Love Among the Spices Read online

  She had not meant her words to imply she was not in society, nor to pretend that her father's place in society did not exist. Her words, however, might give such an impression to the young man beside her, whose relief seemed to grow more assured by the minute.

  "Then I suppose we may converse about beetles quite freely," he replied. "Now that we have made all the proper gestures of pretend."

  His fingers closed around the shiny insect, pulling it forth from the mealy wood. Its legs churned slowly, as if attempting to propel itself free of this human grip.

  "This," he said, "is a common woodboring beetle, as you know. I rather think his presence means we have more things in this log–teeming with all sorts of life beneath its bark and rotting wood. Wood beetles and worms, perhaps a lizard, and quite an interesting array of fungus on the outside."

  As he spoke, he drew a glass jar from within his creel, along with a pair of narrow tongs. He popped the beetle into the jar, then began brushing aside the surface of rotting wood.

  "Let me help," said Marianne. Her fingers peeled back the dead bark, little caring as a shadow of damp black debris scattered itself across her skirt.

  "You need not, Miss Stuart," he said, hastily, "I am quite willing–"

  "As am I, Mr. Nimbley," she interrupted. "There is no need for you to have all of the sport in hunting for natural specimens." She dropped the rotting bark shell, the surface behind it exposed as an intricate pattern of crawl tunnels across the wood, a long centipede racing for cover on one side.

  "Look," he said, his tongs closing gingerly around it before it could escape. "Another jar, Miss Mar–Miss Stuart," he corrected himself, hastily.

  "What kind is it?" she asked, holding out a narrow glass bottle as he dropped the centipede inside. "He has such striking colors–so orange upon this side–"

  "I have a rather more interesting one at home already," he answered, inspecting it through the glass. "I have a bit of rotten stump in a large jar in which the little creature lives quite comfortably. A specimen larger than this one, so I should be obliging and return it, I suppose." He tilted the jar to allow the multi-legged insect to scurry to safety beneath the rotten debris at the foot of the stump.

  "And what of the beetle?" inquired Marianne. In her thoughts, a beetle from her garden came to mind, one whose imprisonment in a jar in her room had caused great anxiety for the house maid Dill a few years before.

  "Oh, he is a specimen worth my study," the young man answered. "I shall return him in a few days' time." Whistling softly under his breath, he poked the tongs through the spongy wood in search of any more discoveries around the beetle's burrowing place.

  "If you would be so obliging, Miss Stuart, then please help me pull aside some of this moss–yes, like so–for there is something beneath it I feel quite sure." His fingers brushed hers in the action, causing the awkwardness from before to appear in his voice and manner.

  There was no such fluster on the part of Marianne's countenance, however; her fingers swiftly peeled aside the delicate fibers of green, revealing a moth pressed beneath, its folded brown and white wings resembling the diseased bark of the stump.

  "Here it is," she exclaimed. "A common enough insect, but–oh, he's taking flight." Her hands tried to clasp the winged insect as it sprang to life now that its cover was removed, carrying itself swiftly towards the stump's recesses. Marianne sprang after it, her fingers clapping closed around it–bringing a shower of dead wood splintering down on her head as her fists struck the crumbling wood within.

  "Careful, Miss Stuart," admonished Nimbley. "Here, place him in a jar if you wish, but I think you needn't fear his escape."

  "But he is my first specimen of the day," she protested. "I shouldn't like him to fly away before I at least have a chance to look at him. Look at this bit of bark to which he was clinging. It's the same pattern as his wings, now isn't that worth my trouble to see?"

  The young man laughed. "I see you have your first lesson in nature's adaptations," he said. "Clever little creatures, which our Creator evidently designed to blend with their surroundings. In this case, tree bark, but there are more kinds with other means of disguise, you know."

  "I have seen the caterpillar whose spots are like another face," said Marianne, thoughtfully, "but I had never seen the clever moth before. For me, it is something entirely new." Her voice held a note of admiration as she raised the jar towards the light filtering through the trees, watching the brown and tan wings flutter against the piece of bark almost identical in color.

