She didn’t say the last part aloud, but the wish blazed like a star inside her chest. She’d spent years hoping the garden would return to Half Moon House, but there came a point when hoping and waiting weren’t enough. The garden was out there somewhere – she knew it. And if it wouldn’t come to her, then she would go to it. It wouldn’t do to sit serenely in drawing rooms, fussing at embroidery when there were such wonders in the world. She had enjoyed studying the plants and insects in her own grounds, and had even attended some of the local horticultural shows and society meetings with her collections, but it was no longer enough. She felt a fierce rush of elation. Her father would have forbidden it, but with his death, her chains were cut, the cage door was opened. If she failed to fly out now, it would only be her own cowardice holding her back.

‘It sure is the most marvellous fun to travel,’ Rosa remarked, ‘but, you know, it does seem a bit of a shame about Eustace. He’s so thoroughly eligible. I’d marry him in a shot.’ She snapped her fingers.

‘I th-thought that you and James Sh-Sheppard seemed c-close?’

A brief shadow seemed to pass over her friend’s face, so fleeting that Beatrice almost thought she must have imagined it. The next second, Rosa gave a merry-sounding laugh.

‘An orchid hunter?’ she exclaimed. ‘Good heavens, Beatrice, I like James very much, but I have my sights set a little higher than that.’

‘L-Lord Rupert then?’ Beatrice said, naming another of Rosa’s many suitors.

She pulled a face. ‘If I married a second son I’d only get to share his courtesy title, and Lady Rupert Brannagh hardly has the same ring to it as Rosa, Duchess of Chalkley, does it?’

Beatrice knew that her friend had left a series of disappointed suitors behind her, both back in the States and when she’d recently travelled through Europe. She had famously turned down proposals from both Italian and French noblemen, and had confided in Beatrice that although she liked the men well enough, she couldn’t get past the fact that many titles on the continent were newly created, with no real heritage to speak of. English family seats, on the other hand, could normally be traced back hundreds of years, and this was a prize that Rosa had set her mind upon. If the rumours were true, she’d even rejected a Polish prince, labelling him ‘third-rate’ when compared to a titled Englishman.

The best, honey, she had often said to Beatrice. I want only the best.

Beatrice shook her head. ‘I d-don’t think such things m-matter.’

Rosa laughed. ‘Why, that’s easy for you to say. You already have a title! I tell you, I’d give anything to be a duchess.’

‘But wh-why?’ Beatrice asked. ‘Why is it s-so important?’