May 2022: Flowers and Ash is part of a series called Calendula Chronicles, currently being posted on AO3. This is partially because it was started there, and mainly because the ratings restrictions allow the story to play out as intended. The next installment (Ashes in the Fall) in the series is a bit steamier (look, when they ask for a pairing, you're getting one), and the tamer side stories are scheduled to be posted alongside that piece. (The first 8 chapters will be essentially UST though, if you aren't sure.)
The sheer weight of the summer heat bore down on the occupants of the all-terrain Jeep making a steady, careful path through the marshes. The mercenary at the wheel had blinked at the pair deplaning at the airfield. Practically kids, he'd sneered to himself. Who'd send for their kids to visit them in a war zone?
Alexander Ashford, seventeen and severe, had attempted to turn the full weight of what he must have seen as aristocratic hauteur on the grizzled veteran of the recent Kijiju…well, incident was a word. Cleansing was Lord Spencer's favored term, and no one had corrected him within earshot.
The elder man smirked at the little lordling and mockingly touched his brow. "Ashford, all then? The whole clan coming in?" The two porters struggling behind them with cases of equipment blanched and hurried past to the car. Two more minutes and this wouldn't be their problem anymore.
A cool voice intervened. "Yes. Colonel Connor, I presume?" The girl at his side was a hair taller than the boy, lithe and neoclassical in appearance the way most women whose titles had survived the war seemed to be. Her long, dark blonde hair was tucked into a neat bun, looking exhausted but composed. Her eyes flicked from his face to his jacket, badges identifying him as such. "Lovely. My brother and I are not quite used to travel and rather delighted to be back on solid ground. Are you to escort us to the site right away?" Her voice held the tone of a woman who was deciding the color palette for her sitting room.
It was also the tone of a woman who would be delighted to spend an afternoon filing paperwork should he decide to antagonize the little lordling further. As fun as that might be, the look in her eye suggested that poking at that particular hole would have him come away with a bloody hand. Colonel Connor grunted, and they all climbed into the Jeep and took off through the marshes.
The road was rough. If the Colonel happened to hit more of the potholes than strictly necessary, well, what of it?
Alexander yelped and started to shout on the fourth major jolt in ten minutes, then again when the girl's hand lashed out like a cobra and pinched him on the leg, hard. He looked at her, wounded. "Marigold, what's wrong-"
Marigold, nineteen and fresh off the debutante line, silenced him with a look that might have turned men to stone. "Try not to piss off the men with guns," she hissed back. "You don't know the situation here. Have you not ever picked up a newspaper?" Riots and unrest seemed to blanket this part of the world. The fact that they had sent mercenaries to clear the way for the 'great men of science' was not particularly encouraging. The roar of the engine made it harder to eavesdrop on them here, but still…
But then again, years of smiling and etiquette and mastering the 'feminine arts' in a Swiss boarding school had crafted her into a mercenary of a softer variety. The Queen Charlotte's Ball in London, a shadow of its Victorian glory, had done well enough to get her into society, and the apprenticeship as the young lady of the manor had begun at once.
And then, abruptly, ended. The world was not kind to highly visible young women who made youthful mistakes. Marigold Ashford had been no exception to that particular rule. Her body was still healing from the aftermath of that little mistake. Her father, as doting on his only daughter as he was ruthlessly expectant of his only son, had insisted that she accompany her brother at the last minute, 'to give her some time away'.
Alex made a face at her, clearly inured to her Gorgonesqe stare. As brilliant as her little brother was- and he truly was- Alexander Ashford was sometimes equally as gifted at clinging to idiocy. "I'm not the one ducking scandals back ho-ooooow fine I'll stop."
Shooting him one last look, she smiled pleasantly at the rearview mirror and nodded to the Colonel. He seemed to be making an effort not to laugh at the sight of two teenagers bickering in his backseat. "Forty minutes more, miss." The man called back. " Marigold smiled wanly in response and leaned back, focusing on keeping her stomach in check as the Jeep lurched towards their destination.
The main encampment sprawled fifty feet from the mouth of the cave. Generators and cables wound around the entrance to the cave's cavernous mouth. Mercenaries held the entrance and patrolled through the camps.
The siblings worked hard to match pace with the cantankerous Colonel. "So much security," she said as softly as she could manage, given their pace. "This is normal?" Open-ended, carefully framed to not offend the planners.
Connor had thawed very slightly since seeing the private display of sibling dominance in play. There was enough ego on this site between the blue blood and the brains that the thought of another young hormonal genius to chivy about had been a headache-inducing one. He could tolerate a fancy little lady about if her job were to slap some sense into the fuckwits who thought they were too good to mind the perimeters at night. "It was a long, rough spring, miss. Can't be too careful." He walked on. She blinked at the brush-off, then followed.
"They've already set up the lab equipment," Alexander noted. Marigold knew his earlier pique had been from impatience and exhaustion, now temporarily forgotten. The ink on his doctorate was still drying, so to speak, and he had leapt at the invitation to meet their father down here, at this secret site in hostile territory.
Marigold smiled back at him, brighter and more genuine this time. "Meaning that you'll be able to get down to work so much quicker, yes?" Alexander grinned back, and she kept moving forward, smile falling off of her face as she kept pacing the colonel.
Please, let them finish the work quickly, she thought with a deeper fervor than she thought possible.
"Ah, the heirs approach," a voice drifted on the late afternoon haze as they approached a moderate pavilion. Three men were seated around a table, gin and tonic firmly at hand. Wouldn't do to let malaria into the party when you have a virologist on hand, Marigold thought. Aloud, she called out, "Father, we've arrived!"