  After a moment, she lifted her hand and let the moth flutter past her fingers. It took flight, hurrying a short distance away to alight on a new tree as she watched it go.

  There was silence for a moment, for Marianne's mind was drifting elsewhere with the moth's movements, as if upon a current of vivid thoughts of bright insect wings and glossy shells. Young Adam Nimbley was silent also, although his thoughts and gaze were not entirely occupied with the moth, as a shrewder observer than Marianne might have determined.

  "Well," he said, softly, after a moment, "shall we continue with our search?" With this query, he placed his hand on the stump again, where the wood was splintering apart near the top.

  "Yes, indeed," Marianne answered. Her hands moved quite close to his own as she crouched near him, intent upon the task at hand.

  For the next half hour, they pulled apart the rotting wood in search of further signs of insects. They found signs of white, writhing wood worms, of termites crawling about like large ants, of a fat salamander whose slick belly bore evidence of consuming the population of this rotting stump. Nimbley popped several of the white worms into a jar with a bit of wood, then traced the insect path imprints left on the wood using a page from Marianne's little book and soft lead pencil.

  As for Marianne, she pressed him to take some of the little cap toadstools crawling along the base of the stump when he told her of the beautiful shapes of fungus beneath the lens of the microscope. She pulled bits of moss and strange sickly-looking fungi from the surface of the bark and wrapped them in some of the rags in his creel for future study. Her fingernails were blackened with grime, her hair filled with bits of moss and wood sponge, but she did not care. It was glorious, the promise of things hidden in the depths of the dead tree's crevices and tunnels, the unexplored log laying just a few feet away from where they now crouched. Not to mention the promise of such extraordinary sights as only the lens of a microscope afforded when a piece of moss or an insect's winged form was placed beneath it, something Marianne was anxious to see.

  She parted from Adam Nimbley only when he consulted his watch in favor of his own tea time; and even then, with the understanding that they would continue on the following day before she could be persuaded to quit at all.

  Hurrying through the trees, she paused at the memory of her nature journal, forgotten on the rock near their specimen site. Hadn't she better retrieve it? For surely Mr. Nimbley had not thought of it, and she could not bear to have it ruined from the damp.

  When she returned, there was no sign of the young man, his creel and hat gone from their resting place beside the stump. Marianne moved swiftly to the open book, lifting it as the pages fluttered, open to blankness unfilled by her words or drawings. Her fingers brushed the jagged paper edge exposed from the blank page Adam Nimbley had torn out for his etching, the image in her mind of his earnest face, smudged spectacles sliding forward as his green-grey eyes concentrated upon his work. Although there was certainly nothing inappropriate in such a thought, she reasoned, as she felt a faint blush on her own cheeks.

  Swift steps carried her past the duck pond, scattering good Mrs. Greerson's geese in a flurry of motion as she cut through the midst of the flock. Gathering her skirts higher, Marianne ignored the seeds and sharp edges on the overgrown meadow grasses, the splintered edge of wood threatening to tear her muslin dress as she clambered over the field gate.

  The Miss Bartons were already at tea in the cottage drawing
room, with Miss Eliza pouring a cup for the Reverend Townbury as Marianne burst in from the hall. Skirts streaked with dirt, hemline brown and wet from where she slipped while crossing the stream's rocks, evidence of nature clinging in bits to her hair and apron.

  For a moment, she was frozen in place at the sight of two strangers–the reverend and his wife–seated at formal tea with her hostesses, although there remained in her memory a fragment of speech from Eliza about two guests from the Rectory. Catching her breath and remembering her manners, she curtseyed. Upon Miss Catherine Barton's face was an expression of deep concern.

  "Miss Stuart," she gasped. "Are you–are you quite well?" Beside her, Miss Eliza's grip upon the teapot trembled noticeably.

  "Quite well," Marianne answered, a trifle breathless. "I am sorry to enter unannounced. I shall go freshen myself after such a long walk." With that, she backed carefully into the hall again, disappearing from view so that the only remaining evidence of her presence was two damp footprints upon the rug. A sound in the hall of swift footsteps, no doubt Marianne taking the stairs two at a time.

