Something in a garden where light and shadow are intertwined

Inspect the face in the garden bright . . .


After folding the poem back up and putting it back in her reticule, Chloe bent over the sundial’s face. It had a green patina, and the dial itself stood in a formal knot garden. Why hadn’t she put it together before? She had seen the sundial several times already. She studied the green patina on the face. She almost forgot that Henry was there until he cleared his throat.

Henry raised an eyebrow at her sudden fascination with the sundial and handed her the butterfly net. “If you see a dark brown butterfly with a red splotch or orange bands on each wing, it’s a Vanessa atalanta. Better known as a red admiral. Oh, and I’m sure you’d recognize the orange-and-black one. Cynthia cardui.”

Chloe grinned. “Of course I would. I go around spewing the Latin names for butterflies all the time.” Her eyes followed the trajectory of light from the sundial, but of course, it was past two o’clock, and everything would be slightly off. She had memorized the next three lines of the poem:


Then follow the line of light

Straight to a house without walls

Enter the door and go where the water falls . . .


Chloe lifted her butterfly net. “I’ll go this way.” She padded in the direction the sundial pointed, until Henry began pontificating like a professor. As a proper lady would, she felt obliged to stop and listen, even though she could hardly wait to figure out where the shaft of light would lead her.

“Are you in a hurry for any particular reason, Miss Parker?”

“No. I’m just anxious to catch a butterfly, that’s all.” She swung her butterfly net like a golf club.

“Look,” Henry said. “This one’s a painted lady.” He held up the jar in the sunlight.

She really didn’t want to hear his nature documentary narration, but there was something about the way his large hands wrapped around the jar, something to the way he turned it while the butterfly flitted around, that stopped her. Suddenly she had a vision of him as he held her in her ball gown and turned her on the dance floor. She tried to shake it. She even shook her head, but the vibrator shifted, and the bonnet almost fell off. She tensed up and tightened the ribbons again. Really, she should’ve gone inside and emptied out the bonnet, but she had to solve the riddle now, and given all that she had to deal with at that moment, the last thing she needed was to fall under Henry’s spell.

“You think you have it rough.” Henry pointed to a butterfly in the hollyhocks. “Look at this green-and-white one. See the orange marking on the top of its wing?”

“Yes. It’s beautiful.” She watched as the butterfly lowered and raised its antennae at her as if it were trying to communicate.

“It’s a male Anthocharis cardamine.”

She smirked.

“All right, he’s an orange tip. It’s unusual for him to be around this late in the season. They only have eighteen days to find a mate.”

“And then what?”

“They die.”

Chloe picked up her net and aimed for the orange tip, but it flew off. The net billowed in the air. “That’s harsh. If I don’t find my mate, I just lose out on a hundred thousand dollars.”

“You don’t care about losing out on the money?”

“Well . . .” Chloe didn’t know what to say. It must’ve been a trick question. “This may sound like a cliché, but to me, it’s not about the money.” And it wasn’t, anymore.

A cloud floated in front of the sun and the shadow on the sundial disappeared.

“Oh no!” Chloe lowered her butterfly net.

“What is it?”

“I—I see some butterflies over there.” She hurried in the direction the sundial had pointed.

Henry followed. “We’ll see what kind of nineteenth-century botanist you really are.”

The trajectory led more or less right into a thick hedgerow, and Chloe stopped at the dead end. Now what? Butterflies flitted around her. She looked at her net, then back at Henry, who leaned on his butterfly net as if it were a walking stick. He was watching her. “I’ve never caught butterflies before,” she said.

“Really? What about when you were little?” The cloud passed, and the sun beamed down on them again.

Chloe stood back to see if there was a way around the hedgerow. She laughed as she pushed her fist into the net, straightening it. “I spent most of my childhood being shuttled between ballet, piano, and voice lessons. I hardly had time for catching butterflies.” And she shouldn’t be taking the time now either, but Henry was on her. She better just catch one and be done with it. She raised the net and aimed for the blue one.

“Wait.” Henry reached from behind her and clasped her fist.

Her blue butterfly flew away. “Hey! I could’ve had him.”

Henry bent her arm and lowered the net. “Did your mum have you take tennis lessons, too?”

