The air in the glasshouse, usually a comforting balm of humid warmth and earthy scents, felt suffocating.
For two days, a silence as thick and impenetrable as the London fog had settled between Beatrice and Alistair.
After Finch’s tearful confession, Alistair had erected a wall of ice around himself, his face a mask of grim preoccupation. He worked with a feverish, silent intensity, his movements clipped and precise, his gaze never once meeting hers.
Every attempt Beatrice made to breach the chasm was met with a curt response or a pointed turn of his back. He was shutting her out, and the rejection was a physical ache in her chest, sharp and persistent.
It felt, to her agonizingly over-active mind, like the deepest form of regret.
He regretted their kiss. He regretted their partnership.
The breakthrough they had shared, the thrilling sense of becoming a single, brilliant mind, had been an illusion.
Now, there was only the cold, hard reality of his distance.
She sat at her workbench, sketchbook open to a half-finished rendering of the Cymbidium’s delicate labellum. Her charcoal stick felt heavy and useless in her hand.
How could she capture the flower’s beauty when all she felt was a hollow ugliness inside? She watched him across the aisle, his broad shoulders tense as he adjusted the ventilation slats.
He was carrying a burden, she could see that much. But his refusal to share it felt like a deliberate act of cruelty, a clear statement that she was not, and never would be, part of his world.
Her suspicions about Finch and the secretive shipments festered, now tangled with the raw hurt of Alistair’s rejection.
Was he involved? Was that the source of his torment?
The thought was a venomous whisper she tried desperately to ignore.
The sharp, authoritative rap at the glasshouse door shattered the tense quiet. Both of them started, their heads snapping toward the sound.
Mr. Finch stood there, his face the colour of bleached parchment, his hands trembling so violently he could barely hold the door handle.
“My lord,” he stammered, his voice a dry rasp. “You… you have visitors.”
Before Alistair could demand who, the doorway was filled by a figure whose presence was an immediate violation of their sanctuary. Lord Davies, dressed in a perfectly tailored riding coat of bottle green, stepped inside.
His lips were curved in a smile that was all predator, though his eyes performed a pantomime of grave concern.
Behind him, two formidable-looking men in severe, dark coats stood sentinel—Bow Street Runners. Their professional impassivity was somehow more menacing than any open threat.
“Blackwood,” Davies said, his voice oozing a false sympathy that set Beatrice’s teeth on edge. “Forgive the intrusion. A matter of some urgency has arisen.”
Alistair straightened to his full height, his posture radiating a cold, dangerous fury. “Davies. What is the meaning of this? You are not welcome here.”
“Alas, my welcome is not the issue,” Davies sighed, gesturing with a gloved hand toward the officers.
“These gentlemen have received a… shall we say, a credible tip. Concerning certain undeclared goods being moved through your estate. As a fellow peer and a concerned citizen, I felt it my duty to accompany them, to ensure everything is handled with the utmost discretion.”
Discretion.
The word was a lie, a poison dart aimed directly at Alistair’s reputation. Beatrice rose slowly from her stool, her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs.
She saw the flicker of something in Alistair’s eyes—not surprise, but a dark, chilling resignation.
He had been expecting this.
“A tip from whom?” Alistair’s voice was dangerously low. “You, I presume?”
Davies gave a theatrical shrug. “The source wishes to remain anonymous. You understand. Now, the information suggests the contraband is concealed somewhere… secure. Somewhere private.”
His gaze swept the magnificent glasshouse, lingering on the rows of exotic specimens before landing, with pointed significance, on the secluded alcove that housed their joint project.
“Somewhere like this.”
The senior Bow Street Runner stepped forward, his expression grim. “My Lord Blackwood, we have a warrant to search the premises. I must ask you and the lady to stand aside.”
Beatrice felt a tremor of disbelief.
This was impossible. A preposterous, malicious fiction spun by a jealous rival.
She looked to Alistair, expecting a full-throated denial, an order for these men to be thrown from his land. Instead, he simply gave a stiff, formal nod.
“Do what you must,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. He turned his head slightly, his gaze finally finding hers.
In their depths, she saw a storm of emotions she couldn’t decipher—anger, regret, and something that looked terrifyingly like defeat.
He gave a minuscule shake of his head, a silent command for her to stay quiet.
But how could she?
This was her work, too.
Her name, her future, was tied to this room, to the very flower they were about to desecrate with their baseless accusations.
The Runners began their search with a methodical, dispassionate efficiency.
They moved through the glasshouse, their heavy boots scuffing the stone floors, their presence an affront to the delicate life teeming around them.
Beatrice watched, her fists clenched, as they peered behind pots of giant ferns and lifted tarps from bags of soil. Davies hovered near the entrance, observing with an air of sanctimonious piety.
