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English
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Published:
2024-10-16
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The Cornflower Conundrum

Summary:

Charlotte returns from the picnic at Heyrick Park with a sprig of cornflowers and much to consider.

A wordless missing scene as part of Drabbletoberfest.

Notes:

Partially inspired by @BilberryLane and her amazing description of AC’s “saunter” down the hill to the picnic as “a little slutty.”

A little Tuesday drabble while I for real work on a longer piece--there's an outline! And three partially complete and wholly disconnected scenes!

Work Text:

The cornflowers presented a conundrum. Several conundrums. Charlotte decided to tackle the most practical and least troubling one: what to do with them.

Upon packing up their picnic, she had carefully wrapped them in a handkerchief and placed them in her reticule. For reasons she did not want to interrogate at the moment, she had tried to do so without him noticing, stealthily stowing her goods while he helped Augusta fold a blanket. Very little escaped the sharp eyes of one aspiring spy for the Spanish resistance, however, and Leo watched with ill-concealed glee as Charlotte tucked the posy away.

And now here she was in her bedroom at Trafalgar House, later than ever for the fair, but far more concerned with the fate of a sprig of blossoms than she was about making her way to the beach. In the quiet of her room she could admit she had not wanted to leave Heyrick today. It had been an afternoon out of time, the warm sunshine preserving the moment in its own golden amber. She had felt easy for the first time in far too long.

“This has been the best afternoon I can remember,” Leo had said. And Charlotte could not entirely disagree.

The four of them had whiled away the afternoon in desultory conversation, she and Mr. Colbourne entertaining the girls with more tales from antiquity, Leo asking a thousand questions about every plant, insect, and rock, all of which her employer answered with surprising knowledge and patient humor. Charlotte called him Dr. Linnaeus and he laughed as his eyes widened again in surprise. Even Augusta had deigned to give a reading of a few short poems with dramatic flair.

And perhaps, Charlotte admitted to herself, she had not been entirely at ease, too aware of the man seated next to her, each of them somehow drawing closer each time they shifted, their bodies unconsciously leaning toward one another. For a mad moment, she had imagined resting against his shoulder, letting his warm strength support her as she grew drowsy from the soporific effects of sunshine and fresh air.

She jerked her thoughts back to the practicalities of preservation. There was no stillroom in a town establishment like Trafalgar House, and she couldn’t very well march into Mrs. Wheatley’s domain and use Heyrick’s for her tiny cluster of blooms. The color would fade in the direct sun of the windowsill, to say nothing of endless inquiries from Alison. Pressing would have to do.

Charlotte withdrew the cornflowers from her reticule for what had to be the tenth time that day. On the return to town from the estate, unsettled by his easy gallantry and searching gaze, she had found herself stopping every so often to look at the blossoms, twirling them in fingers that still faintly tingled from where his hand had brushed hers. They even smelled slightly like him–fresh clover mixing with just a hint of peppery spice.

Charlotte closed her eyes in private mortification. This was the second time in as many days she found herself dwelling on Alexander Colbourne’s scent. Focus on the task at hand, she admonished herself, studiously ignoring the fact that the task at hand was preserving a keepsake from her far too handsome, far too intriguing employer.

She plucked a few sheets of blotting paper from a drawer and carefully arranged the leaves and blooms, trying and failing to push away thoughts of him strolling down the hill towards them, towards her. He moved with languid grace, at his ease in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat. And then that glance when he agreed to Leo’s pleas to join them. The almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgement that conveyed whole paragraphs of meaning, that he’d listened to her, that he thought her words and insight valuable, worthy of consideration and action. And underneath it all, a certain heated surprise.

It was madness to keep the flowers, but maybe there was some magic in their curative properties. Because as disquieted as Charlotte was by the events of the day, she could not help but feel something in her, something in all of them, might have started to heal on this golden summer afternoon.

Charlotte carefully pressed the blossoms into a book before forcing herself to hastily change and pin up her hair, her thoughts already racing past the beach, across the cliffs, and up a long drive to what tomorrow might bring, confusion and conundrums be damned.