The Flower Shop (The Seed Traders' Saga Book 2) Read online

  “The two of us, together forever. That would also mean that you could bring all your ideas to life. Father already gives you a free hand. And one day, the shop will belong to us anyway. With Flora Sonnenschein in charge.”

  “Oh,” Flora breathed. Her shop? Friedrich, her husband? What would Kuno and Ernestine have to say about that? And what about her parents? Her mother was counting on her being home that same day.

  Flora’s head was spinning as wildly as leaves in an autumn wind.

  Her silence prompted Friedrich to speak again. “Even though you might only harbor friendly feelings for me right now, love can still grow. I will do everything in my power to be a good husband. Love can grow. Don’t you think so, too?”

  Flora nodded. That love could come from friendship, well, wasn’t that how it had been between her own mother and father?

  “Love is like a seed,” she murmured, more to herself than to Friedrich. “Only when you tend it and nurture it can it thrive.”

  Friedrich’s brow furrowed. “You can think about it, of course. Take all the time you need. I mean, if you want to return to Gönningen first, the next train leaves at twelve. It doesn’t mean that . . . I mean, we both know that—”

  “Friedrich, hush. If you aren’t quiet for a moment, I won’t be able to think at all.”

  “Hmph.” Friedrich looked at Flora for a long moment, then stood up and went to the window.

  The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock on the wall, but from the door to the hallway came the usual soft Monday-morning noises: Ernestine’s raised voice somewhere in the house, the occasional tinkling of the bell over the front door of the shop, a wagon rolling to a stop in the street outside.

  Flora smiled. The voices of the family members, the daily routine, the house, the garden, and the shop—she had become so intimately familiar with all of it. And she had felt at home there since she had first arrived, had been able to accept the small quirks of Kuno and Ernestine without a problem. She had enjoyed her life in the Sonnenschein household. And as far as Friedrich was concerned . . .

  Now she knew what difficult questions had been weighing so heavily on his mind in recent days and weeks.

  She smiled. He was a good man, and she would probably never find a better one.

  Friedrich had actually proposed to her, and had essentially kidnapped her from the train station to do so. She would never have expected him to do that!

  Flora’s smile turned into a small laugh, and Friedrich turned around immediately and came to her.

  “If I . . . if I really were to . . . say yes,” she began, and her heart was pounding. Should she really?

  “Yes?”

  “Then there is something that you would have to do urgently.” She smiled mischievously at Friedrich.

  “What? Tell me!” Friedrich’s face was so full of concern, as if he were expecting the worst.

  “You’ll finally have to kiss me!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The whole house was in a state of excitement.

  Sabine was the first to congratulate Flora. “I’d given up hope, I have to say,” she whispered to Flora while Friedrich went to fetch his parents. “Oh, I’m so happy for you! But don’t think you can start ordering me around now like the mistress does,” she added with a wink.

  Kuno’s cheeks were flushed red as the four of them sat around the table. He clapped Friedrich jovially on the shoulder. “Congratulations, my son! It took you long enough. There were a few times I wanted to give you a good kick in the rear!”

  “Kuno!” Ernestine hissed. “Watch your language. What’s our future daughter-in-law going to think?”

  Flora and Friedrich held hands and laughed.

  Ernestine plucked nervously at her hair, which was tied into a bun, and it soon looked like a battered bird’s nest. “Good heavens, well, this changes everything. Where is Flora supposed to spend the night now? As the future Mrs. Sonnenschein, she can hardly keep sharing a room with Sabine, can she? Should we set up Sybille’s room for her? Oh, someone has to tell her, too.”

  “Mother, settle down,” said Friedrich, and he laughed again. “Flora has only just accepted my proposal. Now that you and Father know, the most important thing is that we make the midday train to Gönningen so that Flora’s mother does not worry unnecessarily. I will go along, of course, because I would also like to ask her father for her hand.”

  “Do you really want to come along to Gönningen?” Flora asked in some disbelief. “What about your work?” She had never known Friedrich to be so spontaneous.

