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Indian servant. Naresh and his wife Rania, Artemisia’s ayah , had left their sun-drenched home and followed the Dalrymples to the soggy British island out of loyalty to Angus. If ever they regretted their decision, Artemisia had yet to hear them complain.   
    “Good morning, Larla,” Naresh said, templing his fingers in a graceful greeting. He always used Artemisia’s ‘milk name’ instead of her Christian one. It made no difference to Naresh and Rania that Artemisia was a duchess and should be considered a grand, if unconventional, lady. To the humble Indian couple, she would always be Larla, the first round little white baby they’d cosseted and adored.
    “Is my father in the garden?”
    “Oah, yes, by Jove. He is gardening fit to wake the dead,” Naresh intoned in his singsong English. “He is sending me to fetch a vase for his roses.”
    “But the roses are well past their prime,” Artemisia said with despair. “He’s delusional, isn’t he?”
    “Do not let your heart be troubling. Seeing roses where there are no roses is no bad thing. Would you rather he was seeing thorns?” Naresh asked philosophically. “He is calling me by name, and I am thinking he will know yours as well. The master, he is having a good day today.”
    “Well, Southwycke’s future master is not,” Artemisia said with disgust. “Felix is passed out on the path again. Please see if you can rouse his valet and put him to bed.”
    “As you wish.”
    Artemisia continued on in the pale early light. Southwycke’s garden was not fashioned after the popular French style, each blade of grass and leaf neatly manicured. This garden grew in unruly profusion. Most of Artemisia’s visitors considered it an untidy mess, but she loved it. The rampant growth reminded her ever so slightly of the thick jungles of India, where one never knew if the next bend in the path would reveal a vine-encrusted abandoned temple or a troop of monkeys screaming through the canopy overhead.
    Artemisia heard her father before she saw him.
    “Fetch me those pruning shears. Lively now, there’s a good lad.”
    She covered her mouth in despair. Angus surely must know he’d sent Naresh away. He’d fallen to talking to himself now. Even if the words made sense in a garden, the world generally frowned upon speaking to thin air.
    Then Artemisia’s ears pricked to another voice. Her father wasn’t alone, after all. But who could be with him this early?
    She peered around a large clump of pampas grass to see who had invaded her garden.
    Bold as brass, Thomas Doverspike strolled over to her father and handed him the set of shears he requested.
    What on earth was he doing here? She’d told him to come early, but not at the peep of dawn. And she certainly didn’t want him troubling her father.
    “Thankee kindly,” Angus said. “Now just ye hold this stem still while I nip the bugger off. Got to trim it just so or the vine will run wild.”
    When Mr. Doverspike did as her father bid, Artemisia was surprised by the sudden warmth in her chest. Perhaps there was some good in the fellow, after all, if he could take time for her poor confused father. Their heads were bent conspiratorially, the dark hair and the balding pate, hunkered close together. Mr. Doverspike was saying something, but Artemisia couldn’t quite make it out. She edged nearer without leaving the shelter of the decorative grasses.
    “ . . . and so if I should say to you, ‘The tigress feeds by moonlight.’” Mr. Doverspike’s tone trended up, turning the statement into a question.
    Artemisia’s father jerked his head toward the younger man and straightened his arthritic back. “Why, I should say, ‘But the bear feeds whenever it may.’” Angus Dalrymple laughed as if he’d just uttered the greatest witticism in the world and clapped his grubby hand on Mr. Doverspike’s broad shoulder. “But it’s up to men like us to make sure the bear don’t feed at all, eh?”
    “Yes, quite,”