We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt by Chelsea Iversen, a new historical fantasy out from Sourcebooks Landmark on December 3rd.
Harriet Hunt is completely alone. Her father disappeared months ago, leaving her to wander the halls of Sunnyside house, dwelling on a past she’d rather keep buried. She doesn’t often venture beyond her front gate, instead relishing the feel of dirt under her fingernails and of soft moss beneath her feet. Consequently, she’s been deemed a little too peculiar for popular Victorian society. This solitary life suits her fine, though—because, outside, magic awaits.
Harriet’s garden is special. It’s a wild place full of twisting ivy, vibrant plums, and a quiet power that buzzes like bees. Caring for this place, and keeping it from running rampant through the streets of her London suburb, is Harriet’s purpose.
But a woman alone in the world is vulnerable. Soon, a sinister plot involving her father’s disappearance begins to take shape, with Harriet herself at its center. Everything she holds dear—from the thorny roses she tends to her very freedom itself—is at stake. To save herself, Harriet will have to unearth her past, discover the secrets of her garden, and finally embrace the wild magic inside of her.
The man in the round hat arrived an hour or so later, while Harriet sat beneath the plum tree, rereading the same passage from last month’s issue of Gardener’s Chronicle, wondering about garden ferns and, for the hundredth time, whether she would ever invest in a greenhouse. If she did not have to tend to this garden, if she could live where she wanted and create a home of her own, what would her garden look like? She often imagined trees. Dozens of them. Of course, she would need more space for that. A place out in the country with sparrows and forget-me-nots and evening primrose. She thought she would like a greenhouse. The purpose of such a structure would be to have summer blooms in winter, and vegetables if the conditions were right, and it would be wonderful to have fresh summer roses all year long.
But, of course, all these thoughts were pointless. She must remain here. This garden was hers, and without her—
“Mr. Hunt?”
An unfamiliar voice roused her from her thoughts.
It was the nasally twang of a busy man, and she heard a faint rap at the door around the front of the house. Harriet remained unmoving, hoping that her silence would encourage him to leave promptly. She was acutely aware that the silver-lavender roses at the corner of the front garden, just next to the hawthorn, perked up at the sound, swiveling to face the front gate.
The man rounded the corner and spotted her all the way at the back, sitting beneath the plum tree. His small legs carried him over to her so quickly, she barely had the chance to cover her exposed toes, which rested naked over the moss, as they often did when she sat outside. She could feel the garden’s attention buzz to life all around her, the roses standing pert and cautious. This small signal was enough to put Harriet on edge.
“I am looking for Mr. Hunt.”
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The Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt
The man wore a thin mustache, which curled up at the ends quite intentionally. He had a short but sturdy stance to him, like he wouldn’t necessarily instigate a scuffle but was ready for one at any moment.
“It is quite urgent that I speak with him,” he said when she did not respond.
Harriet fidgeted, aware of ivy snaking subtly along the edges of the house, which she could see behind him. She willed the garden to be at ease as she laced up her boots beneath the cover of her skirts.
Her fingers grazed a pointed corner of something in her pocket. The letter.
She wondered if the man in front of her could be a debtor who was fed up with her silence and had finally come to collect what he was owed.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a nest of thorns separating itself from the garden wall and billowing forward, ever so slightly, growing inch by inch, sharpening in the glinting sunlight that muscled through the clouds.
She let a small nervous laugh escape her. The plants had become more and more unruly the more time she spent here by herself. She feared it would take some strain to keep them in check.
The man frowned deeply. “Is he within?”
Finally, boots secured, Harriet stood, wobbling slightly. She had a small height advantage that made the man take an involuntary step back, and the wrinkles on his forehead creased dramatically as he cleared his throat and stood up straighter. She dipped her shoulders so she would appear smaller and smiled weakly, still without speaking. More than half a year had passed since her father had disappeared, and the debt seemed to be mounting higher every day. Harriet had been naive enough think that if she ignored all their inquests, they would eventually stop harassing her and simply accept that he was gone—that they would give up. Naive indeed.
“He is not within, Mr.—” she said with a shake in her voice. A thick, momentary silence followed.
“Inspector Stokes,” he said firmly.
Harriet was thrown for a moment. Inspector. So, he was not here to collect on debts after all. Her vision caught on his blue uniform and white striped cuffs. Of course. She should have put it together before. He was reading her carefully, she noticed now.
“He has not been within for more than seven months,” she managed. “My father has left the country.”
