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pushed aside one thorny branch after another until my cheeks and hands were scratched, reached to the very back of the bush, and uncovered a perfect rose.
    I thought of my father huddled over the fire in the laboratory. In this most imperfect of rose gardens, I had found a perfect rose, just as he ordained. It was on the cusp of being full blown and had a bead of dew on an inner petal. I held its stem and made a clean cut, let the branches fall back, and stood up with the sappy knife in one hand and the perfect rose in the other. Its fragrance was intense, and I threw back my head to draw a deeper breath. Then I saw a puff of smoke on the London road.
    The hillside was scorched, the hedgerows tinder dry. A fire would destroy the wheat crop. I was about to shout for help when I noticed that the smoke was following twists in the lane. Not smoke then, but dust kicked up by a horse’s hooves.
    Apart from Shales, Selden rarely had visitors capable of riding a horse, let alone galloping. Occasionally an elderly scholar came to call, or a tradesman, or a neighboring squire on a mission: “Weeds do spread, Selden; have you thought of turning over the long field by the river?” This energetic horseman would doubtless gallop through the village and away, so, to cheat myself of disappointment, I walked briskly back to the laboratory, where my father’s delight in the rose was sufficient reward. He got to his feet and took the flower reverently in his hand, placed it in a jar of water, and turned it round and round, sniffing with admiration. Then he nodded at me. “Good, Emilie. I’m pleased.” He began calling out its various characteristics for me to record: the measurement and number of its petals, the exact appearance of each stamen and leaf. But after a few minutes we heard hoofbeats at the gate, the rasp of metal on gravel, and then a brisk knock on our redundant front door.
    I laid down my pen, though my father didn’t even look up. There was nobody to answer the door but me—neither of the Gills would bother—so I trekked through the library and across the entrance hall. The door was so unused to being opened that I cut my knuckle on the rusty bolt. White sunlight poured over me. I put up my hand to shade my eyes and there, smiling down from beneath the shade of his hat, was an astonishing young man.
    “Good afternoon, mistress,” he said, and bowed so deeply that he swept the step with his turquoise plumes. “I’m told that this is Sir John Selden’s house?”
    I couldn’t reply, just went on staring. He shone. The sun touched glossy curls, flushed cheeks, and silver buttons. Warmth spilled out of his eyes. He raised his brows, but I still couldn’t speak. Instead, I turned and walked toward the library. He and the scorching light followed, so that between them they burned the back of my dress. In the library, I pointed with my bloody hand to a chair by the window, ducked under the curtain covering the door to the laboratory, and told my father that a stranger had come.
    [ 5 ]
    M Y FATHER AND his visitor spent the rest of the day in the library while I worked on the rose. We intended to let it dry in a sealed container so that it would not be contaminated by insects or dust. After listing, measuring, and sketching the flower’s various parts, I dried its stem and placed it in a clean flask. Then I inverted another, identical flask over it and pasted the necks together with a seal made of pipe clay and freshly cut clippings from my own hair.
    After it was done, I put the flower on the window seat, where it had an untouchable sheen in its glass prison, like a pebble in water. I was guilty of neglect. As I worked, I should have willed myself inside the rose to blend my spirit with its sap, but one look at that stranger had blown away my concentration. I was listening for his departure. I had to catch another glimpse of him before he left.
    In the end, I escaped through a little door used by Gill that led to a stone