Miss Maple: Solving Murder Mysteries in the Countryside After My Banishment (Patreon)

01. Welcome to Bellflower Woods

The cottage was—quaint, Maple supposed, as all cottages surely were. Still, it was private and quiet; surrounded by the expansive grounds of the Foxglove Hollow Estate.

This was the Old Groundskeepers Cottage, which had been converted to a guest cottage back in Maple’s maternal grandfather’s youth. It was a one and a half room building with a small sleeping loft. In this case, the ‘half’ room was a late-addition water closet that had been added when the cottage was renovated. It was built of stout limestone, local to Bellflower Woods, with a thatched roof, a small portico surrounding the front entrance, and a stone bay window with vaulted casements. There was a bit of moss growing in the thatch, which suggested to her that the thatch would need attention soon.

“Your luggage was delivered this morning, Miss,” the woman who’d picked her up from the train station explained.

Her name was Adele Lockheed and she was the property manager here at Foxglove Hollow Estate, where Maple would spend the next year rusticating. She was of middle age with a soft, friendly face. She was dressed neatly in a mustard colored utility suit with a pleated skirt and a tidy jabot affixed with a cameo brooch. Her graying hair was put up into a smooth bouffant with the rest in a net snood. She was, perhaps, the only person in the entire county who knew Maple’s real identity.

“I had one of the girls come down from the big house to tidy up and put a few simple groceries in the kitchen for you. I’m given to understand that you will arrange your own meals, but I thought you might want a few things in place when you arrive. I’ll be sending someone around for your laundry at the beginning of every week and someone will come to tidy up at midweek,” Mrs. Lockheed continued as they entered the building.

Inside, the cottage was furnished secondhand from the Big House’s castoffs. The main floor consisted of a sitting area in front of a big hearth with a small kitchen and pantry tucked under the loft. Some of the cooking clearly happened in the hearth because the mantle had a swinging pothook that could be pushed into the fireplace and had a kettle dangling from it. There was a big wingback chair in front of the hearth with a small padded footstool in front of it. Someone had filled a nearby basket with throw pillows and a crochet blanket. There was a big round rug that took up most of the floor in the sitting area and Maple recognized it as one that she’d spilled tea on in one of the guest suites when she was visiting her grandparents as a small child. The curtains were thick and matched nothing else in the room. Every wall was lined in bookshelves that had been newly filled with the majority of what she’d brought with her to this exile; books upon books upon books. Every book she’d bought and had to put off reading was now lining the walls of the cottage.

“Oh good,” Mrs. Lockheed sighed. “She had time to unpack the crates. They probably aren’t in any particular order. My girl was racing a rainstorm when she was working out here, but we wanted to break up the crates before you arrived. The planks and straw lining are probably in your woodpile for firestarters. Will you be needing a firestarter?”

Maple held up a finger with a small blue flame hovering over it. “I’ll manage, Mrs. Lockheed, thank you.”

“Oh, fancy,” Mrs. Lockheed praised her, but then sobered. “Try not to flash that around too much in this neighborhood. The locals have nothing but boys here and so every eligible girl gets their background picked to pieces as they try to make sure she isn’t someone’s cousin. There haven’t been many spellcasters in these parts and everyone is desperate to marry one in. I’ve spread it around that you’re my niece, but the story might not hold up if all the local mothers band together to get you married to one of their sons. They wouldn’t usually cooperate, but having a talented witch settle down here permanently could be considered a collective win.”

“Imagine their surprise when they met their prospective in-laws?” Maple murmured and added, “You’re not concerned that any of them would recognize me?”

“No, Miss,” Mrs. Lockheed sighed and cupped her cheek. “You didn’t mix with the village much when you visited her ladyship as a little girl and you’ve, ah, grown up considerably since then. Even your hair changed tone a bit. No one expects the presence of a Duke’s daughter to not be announced.”