“I see.” He raised his eyebrows. “Have you any idea where he is, exactly?”
She did have some idea. He had run off to Denmark to live with his wealthy cousin, no doubt, as he had threatened to do many times before. It seems he was keen to avoid debtors’ prison, though he did not think of what would happen to her in his absence. Or perhaps, more accurately, he did not care. It hadn’t been a surprise to Harriet that he had left, in the end. Not really. The only surprise was that he did not send her away to the asylum before he left, as he had also threatened to do many times before. She tried not to fidget. “Denmark, I think, Mr. Stokes—Inspector Stokes—” Was it just her imagination or was he narrowing his eyes at her?
“Denmark.” He rubbed at his dimpled chin with stubby fingers. “Curious.”
From what she could glean, the man did not, in fact, think it curious at all. He appeared to have made up his mind on the matter. And those eyes. They told Harriet that he wanted to pry something from her.
“Tell me—Miss Hunt, I presume?”
Harriet nodded.
“How did you and your father leave things the last time you saw him? Did he seem agitated?”
Heat rushed to her face. The last time she saw her father, the night had been frigid. He’d stood in the threshold, barring her from escaping to the garden, which Harriet watched rise behind him like a thundercloud before he kicked the door closed and dragged her by the arm up the stairs, his fingernails slicing into her flesh. His shouts were manic. Unhinged. She had flinched when he raised a hand, but he’d only tugged at his hair so that it stuck straight up like horns. His eyes bulged red and unseeing. This time, when he threatened her, she’d gone cold, sensing some finality in his words. Locked inside her room, she’d tried to pry open the window, but, of course, he had jammed that shut too. She’d heard him thunder down the stairs and throw open the door. The silence that followed echoed throughout the empty house. Harriet had still been shaking, back pressed against the wall, fingers digging into her scalp, an hour later, maybe two. She’d clutched a candlestick in her hand, waiting for him to come back, to try to take her away. But he hadn’t come back at all.
“I—we had an argument.”
Stokes raised an eyebrow.
“It was brief, and then he was gone.”
Stokes tapped his fingers against his trouser leg. “Can I ask, what is in Denmark?”
She shook her head. “He has a cousin there, I think.”
“His name?” He pulled out a small piece of paper to capture her words in ink.
Harriet shook her head again. “I don’t know…”
“Hmm.” He dropped his hands to his sides and tipped his head slightly, never taking his eyes off her. “Not close with your father’s family then?”
“No.” Other than an unnamed cousin referenced when her father was particularly incensed, she didn’t think he had any family. The only kin she had ever known was her cousin Eunice—a second cousin, really—and she was related on her mother’s side. Harriet could sense Stokes’s gaze on her. She didn’t like the way it made her feel. Like a liar, somehow. She wished she knew what exactly he wanted.
She suddenly noticed the thorns peeling away from the garden wall, creeping up behind Stokes at shoulder level. Her eyes widened, and she tried to breathe slowly—hoping that the plants would sense her calm—but she could only manage quick, shallow breaths. She stared down the brambles, and the spindly arms paused, appearing to decide something. Stokes swiveled around to see what she was looking at, but thankfully, the thicket had eased back against the garden wall, just in time. Seeing nothing amiss, he turned slowly to face Harriet. She tried to force a confident, polite smile though she could feel the sweat—simultaneously hot and cold—collecting at the back of her neck.
Harriet chanced a reluctant glance behind his other shoulder, worried that she would see watchful vines wriggling and curious rose blooms craning their necks to see what was to come. Inspector Stokes turned again. All was still. The house stood weakly behind the vines, like a drunkard leaning into the arms of a steady companion. The ivy pressed up innocently against the house and the roses looked perfectly demure.
Though when the man turned his back on the house again, they peeled themselves out of their stillness and began to hover.
Stop it, she mouthed at the vines. They did not retreat. Instead, she saw the ivy twisting and curling overhead, gathering momentum. Don’t you dare.
Stokes was looking at her. “Your neighbors say you have a history of… strange behavior, Miss Hunt.” He punctuated the word strange. She pulled her eyes from the garden, her attention snagging on his tone. He had spoken to the neighbors, then. About her. She could feel him searching her, as if she were an interesting object, a curiosity, or something even more rare.
Stokes looked her up and down with squinting eyes, as if bringing her stained dress and mussed-up hair into focus. “Where did you get that scar?”
