Roses Have Thorns, page 1
Roses Have Thorns
Roses Have Thorns
Flower of Scotland, Volume 1
Juliet MacLeod
Published by Casa Cielo Press, 2023.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
ROSES HAVE THORNS
First edition. April 4, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 Juliet MacLeod.
ISBN: 979-8215610589
Written by Juliet MacLeod.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
EPIGRAPH
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
FLORIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
To Cooper Alexander,
the real life inspiration for Dundee
EPIGRAPH
No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
Sonnet 35,
William Shakespeare
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Juniper Blair—owner of The Flower of Scotland
Sawyer Livingston—Wabanaki County Sheriff’s investigator
Rob Baker—Pembroke Welsh Corgi breeder
Doug Abbot—real estate developer
Steve Jones—family doctor
Julian Paquet—mayor of Dawn Cove, Maine
Leo MacKenzie—professor of maritime law
Brad Hillard—financial advisor
CHAPTER ONE
A grumbly sigh sounded from around my knees, and I looked down into the eyes of both of my dogs. Dundee, a male Beauceron with a black coat and reddish points, and Cornbread, a female blonde-and-white Pembroke Welsh Corgi, were seated next to me, their steady gazes reminding me that their breakfast was approximately three minutes late. They were starving nearly to death, and I was the meanest, most selfish dog mom who had ever existed. If they could but figure out how to dial a phone and speak in English, they would immediately report me to the ASPCA for abuse.
“You two are the most ridiculous creatures on God’s green earth,” I informed them before turning my attention back to my laptop’s screen. Checking my favorite gossip magazine sites was part of my morning routine, and Them Monthly hadn’t disappointed today. There had been another sighting of Ralph McCurran, the murderer of wealthy New York socialite Victoria Devereux. Since McCurran had strangled Victoria almost a year ago in her swanky New York City apartment, he’d been spotted in Boston, Vancouver, Tokyo, Mumbai, and Nairobi. This time, though he’d been seen at a Burger King in Honolulu that locals claimed was managed by Elvis Presley and owned by Tupac Shakur. There was even a grainy photo purporting to show all three, though to my untrained eye, they more resembled promotional cardboard cut-outs than actual people.
“Speaking of ridiculous,” I muttered and snorted in derision as I turned off my laptop. As much as I loved following celebrity gossip—it turned out that celebrities were people just like the rest of us, with feet of clay and warts, too—sometimes the things the sites, newspapers, and magazines reported were just too outrageous to stomach. Admittedly Them Monthly was the worst of the bunch, but I had an addiction, and I was powerless in the face of it.
When I rose to my feet, the dogs rocketed out of the spare room I used as my office and thundered down the stairs, the sound of their claws against the hardwood floors clacking like the strikes of a typewriter’s keys. I smiled and followed in their wake. The dogs were such characters. I was grateful for them. They’d helped me put my life back together over the past five years.
Once in the kitchen, I filled their bowls with dry food—lamb and rice for Dundee, and salmon and sweet potato for Cornbread—and split a can of tuna in oil between them. They had already assumed a perfect down-wait, so I put their bowls on the floor and released them after taking a huge step back so I wouldn’t be trampled to death in the ensuing stampede. Thereafter, the room was filled with the somewhat soothing sounds of crunching microseconds later.
While the dogs ate, I prepared my own breakfast. The tea kettle whistled, and after filling my mug, I nibbled at a cranberry-orange scone I’d bought yesterday at Tout Sweet, the bakery located next door to my friend Joss’s bookstore. As I waited for my tea to steep, I stared into the soulful brown eyes of my late husband, Joseph Blair. His photo was pinned to the fridge with a sunflower-shaped magnet, surrounded by receipts, take-out menus, post cards from university friends who were still living in Scotland, and other photos of my family and American friends. Despite the fact that Joe had been gone for almost six years, I still missed him terribly. He’d been killed on our ninth wedding anniversary, when an IED exploded as his platoon patrolled a village in Afghanistan. He’d only been 30 years old, a colour sergeant with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders battalion of the British Army, and my entire heart and soul.
After the dogs and I finished breakfast and I cleaned up our dishes, they accompanied me upstairs to my bedroom so I could get dressed for work. Since it was early October, I knew the morning would be chilly but the day would warm up some in the afternoon. Layers were necessary. I paired a navy-blue-and-grey Fair Isle sweater with a heathered grey t-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and comfortable Nike running shoes, before heading into the bathroom to sweep my strawberry-blonde hair back into a loose French braid and apply some eyeliner, mascara, and tinted lip gloss. Once I was ready, the dogs and I went back downstairs so we could get into our outerwear—a light denim jacket for me and harnesses and leads for the dogs. Then we stepped out of my house, a white clapboard-covered, three-bay, late eighteenth-century Colonial, and headed down Main Street towards the Flower of Scotland.
