Page 37 of Homegrown Magic

“Do you like it?” Margot spins, letting her skirt billow into a bell around her waist.

“You are…” Yael swallows hard. “It’s a very, very good dress.”

Margot fights every part of herself that suddenly wants nothing more than to pull Yael Clauneck into her cottage and kiss them.

Where are such thoughts coming from? It has to be the dress. The excitement of the day. Her nerves. Well, that’s not all. It’s also the way Yael’s changed in the last few months, the way Margot feels seen by them. They way they’re looking up at Margot right now.

She brushes these thoughts away along with a loose strand of hair. There’ll be time to puzzle out her feelings later.

“Let’s go,” Margot says, offering Yael her arm. “The show starts soon, and I want to see the guests as they arrive at the manor.”

Though Rastanaya described the crowd she’d invited as “intimate,” there still wouldn’t have been room for them all to stay at the tavern. And anyway, the designer wanted her audience’s arrival in Bloomfield, passing through its open stone gates and riding into the quiet woods, to be part of the magic of the show. They’d stayed at an inn at a crossroads up the Queens’ Road instead. It’s probably better that Margot’s former peers are seeing her for the first time after all these years, resplendent in a ballgown rather than in her typical work clothes following a day in the greenhouses.

At least Yael likes the dress, and Margot inside it, she thinks with a private smile.

Margot and Yael walk in companionable silence, arms linked as their shoes crunch over the now weed-free gravel path between the cottage and the house.

“Wow,” Margot breathes as the house comes into view.

“We did good work,” Yael says.

They really have, and Greenwillow Manor is nearly unrecognizable. Well, that’s not exactly true. Margot recognizes it, because it looks like it did when her parents had a full staff to help them run it, and not like the run-down shell it’s been for the last few years. Thanks to these weeks of Margot’s and Yael’s efforts, Rastanaya’s limitless budget, and the labor of the designer’s assistants over the past few days, Margot knows that behind the front doors, the public rooms of the manor have been scrubbed and filled with borrowed furniture. Cut flowers from Margot’s greenhouses also decorate the first floor, spilling over in extravagant arrangements that she and Yael have worked on for the last week. There will be waiters moving through the crowds with trays of champagne, as well as a reception afterward in the house.

Rastanaya’s preview show is called Wild Places at Gloaming, and, fittingly, it starts at sunset. It’s evening now, and the sun is already painting the horizon pink and orange. Flickering torches line the manor’s driveway. People in outfits as lavish as Margot’s and Yael’s gather in clumps outside the manor, leaving their carriages, horses, and other exotic mounts parked in front of the house. Two women in glittering silver and blue dresses, respectively, climb out of separate carriages and meet by the front door, kissing each other’s cheeks and exclaiming loudly. More guests join them as they arrive, a few whom Margot recognizes as her parents’ former friends, and her stomach lurches. Can she really do this? It’s too late to be asking that question, but the sight of all these people sends fear snaking through her.

“Can we go in through the garden door?” Margot grips Yael’s hand. Suddenly, her corset is too tight. Her mouth is too dry. All she wants is to flee back to the gardener’s cottage.

They squeeze her hand back. “Of course.”

Avoiding the crowds, Margot and Yael dart through a side corridor of the manor to leave through a servants’ entrance rather than the main stairway. They slip through a break in the hedges, and Margot relaxes as the garden comes into view.

She really has outdone herself this time.

As per Rastanaya’s instructions, the fashion show will take place along the marble path under the arched trellis that stretches from the terrace at the back of the house to the fountain at the southern end of the garden. Rastanaya asked Margot not to clean up any of the overgrown garden beds, but Margot couldn’t help herself. She pruned a few of the wild roses, though they still sprawl, and she cleared the soil and debris out of the garden fountain and got it running again. She also wove small, glittering lights through the tree canopy—they’re powered by a simple spell that Clementine taught her to keep candles burning all evening—and she used her own magic to convince the neglected jasmine that grows along the garden trellises to flower. Its scent wafts across the garden, filling the night with perfume.

“This looks astonishing,” Yael says. “You really are a genius, Margot Greenwillow.”

She laughs and takes a flute of champagne from a passing waiter. “I couldn’t have done any of this if you hadn’t been helping in the greenhouses.”

“I think we might be an amazing team.”

“I think you might be right.”

Yael clinks their own glass of champagne against Margot’s, and they walk toward the runway.

Rastanaya’s team has set chairs along both sides of the garden path, and people are already taking their seats. The terrace at the back of the house is also full of fashionable people who look vaguely familiar to Margot, though she doesn’t recognize anyone. Also on the terrace is a small band of fiddlers, lutists, and horn players—something more suited to Clementine’s Tavern than a fashion show for Ashaway’s elite—and they play a rowdy tune. Rastanaya stands at the top of the terrace steps, wearing a stunning green dress and a tall, magical vining headpiece that Margot created for her, the vines braiding and shifting and rebraiding themselves atop her curls. She greets her guests as they appear outside, like a queen holding court. For a moment, Margot sees a vision of her mother, standing in much the same way on the terrace and presiding over a party full of her friends. Iris Greenwillow would love to know that all of these guests who merited an exclusive invitation from Rastanaya were here, exclaiming over her gardens.

Except they’re not her gardens any longer, are they?

“Where should we sit?” Margot wrenches her gaze away from the terrace as she and Yael pause at the end of the runway, standing near enough to the tinkling fountain that a few drops of water splash onto them.

“Rastanaya told me we have seats in the front row.” Yael points to a set of open chairs draped in garlands of ivy so that they appear to be growing out of the ground beneath them.

“Up front?” Margot squeaks out. “Where everyone can see us?” She’d imagined they’d be tucked away, like the rest of the designer’s assistants, somewhere they could watch the show without being watched.

“It would be a waste if I was the only one to see you in that dress.”

Before Margot can reply, a loud, high-pitched voice calls out from the terrace. “Yael? Yael, is that you?”