By ‘grown up’, Mrs. Lockheed meant that Maple had been a fat, freckled child with carroty red hair and unsettlingly catlike yellow eyes. Women in her mother’s line tended to be on the ugly side as children and would then improve as they developed into young ladies. Maple had slimmed down in the middle now that she was an adult, but she was still prone to accumulating extra weight—it just happened to be in places where men liked to see it. The fashionable silhouette was thinner and boyish right now, but Maple’s hourglass shape never went fully out of vogue. Her hair had darkened to a deep auburn as she got older and her freckles were kept at bay with the constant use of sun lotion even in the winter months. Her eyes had been huge for her face when she was little, but now they were in better proportion with the rest of her features and were a luminous shade of gold.

Maple pulled her gloves off, finger by finger, as she took in her surroundings.

There was a sleeping loft situated over the tiny kitchen. Once accessed the lift by means of a small staircase that had been made out of storage shelves, which mostly contained firewood and the aforementioned firestarters. It was spring so she wouldn’t need to use the hearth as heavily as she would when the winter came, but she’d probably need it at night for a while yet.

Bellflower Woods boasted a mild climate since it was located in Eldenvale, the southernmost county in the Eisnach Duchy. Most of Eisnach was bitterly cold. Their only export was monster parts, weapons technology, and iron. With its comparatively mild climate, Eldenvale was the breadbasket of Eisnach. ‘Comparatively’ was the operative word in that sentence. The nights could get dangerously cold, even in late spring. Even the summers here were not that hot, which was why Eldenvale’s second income stream after agriculture was tourism.

As if sensing Maple’s wandering thoughts, Mrs. Lockheed ventured to say, “Your room is still available in the main house. The cottage is well-insulated and protected from wandering animals, but I’m sure your Lady Mother didn’t mean for you to take her words this close to heart.”

“Trust me when I tell you that my mother means what she says exactly in the way she said it,” Maple replied. “The terms of my penance were made clear and I agreed to them. Will you bear the consequences in my place if my parents come to check on me and find me somewhere other than where I was supposed to be?”

For context, Maple was the youngest child and only daughter of Leonard Blackthorne, the Duke of Eisnach and the Protector of the North. His children didn’t get the option to become spoiled, useless nobles who could always count on their parents’ forgiveness.

What did the north need protecting from, might you ask? Monsters. The answer was a near endless tide of monsters.

The nation of Valerion comprised four grand duchies and Eisnach, the northern duchy, was hemmed in on most sides by the Ashtide Mountain Range. The Ashtides were the former home of a reclusive order of magi, who worshiped an evil deity and constantly tryied to open a portal to welcome their evil deity into this world—that is, until they all blew themselves up.

No one fully understood exactly what it was the damn fools had done to themselves, but all of Valerion now had to live with the consequences. Reality was unstable in the Ashtides now and things could pass through the mountains from other worlds. Sometimes these things were intelligent travelers who crossed the astral sea on flying boats to share their mystical knowledge and magical craftsmanship with the people of Valerion. Most of the time the things were angry, panicked creatures who’d wandered out of their natural hunting ranges and into what, from their perspective, was either a strange and frightening place where everything was an enemy or a land of endless bounty where they could eat anything that moved. Those creatures had to be put down fast, before they established a breeding population because they almost always showed up in packs.

Maple’s father had only recently retired from his military responsibilities. It was rare for a Duke of the North to live long enough to retire, but he’d managed it. That was the sort of person whose orders Mrs. Lockheed was suggesting she subvert and, if it had just been her father, Maple might have even tried it. Her mother, the Duchess of Eisnach, Amalfia Blackthorne nee Sterling, was an entirely different beast.

Maple’s mother was the only daughter of the Count Eldenvale and would have been the next Countess Eldenvale when Maple’s grandfather died a few years ago, except her role as the Duchess of Eisnach superseded her inherited title. The operations of Eldenvale County had been temporarily folded into the governance of Eisnach until one of Maple’s many, many older siblings emerged as a viable (and willing) candidate.

Under any other circumstances, Maple would have been installed in the guest apartments at Foxglove House without a second thought, should she have had a reason to live in Eldenvale for any period of time.

These were not ‘any other circumstances.’

