Bottled Up

02 | humpty frumpy

Sodding blood lilies.

Why did Arabella Cavendish want blood lilies?

She groaned, burying her face in her hands. Across the room, leather brogues scuffed the carpet. The footsteps paused.

"You alright?" a male voice asked.

She shook her head.

"The Cavendish wedding?" he guessed.

"I hate her," Louise said, voice muffled. "She wants blood lilies. Dozens of them. Do you know how rare those are?"

"The wedding's not for months, right?"

"It's in March," Louise said. "So seven months. But that's still not enough time."

Maybe she could just spray paint some cattail flowers, Louise thought hopefully. Nobody would notice. Or she could just start farming her own blood lilies. Yes. That seemed like the best option at this point.

A hand landed on her shoulder. "Can I help?"

She lifted her head, blinking. Her boss came into focus like a buffered picture: wavy blond hair; broad shoulders; horn-rimmed glasses. He was wearing an expensive wristwatch that made him look much older than his twenty-nine years, although Sebastian always said that it was the only way clients ever took him — and Crawley Events — seriously.

"I don't know," Louise said. "Do you happen to know a florist with a niche interest in exotic flowers?"

Sebastian smiled. "Afraid not."

"Maybe I can talk Arabella round," Louise said. "Maybe I can convince her to go with roses instead. Or dahlias. Dahlias are lovely."

Sebastian gave her a dubious look. She didn't blame him; Arabella Cavendish was a formidable woman. The socialite had gotten engaged in South Africa last year, surrounded by the blood lilies, which meant that she wanted the flowers at her wedding. Even though the lilies didn't grow in England. Or anywhere else in the world, really.

Arabella wasn't a bad person, exactly. But she had asked all her bridesmaids to gain five pounds so that she looked better in comparison on her wedding day.

But it was Louise's job to make her happy. So here she was.

Trying.

"Go home," Sebastian said, stepping back. "You look exhausted."

Louise closed her notebook. "You flatter me, Seb."

"Anytime."

"And anyway," Louise said, rising from her chair, "I'm not going home."

Sebastian paused in arranging his pencils. "Hot date?"

"I'm going shopping." She gave him a look. "With my sister."

"Ah." Sebastian leaned back, draping an arm across the back of his chair. "What happened to the latest boy, then? The mechanical engineer?"

Louise hoisted her bag. Adam had started to call her "hun," which had given her the ick; she'd pied him off in an eight-word text message and then gone for fro-yo with Ophelia. Not, Louise thought, that she was about to admit that to her boss.

"Goodbye, Seb," she said pointedly.

Sebastian smirked. "He got too clingy, didn't he?"

"Can't hear you," she called.

Louise pushed out the door. London was a watercolor today; misty rain swirled in the gas lamps, and umbrellas exploded in bright fireworks of vermilion, buttercup yellow and cerulean. The late August air had a bite to it, crisp as the skin of an apple.