She made her way beneath an exorbitant monstera, was only momentarily sidetracked by a collection of small hanging flowers she was sure were Clematis repens, then managed to duck beneath the larger palms and potted bushes, only to see that her query was nowhere to be found. She slowly crept around the perimeter of the room, dodging under vines and branches and leaves as she looked for gangly stems with heavy flowers, circling closer and closer to the center of the room.
A long, soft creak interrupted the humid silence.
Saffron crouched beneath an aggressively pointy palm and peered across the room to the door. She saw nothing but the faint waving of a disturbed frond. If Berking had entered the room, there was no way he’d only disturb just one palm frond.
A familiar figure stepped from behind a sheath of leaves, and Saffron let out a huff. “Do you have to be so stealthy?”
Alexander whispered, “Did you find it? You’ve been ages.”
“No luck in here.”
“Do you think it could be in the garden outside?”
Though the notion of searching through the bushes in the dark was not a pleasant one, Saffron agreed that it was possible, considering aconite seeds required cold treatment prior to germination. She should have thought of that before, but it hadn’t occurred to her that Berking might be working with an immature plant.
Saffron didn’t speak again until they were well out and away from the conservatory, where they once again agreed to split up. Saffron took the back, Alexander the front.
She considered the organization of a typical English garden. Surely Berking wouldn’t have planted something so dangerous close to the kitchen garden where his cook might accidentally pick it. No, it would be far away. She started toward the darkest corner, furthest from the kitchen door. Saffron squinted into the black of the dense foliage and began her search.
Half an hour passed, revealing nothing more than a few long-forgotten garden ornaments half-covered in natural debris and a handful of rather nice tulips that an overgrown boxwood obscured from view. Her stockings were stained and torn from crawling about on her hands and knees, and her fingernails were doubtless similarly ruined. The ceaseless wind smarted against her cold ears. Saffron sat back on her heels with a huff and pushed aside a lock of loose hair. Hopefully Alexander had discovered something in the front.
Just as Saffron resolved to find him, a ringing clang broke through the ambient rushing of the wind. Saffron’s heart stuttered as the sound of the gate opening followed, then the rumble of an automobile and the crunch of gravel. Headlights flashed along the far side of the hedge. Saffron pushed through the bushes and dashed to the side of the house, pressing her back against the wall.
The engine cut out. Saffron searched the darkness for Alexander. She saw no sign of him, which was a mixed blessing. The driver wouldn’t see him, but neither could Saffron.
Gravel crunched as feet moved forward on the drive. A long silence followed. Just as Saffron moved to make for the gate, lights flared suddenly from within the house, illuminating the small lawn Saffron had just set her foot onto. She leapt back with a gasp, pressing her back to the cool stone of the building again. Her eyes searched the garden. Her partner was still nowhere to be seen.
There were no good options. She could move along the back or front of the house and pray that Berking wasn’t looking out any windows. She could make a run for it, counting on that she likely could run fast enough to not be caught, but risk being exposed.
She took the last option and sped back into the garden beds, shoving past a bush into the line of cypress trees all the way to the wall. Saffron picked her way through, suddenly grateful for the wind disguising her movements through the shrubs and trees. She made it to the end of the length of the wall and crouched to hide beneath the low hanging branches of a weeping pea shrub, whose fringed leaves tickled her face. No noise had come from the house, and with any luck she would make it to the gate and out without notice. But what if she didn’t come across Alexander? What if he’d gone to find her and was stuck in the bushes, too?
There was not a clear path along the wall. Several cypress trees hugged it to the extent that Saffron could not maneuver behind them. Just as she’d wiggled her way past the last in the line, her foot became tangled on something and she fell roughly on top of something that definitely wasn’t a shrub.
Before she could shriek out her dismay at suddenly being pulled to the ground, a hand smothered her mouth. Relief overtook her at the sight of Alexander’s dark eyes searching her face in the faint light seeping through the leaves.