The susurrus of fallen leaves tumbling down sidewalks filled the village of Dawn Cove, Maine as the dogs and I strolled along, enjoying the sunshine and the birdsong. Trees lining the village commons square and most of the streets in the village were decked out in their autumnal finest—shades of crimson, gold, and ochre hung from their branches, and their roots were covered in layers of brown and fawn and lemon yellow. Autumn was a beautiful time in New England, even if it meant the end of tourist season.
Scarecrows and pumpkins stood side by side with sheaves of dried corn stalks on the front porches of the tidy centuries-old homes of the village. In the downtown business district, old-fashioned cast iron lamp posts had recently been painted a deep forest green, and colorful banners advertising the 75th annual village-wide Halloween party snapped in the breeze. The run-up to the party was one of only a few remaining opportunities to separate tourists from their dollars before the village began its winter slumber. Both Denys’s Seafood Shack and the Dawn Cove Historical Museum had closed at the beginning of the month. My mother’s antiques store, the bed and breakfast, and the only fine dining restaurant in the village would close in January and stay shuttered until April, when tourists would once again flood back into our little corner of Acadia.
Dawn Cove might be tiny—the latest census figures indicated a population of a whopping 1,097 people—but I wouldn’t live anywhere else. It’s a place with a warm, inviting bookstore and a French bakery next door; a general store so steeped in a distant era that shopping there was like taking a trip in a time machine; and an antique store filled with treasures from around the birth of America. Our village has plenty of spots to have a conversation with your neighbors, too. There’s a diner where the staff know your order and your name, and a theatre that not only shows first-run films on the weekend, but also hosts plays and musicals, concerts and ballets, and sometimes even opera. And there’s plenty of hiking, fishing, hunting, camping, and boating if you prefer the physical to the cerebral.
As I made my way towards the foot of Main Street, where my shop sat on the corner of Water Avenue, I passed by La Tour Inn, where a few older couples sat, their laps covered with thick blankets while they ate their breakfasts and sipped their coffee on the bed and breakfast’s front porch. I didn’t recognize any of them—tourists probably—but I waved nonetheless. One of the women called out to compliment the dogs. I thanked her with a smile and another wave.
Downtown Dawn Cove always smelled amazing in the morning. The mingling scents of frying bacon from Last Magnolia Café and yeasty bread and coffee from Tout Sweet combined with woodsmoke from the nearby houses created a mélange of homeyness and comfort. I inhaled deeply and smiled. Maine in October was heaven on Earth.
After stopping in at Tout Sweet for a large caramel macchiato, I headed across the street to open up the shop. I saw the dogs settled on their bed with their Nylabones, then began turning on lights, checking the coolers in the front and the large walk-in fridge in the back, and logging into the computer. When all that was done, I tied on my apron and perched on the stool behin
CHAPTER TWO
My cousin, Sarah Brown, arrived at the shop about ten minutes after I did. She was short, pleasantly round, and had the most arresting eyes I’d ever seen. They were the deep golden amber of a good whiskey and lined with thick, sooty lashes that needed no mascara. I was more than a little jealous of them.
“Hey,” I said when she walked through the shop’s front door. “I didn’t know you were working here this morning. Jess didn’t need you?”
Sarah shook her head, sending her dark blonde curls bouncing. “Nah,” she answered, her Brooklyn accent making the word harsh to my ears. “She said business is slowing down, so she’s not gonna need me so much. But it’s okay,” she added when she saw the concern on my face. “My orders are picking up for the holidays, so it works out good.”
She stooped to rub Dundee and Cornbread’s ears. The dogs were curled up together on the pet bed that sat next to the small coolers stocked with fresh, ready-to-go bouquets.
“Oh, good,” I said. “I won’t worry about you then.”
Sarah smirked at me as she rounded the counter and went to our FTD computer to check on out-of-state orders for in-area deliveries that had been sent via our website and also through a listing on the FTD’s own website. “Yeah. Sure you won’t.”
I swatted her arm and nudged her with my hip, eliciting a giggle from her. “So tell me about what you’re working on,” I said. Sarah was a jewelry designer who made custom pieces and sold them from her online shop. Some of her bracelets and necklaces had sold for thousands of dollars, but those were rare. Most of her sales were for less than $500, so she picked up extra shifts with me making bouquets and deliveries, at my sister Hazel’s salon answering the phone and booking appointments, and waiting tables at Last Magnolia Café, Jessica Sullivan’s breakfast and lunch joint, located right next door to my shop. Sarah made a decent living, but there were times when she asked me or Hazel for extra money for groceries or to feed her menagerie of foster animals, money that was always paid back, sometimes with interest.
Her eyes scanned the computer’s screen as she printed out orders. “Well, one of Mom’s art friends ordered a cocktail ring. It has an eight carat, cushion-cut Tanzanite set in platinum, surrounded by pavé.” She plucked the orders from the printer and pulled her phone out from the back pocket of her jeans. Bringing up a drawing, she showed me the ring she had designed. It was gorgeous: a huge, sparkling, square, blue stone surrounded by brilliant little diamonds. She swiped to another photo, this one of the underside of the ring. There was an X-shape, also set with pavé diamonds, holding the stone onto the band. I whistled.