Lord Ashford, chief virologist in the expedition, smiled broadly at his children and rose from his seat the greet them. Alexander first- clapping the young man on the shoulder. They talked in animated tones about the boy's doctoral work- the timing, really couldn't have worked out better if they had tried. The elder Ashford, generally nearly clinical in manner, made an exception when connecting through science, and Alexander had strived to nurture that genius thread as much as possible.
Marigold stepped to the side, watching them fondly. Lord Ashford really hadn't known what to do with a daughter, but that was common for the type of girls she had grown up with. She had been sent to a boarding school for the children of the supposedly idle rich. She had worked to make friends- no, allies- while learning how to be effective wives for the next generation's up-and-coming young men. She blanched internally at the thought, holding her indulgently thoughtful mask steady. Surely she wouldn't have had to be carted all the way here for that.
Lord Ashford turned to her, eyes still shining with pride for Alexander. Sometimes, the reflected light from that was enough. She smiled back. "Father, it's good to see you. The invitation was a surprise, be welcome nonetheless." And still a mystery. Why?
He smiled back, touching her cheek as if she were made of spun sugar. The delicate way he handled her had always amused Alexander, and he managed to make use of the insured angle he held to cross his eyes at her. She huffed at him, not without fondness. Doctor or not, he was such a kid sometimes. She was glad of it.
Her father lowered his voice. "I heard about London. Are you alright?" Marigold smiled at him, though a tightness crept into her voice. "We can discuss that later." Shifting her tone to something more genial, she said more loudly, "I'm not sure what I can really do out here, but a change of scenery was a lovely idea."
Lord Spencer - uncle, she was supposed to call him, remember- toasted the teens in an unusually effusive move for him. Today must have been a productive one. "We're quite lucky to have to pleasure of your company, both of you. Miss Ashford, I heard that you completed your term in Geneva?"
The other man at the table was perhaps in his mid-twenties. The botanist, she recited mentally, Dr. Marcus. American. He'd been removed from his posting at a Swiss university due to some sort of academic scandal, and Spencer had snapped him up. She'd known a few American girls at finishing school. They were often more gregarious but had a sense of restlessness about them. This particular one seemed to be repressing a sneer, looking up sharply at the mention of Geneva and eyeing her suspiciously. He wasn't doing a particularly good job of it, but he clearly felt otherwise. Best not dispel that particular myth on first meeting. Privately she noted to look further into the matter. Knowing a partial story seemed fraught, somehow.
He was also the reason that she wished Spencer hadn't mentioned Geneva, but the barb was already delivered. "Last year, really." She did her best to appear oblivious to the younger botanist. "London was chaos most of this spring, I've really barely come up for air," please let him assume I'm not smart enough to know how much of his fall had clung to him, she silently begged. She kept her eyes on Spencer.
He held her eye for a long moment, then nodded, seeming to approve. The tension slowly began to seep out of the moment. A test, then? So it would be one of those visits. She'd grown up on tales of Dame Sark holding off the invading Germans through etiquette alone. This was hardly the family parlor, but it seemed like she wouldn't be kept entirely idle on this trip.
Twenty minutes and a few polite excuses later, the young pair were led off to their quarters for their stay. Edward Ashford watched the leave with a fond look that almost threatened to break into a smile. "Alexander's up to date with the latest in gene expression," he said to the other two almost as an afterthought. It's a shame the virus doesn't have an active sample to work from, but working from the point where the body fails is still data." None mentioned the population of warriors who had died in their temple cavern in a last-ditch effort to be the one worthy to lead. "We ought to be able to map the structure of the virus from that point. Oswell…are you quite sure about your weapons angle? The pharmaceutics side is an easy enough pitch, is it not?" They had been arguing this point enough that summer that
Spencer did little more than sigh at this point. "It is, and we'll need directors on that side. People to broker the relationships we'll need for growth." He sipped his drink, grimacing at the quinine taste. "Loyalty's harder to cultivate than training, given decent enough instincts. Did you tell her about the Umbrella project?"
Edward frowned. "I told Alexander, of course."
"Hmm. I keep getting letters from London asking about the exciting new company that has no details that your boy is somehow in the middle of." Spencer smiled. It was a cruel expression on his face. "The whole thing had filtered through the grapevine of the social season quite thoroughly. I wonder what a little political and business acumen would generate for accessing the defense budgets."
Marcus' sneering reply seemed to evaporate at this last point, and his mouth snapped shut. Of course. Spencer had poured a large chunk of his fortune into the Arklay facility. Someone would have to get the machinery of investment going, for the little storefront facade these two were building around the working, and how to hunt for the proverbial white whales who would want the true product.
Still. Ashford had seemingly materialized from a silent partner to bringing his entire line in on the project. He had gone from running his own lab and project with Spencer's support to being relegated to a junior partner in the enterprise. Spencer's offer to trade his access to the academic world for full research support had changed the balance of power in their little circle. In the lab, he didn't care much, but the gap was already visible.
His assistant, George Bailey, was still with him, for now. Spencer had been pulling George aside more and more this year. Spencer had put it down to the necessities of building support for his research. Scaling the business was an inevitability.
Ashford seemed not to notice the tension at the table. "Industry events are dreadful affairs," he mused. "I wouldn't mind going to fewer conferences if someone were able to do that bit of legwork." Alexander was still rising in his field, of course. Still, the company itself would need representation out in the world, and his daughter, practically tailor-made for such things, needed something to do with her time. She'd run wild quite enough this past year. Ashford relaxed further, satisfied for now.
They had been friends since their shared youth, united in vision and, with a new generation ready to take the baton, on the cusp of a great era of discovery.
Whatever could go wrong?