“I’m meant to be incognito while I’m here. How long do you think it will take the village busybodies to put the pieces together if a red haired, golden-eyed girl takes up residency in Foxglove House?” she asked Mrs. Lockheed, who deflated.

“This is well beneath your dignity, Miss,” she sighed in defeat.

“Yes, well,” Maple said primly, “That was rather the point.”

02. A Bath and a Ridiculous Book

Mrs. Lockheed shrank and nodded. “Your mail will come to the house,” she said to change the subject. “I’ll have one of the girls bring it to you here, if you don’t mind them combining that errand with the daily trip to check the wellhouse?”

“Unless it’s marked as urgent, they may bring it when convenient,” Maple said dismissively. She noted her empty trunk sitting to one side of the sitting room. “I see my clothes have been unpacked. Please pass my thanks to your girls.”

“Of course, Miss,” Miss Lockheed said and only just stopped herself from curtseying.

She shouldn’t have done that under any circumstances, according to strict tradition, but the Duke’s family got extra respect in the North because so many of them ended up being fed into the meat grinder that was the Ashtide Front. Citizens could ignore that in the south, but small and medium monsters were known to slip the borderguard’s net and appear as far south as Eldenvale—the terrestrial ones, anyway. The fliers could get into every corner of the continent, but they were seen most often in Eisnach so the Northerners had a special bond with their Dukes that other regions did not often have with their territorial lords. Maple’s father might have retired to the Capitol, following an injury bad enough to force him to retire from the front, but he was still the Guardian of the North even if his area was council chambers now, rather than the battlefield.

Mrs. Lockheed fussed around for a bit longer, showing Maple where they’d laid in a store of fresh eggs, jam, bread, air-cured sausages, and pickles for her use. Maple had sent a supply of tea ahead with her luggage and the girl who aired out the cottage had taken the time to load some into the cottage’s tea tin. Once she was certain that Maple couldn’t go hungry, Mrs. Lockheed made excuses to triplecheck all the window latches and the wardstones. Now, the cottage was located on the well-protected grounds of the manor so a terrestrial monster wasn’t going to get anywhere near here and Maple didn’t have the heart to tell her host that if a flying monster arrived, she was going to shoot it out of the sky rather than hide inside the cottage and wait for the militia to assemble. She might have been raised as a lady and a scholar, but no Blackthorne child made it to adulthood without killing at least one monster all on their own.

Eventually, though, it got dark enough that even the fussy older caretaker had to excuse herself to the main house and Maple was left by herself. She kicked off her shoes, fell into the wingback chair, and exhaled gustily. Finally, she had some quiet.

It had taken her three days of nonstop travel first by train and then by stagecoach to reach Eldenvale. The drive to Bellflower Woods took her through Eldenvale’s pastoral wine country, which would have been much more pleasurable if she hadn’t been filthy from several days of minimal bathing in train cars and public toilets. She’d promised herself a bath, first thing when she arrived at the cottage, but all she wanted to do was sit down now that she had arrived.

There was a bath available, she was pleased to note, which sat to one side of the hearth. It was a large copper tub that was taller than it was wide. There were wooden steps set into the wall to help a prospective bather enter the water. Inside, there would be a wooden insert with a stepstool on one side for a bather to sit on. Maple estimated that, when full, the water would cover her to the chin. She recognized the style as traditionally northern, meant to be sat upright in for a soak. Southern people liked a long, shallow tub that they could lounge in. This tub was currently full of stray cushions, throw blankets, and linens; all of which could be easily tossed out before it was used.

As the sun set, the temperature dropped and eventually Maple was forced to get up from her comfortable seat. She pointed a finger at the fireplace, which had already been laid with everything necessary for a hearty fire and shot a dart of fire at the little cluster of dried straw and old newspaper that had been crumpled under the logs for a firestarter. Bless the maids up at the Main House. Maple did not think she could have forced herself to lay her own fire, as tired as she was. Her brief rest had not rallied her energy.