“That’s beautiful. How much?”
She shrugged and returned her phone to her pocket before moving into the back room to get started on the orders. I followed her, reflexively inhaling the scents of roses and carnations and eucalyptus.
“We settled on $15,000,” she said, laying out the printed orders side by side.
I stopped dead in my tracks. “Fifteen... Thousand... Dollars?” I said, my voice strangled with shock. “That’s...” I swallowed and cleared my throat. “That’s a lot of money.”
Sarah chuckled softly and began working on the first order. It looked to be pretty straight forward: a dozen pink roses for a new mother, accented with baby’s breath and trailing ivy vines. “My biggest commission yet. It’s coming at the perfect time, too. Christmas is coming up, and Mom wants me to go back to Brooklyn. I’ll finally be able to.”
I nodded, happy for her. She’d moved to Dawn Cove about the same time I came back from Scotland, and we’d been roommates for a while before I bought my house. We’d both been struggling, trying to find our way in a new life that didn’t remotely resemble the one we’d left behind. But we’d both managed to carve out a little bit of happiness and success, and I was proud of us.
I glanced at the next orders and frowned. “Weird,” I said. “These are custom bouquet requests asking for a bunch of strange flowers. I’m not even sure we have all these in stock.”
“Like what?”
“Well, yellow carnations aren’t that weird. I know we have those, but columbines and asphodel?” I tapped my index finger against my lower lip. “I need to see if we actually have and contact the customer to see if they’ll accept substitutes.”
I went to the stock room, a large walk-in refrigerator located off to the side of the work room that housed dozens of buckets filled with water and fresh cut flowers. Much to my surprise, we had all the flowers in the order. I grabbed the stems I’d need and began wondering what I could use to flesh out the bouquet. Ferns or myrtle? Maybe some stock or statice as well? I’d seen some of both in the fridge, and in colors that would go well with the purple columbines, yellow carnations, and white asphodel. I went out into the shop’s sales room and brought up the order on the FTD computer. There was no contact information available other than an email address, so I dashed off a quick message asking if filler flowers would be acceptable and suggesting the white stock or statice.
While I waited to hear back from the customer, I began arranging the rest of the flowers in the remaining four orders, filling in with myrtle and leatherleaf fern. When I was done, I set the bouquets in their vases into the fridge and went back to the sales room. Across the street, Pelletier’s General Store and Moore’s Pharmacy were visible through the huge display windows of my shop. Frank Pelletier and Walt Moore arrived simultaneously and began opening up their shops, dragging sandwich board signs displaying daily deals to the sidewalk and filling the newspaper racks with the Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News.
The FTD computer beeped and I saw that the customer with the strange orders had responded. Apparently fillers were not acceptable, and I was told to leave the extra flowers out. Fine with me, I decided and went to the fridge to finish the bouquets.
“Are you going on your deliveries soon?” I asked Sarah as I set the bouquets on the work bench beside her. The pink roses for the new mother were beside a white wicker basket filled with sunflowers. Sarah worked fast and did a great job. The bouquets she’d made were beautiful, and I knew they’d delight their recipients.
“Yeah, if everything’s done,” she said, giving the new bouquets the side eye. “Somehow you made those look good. What an odd arrangement.”
“The colors kinda work together, though, don’t you think?” I gave the flowers a critical look. I wouldn’t have chosen them, but they obviously meant something to someone. I wondered what and to whom.
“Yeah. Somehow,” she said. “Where is everything going?”
“To the mayor’s office, my dad’s office, Dr. Jones’s office, and Brad’s house. The roses are going to Blue Hill, but the sunflowers are going to someone out at the Maritime College. It’s her birthday. I thought maybe I’d throw in a birthday bear, too,” I said, grabbing a small brown-furred teddy bear wearing a white t-shirt that read “Happy birthday!” and sat it down next to the basket. Something about the delivery locations of the strange bouquets nudged something in the recesses of my mind, and I frowned in thought.
“What’s up?” Sarah asked, clearing away bits of foliage and fallen flower petals from the work bench.
I tapped one of the vases with the odd arrangement. “Didn’t we deliver flowers to these guys a couple of weeks ago? The Dawn Cove Investment Club?” I paused for a moment, forcing the memory to the surface. “Yeah. We did. The bouquets had white anemones, white camellias, and forsythia, with maidenhair ferns.”
Now Sarah was frowning. “Yes, you’re right. The mayor, Leo, Steve, and Brad got the same bouquets. Someone else did, too, right?”
“Yeah. Rob Baker, Cornbread’s breeder. They’re lucky, to be getting so many flowers. Leave Brad’s and Julian’s for me. I’ll do them after lunch. I want to see Noah, too.”
“Okay with me.” She picked up the roses and the bear, the sunflowers, and two of the odd arrangements. “I’ll be back in a bit.” She headed out the back door to the tiny parking lot behind the building where the shop’s van was parked.