“How did you know?” She stepped back and looked at his hand wrapped around hers.

He put his other hand on her shoulder.

“You’re holding the net like a tennis racket. We’re not out to kill. Think of it as netting a fish out of a fishbowl. Like this. Gently.”

He guided her arm in slow, swishy, underhanded swoops. His minty breath felt cool on her warm neck. She shouldn’t be here, like this, with Henry, when the riddle needed to be solved. The sun shone in what had become a Tiffany-box-blue sky, the birds sang overhead, and she was, of all things, chasing butterflies with a captivating man. How a guy could’ve made catching butterflies look manly, sexy even, blew her mind.

“There. That’s better. Just relax.”

Easy for him to say, he didn’t have a stolen vibrator rattling around in his bonnet and a burning desire to find something that matched the description of a house without walls.

He released his hand from hers, and even in this summer heat, her hand suddenly felt cold. “Mr. Wrightman, would you be so kind as to fix my tiara? I’m quite sure you could do it, after all.”

“I’m happy to do the smithing, but there isn’t enough time to have it ready for the ball.”

“That doesn’t matter. I’ll have a footman bring it to you before you leave. Please, though, don’t let Lady Grace help you with it.”

“Did Mr. Darcy allow Caroline Bingley to mend his pen?”

Chloe laughed. Did this mean he saw Grace as a Caroline Bingley type?! Chloe knew she couldn’t be the only one who’d noticed a similarity between Grace and the Jane Austen character.

He pointed to a couple butterflies across the lawn in the lavender, and motioned her toward them, but then stopped and squinted toward the rose garden. “You’re wearing my glasses and I’m nearsighted—is Mrs. Crescent trying to get your attention?”

“No. Not really.” Chloe pretended not to see Mrs. Crescent, who stood now under the shady bower of roses, and waved Chloe in like a jumbo jet on a foggy runway. As Mrs. Crescent waddled toward them, Chloe’s arm went limp and the net fell to her side. She didn’t catch a single butterfly and she wasn’t able to go beyond the hedgerow. She took a step back and crushed a clump of lavender behind her.

Fifi trotted up to Chloe as Henry bowed to Mrs. Crescent. “Thank you for releasing your charge for a few moments, Mrs. Crescent.” He reached for the butterfly net in Chloe’s hand, but she moved it behind her back and pushed it into the lawn as if she were staking her claim.

The servants had set up a green-and-white striped canopy above the clover patch.

Mrs. Crescent wiped sweat from under her cap with a lace-trimmed handkerchief. “Miss Parker, the mantua-maker is here to work on your gown.” She lifted her watch from her chatelaine and tapped on it. “I would’ve sent a servant to tell you, but I thought I’d deliver the message personally, so you understand the sense of urgency.”

Chloe looked back at the hedgerow. “Mrs. Crescent, Mr. Wrightman, you must excuse me. I’ll be right with you. Just wait here!” She curtsied, held on to her bonnet, and ran all the way to the end of the hedgerow.

“Obstinate girl!” she heard Mrs. Crescent say.

“Is she, really?” Henry asked.

“I implore you, Mr. Wrightman, to please get her back here immediately.”

Chloe heard all this, because she was on the other side of the hedgerow, exactly where the shaft of light would’ve pointed, and she found herself looking at a gazebo she had never noticed before.

“A house without walls,” she said to herself.

By the time Henry caught up with her, she had discovered a fountain on the other side of the gazebo. It was in the form of a statue, a merman tipping a seashell, but the fountain was dry. She looked frantically for a secret door of some kind, but the fountain was solid.

“What are you doing?” Henry asked.

“Admiring this fountain,” Chloe said. She was still looking for some kind of secret door when she stepped on a small metal square with a green patina. It must’ve had something to do with accessing the plumbing for the fountain.

“Your chaperone is growing very impatient. I think you’ve pushed her to her limit.”

Chloe yanked on the weathered ring that was set into the metal until the small square creaked open. There, just under the lid, was a basket with a note that read, You have found the secret door outside the house without walls, but have you solved the puzzle in the poem? If so, you may place your answer here. If not, then you must go back and begin again.

Henry walked over, but Chloe slammed the lid shut just in time.

“Mrs. Crescent is waiting.”