  “My work isn’t going anywhere. What’s more important is that I don’t let my bride-to-be out of sight, or she might decide to change her mind!”

  Flora gave Sabine, who was standing in the doorway, a furtive wink.

  “You won’t meet my father, I’m afraid. He and Uncle Valentin have already left for Bohemia, on their usual sales trip. They won’t be back until Christmas.”

  Friedrich kissed first Flora’s hand, then his mother’s, making them both giggle bashfully.

  “Then we’ll write him a letter. Your mother is sure to know an address where it will reach him,” he said energetically.

  “But . . . but . . .” Kuno looked first at his son, then at Flora. “What about Flora’s new floristry master? What’s he going to do if she doesn’t take up her post as planned?”

  Flora and Friedrich giggled like two schoolchildren. They had forgotten all about Flora’s invented apprenticeship in Reutlingen!

  The closer their train got to Flora’s home village of Gönningen, the more restless she became. What would her mother say? Would she feel that Flora had left her to fend for herself with all the work? Or would she believe, perhaps, that the whole thing had been planned like this from the start?

  “Mother is going to fall off her chair, I swear. I never even hinted at anything like this in a single letter I wrote,” she fretted as the autumn landscape rolled past. “She’ll probably think I’ve been hiding it from her for months.”

  Friedrich squeezed her hand and tried to reassure her, but it was not an easy task.

  “What about my seed selling in winter and our customers in Baden-Baden?” Flora asked despairingly.

  Friedrich frowned. “I thought you wanted to suggest to your parents that you continue to serve the customers in your Baden-Baden Samenstrich, didn’t you? There’s very little to do in the shop in winter, and you would have plenty of time to carry on with the seed business. Maybe we could even put up a rack of seeds and sell them directly.”

  “Of course, but . . .” Flora’s thoughts tumbled on and on.

  “You’re starting to look as worried as my mother,” Friedrich said.

  Flora glared at him. “I’ve never had this many things to worry about before!”

  And Hannah very nearly did fall off her chair. The newly engaged couple were sitting at the dinner table with her, the twins, Seraphine, and Suse when Flora made the announcement. After a stunned moment of silence, everyone started talking at once.

  “You’re marrying a stranger, just as I did!” was the first thing Hannah said. She was on the verge of tears.

  Suse let out a high-pitched squeal. “I knew it! I knew it!” She jumped up and threw her arms around Flora.

  The twins made some unintelligible sounds that could be interpreted as congratulations, and then they clapped both Friedrich and Flora on the shoulder.

  Hannah stood up and busied herself with the coffeepot at the stove. A minute for herself, just a minute to . . .

  Her little Flora was getting married. And leaving Gönningen forever. Just as she herself had once left Nuremberg to go in search of Helmut.

  She looked back over her shoulder, scrutinizing her daughter. It was all so sudden. Had Flora thought this through? The way she held Friedrich’s hand, she seemed almost childlike, naïve. Or was she perhaps pregnant? But Hannah instantly rebuked herself for her suspicions: not every woman gets married because she has to
.

  So many memories came at once. It had been bitterly cold when she arrived in Gönningen just before Christmas in 1849, the snow knee-deep. And she had been so worried about whether Gönningen might be a new home for her at all. Admittedly, the situation she found herself in back then was not comparable to Flora’s. The way Friedrich seemed to idolize Flora left his love in no doubt. But in 1849, Hannah had had to fight to win her husband’s love. It was not always a fair fight, but what was it they said? All’s fair in love and war . . .

  Since then, she and her rival, Seraphine—Helmut’s fiancée when Hannah arrived in Gönningen—had come to terms with how things were, and they even lived under the same roof, albeit on different floors. Seraphine had been married to Valentin almost as long as Hannah had been married to Helmut. And sometimes Valentin even managed to make his wife smile, although most of the time he tried in vain. Helmut had no interest at all in his sister-in-law, and Hannah would not have stood for any less! The bond between the brothers continued to be very close, and the two women had their work to do, so they did their best not to get in each other’s way.

