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The rumble of the family car, with her father aboard, hadn’t faded from Charlie’s ears for long at all when she heard the distinct sounds of a low-voiced argument. She followed the noise through to the kitchen, nudging the door open to find Mary Thompson and Anthony stood in front of the table at the center. The two were in each other’s faces, teeth grit, Anthony halfway through some very furious, very Italian hand-gestures when they noticed her.
“Mary. Anthony.” Both of them backed down from the other’s face and turned, arms behind their back, expressions neutral. “What seems to be the problem?”
Mary’s face scrunched in indignation, while Anthony became grimly determined, but neither moved to speak.
Charlie cleared her throat delicately.
Mary cast a sidelong glance at Anthony. “The problem, Miss Morningstar, is that this one,” she tossed her head at the young man beside her, “has lost his d – ahem, his mind. He’s seein’ danger where there ain’t any, and it’s doin’ funny things to his head.”
Anthony glared at Mary without compunction. “I’m telling ya, something’s wrong about this!”
“And just what is so wrong about flowers?”
“It’s – I mean – I don’t know, there just is. ‘Sides, who sends his gal bunches of weeds? Who, if not some sort of crazy person, would leave this kind of lady,” he declared, pointing at Charlie, “anything but a bouquet of proper roses?”
Mary turned around at that, mouth wide open and a hand to her chest in outrage. “I don’t know, maybe some poor, broke man who just wanted to leave the lady somethin’ to remember him by? Some of us, Anthony, don’t have the luxury of fallin’ in love with someone in our station!”
“How’d he expect her to remember her by if there’s no card, no letter, nothing?” There was an edge of concern in Anthony’s angry retort. “I’m telling ya, there’s something afoot. Maybe something crazy.”
Mary’s dark face colored, almost apoplectic. Charlie felt the time was right to walk up to them and lay a placating hand on a shoulder and an elbow respectively. “Alright. So this is about some man who’s left me flowers?”
Anthony and Mary turned to stare at her, then looked away in embarrassment. That they cared for her, Charlie had no doubt – often treating her like a child half her age, perhaps even too young to understand words, in their zeal.
Anthony scratched his arm in discomfort. “Yeah. Kind of.”
“It is, Miss Morningstar,” Mary replied. “We found a bouquet at the back door. Figured it was for you.”
“Except it’s a bouquet,” Anthony spit out the word in disgust, “of white clover.”
Charlie wasn’t very interested in gardening, but she knew of white clover. It was one of the gardener’s banes, small and hardy and prone to taking over plots of soil if left to its own devices. She couldn’t really recall what it looked like right then, but she knew it wasn’t considered very pretty.
“Um. Are you sure it’s even a bouquet? Maybe someone was out and felt like weeding the garden, and they left a pile of them all together by coincidence?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Anthony responded gloomily. “Nobody ties up garden debris with good ribbon.” He closed his eyes, shoulders dropping in defeat. “See for yourself.” He moved aside, gesturing to something on the table behind him. Mary took a step away herself.
Lying on the yellow tablecloth was a bundle of short-stemmed flowers, blooms round and white, clustered like a carnation with sharp petals. The stems, all the same length, hinted at careful trimming, and as Anthony had said, the little bundle was tied with a dark crimson ribbon.
The color brought an immediate image to Charlie’s mind: a white smile, sharp or friendly, or even tender by turns. She shoved the thoughts aside and made as if to pick up the bouquet, then drew her hand back in apprehension. She looked to Anthony, only to find him already waiting for her gaze and shaking his head.
“No poison, Miss.” He jerked a thumb at Mary. “This one’d be dead by now if there’d been any. All picking it up and holding it to her face. Tch.”
Mary raised her nose. “Hmph!”
“Hey, you should be more careful yourself.” Anthony’s voice softened in genuine concern. “You know how many people would throw a ball if Miss Charlotte or her daddy had some kind of accident. And they wouldn’t give a – um, a whistle about popping one of us on the way to that accident, if you know what I mean.”
Mary lowered her face.
Charlie shivered. She was aware of the sword of Damocles that hovered over her head, and that of everyone who associated themselves with the Morningstars. It made her appreciate every man and woman that entered their service all the more, most especially cases like Anthony’s. To leave his comfortable life as the wayward son of a mafia Don, to renounce his vices, just to become her protector…Charlie had said yes, absolutely yes, even before her willful friend had revealed to them the many talents of a child raised in the service of the Five Families. Other than an unusual knowledge of submachine guns and resourceful combat, Anthony could sniff out the delicate bitter-almond scent of cyanide better than a hound, no matter how faint.
