Page 93 of The Queen of Roses

“The windows, beams, and columns needed oiling,” he said, as though that explained things.

“Did you plant your vegetable patch?”

Rather than answering, he led her around the side of the house, where she found an area of land had been cleared and a grid of beds laid out with rectangles of timber.

“Onions there,” he said, pointing to the tops of onion sets that just poked through the soil. “Spinach, carrots, and broccoli. Beans will go in in the spring. Tomatoes, too.”

“Cook will be jealous of your bounty once the summer comes,” Adele said before turning to a small fenced-in area where a chestnut mare stood watching them. “And you have a horse.”

“Bought her a fortnight ago,” he said as the horse slowly loped up to them, nosing him. He produced a carrot from his jacket pocket and gave the animal a pet on the nose as she munched away. “Yours can stay in here with her.”

She watched him open the wooden gate to the little paddock and lead her horse in. The two animals eyed one another, Adele’s horse tossing its head before making its way over to the water trough and drinking deeply.

“Thank you,” she said, making a note to have feed sent up to Rosewood House, since it was not fair to expect her gardener to provide for her horse on her visits. “Now, I’d like to see what you have managed to do to date.”

Macalister nodded. “This way.”

He walked her through the property, showing her all the things that he and the four men he’d hired to help him clear it had done. The rose garden was gone, but he showed her how he’d saved some of the better specimens. The chaparral that had been encroaching on the sides of what would be her garden beds had been beaten back to the edges of the property. The men had also turned the soil and dug out an impressive stack of granite rocks, which they’d piled up next to the long, rough wooden tables he’d built near the caretaker’s cottage to cultivate young plants from seed. When Macalister showed her the orchard, she saw that he had cut away dead wood to let some sunlight through the canopy of the trees.

“Here,” he said, reaching up for an orange and twisting it off with ease.

When he handed it to her, she lifted it to her nose and breathed in deeply. “I have always loved the scent of fresh oranges. They were unusual in London. A Christmas treat.”

They stood for a moment, neither knowing what to say after that little exchange of confidence.

Finally, Adele cleared her throat. “What is next?”

He scratched the back of his neck, looking around the orchard. “That depends on you, Mrs. Whitley.”

“On me?”

“I need to start ordering muck, gravel, seeds, and plants. Can’t do anything without your go-ahead.”

“You need only to write to me, and I will happily receive any bills for work we have agreed upon,” she said.

He looked at her. “I have written to you. Three times.”

She flushed. Apparently all that correspondence she had been neglecting was not exclusively letters of condolence.

“I do apologize, Macalister. I have been rather distracted with everything that has happened since my father’s death.”

“It’s no matter—” he started to say, but she cut him off.

“No. You needed an answer from me for work I hired you to do, and I neglected to provide it. My father died, but I did not stop living. Everyone is walking around me as though I am one misspoken word away from falling to bits. I am tired of it. I need an occupation, or I shall go mad.”

“My father died when I was fifteen.”

“Oh,” she said, a little startled.

“It was a long time ago. Not so long I don’t remember what it felt like, though.”

“What did it feel like?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I went outside and dug a ten-foot trench we didn’t need. My mother made me fill it all in again and told me never to dig up her garden again.”

“I suppose she was angry.”

His lips tilted up just the littlest bit. “She knew I needed to do it, but that didn’t mean she had to like me digging up her petunias. I spent the entire summer working out in her garden as punishment.”