma crowed. “Oh, I love these. It means spring is truly here. And those are white cherries. I think we should have a huge amount in the drawing room, don’t you? These are boxwood.”
Elijah sniffed the boxwood and actually took a step back. “I think something died.”
“Boxwood doesn’t smell as beautiful as it looks,” Jemma agreed. She nodded to James. “We’ll have a largish amount of the white cherry, thank you.” She drew Elijah on, out of earshot of the footman. “Do tell me, Elijah, should I pay your mother a visit?”
“We could do so together,” he replied, with a notable lack of enthusiasm. “It’s like visiting the king, you know. We’d have to petition a visit. She hasn’t summoned me in some two years.” He thought about it.
“Perhaps longer.”
Jemma stopped. “She might be ill!”
“Oh, no. She writes me once a week. Strategy is her métier. She has given me remarkably good advice on a number of topics over the years. Though she tends to be far too inclined to insult,” he added. “She is always counseling me to ferocity.”
The fact that his mother’s primary decorating idea had been to strew the house with lurid depictions of Judith holding Holofernes’s bloody head meant the dowager duchess’s forceful tendencies were no surprise to Jemma. She bent to look at a pail of bluebells.
The old man selling the bluebells looked like a tattered and rather furry owl, all eyes and beak. “Grew ’em on the dung heap,” he said to her. “I’s always has the first and best bluebells in London. It’s the dung that does it. Ha’penny a bunch, if you please.”
Elijah looked down at the bluebells with the first real interest he’d shown in the market. “Why do you suppose that is?” he asked the man. “Could it be that the dung generates heat?”
“Me granddad said it was because there’s nothing richer than the dung of a horse fed on grain.”
“Dung heaps do generate heat, though. Sometimes they combust. Perhaps this flower enjoys heat from above and below.” The man didn’t roll his eyes, because one didn’t do that to a nabob wearing a velvet jacket.
“What are these flowers?” Jemma asked. He had a bucket of tall, showy flowers that resembled bluebells, but with heads the color of violets.
“Don’t touch those,” the man barked.
“You are speaking to a duchess.” Elijah’s voice was all the more commanding for being utterly even.
“They’re some sort of pisin.”
“Pissing?” Elijah asked. “A pissing flower?”
“Pisin!” the man said, annoyed. “Dead Men’s Bells, they’re called. And they’re pisin!”
“Poison,” Jemma supplied. “And yet they’re so beautiful. Do you grow them for an apothecary?”
“A doctor. He takes whatever I grows. Some sort o’ medicine he’s cooking up.” The old man gave a sudden cackle. “Don’t mind taking his brass but I’ll be slumgubbered if I’ll take any o’ his medicine!”
“Surely it doesn’t kill by the touch,” Elijah said, his voice still sounding annoyed.
“For all I know, you’ll reach down an’ eat one,” the man said stubbornly. “There’s chillen have died o’ that. You can die even from drinking the water one of these has been sittin’ in.”
“I’ll put bluebells down the dining room table,” Jemma decided. “We’ll take at least half of those, if you please, James,” she told the footman.
Elijah plucked a few of the nodding bluebells. “They’re the perfect color for your hair,” he said, looking down at her. He tucked them on top of her ear. “Your hair is the color of…something yellow. I’m not very good at compliments.”
“Egg yolks?” she said cheerfully.