Merrilyn Parkham-Smith

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Spotlight on The Blossoming of the Wallflower”

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.

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Tea with the donors

This is a piece of description from The Blossoming of the Wallflower. The Venetian Breakfast is a significant event in the past for Caroline Warfield’s character, Belinda Westcott. Her Wallflower story is coming out in December.

I’ve made it an event in my story, too, and what will happen next will focus my hero’s mind on romance.

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He returned upstairs to his valet, who was on his mettle, since Uncle Jacob and Dar were going to the Duchess of Haverford’s Venetian breakfast, and the valet had never before prepared his employer for an event with such an august hostess. Dar shared the valet’s excitement, not for the same reason. Miss Parkham-Smith was also invited.

But would she attend after her upsetting morning? He wanted to rush next door and check, but then he would be late for the breakfast, and what if she was going after all? She would be, he was sure. Miss Parkham-Smith was no wilting violet. 

It was a benefit event, with the price of the tickets going to help one of the duchess’s many charities, but Dar had been told to take a full bill-fold, for there would be raffles and contest to separate the guests from more of their money in order to support the cause.

Miss Parkham-Smith would not miss the opportunity to help others, he was sure.

Haverford House was outside of London up river, a twenty-minute carriage ride from Mayfair if the roads were quiet and in good repair. The second was true, but the first—half of polite London seemed to be on the road that afternoon. It was a good forty minutes before they turned into the great courtyard formed by the main house and its wings, but Miss Parkham-Smith’s carriage had been within sight for most of the journey, so Dar was able to be patient.

Indeed, the ladies were descending from their carriage when Dar and Uncle Jacob arrived, and by mutual consent, they hurried to offer their arms, Dar to Miss Parkham-Smith and Uncle Jacob to Mrs. Olsen.

Several footmen hurried from Miss Parkham-Smith’s carriage down the steps to the mansion’s basement, carrying large baskets. 

“Many of us have contributed to the meal,” Miss Parkham-Smith explained. “My cook has made several bowls of salmagundy. They are packed in ice in the baskets, together with jugs of salad dressing.”

They were ushered up the steps to the grand entrance and then straight through the spectacular entry hall, with its domed ceiling five storeys above, its sweeping staircases, and more priceless artwork than Dar had ever seen collected in one place before.

They went with a stream of other guests down one side of the staircase and through double doors into another more homely hall, this one with ceilings no more than sixteen feet high and sized not much larger than half the ground floor of Dar’s townhouse. 

A bank of french doors stood open to a terrace, and beyond that was a magnificently manicured garden that stretched down to the river.

Dar remembered reading that the Duke of Haverford had a pied a terre in London for nights when Parliament sat late or he lingered with his latest mistress, but that the duchess and her son, the Marquess of Aldridge, were prone to using the river, timing their travel to take advantage of the tides to sweep down to London or up river to their magnificent home.

They were both there to welcome guests, standing at the top of steps down into the garden. On the lawn at the base of the steps, several marquees made a bright splash, and men and gaily clad women strolled to and fro in the cheerful sunlight or under the shade of the trees that lined a walk down to the river.

Miss Packham-Smith sighed with pleasure. “What a beautiful garden!”

They were close enough for the duchess to hear her, and she beamed. The Marquess of Aldridge also looked pleased. “My mother redesigned the gardens when she married my father,” he said. The duchess explained, “They were in the formal French style, and much neglected, so that many of the plants were overgrown and others had died.”

“You have done a wonderful job,” Miss Parkham-Smith said. “Everything I can see from here is in perfect balance and harmony.”

“You must explore them all,” the duchess insisted. “I am so glad you have come, Miss Packham-Smith. I trust you and your companions enjoy yourself.”

Uncle Jacob said that his old legs would not carry him to every corner of the garden, and Mrs. Olsen felt that there could be no objection to Miss Parkham-Smith walking unchaperoned with Dar, given that it was in the middle of the afternoon and there were so many people. “Lord Finchwater and I will sit on that bench in the shade,” she proposed, “and gossip about all the people.”

Uncle Jacob said that was a perfect recipe for his enjoyment of the afternoon and they left Dar and Miss Parkham-Smith to their explorations.

She was entrancing in her enthusiasm, Dar decided. In fact, she was altogether entrancing. The garden was laid out in rooms, with hedges, shrubs, stone walls, pergolas and other features used to divide one small garden area from another. They walked all the way down one meandering path to the wall between the garden and the river, along the wall past the river gate, up the central path, which was equally rambling, and back to the lawn. 

There was still a great deal to explore, but the first of the raffles had just been announced, and Dar and Merrilyn—somewhere in the last hour they had moved to first-name terms—joined the queue to sign up for an enormous basket of fruit that they would have to give away if they won it, for no one could eat so much before it began to spoil.

By the time they were done, footmen were beginning to circulate with trays of drink, and tables of food had been set out in the marquees.