The logs caught without resistance and soon the circulating charms on the walls distributed the warm air to every corner of the cottage. Then she went to the tub and went about the process of emptying it of its contents. There was an inset wicker basket holding it all, so she only had to lift it out and brush out any dust that had accumulated at the bottom of the basin. From there, she used a water catchment spell to fill the tub. The water she received was clear and icy cold, so it likely came from the aforementioned well house.

This, here, was a nice benefit to leaving the city. You couldn’t use convenience spells like that without risking pulling from someone’s graywater tank or the city sewers. Catchment spells pulled from the largest body of water within a certain radius and it was hard to tell what that would be in a dense urban environment. Big houses like her father’s town house had huge rooftop and underground cisterns to combat this problem, but other places in the city weren’t so lucky.

Maple still tested the water just to be sure with a purification charm and found it to be clean enough for bathing in. Normally, she would have heated the water with magic too, but she started to get a headache when she cast the purification charm. She sighed to herself and admitted that, yes, she hadn’t been sleeping or eating as well as she should have, lately. That negligence was now showing up in her mana reserves.

So, instead of heating the water all at once, Maple rotated the now incredibly heavy tub a half-turn so the large loop of pipe attached to the tube that had previously been tucked against the wall now stuck into the fireplace. She turned a nozzle at the base of the tub and let water flow into the recirculating pipe. The external piping was connected to a coil set in the bottom of the tub, underneath a wooden insert. The fire would heat the water in the pipe and, eventually, the rest of the water in the tub too. Thermal circulation charms carved into the interior of the tub would hasten the effect, but she’d still have to wait for her bath to heat up.

Maple went to the valise she’d brought with her on the train. It contained her cosmetics, her spare shirts for travel, and the other necessary comforts of travel. It also contained the ‘travelers tin’ that had been her steadfast companion during her university days, when she was obliged to live in the dormitories and was not allowed to hire personal staff. She, like most university girls who could afford it, bought little metal tins and paid at the local taverns, restaurants, and sometimes households to have them filled with whatever was being served that day. Maple had had the opportunity to stop by the Three Little Birds Taphouse, which was located right next to the Stagecoach landing, and have her tin filled with a bit of their daily special; three savory onion, beef, and root vegetable hand pies wrapped in wax paper to keep them off the sticky toffee pudding that took up a third of the tin. She took the whole thing and pushed it into the hearth, just shy of the fire, to heat up. Likewise, she filled the empty cast iron kettle with water and swung it into the fire.

With her tea and dinner settled for now, Maple took herself up into the loft where her clothes had been stored in a wall of cabinets that took up the entire end of the loft opposite the stairs. The doors were painted a pale sage green and trimmed with white flowers. Inside the cabinets, she found her clothes had been hung up neatly and arranged by season. Her shoes were neatly lined up underneath. The bottom bank of cabinets hid recessed drawers, which were filled with her underpinnings. Maple took out her rabbit fur house slippers with a small wedge heel and her quilted silk dressing gown, with a set of thick ivory flannel pajamas to wear underneath.

She stripped out of her wool suit to get the business of undressing over with and put on the ankle length dressing gown, rather than put fresh pajamas on her dirty body. Her hair had fared about as well as the rest of her, in that it looked fine until she took it down. Once she combed it all out, her curls hung limp and dull down her back.

The bathwater was ready by the time she got downstairs and she was able to fish out a pitcher of warm water to wash her hair in the kitchen basin. She gave her body a bit of a pre-wash too with a wash cloth to take off the worst of her travels before she went to soak. It was a fight to not fall asleep in the warm, clean water. Once she’d soaked a little, she got out again to do another scrub over the kitchen basin. It took her another round or so of soaking and scrubbing to finally feel clean enough to put on her pajamas and go retrieve her dinner from the hearth.

When she opened the tin, she found the wax paper had caught in places but the hand pies had warmed through and the stick toffee pudding was soft. She wrapped the tin in a spare towel and went to eat in the wingback chair in front of the fire to let her hair dry a little before she put it up for the night. She also selected one of the books she’d brought with her, ‘Midnight Roses and The Prince’s Cursed Kiss.’