(Whether he’d come about that knowledge as the poisoner or the poisoned wasn’t any of her business. The mafia was his old life: in this life, he fought out in the open, and he didn’t lift a finger to hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.)
(Only those who deserve it…the phrase threatened to fill Charlie’s memory with sharp half-moon smiles again for a moment, before she shook the thought off like it was a persistent fly.)
With a shake of her head, she picked the bouquet up from the table. The flowers were so small and thin-stemmed, Charlie could hold the entire thing in one hand. As it approached her face, the aroma of vanilla obscured the subtler, fresh-chlorophyll scent of newly cut stems.
Charlie took a great lungful of the scent, familiar and warm as memories of her paternal grandmother at her counter: she was a lady, of course, but she was not above taking over the kitchen sometimes, to produce “a proper cream cake” for her daughter-in-law and granddaughter. As with people, Charlie had room in her heart for every kind of flower, but the nostalgia of its scent endeared the humble clover to her immediately.
“Could you get me a cup please, Mary? With water. I’d like to set these up in my room.”
“Right away, Miss Morningstar.” Mary bustled towards the cupboard with a triumphant look thrown to Anthony – softer, but still somewhat superior.
While Mary’s back was turned, Charlie edged closer to Anthony. “Is anything really wrong?” If he thought there was a true conspiracy afoot, Charlie would take him at his word.
Anthony sighed. “Well…no. But I don’t like that I didn’t catch some guy running around past the gates.” After one scare too many, Anthony had persuaded her father to keep a few bodyguards around the house at night. He was their unofficial head, a job whose successful execution he prided himself on far more than the house tasks he undertook sometimes.
“Flowers don’t mean-“
“Nah, Sicilians leave fish in clothes, not wildflowers.” Anthony flicked Charlie’s cheek with two fingers, playful. “I guess Mary could be right. I could be going a bridge too far.” He smiled at her sincerely. “But if there’s real danger, I’ll handle it. Don’t ya lose sleep over it, doll face.”
There was another bouquet, near identical, in the same place the following day.
Anthony’s rage had transformed into confusion. “Maybe one of my guys is sleeping on the job. That’s OK. I’ll sniff him out and have this fixed in a jiffy.”
He did discover that one of his boys was stuck on a serving girl from three houses over, and that he tended to neglect his duties for an hour or three a night to go wooing her at her window – which was to say the window of her own family’s house, way over in Tremé. As gallant and aboveboard as that was, Anthony had the man picking up his personal effects before midday, even though he kissed him on the cheek and wished him well in his courtship.
“We’ll get him this time,” he declared, leaning half into the parlor as Miss Morningstar waited for Emily. “Ohhh boy, will this be swell.”
“I can’t believe it!” Anthony stalked into the house, brandishing another white clover bouquet, before Charlie had risen from the breakfast table. “We were more prepared than a Great War regiment! More eager for a fight than a fish fresh outta the big house! We didn’t sleep a wink!”
Charlie looked up from her cup of sweet tea. “Maybe he’s just subtle?” She hadn’t been too concerned once it had become clear that this wasn’t a coded message from any of the crime families. Anthony, and perhaps even Emily, might call her naïve for her tranquility, but really, what could be so bad about a man determined to leave her flowers? She’d never say this to another soul, but she felt inclined to commend the secret admirer’s determination in getting his present to her, strong enough to persist despite a small team of armed men combing the grounds for him.
“Subtle?!” Anthony stared at Charlie, appalled. “Miss, he’s gotta be a shadow to keep creeping in like that. This is giving me the heebie jeebies, is what.” He shivered. “Maybe we should get a preacher up here.”
Charlie blinked at him, beginning to smile. “Are you trying to tell me I’m being wooed by an evil spirit?”
“…it sounded a little less nuts in my head. But, I don’t know, maybe?”
Charlie pulled out the crucifix around her neck from where it hid beneath the neck of her dress.
“Hey, I just said he was bringing the flowers, not that he’s hanging over you while you sleep or anything.”
“Even if there is a spirit, it seems like he can’t get into the house.” Charlie found the entire line of though amusing, but she did concede that, were this spirit real, he must be having a good laugh at foiling poor Anthony’s attempts to catch it in the act. “And he can’t harm us.” Not unless one counted wounding her dear friend’s ex-mafioso pride, that was.