  Yes, many things had changed. And many things had stayed the same.

  “If you like, I’ll give you my wedding dress. It’s hanging in my closet, as good as new,” said Seraphine to Flora just then.

  Something felt as if it were pressing at the back of Hannah’s eye. The old times were forgotten. Her little girl in a wedding dress—it was hard for her to imagine.

  Oh, if only Helmut were here. He would no doubt whisper to her that she should not be so sentimental. Or would he be even more sentimental than her? It was not easy for a father to let a daughter go, after all.

  Oh, Helmut . . .

  He would like Friedrich, Hannah was certain of that.

  Friedrich hung on Flora’s every word, nodding almost reverently at everything she said. He was head over heels for her, that was obvious. He seemed a little quiet, but she was sure he was a decent fellow. Even the twins, lounging against the kitchen cabinets, seemed to think that; they also seemed to have forgotten that they had announced earlier that they were going off to meet their friends at The Sun. And Suse, who had just planned to pop in for a moment to welcome her friend home, also made no signs of leaving, although it was now well after dark.

  Hannah set the pot of freshly brewed coffee on the table, then sliced a fruit loaf. It was really time for her to be thinking about getting dinner started, but she did not want to disturb the wonderful mood with too much bustling around. When was the last time they had all been gathered so pleasantly at the table? How often did happy news like this come along?

  At some point, the last crumb of fruit loaf was gone, and the coffeepot empty. The twins took Friedrich off to the inn with them—his engagement to their sister had to be duly celebrated, after all. Suse put on a shocked face at the late hour and hurried away. Seraphine retired to her room with a headache.

  Finally, mother and daughter were alone.

  Hannah opened a bottle of red wine.

  “Why only now?” Flora asked, indicating the bottle.

  “I’m not going to waste good wine like this on your brothers,” Hannah replied with a laugh. “Well? Are you happy, my child?” she asked over the rim of her wineglass.

  Flora sipped the wine thoughtfully. “Of course I’m happy. But I’ve never really been unhappy in my life, so I don’t feel much different from usual.”

  Hannah frowned. “Hmm. But if you’re in love . . .”

  “What do I know about being in love? Oh, Mother, I feel so stupid sometimes,” Flora suddenly said. “All summer, I’ve been going walking with Friedrich. We’ve talked and told stories and laughed together. And in all that time, it never occurred to me that we might be in love with each other. Whenever Sabine teased me about it, I actually got rather angry at her. I was firmly convinced that all we had was a remarkably close friendship.” She looked at Hannah with an almost despairing look in her eyes. “Can a person really be so naïve?”

  Hannah smiled. Her Flora, her own little know-all in everything but matters of the heart.

  “Being a little slow to understand the state of your own feelings is not uncommon. I’d go so far as to say it’s probably true of most of us.”

  “Really?” Flora looked at her mother hopefully. “You know, my mind was really on the flower shop most of the time.”

  Love doesn’t happen in your mind, Hannah almost said, but kept it to herself. “You wanted to learn something, and your training came first. Your father and I expected nothing else of you. We knew you didn’t go to Baden-Baden to flirt with men.”

  “Of course, but . . .” Flora still looked depressed. “But, well, Friedrich and I . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s just that, somehow it seems strange to me that we will soon be husband and wife. And when I think about us, well . . .” Flora’s concentration was trained on her fingernail tracing a crack in the tabletop.

  Hannah sighed inwardly. Oh no, here come the questions that every mother dreads. The questions about the wedding night, the questions . . . and answers for which every word was a strain.

  She suddenly felt old and tired and far removed from all of that. What could she tell her daughter to take away with her? Who was she to give good advice?

  “Don’t worry, child, everything will fall into place. There are things between a husband and wife that don’t need to be discussed ahead of time. They simply happen. And despite what you might imagine, it won’t be bad, believe me,” said Hannah with as much determination as she could muster. Then she straightened her back, slid open the drawer beneath the tabletop, and took out paper and a pencil. “Why don’t we write to your father? He will be as surprised as any of us to hear the happy news.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Baden-Baden, November 2, 1871

  My dearest Flora!

