Pansy Turner

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Absence makes the heart grow fonder, in WIP Wednesday

In Perchance to Dream, I have nearly 17,000 words in the bucket, and have just written a scene where John is listening to his daughter in the garden and thinking about his recent visitor, with whom he has been exchanging letters.

Jane’s writing and reading was going ahead by leaps and bounds, and she also showed a flair for numbers. I suppose I shall have to employ a governess sooner or later. His mind’s eye pictured Pansy, bending over her work on that last afternoon. She would make a wonderful governess. John rejected the thought, shoving it away with something akin to horror. Even if the lady was looking for employment, which she wasn’t, he could never have her living under his roof.

Witness his frequent thoughts of that visit, of the growing desire that made him both anxious for her present and eager to avoid it, of how he struggled with lust that last afternoon as he viewed her lovely rear, neatly outlined in her woollen gown.

She is a friend, and has become a good one over the past few months. That was all it could be.

His inner self asked, snidely, So is that why you are hovering by the window instead of getting on with your work?

He had to admit, if only to himself, that he was waiting for Thorne to come back from the nearest Royal Mail stop, some five miles away by road. He’d been sent to post a letter and to collect any mail that might have been waiting.

You had a letter only a week ago, he scolded himself. She had written that she was travelling to Essex. He hoped Peter’s children were recovering. He hoped she found treasures in her new rose blooms.

His own letter carried an invitation. He was nearly ready to install the Carlisle clock tower scenes, and would be travelling up there within the fortnight. Yesterday, the town council had sent him the date for the opening ceremony. The Thornes and Jane would travel up for it, of course.

He should not hope for it. It is a long way for Pansy to come. On the other hand, it was in July, when the ton were abandoning the stinky hole that London became in the summer, and she did, after all, have a sister to visit in Galloway, only a day’s journey from Carlisle.

Against that, it was high summer, and she would be desperate to get back to her garden after the long months in London.

The clop of hooves had him crossing the room to look out at the carriage way. Thorne was home.

John drew away from the window before Thorne could see him, and busied himself tidying his work desk, and then his tray of parts. Doubtless, Thorne and his wife had figured out how besotted John had become. It was hard to keep such a secret from a man who had been his batman since he first took up his commission. John could, however, at least pretend to be indifferent.

It was a very long half hour before Thorne knocked on the door and entered.

 

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Reluctant heroes on WIP Wednesday

The Writer is an automaton built in the 1770s using 6,000 moving parts by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-Louis, and Jean-Frédéric Leschot. Some regard it as the world’s first programmable computer. In Perchance to Dream, my hero makes automata.

I’m trying my hand at an enemies to lovers trope in the next book in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale. In Perchance to Dream, my hero had shut himself away in the country. He lives in a tower, guarded by his faithful servants, the Thornes. Guess the fairy tale! Here’s John’s first scene.

Ravenham, Cumbria, May 1825

“Another letter from that Miss Turner, Captain,” Thorne reported.

“Throw it in the fire,” John commanded. Thorne didn’t comment, but put the letter into his pocket, no doubt to store it with the others.

He didn’t need to read it to know it would be another request for cuttings from the roses that rambled everywhere at Rosewood Towers. At least, he assumed that all five letters were on the same topic. Not that he’d read them, but Arial, Lady Stancroft, whose letters he did read, had said that was what Miss Turner wanted.

Or claimed to want. Arial was one of only three females in the world that John trusted. Arial, wife of his dearest friend, Peter Ransome, Earl of Stancroft. Cordelia, wife of his half-brother, the Marquess of Deerhaven. Thorne’s wife, Maggie Thorne. Presumably, the world held other good females, whom John had not encountered. Pansy Turner was not one of them. John remembered her from his time in London, eight years ago, and wouldn’t trust her an inch. Arial, who was kind and good, might think the harpy would travel all the way to Cumbria for a bunch of rose cuttings. John was sure the Turner female had other motives, to do with her being single and him lacking a wife.

“If that’s all, Thorne,” John hinted.

“No, sir. I came to remind you that you promised to take Miss Jane fishing this afternoon.”

He had, too. He cast a wistful glance at the pieces of automaton scattered across his work table. “Tell Mrs Thorne I will collect her in ten minutes,” he said. “I had better change into something old.”

Not that he had anything new. He had last bought clothes in 1818, not long before he married Jane’s mother. But Mrs Thorne would growl if he went fishing in anything that was still presentable enough for visitors. Not that he ever had visitors.

Jane was waiting impatiently when he arrived at the other tower. “Papa, I thought you had forgotten me,” she scolded.

“Hush, Miss Jane,” said Mrs Thorne, throwing him a worried glance. “Your Papa would never forget you.”

That hurt on two counts. First, that Mrs Thorne could think he would be cross with his darling girl for challenging him. Second, that the only reason he was here, as the Thornes well knew, was his standing order to remind him of any promise to his daughter. When the melancholoy was bad, he forgot everything.

“I am sorry I am late, darling girl. Shall we go and catch some fishies?”

She gifted him with a sweet smile, took his offered hand, and for a moment, his world righted.

The world held four good females, he amended, and the best of them all was Jane, who was only seven. She was something of a tyrant, but she had a good heart.

They passed the rambling manor house and walked through the wild overgrown garden to the trout stream. Jane described the fish she was going to catch, speculated on when her wiggly tooth might fall out, spelled for him the words she had learned that morning, and described the new dress Mrs Thorne was making for her, which was the same colour as the roses.