“Hmmmm.” Anthony held two fingers to his chin in contemplation, then he stalked over to the table. “Sorry Miss.” He grabbed the salt shaker.
“Anthony, really?” Charlie laid her hand delicately on his. Emily’s family was Sicilian too (or the Albanians of Italy, as one of her cousins clarified with pride), and from her it was that Charlie had heard all about the Malocchio, the evil eye. That, and its many counters, one of which was sprinkling salt across doorways.
“Hey, my old zia insisted it worked.”
“All you’ll do is get all the housemaids angry at you again.” Mary might actually resort to physical violence against him this time.
“But it’ll protect the house!” There was true zeal in the way his fingers tightened over the little glass container.
“I know it must be galling to have some unknown person wandering around in here,” Charlie soothed, voice gentle, “but whoever it is, I’m sure he’s a person. A well-intentioned person. If he meant us harm, he could have done a hundred things already.” Shoot, try to force his way in. Set the house on fire perhaps.
Anthony looked down, a little ashamed. “OK.” But he did not release the salt shaker. “But c’mon miss, just a light sprinkling? Pleeeease?” He bent his knees so they were eye to eye, mouth in a heartbroken little pout. “I’ll make sure it gets into the gaps so Mary won’t set the rest of the house on me.”
Charlie sighed. “Alright, if you think you’ll breathe easier this way.”
“And maybe put some around your window frame?”
“OK.”
“And what about the boss’s bedroom doorway?”
“OK.”
“His windows could do with a bit of evil eye cure.”
“Alright.”
“Maybe around the front gate too?”
“Anthony.”
“Alright, OK.”
Charlie removed her hand from Anthony’s. “Can I have the flowers?”
“What? Why?”
“They’re pretty, and they’re harmless.” And they had become a pleasant thing to look forward to, once she herself had felt no ill intent from them.
“Even though they’ve probably been touched by demons from Hell?”
“Do you really think that?”
“…actually, no, no I don’t.” With a sigh he set the bouquet down on the table. “Fine.” But before Charlie could react, he raised the salt shaker over his head and, with a flick of the wrist reminiscent of a Catholic priest sprinkling his faithful with holy water, Anthony covered the flowers (and the table, and part of Charlie) in a wave of salt. “Nel nome del Padre, del Figlio e dello Spirito Santo!” he yelled with authority. He stood over the table for a good ten seconds after that, as if waiting for the flowers to scream and release their hidden evil. When nothing happened, Anthony’s victorious expression turned confused. “Huh. Well, good news is the flowers themselves don’t have demons or evil eye curses.”
With a sigh, Charlie dusted salt off of her lap. “That’s, ah, good to know. Thank you, Anthony.”
Charlie put the new bouquet in the cup with its compatriots. Three days of white clover turned out to look rather pretty when they were arranged all together, she mused, tucking and poking them into place. In the other hand, she held today’s ribbon, rubbing it between her fingers in mindless repetition.
Had it been twine or thread, or perhaps the trimming of a shirt, Charlie would have accepted Mary’s theory of a down-on-their luck man (or perhaps a down-on-her-luck woman of outstanding courage), an admirer with no greater intent than to offer her a token of admiration. But the thick glossy ribbon, always dark red, was at odds with the humble clumps of clover. Almost too much for it to be accidental.
Could it be…?
She hadn’t heard from, or of, Alastor De la Croix since the Goudeau ball three days ago. This wasn’t odd, even considering his jacket hung, laundered and unwrinkled, in Charlie’s closet: well-mannered Alastor wouldn’t dream of rushing her to return something he’d offered to be gallant. No gentleman would, even if that were their only suit jacket. They’d had a conversation about a very delicate subject, but it had ended with a kind of understanding, one that meant Alastor was in no way obligated to send her a letter, or even a note.
But still she wondered. Three days, three bouquets.
This kind of subtle communication was exactly what Charlie would have expected of him. The trouble was that, other than working out that he was the sender, she didn’t know what his message was.
Three near identical bouquets of the same kind of flower, left for her in spite of the armed men combing the property. As if he were patiently repeating a phrase to an uncomprehending child.
Charlie mulled the question over and over again in her head, relentless, until her father very innocently provided her with the final piece of the puzzle.
