The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,86

Flood looked immensely gratified.

Captain Stanhope went into paroxysms of delighted laughter on account of one particularly poorly embroidered bee. “The eyes!” he choked, shoulders shaking. “Look at the eyes! I can’t stand it!”

Flood blazed red. “I can pick it out and try to fix—”

“Don’t you dare,” her brother protested, wrapping one arm around her and pulling her into an embrace. “I adore him. I’m calling him Clarence.”

“Most bees are female,” Flood reminded him, even as she blushed and ducked her head.

“I’m calling her Clarence, then.”

Agatha had given Flood a new volume of poetry—one of the sonnets was about queen bees—and had received in return a very small, very beautiful pot of green glass. When she raised the lid and sniffed experimentally, she inhaled the scent of lemons and honey and just a hint of warm bread. It was sharp and sweet and strong and Agatha had to fight the urge to scoop it into her mouth and devour it like a sweet-toothed child snatching frosting from an untended cake.

Flood was watching her, smiling shyly. “It’s one of Miss Coningsby’s balm recipes,” she said. “Do you like it?”

Agatha dabbed her fingers in and spread the balm onto the rough spots of her hand and the warm skin of her wrist; it sank in at once as that luscious scent swirled around her. “I love it,” she responded softly. Her own pulse beat rather unsteadily beneath her scent-drenched fingertips.

Penelope’s smile was so dazzling Agatha had to look away in self-defense—just in time to take note of Eliza and Sydney, gazing meaningfully at one another over a book of madrigals the girl had just unwrapped.

Sydney reached out and touched the back of her hand with just a fingertip; her lips curved teasingly . . . then Captain Stanhope’s belly laugh rang out again and the two young people pulled away from one another.

Agatha quashed a sigh. It had been months, now. More than time to have a proper motherly talk with her son about how his courtship was progressing. A flash of memory warmed her and had her smiling softly. She’d resented her own parents’ interference when she was his age; she had much more sympathy with them now, from the vantage of mature perspective.

Her mother would be laughing at her, Agatha knew.

Well, at least one Griffin could find happiness with the person they loved. Agatha was doomed to pine for the foreseeable forever, but there was no reason her son should do the same.

She managed to snag Sydney by the elbow as everyone else trooped to the dining room for dinner. “I have something for you,” she murmured.

Sydney stopped and tilted his head. “You already gave me a gift.”

“So I did, but indulge me.” Agatha reached into her pocket and pulled out her silver wedding band. It gleamed hopefully in her palm when she extended her hand to her son. “You might like to take this as well. To keep handy. If you can think of someone who might be inclined to accept it.” She smiled expectantly.

Sydney’s lips tilted up, just as she’d hoped, but his smile gleamed much more falsely than the silver. “I don’t believe I’ll be needing a ring, Mum,” he replied softly.

Her heart ached at his words. “You don’t think Eliza would have you?”

His face tightened even more. “We’ve decided . . .”

Agatha waited the space of five whole breaths before her impatience got control of her tongue. “You’ve decided what?”

“We’ve decided not to get married.” The words came out all in a rush, as if Sydney were trying to shove the incriminating sentence out the window before the constables came in and caught him with the evidence.

Agatha stood there, shocked.

Sydney tried to leave, but his mother’s hand shot out quick as a striking snake and latched onto his coat sleeve. The ring tumbled to the wooden floor and chimed a protest.

“What do you mean, not to get married?” Agatha hissed through a clenching jaw.

“Mrs. Griffin?” Eliza stepped cautiously toward them down the hall. “Is everything alright?” She spotted the bright ring on the floor and bent to pick it up.

Sydney froze. Eyes wide, mouth flat, poised on the edge of a precipice, with a long fall threatening.

Agatha bit back a thousand different harsh words.

Eliza turned the ring back and forth, then raised her eyes to the Griffins, twin statues on the parlor threshold. After a moment, she held the ring out to Agatha—slowly, as though confronting some kind of wild beast liable to turn feral at any