The roses reminded him of Miss Turner. Five letters! The woman was determined. He hoped the latest would be the end of it.

 

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The rose craze

Because I’m a sucker for punishment, I’ve made my latest heroine a rose breeder. Which means research into 18th century and early 19th century roses, and how to develop new varieties using 18th century methods. Which is fun, and not punishment at all.

Wild roses grow without the northern hemisphere, and have been cherished and cultivated since the beginnings of human settlement. They split into two groups, both of which have helped to form modern rose breeds.

First, and most familiar to my English gardener in 1825, are the Western roses: Gallicas, Albas, Damasks, Damask Perpetuals, Centifolias, and Mosses. These bloom once a year, in the Spring.

The Netherlands, thanks to their trading ships and geography, became great producers of all sorts of flowers. They still are. Tulips, of course, but also hyacinths, carnations, and roses. Where there were once dozens of cultivars, by 1810, a couple of hundred existed.

The French rose industry was fueled by the French Empress Josephine, who consoled herself with her garden at Malmaison after her divorce from Napoleon. Here, she encouraged breeding and hybridising, and several breeders inspired by her produced several hundred new cultivars.

The second group, the Oriental groups were newcomers to Europe between 1750 and 1824: primarily China and Tea roses. These bloom more or less continuously. Initially, they were hard to hybridise with the Western roses, and not hardy. But crosses between East and West finally happened, and by the 1830s, repeat-breeding hybrids began to appear. By the 1840s, hybrid perpetuals were the favourites of most gardeners. Experimentation continued and does to this day, as rose breeders seek to perfect colour, perfume, disease resistance, length of blooming season, size, growth pattern, and other features.

Sources:

  • https://home.csulb.edu/~odinthor/oldrose.html
  • https://archive.org/details/lesroses1821pjre/page/n5/mode/2up (this one is in French, but includes colour plates of the Malmaison roses)

Excerpt

Pansy Turner was never happier than among her roses, so her current low mood was evidence of her general dissatisfaction. She refused to call it unhappiness. After all, what did she have to be unhappy about?

Eight years ago, yes. But eight years ago, she had been a harridan in training with no friends, largely ignored by her more ruthless mother and younger sister except when they had a use for her.

She was making her way along the seedlings in her succession houses, examining the opening blooms to see if any of the offspring of her controlled fertilisation efforts had the characteristics she hoped for.

If she was in the mood to count blessings, the successions houses would be on the list.

She would ever be grateful that her stepbrother Peter had taken her in and made her part of his family. She showed her gratitude by lending a hand wherever she was needed, with the house, with the children, and especially with the garden, which had become her great joy — and roses her passion.

As well as Peter, she had three sisters: Peter’s wife Arial and his sisters, Violet and Rose. She was Auntie Pansy to the children that filled the nursery and the schoolroom, four of them belonging to Arial and Peter, and three cousins of Arial’s.

Her life was full, productive, and rewarding.

In January, when she opened the rosehips produced by her breeding programme and planted them in the succession houses, she had been full of joy and hope.

Then, Rose and Violet made their debut, being presented first at Court and then to the ton at a magnificent ball. She smiled at the memory. They had been so lovely, and had from the first attracted much attention. Pansy was so pleased and proud.

And yet… It seemed like only yesterday they were little girls, and she was the debutante, full of hopes and dreams. Her mother and sister had blamed poverty for their failure in the marriage market, but the truth was they had scuppered their own chances by being horrible people.

Pansy had made amends — was still making them. Today’s debutantes knew her only as the older sister of Rose and Violet, the one with the odd hobby of designing gardens and breeding roses. But still, Society abounded with people who remembered her as she was before. She would never truly be comfortable around them.

No. Pansy did not envy Rose and Violet their success. Their hopes and dreams though; those made her wistful. She would be thirty at her next birthday, and her time to marry had long passed. Without a husband of her own, without children, she would always be an extra on the edges of family life.

She was, she knew, very fortunate. She never needed to worry about a roof over her head. She had a generous allowance, much of which she spent on her gardens. Peter’s and Arial’s gardens, for, though Pansy had made them, she did not own them.

It made no difference. She was guaranteed a free hand; given all the labour, materials, tools and building she required. She was also appreciated. Arial, a busy mother as well as an investor and owner of a number of businesses, said she did not know what she would do without Pansy.

She was needed. It was enough. It would have to be enough, and this maudlin patch would pass.

She bent to examine another of the new blooms; the hybrid children of rosa centiflora and rosa mundi, whose lovely vari-coloured white and magenta she hoped to replicate in other shades. None of her babies had the yellow tones she had been hoping for.

True, some of the plants were worth keeping for another season, and growing on to multiply by making cuttings. But none of the dozens of hips she’d harvested for seed and the hundreds of plants she’d planted had produced the blooms she had seen in her mind’s eye. Perhaps that was the reason she felt so low today.

Here were the centifolias, beautiful in shades of pink and cream. She had hoped for a deep pink. A friend of her brother had given Arial a bunch from his garden that was the exact shade she had in mind. It had, impressively, survived in water on the long journey from Cumbria where the man lived to their home in Leicester. But when she asked him for cuttings, he did not reply.

She had, in fact, sent four polite letters and had received not a single acknowledgment. Which was rude. Her misery flared into irritation. She should write to him again, and tell him exactly what she thought of him.