Page 96 of The Queen of Roses

With no maid to do it for her, she clumsily pumped her own water from the well into the blue-and-white jug from one of the bedrooms and carried it up to the room where she’d left her mourning dress on the bed. She undid the dirty light blue dress she’d changed into, using a buttonhook to release the very top buttons. Using a length of white linen, she dipped the cloth into the cold well water and began to wash the dirt from her face, hands, and arms. Her hair had remained remarkably tidy in its chignon, but little tufts of baby hairs frizzed by her perspiration had come free, and she dipped her fingers in the water to try her best to tame them. Then she used the same cloth to wipe the dust from her boots.

After she’d washed, Adele turned to her stark black dress and sighed, the reality of her situation once again creeping in. In a little more than five months, she would be able to break free of the deepest blacks and enter half-mourning. She would be allowed to wear flashes of white and eventually lavender and mauve—hardly her best colors, but ones she now craved.

It was a struggle dressing without the aid of her maid, but she just managed it after doing battle with button and buttonhook. Finally finished, she turned back to the mirror, almost disappointed to find her normal self restored.

As Adele made her way down the stairs, she heard the creak of the planks of the porch. Opening the front door, she found Macalister leaning against one of the squared-off columns that supported the porch’s roof. Her buggy’s horse was grazing on the grass in front of the house, its leads tied loosely to the railing.

“I brought your horse around. Thought you might want a hand hitching her,” he said by way of explanation.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Also thought you might want this.” He held out a leather-and-metal flask.

She raised a brow.

“Hard work deserves a drink,” he said.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Bourbon.”

“My mother always says that ladies don’t drink hard spirits,” she said.

“Do you do everything your mother says?” he asked.

“Absolutely not.”

She took a delicate sip from the flask, the strong liquor burning her lips pleasantly. However, when she took a longer drink and swallowed, she immediately began to cough and sputter from the strength of it.

“Goodness,” she managed as Macalister took the flask from her with a laugh and steered her into one of the chairs that sat on the front porch.

“What do ladies drink in town?” he asked, wiping the top of the flask before closing it and then returning it to the pocket of his heavy canvas trousers.

Still red-faced from her coughing fit, Adele placed a hand to her breast. “Why, Mr. Macalister, don’t you know that Pasadena is a dry city?”

He snorted at her mock shock. “Dry as the Pacific Ocean.”

“In houses where that sort of thing is served, ladies drink wine or champagne. Perhaps a little sherry or brandy when they are overcome. It is all entirely medicinal, you understand.”

“Naturally,” he said. “I don’t suppose ladies dig holes, either?”

“I can assure you that they do not,” she said.

A moment of silence fell between the two of them, and Adele found it not entirely unpleasant. He wasn’t a man of many words outside of when he was instructing or explaining something, and she did not feel the obligation to fill that silence with words the way she might have done if they were in polite society, where women were expected to provide glittering conversation about any subject under the sun.

It was, she was surprised, Macalister who spoke first. “I saw you had a blister tear.” He picked up a small parcel wrapped in parchment. “They hurt like the devil, but if you put some of this on it will help.”

“What is it?” she asked, taking the parcel and beginning to unwrap it.

“Aloe.”

“What a strange-looking plant,” she said, following the plump, long spine of green that wept at the base of the cut he’d made.

“My mother used to keep it around to treat burns and cuts,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, touched that he would think of her comfort.

She rose, her long black skirts falling around her to brush the porch floor. “I should be going.”