  We have been apart for three weeks now, and my desire to see you again is so strong that I have a mind to board the next train to Gönningen.

  Flora looked up from Friedrich’s letter. “He misses me . . . Oh, I miss him so much! What a stupid idea for me to stay here until the wedding.”

  “What do you mean, a stupid idea?” said Seraphine. “Don’t we have enough work to do before the big day?”

  “Of course.” Flora’s gaze drifted wistfully out the window in the direction of Baden-Baden.

  It was a dreary November day, and the fog hung so low over the Swabian Mountains that Gönningen was engulfed in a damp, cool pall. “If only the wedding wasn’t so far off.”

  Suse and Seraphine were with Flora in her room. Seraphine was doing her best to alter her beautiful but far-too-small wedding dress to fit Flora. Again and again, she pinned layers of material into place at the neckline, at the back, and around the skirt, and Flora then had to turn and bend and sit. Either the top would fit and the skirt would billow unattractively, or the skirt hung nicely but the fabric stretched uncomfortably across Flora’s chest.

  Throughout the fitting, Flora would not let anyone stop her from reading Friedrich’s letter, which had come that morning. She was hungry for news from Baden-Baden. And, of course, she had to tell Suse and Seraphine everything.

  “‘I am using every free minute to connect my room and Sybille’s,’” she read aloud. “‘The door is already out, although I still have to fix the parquetry in the connecting section and then rearrange the furniture. I hope you like the little nest I am preparing for the two of us.’”

  Suse sighed. “A little nest! How romantic.”

  Flora’s brow furrowed. “It’s hard to imagine going back to Baden-Baden and not sharing a room with Sabine but living with Friedrich instead.”

  “So tell us, where are your rooms, exactly? And what do they look like?” Seraphine asked.

  “On the second floor, just beside his parents’ bedroom. I hope they don’t snore too loudly.” Flora giggled. “But I can’t tell you what Friedrich’s room looks like, because I�
��ve never seen it. Sybille’s room is really just a small room with a window. You’ll have to come and visit me as soon as you can, so I can show you everything.” She turned to the next page of the letter. “But what’s this? ‘Mother wants me to tell you that she agrees to having the wedding on January thirteenth in Gönningen. And she approves of the seating arrangements your dear mother went to such a lot of trouble to sketch out and enclose in your last letter. The same goes for all the other suggestions your mother put forward—I do believe the two of them will get on very well.’”

  Flora looked up. “January the thirteenth has been officially sanctioned, thank God. If I think about dragging this all out any longer . . . The thirteenth is a Saturday, and the flower shop is normally closed from midday Saturday until Monday morning, so it makes sense to have the wedding on a weekend. But I honestly did not think that Ernestine would be so willing to have the wedding here in Gönningen.”

  Suse laughed. “Usually, the groom’s parents are happy if they have as little to do with the arrangements as possible. All the work, you know, not to mention the money.”

  Flora shrugged. “There will only be a dozen guests coming from Friedrich’s side, no more, but we’ll have more than two hundred. Getting all of them to Baden-Baden would have been expensive.” She turned back to her letter.

  “‘Mother is terribly excited. She’s starting a thousand things before she finishes even one. By the time January thirteenth arrives, her nerves will be completely shot, and mine and my father’s to boot! Darling, you can be happy that you don’t have to be here right now.’”

  Flora grimaced. “He goes on to say that unfortunately his sister can’t come to the wedding. I’m not really sad about that. Just before I left Baden-Baden, Friedrich and I went to the Lichtenthal Abbey on a Sunday, where I met Sybille.”

  “So what’s she like? Not everyone can claim a nun in the family,” said Suse.

  “She wore a martyred look on her face, and I found her rather boring. She kept making snide remarks, as if she was somehow envious of Friedrich. In any case, we only stayed for an hour, and I was quite happy to leave again.” Flora frowned. “It’s strange, actually. The nunnery is situated very close to the town, but it is its own world, very different from the town.”