  "Oh," said Miss Catherine, the word emerging as a soft, dismal cry from her throat. "I suppose–I hope that everything is–that Miss Stuart has not had a fall?" She ventured a glance in Miss Eliza's direction, as if pleading for help.

  "It is very damp today along the roads," said Miss Eliza, in a doubtful voice after a moment of reflection. "Is it not, Mr. Townbury?"

  "Indeed it is, Ma'am," he answered. And nothing else was said upon the subject.

  *****

  "Do you admire my blue-bottle fly?" asked Adam Nimbley. "I was rather intrigued by his size when I found him busy 'round the carcass of a dead raven this morning, so I brought him along."

  The fly was among the specimens already contained in Nimbley's creel when he met Marianne in the woods. A jar with a series of half-grown tadpoles swimming in murky water from the stream, a pale green Mantis clinging to a water oak branch.

  "He is rather noisy," said Marianne, peering through the glass surface. "I think you should let him go, for surely we will find something worth having more than a common fly."

  "I think you are too impatient in our work," he answered, with a soft laugh. "We have turned over a half-dozen rocks and already peeled back much of the bark from this fallen log and found nothing more promising than a handsome large spider." As he spoke, he removed his eyeglasses and wiped them clean with a handkerchief from his pocket.

  Marianne was sitting upon said log, balancing the creel on her lap. There was a smudge traveling across her cheek from the mud beneath the rocks, but she had waved away the proferred handkerchief from Nimbley in favor of allowing it to remain.

  "I shall have to wash it off before tea anyway," she explained, "for I gave the Miss Bartons rather a fright when I returned so disheveled yesterday. I had forgotten their guests and my entrance did not give them the impression of a proper young woman." The only concessions Marianne had made today was to leave her hair pinned up properly and wear her third best afternoon dress despite the risk of the forest's mud.

  Adam Nimbley had glanced at her more than once as he lifted the shell of a large green beetle, to which several worker ants were clinging in the process of carrying it away in bits and pieces. His gaze was shy, flickering away again towards any distraction which afforded itself handy.

  "If we should at least find another chrysalis–or perhaps a caterpillar in the process of weaving himself one. Wouldn't that be better than a mere blue fly in a bottle?"

  "I did not see one," Adam answered, "although I found something equally interesting. Pity it was not alive, poor creature, for I found it on one of the stream's rocks. It's in the box beneath the jar of red mushrooms."

  Marianne withdrew small box, lifting the paper lid to view the contents within. It contained a deceased dragonfly, its legs folded inwardly as its beautiful wings tapered outwards in perfect curves.

  "He's lovely," she said. "What splendid colors. It's far more beautiful than any pin or brooch in the windows of a London shop."

  "Do you really think so?" he asked, curiously. "I would suppose any young lady would admire a pretty ornament more than an insect's corpse."

  Marianne did not reply as her fingertips carefully turned the dragonfly to catch the light. "I think the colors in his wings are worth looking upon far more than the diamonds of the explorers from Africa. Even the little ring Lucy Easton–that is, Lady Sanford," she corrected herself upon afterthought, "– has from a stone in Africa is not so beautiful."

  "Lady Sanford," he repeated. "Then you have seen the Sanfords and Eastons in London? Quite splendid at balls and parties is the former Miss Easton. A very fine family indeed."

  Marianne laughed. "I have known the Eastons all my life. Although it was not until my sister Flora's marriage that they were my family in more than feeling." She placed the lid on the box again.

  "Then you–are related to them?" Adam's voice exhibited a slight tremor. "Lady Flora Easton–Lord Easton's wife– is your sister?"

  "Why, yes," Marianne answered. A funny smile appeared on her face as she surveyed his shocked countenance. "What does it matter?"

  His face flushed deeply. "Only that I did not know," he answered, in a low voice. "That is to say, I did not realize whom I was addressing."

