As a gardener, Merrilyn Parkham-Smythe, was happy to be called a wallflower. Wallflowers were tenacious, long-blooming, colourful and reliable plants, easy to care for as long as they had a fair share of sun. Like them, Merrilyn had no objection to providing background to the showier and more troublesome ladies of Society. She did object to being slighted and bullied by those highly-praised blooms and their male counterparts.

The gentleman next door, for example. What a pity such a fine looking man was such an ass. He had damaged her garden and insulted her. He richly deserved what he had coming. Didn’t he?

Sir Darius Finchwater hadn’t meant to offend the lady next door. He had acted on an assumption. He should have checked. And when he found out, too late, what he had done, he should have made a charming apology. Sometimes, when embarrassed, his tongue betrayed him. He was much better with reptiles than with people.

He could think of a better use for those perfectly shaped lips than to hurl abuse at him. Since he couldn’t be in her presence without thoughts that were inappropriate in the presence of an innocent lady, he had to ignore her. But would she ignore him?

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Extract from The Blossoming of the Wallflower

Dar was breaking his fast on bread and cheese in his uncle’s bed chamber. Uncle Jacob, still looking tired and frail, was nonetheless much improved over yesterday, when he had suffered a session of chest pains which the doctor, hastily resummoned, called angina pectoris.

By the doctor’s command, he was eating gruel, though he grumbled life was not worth living if he had to eat such pap. “I am only doing this because I wish to live long enough to see you married to that lovely girl next door.”

“She might not have me,” Dar warned.

“Ask her, lad,” Uncle Jacob advised. “Don’t leave it until someone else finds out what a treasure she is before you say anything. Perhaps she will say no, though I do not think so. I have seen the way she looks at you. But perhaps she will say yes. Perhaps, if you fail to ask, you will live with regret for the remainder of your days.”

He stared straight into thin air and Dar had the impression he had stopped thinking about Merrilyn or even about Dar. That he was looking into the past and seeing the inexorable march of the years. “Perhaps she will die before you ask, leaving you to wonder whether, if she had been married to you, you might have kept her safe.”

Had Uncle Jacob once been in love? Dar had always thought him a curmudgeon who had chosen to remain a bachelor. Yet the longing in his voice would appear to argue otherwise.

Uncle Jacob broke the silence that followed with a sharp look and the remark, “Perhaps someone else will snatch her up before you have the chance.”

Quite right. Dar had to ask her. The time was not yet—he had more courting to do first. But he was determined to ask. “Yes, Uncle.”

A knock on the door proved to be the butler, asking if Dar would step below stairs.

“I did not want to say anything in front of Lord Finchwater,” he confided as he and Dar descended to the kitchen, “but the maid from next door is here, and very distressed.”

Dar hurried his steps.

Sure enough, the girl was pacing back and forth wringing her hands, while Dar’s servants tried to comfort her. “I must talk to Sir Darius,” she kept repeating.

“I am here,” Dar told her, and she burst into tears.

“They have taken my mistress,” she sobbed. “She went out into the garden early, and she never came back inside. She is gone, sir.”

A moment of weakness was not permitted. Time enough to give into his feelings once she was safe. “Who are they? Who has taken her?”

The maid shook her head. “It must have been those men from the other day,” she insisted. “Nobody saw nothing.”

What of Dar’s footman, who had been set to watch the back gate? Dar had been maintaining an around-the-clock watch since the villains first tried to get into the house. He turned to his butler to ask for someone to be sent to the back lane to check on the footman, but one of the other men hurried into the kitchen, checked at the sight of Dar, then strode towards him.

“Sir! Fred has been hurt. I need help to carry him inside. Someone hit him over the head and tied him up.”

Dar nodded to the butler. “Get the doctor,” he commanded. “I will pay his fee. Have the man carried in on a board in case he has injuries we cannot see. I am going next door. Whoever did this has abducted Miss Parkham-Smythe.”

As he left, he heard the footman explaining how he had searched when the man he had come to relieve was not in position, and had found him shoved into a wood shed at the side of the lane. At the moment, that was not Dar’s concern. Finding Merrilyn was.