The cabin had some with a bookstand of the kind that usually held a hymnal for Evensong Prayers, but would have to suffer the burden of Maple’s less than divine reading material. She set her book on the stand and opened it to the first page.

Rain hammered against the vaulted windows of the ballroom hard enough to sound like a standing ovation, but the mood inside was hardly celebratory. Lightning spiderwebbed across the sky and flashed bright enough to overpower the soft candle light inside and cast hard shadows across the floor from every attendee, followed by a harsh boom of thunder.

Lady Seraphina Vale stood beneath the chandeliers in a gown the color of spilled wine, trembling with the effort it took not to faint onto the polished marble floor. Across the ballroom, the Crown Prince watched her with an expression that a poet might compare to the storm outside…

Maple read her book until she ran out of dinner and, to her surprise, her stomach gurgled for more. She’d chosen a heavy meal on purpose, but in retrospect she realized she hadn’t had much to eat today other than what was the tin. She vaguely recalled getting some tea from the beverage cart on her last train, but they’d been out of meals and she’d had to make do with a few thin pastries. Lunch had come and gone while she was still on the stagecoach and the station vendors hadn’t been open yet when she made the transfer from train to stage, so she hadn’t been able to bring anything with her.

She made herself another mug of tea, this time with extra cream and sugar, before she went rooting around in the supplies that Mrs. Lockheed had left her. Among the various tiny pots and pans she’d inherited from previous occupants of the cottage, Maple found what looked like an abnormally large round spoon on a long, twisted iron handle. She held it up at eye level and greeted it, “So we meet again.”

The girls in her dormitory fought bitter wars over use of the common room’s egg spoon, which was not so much a spoon as it was a small useful pan meant to quickly cook single servings over a live fire, such as a fried egg or a cup of milk for cocoa. Their dormitory did not have anything like a shared kitchen, so any meal they took outside of the dining hall or a restaurant was cooked in their common area. None of them had wanted to buy their own egg spoon. They were expensive, for one, and it would have gotten stolen immediately, for another. So, instead, they just argued over use of the one they already had that was chained to the hearth so it couldn’t wander off.

“The reward for going quietly into my exile is my very own egg spoon,” Maple sighed aloud, but also took it to the kitchen basin for a scrub and an oiling, before she used it to fry an egg. She used its sister implement, a matching toasting fork, to toast some bread. Thus armed with an egg toast and milk tea, she returned to the trials and tribulations of Lady Seraphina Vale, who had surely never had to even touch an egg spoon or fry her own eggs in her entire life.

…Lucien descended the marble staircase with slow, deliberate steps, black military coat trailing behind him like a funeral veil. Rumor claimed the royal curse had turned his blood to poison. Rumor also claimed that every woman he kissed died within the month…

Notes:

Please don’t harbor any hopes that Maple’s reading material will improve. It won’t. It will all be irredeemable garbage. Let her eat her trash in peace.

03. The Flower Shop

Maple woke the next morning and considered, just a minute, not getting out of bed at all. The sun wasn’t up yet. Her bed had a good mattress made of cotton, wool, and horsehair with steel springs and a goose down pad on top. Between that, the down comforter, and multiple layers of fine knit blanket toppers, she had gone to sleep cradled in a cloud of warmth. By comparison, her breath condensed on the chilly morning air when she exhaled and her nose was so cold that it actually hurt.

When she rolled over in bed to peer over the ledge of her sleeping loft, she realized she’d done a bad job of banking the fire last night. It had gone out, rather than burning down to embers. She sighed, threw the covers back, and reached for the robe she’d laid across the foot of her bed.

The first order of business was getting a new fire going. It would warm up later, once the sun rose, but Maple guessed from the darkness outside her window that that wouldn’t be for another hour or so. Not to mention, she needed hot water for tea and a fire to cook her breakfast with.

Once the fire was crackling again, she treated herself to another chapter of her book as the kettle heated. Lady Seraphina Vale had been forced to marry the cursed Prince Lucien Auremont and had endured the humiliation of being fitted for a whole new wardrobe and jewelry collection to befit her status as the new Crown Princess. They hadn’t kissed yet, but they had done just about everything else up to that and a few things past it, although you could not call their marriage ‘consummated’ yet. Well, it was still the first quarter of the book and there were four sequels. The author had to save something for their readers to look forward to.

