The Accidental Bride

Chapter One
 London, 1813
 Thea Martin wiped the sweat from her brow with her forearm, careful to avoid touching her face with her dirt-stained gloves. Spending hours in her new conservatory would be all well and good in winter when the wall-to-wall glass magnified the heat of the sun, but it was a noble sacrifice in the name of science to bear it during the heat of August.
 She snipped a bud on a bright pink dahlia, hoping to encourage a larger bloom to form, and let it fall to the table crowded with plants, buckets of soil, and discarded clippings. Life at its finest, new growth emerging from the muck of its surroundings.
 There was nothing more satisfying.
 Thea made a notation in her journal, then glared at the dirt that smeared across her words. She had forgotten to remove her blasted gloves. She tugged them off and tossed them onto the table amid the mess before losing herself in details of petal length and stamen placement.
 A shadow darkened her journal, and a stack of letters landed with a thwack on the table.
 Startled, she looked up to see Anthony. “You’re back!” She threw herself at him, clutching him tight enough to wrinkle the wool of his expensive coat, but she couldn’t restrain her joy. Anthony was dearer to her than her own brothers.
 “And I’ve brought presents.” He nudged the envelopes.
 “Of course you did, you darling man.” Thea drew the pile closer and cracked the seal on the first letter, then nodded as she scanned the contents. There were notes scrawled around landscape illustrations of fields and flowers, instructions on how to pick and preserve the plants. A sachet that had been tucked inside the pages fell out, and she peeked inside it. “Ah, Lobelia cardinalis seeds. Wonderful.” The vibrant red cardinal flower was known to reduce swelling. Another letter included penstemon hirsutus seeds, a purple flower with a hairy stem, but she was most delighted to find a packet of dichorisandra thyrsiflora. Thea clutched the seeds to her chest. She didn’t know of anyone who had cultivated blue ginger in England yet. “These are marvelous. Thank you.”
 “You paid the crew well enough for them. They send their thanks, by the way. It was a good bonus on a long journey.”
 Seeds and cuttings from other countries were of vital value to botanical study. To Thea, it meant she could cultivate the foreign plants that fascinated her. She could barter seeds with other collectors, further diversifying both of their stocks. Botanical interest had a far reach these days—comprising of scholars, physicians, florists and their nurseries, estate gardeners, and more—and she could be the center of their discussion if she could grow something that had never before thrived in England.
 Anthony prowled around the room, peering at every corner. He was a short compact man with a round chin, and he often lamented that it was most unfashionable these days to sport a beard. He compensated for it by growing his sideburns long enough to meet the high points of his starched collars. Anthony had a presence that brightened the room more than the sun that dazzled through Thea’s windows. “The conservatory was in the planning stage when I left. It’s impressive, but already you are out of space.”
 Satisfaction coursed through her as she looked around. The high domed ceiling made it seem airier than it really was. It might be snug, but the addition took up over half of the back garden of her Chelsea townhouse. Pots and vases lined the tables along the glass walls, overflowing with plants and flowers—bright fuchsias, cherry pink begonias, sunny yellow chrysanthemums, and an orange tree heavy with fruit. The padded bench with its cushions waited for her to curl up with a cup of tea and her notebook at the end of the day.
 Thea gazed at the camellia japonica variegata that took up the other half of her garden. It was a magnificent shrub, five feet wide and about as tall, but so far only glossy leaves rustled in the summer breeze. Camellias bloomed inside in carefully cultivated environments, and were a popular sight in conservatories and greenhouses. She was determined to be the first to grow one outside, however, all the way from seed to flower. Yet it was proving difficult to pin her hopes on a bush that took six years to blossom, and which hadn’t yet done so in the seven since it had been planted.
 These blue ginger seeds would be an excellent project if the camellia never bloomed.
 “The conservatory is wonderful, isn’t it? It has exceeded my expectations.”
 Anthony tapped on a square of windowpane. “And the budget, too, I imagine. Wise choice to use mullions instead of sheets of glass. It would have cost you twice as much otherwise.”
 Thea waved a hand. “Yes, it drained all the money I had saved over the years. But it was necessary.”
 Every farthing that furnished the conservatory and paid for the seeds and plants that Anthony’s crew gathered for her was worth it. She hadn’t thought twice about making the decision, extravagant as it was. Someday, she would succeed in growing something that England had never seen before.
 Thank goodness her allowance was due in a fortnight.
 Plants thrived in the wild with naught more expense than nature’s bounty of water, air, and soil, but they were dashed expensive to keep as a source of study.
 Thea tapped the packet of blue ginger seeds into her palm and frowned at their texture, hoping they weren’t too dry. Three-quarters of the seeds that Anthony brought back tended to lose their germination during the voyage. It was a common agony among botanists as they sought to understand the ideal conditions in which to transport and grow plants from afar in England’s climate. Some of the seeds that Anthony had collected this time were sealed in their own drop of wax, which he explained