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relieved breath, “your tropical flowers can wait a moment,
long enough for you to meet your cousin Jeannette who’s come to stay with us
for a few months. Remember, Bertie dear, my telling you about her?”
    His bushy white
brows furrowed for a moment as his gaze settled upon Jeannette as if he’d only
just then noticed her presence at the dining table.
    The expression
cleared as abruptly as it had come, then he smiled. “Of course, of course.
Brantford’s chit, eh? Jeannette, is it? Well, welcome to you, cousin. Most
welcome, and pardon my lack of manners.” He clipped off a quick but respectable
bow.
    Jeannette rose,
curtseyed in reply. “Thank you, cousin, for inviting me to your home.”
    “From what I
heard tell, it was your mother did the inviting and not the other way round. Edith
always would have her way even when she was younger than you. Knew your mother
in my youth and she always shot the fear of God straight up my spine. Worse
than being chased by Diana with her quiver of arrows.” He broke off, nodded at
Jeannette. “Some sort of scandal, wasn’t it, got you shipped off here?”
    “Bertie,” Wilda
hushed, admonishing him with a stern look.
    “What?” he asked
on a shrug. “She’s the one involved in the dustup, so it shouldn’t come as any
surprise to her, what? Doesn’t come as a surprise, does it now, girl?”
    Jeannette paused,
caught somewhere between affront and laughter. Humor won as she burst into the
first laugh she’d had in a good long while. “No, no surprise at all.”
    “See, Wilda, she
don’t mind. Well, my eggs are getting cold and my
Strelitzia
awaits. Make
yourself at home, Cousin Jeannette. Wilda, my love, I’ll see you this afternoon
at tea.”
    And with that he
hurried from the room, breakfast in hand.
    “Tea indeed,”
Wilda scoffed, “if he doesn’t lose himself in one of those projects of his and
forget the time like he always does.”
    Jeannette resumed
her seat and let the footman refresh her tea.
    “You’ll get used
to Bertie if you stay here long enough,” Wilda continued. “He puts in an
appearance for meals and not much else. Heaven knows why I continue to love
that man. When he’s not lost among his plants he’s busy experimenting with his
sun-image idea. Wants to make pictures of his flowers.”
    “Drawings, you
mean?”
    “No, dear. There
are blind men who draw better than my poor Bertie. Try as he might he’s utterly
helpless with a pencil or paintbrush, much to his eternal regret. No, no, he’s
taken the notion into his head to put images of living things onto a hard
surface. He mutters on about it to me occasionally, talks about silver halides
and such, but I don’t understand the half of it. Thomas Wedgwood and some
French fellow—Niépce, I think that’s his name—are apparently busy attempting to
beat Bertie out. They’re all playing around with the same dangerous nonsense. I
only hope those other men don’t burn down half their houses like Bertie did.”
    Jeannette stopped
buttering her toast in mid-stroke. “Burned the house?”
    Wilda nodded
animatedly, the lace edging on her cap fluttering at her movement. “Yes indeed.
The silly man left one of his experiments heating over an open flame while he
wandered off to the library to look up some fact or other. By the time he
returned, his entire laboratory was engulfed. We were lucky only the west wing
burned to the ground. If not for the local people setting up a bucket brigade
down to the nearby stream, I fear we’d have lost the entire house.”
    “How dreadful,”
Jeannette sympathized.
    “It was, and
we’ve had workmen here ever since. Surely you’ve heard them racketing away?”
    A fresh crash
reverberated in the distance, followed by several indistinguishable male
shouts.
    Jeannette hid a
grimace at the irony, set her knife and slice of toast onto her plate before
politely reaching for the marmalade dish. She wondered if the older woman might
be slightly deaf, since no