The teakettle began to whistle just as Prince Lucian pushed his new Princess against a wall and accused her of being a spy for his stepmother, the Dowager Empress.

Maple put the book aside and went to brew herself a pot of tea. She made herself another egg toast to go with it and then toasted an additional bit of bread for jam. Later, she was going to have to take a few more of her school tins out of her valise and pay to have them filled with more rounded meals. It was difficult for a mage to get fat or stay that way, but a diet of only bread, eggs, and tea would leave her bloated after a while.

She ate her breakfast and read about Lady Seraphina’s plot to prove her innocence by sneaking into her husband’s study. This went, predictably, pear-shaped when he came back unexpectedly and found her in his letter box. Things weren’t looking good for Lady Seraphina.

Once she’d eaten and warmed up the cottage, the sun was beginning to rise and she acknowledged that it was time for her to rise with it. This was the country and they kept country hours here. The market opened early and ran out of things fast. She had some errands to run in town and, if she wanted to reach the butcher while he still had bacon, she’d need to dress now.

Her sage suit still needed airing out and probably several rounds of cleaning charms before it stopped smelling like a train station, so she chose a faun colored twin sweater set with a dickey collar and wide-legged evergreen corduroy trousers that were long enough to hide her utilitarian rubber-soled felt boots. Given the hour, she didn’t bother with taking her hair down from her rag curls and, instead, covered her hair with a green silk paisley scarf tied in a jaunty offset bow in front.

Lastly, she went to her valise and opened it. At first glance, the bag seemed empty except for the puddle of odd darkness in the center of it. Maple ignored that, plunged an arm inside and groped around until she found the small stack of old tins she’d stored in there (washed and nested neatly together) almost eleven months ago, following her graduation. Since then, she’d been living in the family townhouse where the kitchen never closed, since her parents and their staff kept odd hours by necessity. She also found her old straw market bag, which was a stiff-sided tote with a sturdy oblong bottom and long handles that could be looped over one’s shoulder.

Thus armed, she collected her pocketbook and her good woolen coat. She set out into the chilly, dawn air to see if the Bellflower market had gotten any bigger since she saw it last.

Short form answer; no, it had not.

Bellflower Woods was a small village of maybe two hundred year-round residents, three hundred if you counted the surrounding farms and the nearby wellness resort further up river from the village. The village was supported mainly by the wine trade and people passing through on their way to the resort, but also by people who had business at Foxglove House. Maple’s second cousin lived in his own small barony, which commanded most of his attention since he owned nearly half of the farmland that supported Eisnach Duchy. He still made time to hold court a few times a month for petitioners whose cases couldn’t be handled by local magistrates or to hear taxation and infrastructure complaints and those petitioners would come through Bellflower Woods to spend a little money.

That meant there was one grocer who also sold dry goods, one butcher who did double duty as a fishmonger when there was fish to be had, a bakery, the taphouse that doubled as an inn, and a tiny booksh—Maple drew up short as she realized that the tiny storefront wedged between the baker and the grocer was no longer ‘F. Barnes Fine Books.’ The shop had been painted pond blue and stunning displays of spring flowers spilled out from the interior into the street. The hanging sign over the door now read ‘Eldenvale Floral Co.’

As she stared, a young woman emerged from the darkened interior of the shop, lugging a heavy basin of pre-made bouquets in water. She was blonde, a bit on the short side, and facing away from Maple. She was wearing a blue floral wrap dress and a set of cherry-red peeptoe slingbacks. When she turned around to shove the basin into place, she revealed her sweet, heartshaped face. She had wide blue eyes, lightly flushed cheeks, and dollike rosebud lips. Maple was certain that she’d seen this woman’s identical twin sister in an advertisement for face powder.

The woman spotted Maple, smiled, and gave her a friendly wave. Maple realized she’d been caught staring and waved back before continuing on her way to the Three Birds Taphouse.