“A terrible business,” he murmured, loud enough for Beatrice to hear.
“To think the Blackwood name could be associated with common smuggling. Brandy, silks… goods from France, I’m told. Utterly treasonous, if true.”
France. The word hit Beatrice like a stone.
The foreign coin she had found near the docks… had it been French?
Her mind started racing, connecting disparate, troubling details. Finch’s terror. The hushed argument with the sailor.
The crates arriving in darkness. And Alistair’s recent, impenetrable silence.
A cold dread began to seep into her bones, chilling her far more than the morning air.
The search narrowed, inevitably, to their workspace.
The Runners approached the staging area where the Cymbidium Beaumontia-Holloway resided in its dozens of propagated pots. It felt like a violation of something sacred.
One of the men knelt, running his hand along the floor beneath the long workbench. He paused.
“Here, sir,” he said, his voice flat. He knocked on a section of the stone floor. It returned a hollow echo.
Using a small crowbar from his satchel, he pried at the edges of a large flagstone. With a grating scrape, it lifted away, revealing a dark, recessed compartment beneath.
Beatrice’s breath caught in her throat. She had worked in this spot for weeks and never suspected a thing.
From the hole, the two men heaved a small, rough-hewn wooden crate.
It was unmarked, bound with simple rope. They set it on the floor with a solid thud.
“Well, well,” Davies breathed, stepping forward. “What have we here?”
The Runner pried open the lid.
The interior was packed with straw, but peeking from within was the unmistakable sheen of deep blue silk and the dark, amber glint of a glass bottle.
He pulled out a bolt of fabric, letting it unspool onto the dusty floor—a river of exquisite French silk, shimmering under the angled light of the glass roof.
Beside it, he placed a bottle of Courvoisier brandy.
The evidence was damning. Irrefutable.
And it had been found directly beneath the orchid that had become the centre of her world.
Beatrice’s gaze flew to Alistair.
His face was a pale, rigid mask, his jaw clenched so tightly a muscle jumped in his cheek.
He looked trapped. Guilty.
And in that horrifying, heart-stopping moment, everything coalesced in her mind with the terrible clarity of a scientific proof.
Alistair’s secrecy.
His sudden wealth of resources to fund their accelerated research. His strange relationship with Finch.
His cold withdrawal after their kiss hadn’t been regret—it had been the fear of a criminal on the verge of being discovered. He hadn’t been protecting her; he had been protecting his secret.
He had used her.
He had used their project, their shared passion, their brilliant discovery, as a cover for a common smuggling operation.
Her presence, her legitimate botanical work, was the perfect distraction, the perfect excuse for late-night activity and unusual shipments.
The intellectual connection she’d treasured, the vulnerability she thought she had seen, the kiss that had promised a future she hadn’t dared to dream of—it was all a lie.
A calculated deception to facilitate his crimes.
The world tilted, the vibrant green of the glasshouse blurring at the edges. The man she had defended, the man she had begun to trust, to admire, to… The thought died, choked by a wave of nausea.
“Alistair Beaumont, Earl of Blackwood,” the head Runner declared, his voice ringing with grim finality. “I am charging you with the smuggling of contraband goods and conspiring against the Crown’s revenues.
And you, miss,” he said, turning his cold eyes on Beatrice, “given your intimate involvement with this project, your name will be included in the official inquiry. You will be questioned at length.”
Her name. Implicated.
The dream of presenting to the Royal Society, of saving her family, of earning her father’s pride, didn’t just shatter—it burst into flames, turning to ash before her very eyes.
She was not the brilliant Miss Holloway, botanical pioneer. She was the foolish, gullible accomplice of a criminal Earl.
“This is a setup, Beatrice,” Alistair said, his voice low and urgent, taking a step toward her. “Davies has framed me. You must believe me.”
But she couldn’t.
The evidence was right there, lying on the floor between them: the silks, the brandy, the ruin of all her hopes.
She looked at him, truly looked at him, and saw not the complex, wounded man she had come to care for, but a stranger.
A liar. A betrayer.
All her worst fears about the arrogance and duplicity of men like him, fears she had allowed herself to forget, came rushing back with the force of a tidal wave.
She flinched back as if his touch would burn her.
The hurt on his face was sharp and clear, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Her own pain was a blinding, all-consuming force.
“You used me,” she whispered, the words tasting like poison on her tongue. “All of it. Our work… it was all a cover.”
“No,” he insisted, his voice raw. “Never.”
But she was no longer listening.
She saw only the smug, triumphant smirk on Lord Davies’s face and the damning evidence at their feet.
The trap had been sprung, and as she stood amidst the wreckage of her dreams, Beatrice Holloway knew with a certainty that broke her heart that she had been caught in it, too.
And the man who had set the bait was the one she had foolishly, impossibly, begun to love.