  Marianne's face flushed with comprehension. "Then it makes a difference to you, to know that I am part of society?" she asked.

  His eyes were averted from hers, voice stammering in reply. "Of course it does. Your connections, your family–it would change my manner of speech to you, of course. How could it not? If I had realized it, I never would have addressed you in such a fashion as this."

  "Because it does not matter to me what I am," Marianne answered, a trifle coldly. "And I do not wish to be treated differently by anybody because of some very silly rules of station." She shoved the box into the creel and slid down from the log, seizing her basket and nature journal as she walked away.

  "Miss Stuart," he called. "Please, wait–" The words were in vain, since Marianne did not turn back, her stray curls flouncing as she disappeared in the direction of the duck pond's field.

  He waited a half-hour for her return, leaning anxiously against the log as he peered through the trees. But tea time came and went, and there was no further sign of Marianne.

  Nor was she here the next afternoon when he returned, hopefully, his creel shouldered with a supply of empty jars waiting for samples of nature. He wandered over the same grounds where he had met the young girl, the wooded stream and the large tree stump turning to ruin beneath the bracken and branches, without catching sight of a muslin skirt fluttering ahead or a long curtain of dark curls unshielded by a bonnet.

  As for Marianne, she returned to the Miss Bartons' cottage, cheeks crimson with indignation. She did not care about Adam Nimbley's social standing even if he was a local farmer’s son and therefore beneath her in the eyes of Mrs. Fitzwilliam and others–and Marianne felt keenly that he should not care about hers in the sense of thinking of her as above him.

  "It was of no consequence to him when he did not know," she muttered, "with no connection whatsoever in the making of our acquaintance. Why on earth would he spoil it all by caring about something so silly as my sister's marriage?" Head held high, she pushed open the field gate to the Miss Barton's lane instead of climbing over it as she had before.

  "Are you not going for a walk today, Miss Stuart?" asked Miss Catherine. "You have been out almost every day since you arrived, so it seems uncommon to find you in the morning room. I hope you are not indisposed, my dear?"

  "Not at all," Marianne assured her, although the emotion in her tone was not the typical warmth or fervor of one of Miss Stuart's replies. "I have merely walked everywhere I wish around the village and have no place left to explore. So I am content to sit at home." With a little shrug of her shoulders, as if indifferent to the subject of strolling outdoors.

  "There is a lovely path near
Bayberry Cottage," suggested Miss Catherine. "Such lovely trees and a whole row of currant bushes along one side. Such a place might suit you indeed and it is but a mile of easy walking."

  "Perhaps so," answered Marianne. "I thank you for the mention of it, Miss Catherine." But instead of taking up her bonnet, she took up a little book on the life of Napoleon which her father had not known was concealed in her luggage. Doing her best to give no thought to the charms of the young man's microscope which had engaged her thoughts previously, nor the curiosity of what interesting specimens he might find without her present.

  It was difficult, but she succeeded in half-forgetting about him by the sheer stubborn will which had allowed more than one strong-minded Stuart to persevere against unlikely odds.

  Marianne did not walk out anymore on her visit to Kent, nor was she absent by any feigned excuses from the polite invitation to drink tea with Mrs. Greerson or the card party at which Lady Celia of small fortune and grand title was introduced to her with such pride by her hostesses. Another two days and she was persuaded by such a case of homesickness to return to London in the company of Miss Eliza Barton's maid, where she was received with some relief by Sir Edward after a long and lonely silence in Evering House.

  As Miss Marianne had chosen to write nothing of Mr. Adam Nimbley in her letters home, no inquiries were made, anxious or otherwise, when she returned to London. And since neither Miss Barton nor Miss Catherine Barton had remembered mention of him, the subject did not trouble the family at home.

  Chapter Four

  "If you will kindly straighten your formation, dear ladies, we shall begin. And one, two, three, one two three..." As this count concluded, so moved the feet of the Honorable Mrs. Ashford in the fashionable steps of the waltz, sans partner. Per her instruction, a row of polite young ladies showing evident manners of being novices in society copied those steps as best they could manage.