“Breaking the lock is still an option,” he said.
She peered around. “No, it’s not. I can’t explain it, but it just feels wrong.”
“Fair enough. See if you can cut a spot big enough for the both of us down there, and I’ll do what I can to bring the tools over,” he called.
She drew her machete, grasped a branch, and gave it a good whack. A half hour later, Charlie gingerly stepped from the top of one ladder to the other.
“I hate heights,” he muttered.
“I know, I know.”
He passed down a lopper and stepped down to join her with a sigh of relief. “So this is the winter garden.”
“Or Celeste’s garden.”
“Still wondering who Celeste is?” he asked.
“Everything gardeners do is intentional. We create order out of nature. If she called this Celeste’s garden, there was a reason,” she said.
“Wasn’t it written in someone else’s handwriting?” he asked.
“Yes, but Celeste must mean something for someone to add it to the drawings.”
“You could reach out to Professor Waylan,” Charlie suggested, naming an academic who had helped her in the past with some of her trickier research questions.
Emma’s forehead furrowed. “I think he’s still on his annual sabbatical north.”
Something of an eccentric, the professor cut off all communication when on sabbatical except for once a month when he picked up letters on a supply run into the nearest village.
“He won’t mind a letter from you. Everyone else, maybe, but not you,” said Charlie.
She nodded. “I’ll send him a letter and ask if he knows of a Celeste connection.”
Charlie looked around again, hands on his hips. “This is quite the jungle.”
“A fun challenge,” she said with a raised brow.
“We have different definitions of fun, you and I. For instance, ask me what I’m doing this weekend,” he said, pushing down a branch to make a cut.
“Let me guess. You’re taking the boat down one of the canals and then going to the pub.”
He shot her a look. “Okay, fine. What are you doing?”
“Hand me the loppers.” When he did, she chopped away a branch that had been jabbing her in the back. “There we go.”
“Emma, what are you doing this weekend?” he asked again.
“I was thinking about going to a garden center.”
He laughed. “This isn’t enough for you?”
“Actually, I was thinking about getting some pots. For Bow Cottage.”
He stopped. “You’ll just have to take it with you when you leave,” he said.
She smiled. “Then it’s a good thing that you own a pickup truck, isn’t it?”
• VENETIA •
FRIDAY, 17 MAY 1907
Highbury House
Warm with clear skies
So much has happened today—tonight. I’m shaking with excitement like a girl.
I’ve never had a great sense for fashion. I have dresses for dinners in the evening. However, a ball gown is quite another thing. That is why, when I tugged a little at the lace sleeves of my best evening dress earlier this evening, a touch of worry flared up. I’d been to countless dinners, but this was not just dinner. There would be dancing afterward, the ballroom filled with women dressed in their very best.
I might have given an excuse and begged off Mrs. Melcourt’s dance had it not been for the promise of seeing Matthew. In the three weeks since he kissed me, we have seen each other only briefly and never alone. He takes tea with his sister every first Thursday of the month and he makes a point to walk the developing garden with her. Twice I thought I’d caught him watching me as I worked on the long border and he smoked cigars with Mr. Melcourt on the veranda, but I couldn’t be sure.
I wanted to not worry about Matthew and what he might think of me after our interlude, but I did care. Each kiss in my life had been a calculated risk, yet I was glad for the risk I’d taken with him. I could only hope he was as well.
He would be in attendance that evening, along with some of Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, and Oxfordshire’s finest families. At dinner the night before the ball, I met three couples—all prominent men of industry and their wives—who had come down from London, necessitating three trips to collect them from the station. This morning, when I went to the village bookseller’s, I’d heard several women chatting excitedly about what they would wear.
As I approached the house, I gave one last tug to my sleeve and adjusted the white gloves that stretched up my arms before stepping through the French doors off the veranda. Mrs. Creasley was occupied helping a group of four guests with their wraps and hats, so I left my shawl on a sideboard and slipped in unnoticed. My invisibility was not to last, however. A mere three steps into the drawing room, Mrs. Melcourt rushed forward, her hands outstretched.
“My dear Miss Smith,” she said, all smiles and light, “you are just the woman I wanted to see. Lady Kinner, may I introduce Miss Smith?”
I curtsied and looked to the other woman, hoping for some prompt that would help me understand why Mrs. Melcourt had dropped her usually frosty manner. Lady Kinner was clearly a woman of distinction. She bore herself as though graciousness and good manners were as fundamental to her being as blood and bone. She wore her carefully styled silver hair in a cloud of curls, and her dress was an understated mauve covered in a black net overlay. Despite her diminutive height, her eyes shone with an uncommon intelligence. I liked her immediately.
“Miss Smith, when Mrs. Melcourt told me that you were the woman Mr. Melcourt had selected to transform Highbury House’s gardens, I was delighted. My dear friend Mrs. Bartholomew has not stopped singing your praises about the magic you performed on Avenlane,” said Lady Kinner.
I gave a little laugh. “Thank you, Lady Kinner. I appreciate Mrs. Bartholomew’s accolades, especially considering Avenlane’s situation.” I spared Mrs. Melcourt a glance. “The house sits high on the Dover cliffs, and the sea wind whips across the garden. Many plants will never thrive in that sort of environment, so it was vital to select each one carefully. We also created wind breaks of walls and tree lines across the property, and none of them obscured the views of the sea from the house.”
Never mind the exacting nature of Mrs. Bartholomew herself. A stubborn woman who was unafraid to speak her mind, she knew nearly as much as I did about native British trees. We also argued fiercely at various points during the project, and by the end, we’d both received a stellar education in coastal flora, if only to prove the other wrong.
As though reading my thoughts, Lady Kinner said, “I’m certain that Mrs. Bartholomew proved to be a spirited client.”
“One might say that,” I said.
“Laura has been that way since we were girls,” said Lady Kinner with affection. “Did you back down?”
“Not when I was right. Our most strenuous fight was over a row of great hedges of ‘Common Lavender.’ I told her that they would make no sense in a coastal garden, but she insisted, so we planted one to see how the lavender fared. It died after five weeks.”
“What did she do?” Lady Kinner asked.