ricka mentioned that I should save all my deleted fragments. But that gave me a better idea. Why not let you all see some of them?

Here’s a scene that I hated to delete. I hadn’t planned to delete it. But I started from the top. On revisions, it was obvious that the scene started too soon. After all, she gets up and gets out of bed–not particularly important, right? And then she goes downstairs. Yawn. So I started deleting the first few paragraphs, looking for the start of the scene.

But in order to find the start of a scene, you have to figure out what the scene does for the book. And unfortunately, I had to admit that the answer in this case was: nothing. Nothing at all. So I deleted the scene. It was all setup for the scene when the boys come visiting, after all, and that scene is much more fun if the reader discovers the flowers at the same time the hero does. So sad, but goodbye.

Enjoy!  The scene is after the jump.

“Good heavens, Claire.”

Claire clawed her way awake at the sound of her aunt’s muffled voice behind her door.

“Wake up, and come down stairs immediately! This simply can’t wait.”

Claire groggily rubbed her eyes. The light filtering through her curtains was silvered with the first strains of morning, and she could hear the fishwife hawking her wares. It was too early for anyone but servants–and her ever-wakeful aunt–to be awake. But there was no helping it now. Suppressing a yawn, Claire rang for her maid.

By the time she reached the foot of the staircase fifteen minutes later, she smelled them. The overpowering odor of freshly-clipped roses. Their sweet floral scent had filled the bottom floor of the house. The front door, she noted, was open, and a wiry man, clad in loose-fitting grubby gray clothing, was bringing in two vases of pink roses, one under each arm.

He took no notice of her, but carried them into the sitting room. Curious, Claire followed. Every available surface in the cream-papered room was filled with vase after vase of roses. Bloom after perfect bloom waved stiffly as Claire passed. The mantel of the fireplace, painted in intertwining gold and green, was covered with near-identical blown-glass vases of the flowers. The long side-table overflowed with them, and the short-legged table in front of the sofa was clustered. Someone had even put the top of the grand piano down and covered the instrument. And its bench. The heads bobbing on the mantelpiece and the table were all red. Halfway across the piano, the blooms stopped being quite so perfect. Some of them were barely even buds; others were rapidly losing petals. The flowers then abruptly shifted to pink. Somehow or other, the man juggled the vases already on the piano and deposited his two vases.

“Well,” said the fellow. “That’s the lot of them. Think it’s enough flowers for you, missy?”

Claire goggled. She hadn’t seen so many flowers since her mother’s funeral.

“Good heavens.”

“Are you Miss Cunningham?”

She nodded.

“‘Ere, then. This is for you.” He handed over a thick ivory card. Claire glanced at it.

“Well,” demanded her aunt, waiting in the corner with hands clasped. “What does it say?”

“Just so you know,” continued the delivery man obliviously, “it’s seven hundred roses that we delivered here.” The man frowned for a second. “Well, seven hundred and seventy-two, really. But it comes out to seven hundred red ones.”

Claire looked at the man curiously.

“If his nibs is asking about his flowers, would you mind telling him they all were red? See, that’s what he ordered–seven hundred red roses. But, as it turns out, I could only get my hands on just over five hundred of them.”

Claire made what she hoped was an encouraging sound in her throat.

“All these toffs is the same, see? They order flowers, with no thought as to where they’re to come from. Why, just last week I had a Duke send his wife two hundred buds just to apologize for–but I get ahead of myself.”

The man walked over to the piano and started gathering the fallen petals.

“So your bloke sent his man over to my place at four in the bl–in the morning, and tells me I have to have seven hundred red roses at your place by nine sharp. Well, I tell you–my wife and the boys and me denuded every last rose bush we had. And those of my fellow florists, too, let me tell you. But we couldn’t come up with no more than five hundred and fifty-six, and let me tell you, that was thinning the pool at both ends, if you know what I mean.”

Claire didn’t, but she was too fascinated to interrupt.

“So then I decided to use my brain box.” The man waggled an eyebrow and tapped his head. “I said to myself, ‘Self, where can you get some more red roses from?’ And do you know what my self says back?”

Claire shook her head.

“My self answers, ‘Jeremiah Splat’–that’s my name, pleased to meet you–’if you don’t know that pink is just red mixed with white, you’re a farrier, not a florist.’ That’s when I realized that three pink roses was basically the same thing as two red roses and one white.”

“How ingenious. I would never have thought to try such a trick.” Claire bit back a grin. “But I believe this means I owe you a hundred white roses or so.”

“On the house, ma’am. No charge.”

“Claire,” said her aunt, “what does the card say?”

Claire glanced down. “Oh, it’s from Mr. Madison. He says the usual.”

“The usual?” her aunt shrieked, darting across the room. “What’s usual for an Earl’s heir?”

Claire sped over the words again, and paraphrased. “Pleased to meet you last night, something something something, some rot about my being exceptionally lovely, he’ll call this afternoon.”

Her aunt wrested the creamy scrap of paper from her hand and read aloud. “‘My dearest Miss Cunningham’–oh, that’s a bit forward, but I do think we can forgive an Earl-to-be–’I was most delighted to make your acquaintance last night. You simply outshone every other girl present.”