Father and daughter tradition meant that Charlie and her Dad sat together in his office on the second floor, right after supper, to tell each other about their day - one of her favorite moments. Even when all her father had were petty complaints about rude business partners, which Charlie inevitably tuned out before long, it was wonderful to have an hour or so just for the two of them.
That day her mind, busy with her florid riddle, had wandered away from her father’s lurid recounting of a widow who’d trapped him in (gasp) a conversation. But it wandered right back, ran back really, when the man mentioned flowers.
“- really hope poor little Marie never figures out what those flowers mean when they're together.”
Charlie gazed at the spread newspaper hiding her father from sight. “What was that about flowers, Dad?”
Lucius Morningstar's head popped around his open newspaper. “Oh. Right,” he began, in a radio funny show's old man voice, wet and exaggerated. “I forget all you whippersnappers forget the old ways, with your cars and your telephones. All bees feet and cat's nightgowns with you!”
Charlie laughed hard enough to tip her armchair forward. The fact that her father might really think those were today's snazzy expressions only made it all the better. “It's - oh never mind.” She brushed amused tears away with a finger. “What is it that us misguided youths have let fall by the wayside?”
His expression softened. “Just a silly thing us old-timers did. Flowers, bouquets, even what hand you held a flower in, used to have special meaning.”
“Wow. Can you tell me about it?” A fascinating tidbit on any day, a shining revelation on this particular one.
“Of course, sweetie.” He folded his paper in a single snap. “It was called flower language, but I've heard people call it “Victorian flower language” now, as if we all lived in the Pleistocene. Hmph. Of course, England is sort of a backwards place…”
“Daddy!” Her very American father had gone to college, er, university in England. He’d liked it enough to bring back a preference for its tea, its fashion and at least one of its women, but he’d never abandoned his very patriotic habit of disparaging it.
“I’m not serious, honey. Well…maybe a little. In any case,” he declared, “people used to send messages with flowers. It’s an entire language. You could tell a girl where to meet you and when just by walking past her with the right flower.”
“Oooooh.” A thought, a sadder one, occurred to Charlie. “Did…I mean, this happened in London right, so - I mean-”
“Your mother,” he interrupted, a mixture of joy, nostalgia and intense longing on his face, “figured me out before I could try to woo too many English dames with the poetry of my foliage. I proposed to her with it, in fact.” He sat back in the chair with a sigh. “A hundred and eight roses, or “will you marry me?” in flower language.” His smile became rueful. “I think even her family thought it was very romantic, right up until I opened my mouth and out came my lovely, uncultured accent.”
Charlie’s heart twisted, even as she felt tickled by her father’s brand of humor. She missed her mother like an ache in the ribs, and yet she loved to hear about her. Sometimes it felt like the void Lilian Morningstar (born The Honorable Miss Lilian Arundell, disowned for marrying an American commoner) had left behind was vast as an undersea chasm, capable of swallowing every last bit of light in the world whole. Others, like today, her memory felt so alive that Charlie half expected her to walk into the room, tutting at her husband for talking about her behind her back.
They were quiet for a moment, each lost in their own memories, until Charlie remembered why flowers had been on her mind in the first place. “Was there a book of some kind about it? Flower language, I mean.”
“Your mother had a few.” Which meant that they had a few somewhere in the many bookshelves of the house, because her father would never throw away a book, less still if it had been his beloved Lilian’s.
“Do you think I can look at one of them later?”
“Of course! I think I saw one of them hiding out beside my history books.” He jerked a thumb behind him, referring to the empty guest bedroom beside his office.
“Great.” Charlie smiled. “Oh, wait! What was that about Marie Goudeau?”
“Ah yes, someone gave her begonias and pink larkspur.” Her father chuckled, a little uncharitable. “Which mean ‘beware’ and ‘fickleness’.” He shook his head. “I didn’t say a word to Mrs. Thibodeaux about it, but if she wasn’t exaggerating about that one being Marie’s favorite bouquet the other night, little girl’s in for a real let down.”
Charlie felt a little indignant on Marie’s behalf at that. If it was who she thought it was behind both incidents…well, hopefully she’d find a bouquet that could stand in for a stern talking to about the feelings of young girls.
Safe in her room later that night, with a single lamp close to her bed for illumination, Charlie conceded that flower language was a fascinating thing. She’d examine this and all the rest of her mother’s books on the matter, for sure - after she’d figured out the message.
