Page 14 of A Season for Scandal

“When you arrived with Oliver’s card, you piqued our interest,” Mrs Finch said finally.

“Oliver is … important to us,” Izzy added. “We consider him a friend. Though I’m sure he would object to the description.”

“And so we looked into you, Marigold Bloom. We had someone follow you.” Mrs Finch nodded to Izzy. “We liked what we found.”

I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or pleased by this information. “Thank you, I think.”

“As a matter of fact, I had already taken something of an interest in Bloom’s.” Mrs Finch leaned back in her chair. “You frequently employ women who may otherwise struggle to find employment.”

I jolted in surprise. The fact that Bloom’s often hired women with backgrounds that others might find …unsavourywas not common knowledge. Scout was hardly the first employee I had taken off the street. I pursed my lips. “My employees’ past is their business and no one else’s,” I said firmly.

Something like approval flickered in Mrs Finch’s eyes. “You are a hard worker who has built something extraordinary using your skill and brains,” Mrs Finch continued. “You are loyal to your family. Your work takes you to many … interesting locations around the city.”

“That is true, I suppose,” I said slowly.

“You are a keen businesswoman too. Your accounts are perfectly balanced,” Mrs Finch mused, and I didn’t even bother wondering how she knew that. “You have a good eye when it comes to your clients,” she continued. “There doesn’t seem to be much trouble with extracting payment on time.”

“I tend to know if a customer will be a problem,” I admitted with a shrug.

“You read them well.” Mrs Finch nodded. “And you’re a saleswoman: you’re good with people, with getting them to talk, to open up to you.”

I thought about what she said and knew it was true. It wasn’t only in business either. How often had Simon criticized me for precisely that, for wanting to talk to people, to find out about them, for being too friendly, too interested?

“I saw what you did in that alley last night,” Izzy reminded me.

“Nearly got myself killed, you mean?”

“You protected that young girl,” Izzy said quietly. “I saw the man who chased her. If you hadn’t intervened, I truly think she might be dead. You read his intentions. And you offered her what she needed too.”

My stomach lurched. It wasn’t as though I didn’t know that, but I hadn’t wanted to look at the idea head on. “I hardly think he was being subtle about his intentions.”

“You ran in, unarmed and untrained, ready to defend someone in need. You measured his response and initially tried to dispel the situation with tact and diplomacy, which showed calm, clear thinking under pressure,” Izzy continued.

“I wasn’t unarmed,” I said weakly. “I had my secateurs.”

This startled a laugh from Mrs Finch. “Yes, Izzy,” she said softly. “I think you might be right about this one.”

Izzy sat back, looking smug.

“Right about what?” I asked.

“That Marigold Bloom has the makings of a Finch,” Mrs Finch said. “That I should offer you a job.”

CHAPTER NINE

I spent the next two days in a trance of indecision, thrown by Mrs Finch’s offer of a job at her agency. She told me to take some time to think about it, and I had been doing little else.

I was still thinking about it in the back room at work when Grandfather’s head popped round the door.

As much as I loved the shop, this room and the garden on to which it backed was where my heart lived. I might have convinced everyone, including myself, that adding our own small garden was to the advantage of the business – it even had the benefit of being true – but had it not made us a penny I would have pushed for it anyway.

Selfishly, I had carved out this tiny green space for myself. A place I could have my fingers in the dirt. A place where I loved to tip my face towards the sunshine, basking in it as much as any flower, and where even the grey London rain became something vital and life-giving.

“Are those the early rose cuttings?” Grandfather asked, interested. I stood at the potting table, carefully labelling the tiny cuttings I had planted, ready to be placed in the greenhouse. At my back, the doors to the garden stood open, spilling the pale light of spring across the stone floor. A gentle breeze ruffled my hair, lifting the heavy curls away from my neck. I wiped my hands on the apron I wore over my dress.

“Yes, I have high hopes for these beauties,” I said. “But next week we can begin the cross-pollination on the new hybrids.” I felt a tingle at this. Twenty years earlier, a gardener called Henry Bennett had found a way to create new breeds of roses by meticulously transferring pollen from one flower to another, producing seeds that combined aspects of both blooms.

It was only possible thanks to the constant warmth of the greenhouse, and it was an exciting undertaking – an experiment with unpredictable results: whether the seeds would thrive in the first instance, and then which features would be taken from each of the flowers involved. I found it fascinating.