She blinked to bring him into focus now too. There was a flash in his eyes that made her pause. Was it contempt? No, she knew quite clearly what that looked like. It was more like cunning. She could not pinpoint it, exactly, but it made her skin prickle. It also made the thorns on the cabbage roses thicken and sharpen. The garden had sensed it too, then.
“It’s from when I was a girl.”
Hearing a rustling behind her, Harriet took a panicked sidestep toward the front garden, hoping he would turn away from the roses. The pale blossoms of the Madame Audots bobbed, leaned in, listened.
Thankfully, Stokes swiveled to follow her. She closed her eyes tightly, willing the garden to relax. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it, she mouthed silently again.
“Have you been living here alone, Miss Hunt?” Stokes asked.
Harriet barely heard him. Leave it, she muttered through clenched teeth, her eyes still on the roses. The advancing stems hesitated, and she dipped her face to try to hide her hard glare. After a beat, which felt surreally like disappointment, the garden subsided, and she watched the flowers settle back into place.
“Miss Hunt.” His impatience was unveiled now, as if he were addressing an unmanageable child.
“Sorry?” A single bead of sweat dripped down Harriet’s back, but she let her shoulders release.
“Who supports you? How are you able to live here on your own, a young woman, with no husband or father?” He had his pen and paper out again.
Now that the garden was still, she could finally think. Who supported her? She supported herself. What choice did she have? A monthly trip to the pawnbrokers was how she had gotten by so far, but she would soon run out of carpets, dishes, trinkets, ornaments, candlesticks, and her mother’s jewelry—all of it. Thankfully, she had convinced her landlord to allow monthly, rather than annual payments. Her father had been quite fond of expensive things, for better or worse, and it had been helpful for the past several months, but by now, the interior of the house was all but bare. Just a few necessities remained in Harriet’s possession: one chair in the parlor, a breakfast table, a few dishes given to her by Eunice, a worn-down, old-fashioned kitchen table. There was the Dutch clock in the front passage, which was lacquered oak and brass, and which she would be happy to be rid of—but the glass face was cracked. She was sure it would sell for very little. And of course, there was the lovely Henry Pickering landscape hanging in the parlor, which she hoped would be worth a fair amount should she need it, but it was the one thing in the house she didn’t mind looking at.
As she stared back at the man’s small eyes and curled-up whiskers, heat crept up Harriet’s neck. She wondered if she should tell him about the debtors. Perhaps that would explain her father’s absence better. It might at least stop him from looking at her that way.
“Did he explicitly tell you he was going to Denmark when he left?”
The shift back to the subject of her father shook her. Perhaps Stokes had already made up his mind about how Harriet supported herself. “Well, no. But—”
“And did he tell anyone else about his travel plans?”
“I don’t know. I—”
“And did you ever wonder where he was? Why he didn’t come back?”
Harriet’s muscles went rigid.
“You see, it’s strange. His colleagues say that he has never mentioned any relations at all. No cousin in Denmark. No sister in Spain. No wife in Wapping. And no daughter in Upper Holloway. Now, why would that be?”
The moss at Harriet’s feet suddenly radiated heat, friction mounting between her boots and the ground. She knew exactly why that would be. She shifted from one foot to the other and back again, swallowing her retort. She wished he would just leave. All around her, she could feel the rapt attention of each plant—each bud, each leaf. Fingers of ivy lifted off the wall above them, quivering with tension. Thorns resumed sharpening their points, and roses widened their blossoms. These were the small signs of battle preparation that Harriet feared. The garden was waiting, ready to act in her defense, but she could not afford to let it go wild. Not now. She watched anxiously, pinching the skin of her forearm to try to regain some control.
She forced herself to look back at his face, knowing that if she kept staring at her garden beyond his shoulder, he would turn and see what she saw. But he did not seem to care about the garden. Instead, he was watching her, a dark expression written on his face. Realization prodded at her. She needn’t fear looking mad in front of this man. To him, she was already suspicious.
“We were not often in accord,” she said breathlessly, feeling suddenly cornered. “But there have been letters—”
“Letters, yes, of course,” he said, his words snipped. “Well, I will look further into this journey to—where did you say?”
He was trying to trip her up, to catch her in a lie.
“Denmark,” she said with a small degree of defiance. She was not lying, and she did not want to look like she was.
“Denmark,” he said, snapping his fingers. “That’s right.”
He tipped his hat and cast out his next words slowly, dangerously, like a fisherman with a hook, hoping to catch on something.
Excerpted from The Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt, copyright © 2024 by Chelsea Iversen.