White was a good thing though, the book had told her that much. Most of the meanings associated with white flowers were related to purity and other such good things, not very exciting when it came to suitors, but at least not the terrible words hidden in Marie Goudeau’s favorite bouquet.
At long last she found an entry for clover (white). My thoughts are with you.
Charlie put a hand to the top of her cheeks. Was she blushing like a teenager, alone in her room with her first romance novel? For shame.
My thoughts are with you. Even the wording fit Alastor perfectly.
Charlie fanned her face and glanced at the bouquets of white clover on her dressing table. There was, the book had warned, some discrepancy when it came to the meanings of specific flowers, especially back in their heyday. Which meant there was a chance that whatever source Alastor had used when choosing this specific flower could have assigned it a whole different meaning - well, not too different, but it might mean “we’re friends” or “I celebrate your innocent outlook in life”.
She could go out and ask him. She’d sent him a letter at the radio station once. But a part of her, a proud part that sounded like her father, insisted that she play this game by the rules.
And why shouldn’t she? It’d be fun, and she’d get to use this lovely, subtle language, perhaps even master it like her mother had.
Charlie riffled through the book with a determined tilt to her head.
One day, and one white clover bouquet, after she’d made her choice, Charlie found herself creeping down the stairs of her house at midnight, a length of pink ribbon from the sewing box in hand.
It had been a challenge to put this bouquet together, because it required three very specific types of flowers. Concerned that the florist might catch her, Charlie had ended up buying several dozens, even though she only needed three of them. Now, under the cover of night, she tiptoed all over the house, gathering a bunch of bell flowers from the vase she’d set up in the second floor sitting room, a handful of yellow lilies from the vase down in the living room. The betony, tall and purple, had earned her a hint of surprise, then a laugh from the florist (“you can have someone pick you some of those for free, y’know”), but the yellow, deep blue and purple looked lovely together.
“Blue bell flowers and yellow lilies, for gratitude, and betony for surprise,” she whispered to herself, arranging her bouquet to her liking. Well, as far as putting each bunch together into a single large bunch and tying them with the pink ribbon was arranging. The colors went so well together, it wasn’t hard work at all to make the ensemble look pretty, and so Charlie didn’t lament her inexperienced handiwork too much.
(She could have added a single dark pink rose, both for its connection to gratitude and for a pop of brighter color, but roses were so steeped in romantic significance, she’d gotten hesitant in the end.)
In her slippers and robe, Charlie crept to the back door, then stole a glance outside. Anthony was out there, somewhere, but it seemed he might be at the other side of the house at present. She opened the door, well-oiled hinges gliding like a whisper, and hurried down the two steps. Anthony always said he’d found the bouquet tucked beside these steps, sometime between three or four in the morning: she could only hope her friend would be too busy keeping the house’s perimeter safe until then, giving her mysterious sender time to find her offering.
She laid the flowers close to the house wall, hidden by angles and shadows to everyone save whoever stood right in front of these steps. Then she wrapped her arms around her middle, securing the dark robe over her tragically white nightgown, and dashed back into the house.
“I’m happy to report we had no flowers last night,” Anthony declared, traipsing into the dining room with a spring to his step.
Charlie hid a smile behind her spoonful of honeyed oats. “Oh?”
“Yep. I checked all night, and just now for the last time. No unaccounted for plants, no suspicious men.” Anthony’s hand darted forward, stealing the slice of brioche bread from Charlie’s plate, biting into it before Therese could finish her affronted gasp.
“You’re lucky Mary’s off on a market run this morning,” Charlie replied, serene, even as Therese shook her head.
“Consider it my reward for a successful campaign, Miss.” He winked at her and ate the rest of her brioche right then and there. He left for a well-earned nap, a merry bounce to his tired stride.
Late that night, on a hunch, Charlie tiptoed out the back door once again.
It was barely midnight, far too early for anything to happen, she told herself. Perhaps she’d compromised the game by participating, and nothing would ever be waiting for her ever.
She stifled a delighted gasp when a large bunch of something white, tinted blue in the moonlight, peeked out at her beside the back door stoop.
Charlie picked up the bouquet and hurried back inside the house, burying her nose and her smiling face into the armful of wild daisies, held together by dark red ribbon. In the middle of the sea of white, a single dark pink rose added a lovely pop of color to the ensemble.
Wild daisies: I share your sentiments