Rose Gardner's Florist (The Providence Street Shops #2) - Bonnie Dee Page 0,34
do to help, you must let me know.”
“For now, I ask only that you arrange an appointment with your solicitor.”
“Perhaps she might feel more comfortable talking with him at your place than at his office,” Will suggested. “I will arrange something for tomorrow after the shop is closed.”
“That would be perfect. Good night, Mr. … Good night, Will.”
After ending the call, Rose hugged herself and twirled amidst the ferns and flowers. She had a beau! Not the sort she had ever expected, but a kind and chivalrous gentleman. She wanted to sing out her news to the world, but must be content to hold the happiness bubbling inside her.
She went upstairs to inform Candace about the upcoming meeting to find the flat already filled with delicious cooking odors. Candace seemed determined to earn her keep by cleaning and cooking before Rose got to either task. The meals she made from simple ingredients were delicious.
But best of all were the sinfully delightful desserts concocted from chocolate so dark it was like black velvet on the tongue.
They had but a moment to discuss the solicitor before Arietta arrived direct from work in a patched dress with a few chicken feathers adorning the shoulders.
Rose introduced Candace as Violet, not knowing what her sister might do if there was a reward involved for news of the missing Sweet girl. Arietta managed the greeting politely enough before announcing, “I’m starved. Are we havin’ supper?”
Candace assured them she had already eaten, then excused herself and went downstairs, allowing them time alone.
“How are you feeling?” Rose enquired. “Not queasy I hope.”
Arietta patted the slight bulge of new life visible when her dress pressed against it. “Naw. Fit as a fiddle and ‘ungry as ‘ell. Mum says that’s a sure sign of a boy.”
“Sit then, and I’ll—”
Before Rose could make the offer, Arietta already occupied a chair and had begun serving herself a bowl of stew.
Rose sat and watched her sister dig in, her own appetite subsiding. “Is your intended happy he might have a son?”
“Gus says this’ll likely be our only kid as he’s gettin’ on in years. He don’t mind that it’s another chap’s or that I ain’t a virgin, which is ’ow I know he loves me,” Arietta said. “What luck, eh?”
This was perhaps the most pitiful part of Arietta’s thinking, the manner in which she assessed Gus as a worthy partner for her entire life. Rose wanted to enquire about the boy who had gotten her pregnant, but it seemed there was no point in it now. Instead, she asked, “How do you feel about Gus? Do you love him?”
“I like ’im well enough, an’ that’s better. We’ll get on like people do, and I’ll be livin’ in comfort so…”
Arietta’s pragmatism sounded exactly like Mum’s, and Mum had made the mistake of marrying Raymond Gardener and falling in love with gin.
“You done right well for yourself, ain’t ya?” Arietta took a look around the flat, Rose having already shown her the shop after letting her in. “Good for you, Rosie. Don’t let Mum and Dad bleed you dry. You know they will if you let ‘em. Already tried to get Gus to loan ‘em money, the greedy blighters. And they won’t pay a lick for my weddin’. Gus ‘ad to cover that.”
“Speaking of the wedding. Are you ready to try on the gown? I chose one with tucks at the waist to hide your condition.”
Rose brought the dress out from her bedroom. Arietta gasped at the sight of the shiny pink satin dress, gaudier than Rose would have chosen, but she knew her sister’s taste.
“Cor, I’ll look like a bleedin’ princess in that! And I can wear it at any parties the officers throw in Inja.”
Did Arietta understand a sergeant was not on a par with commissioned officers? There would be no ballrooms in her future. Rose held her tongue.
As Arietta tried on the gown and Rose showed her how she might arrange her hair, it felt as if they were sisters in the truest sense of the word. The bickering and fisticuffs of their childhood belonged to Spitalfields. For the moment they might behave as friends without the pressure of living together in tight quarters.
After Arietta removed the dress and Rose placed it in a tissue-lined box, her sister asked, “What about you, Rosie? Do you never feature yourself wed to some chap? ’Ave you been romanced by many?”
Rose thought of William, but replied, “A few, but there’s never been a lad I