Mrs. Goode, the hostess, greeted her as soon as she stepped inside. “Miss Maple!” she called out from behind her counter, with a jaunty wave. “I thought I might be seeing you again today. How were the pasties? I was afraid they were a bit stale by the time you came around. I usually feed the day's leftovers to my boys, who will eat just about anything too fast to taste it so I wasn’t being as careful about keeping them covered as I am during the day.”

“They were excellent, Mrs. Goode,” Maple reassured her. “I heated them in my fire and they refreshed beautifully. I hoped I might prevail on you to fill a few more tins? I’m not much of a cook and my cottage has no stove or oven.”

“I think we can manage,” Mrs. Good agreed with a chuckle. “Today’s menu is river eel pie and mash with parsley gravy, steak and kidney suet pud, onion and bacon pasties, and blind scouse with red cabbage and roasted beetroot. For sweets, we have jam roll and baked apple custards.”

Maple handed over her tins. “I’d like the blind scouse, pasties, apple custards, and could I have half of these tins filled with breakfast? I can do an egg and toast at home, but not much else.”

Mrs. Goode thought about it. “Well, now, I could do you up a kedgeree with white river fish and frizzled onions, a rarebit pot that you could finish with an egg at home, or a chimney scramble with cut sausages and potatoes that you would also need to add your own egg to.”

“The rarebit pot and the chimney scramble, please,” Maple decided. It wasn’t that she didn’t like fish, but white river fish could have a smell that lingered and smoking it didn’t help. She did not like the idea of eating them anywhere she would also be sleeping. “What do I owe?”

“Five shilling per tin, three for the breakfasts, comes to thirty-two,” Mrs. Goode chirped as she swept up the tins. “I take half now and the rest when you collect. I’ll need an hour or so for the breakfast tins since we don’t have that ready.”

“I’ll come by for lunch and collect them then,” Maple said and she counted out the coins from her pocketbook. She could afford to take her time in the other shops. Her market bag had the same storage magic as her valise and connected to the same space. She excused herself and went to peruse the other shops.

The grocery was owned by a nearby farmer and thus unmanned during the weekday mornings, when he and his family were occupied with the animals and fields. One paid on the honor system through a slot in a latched box. She bought some fruit, nuts, and sweet potatoes to bake in the fireplace, more cream for her tea, and a box of homemade ginger biscuits. The butcher had plenty of smoked bacon and was happy to sell her some. She bought a crusty sourdough loaf at the bakery, since the bread in her cottage was already running low, along with a small pound cake.

Shopping complete, she found a bench that caught a little crossbreeze from the flowershop and carried the scent of flowers to her. She pulled her copy of ‘Midnight Roses’ and settled down to have a nice outdoor reading session.

Lucien stood in the doorway, still wearing his formal black uniform coat, rain glistening across his shoulders. Two imperial guards lingered behind him before he dismissed them with a glance.

The door shut quietly behind him as he stepped inside, which was somehow worse than him slamming it. That was another unfortunate thing about her husband. Most men looked angry before they became dangerous. Lucien only became quieter.

Seraphina straightened with all the dignity available to a woman caught elbow-deep in treason-adjacent activities and said, “I can explain.”

Lucien removed his gloves slowly, one finger at a time. “That would be a refreshing change.”

Maple blinked as a half-furled rose appeared in between her face and the page. It was a lush red rose with petals that shaded into dark red at the edges. There was the slightest touch of gold at the center of the blossom, where the petals lighted and had started shading into white. The glorious perfume that enveloped her was only further proof that this was an ivory-heart rose that someone had interrupted her reading with.

She looked up, expecting to see one of the many lusty farm boys that Mrs. Lockheed had warned her about, only to find herself confronted with the Flower Shop owner.

“You came into every shop except mine,” the woman said with a smile that told Maple she was being playful and not accusatory. The gentle spring breeze ruffled a lock of her golden hair across her forehead and she tucked it behind her ear with her free hand. She cocked her head at Maple and asked, “Do you not like flowers?”