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—if I quit now, I think they’ll take an awful dislike to me and perhaps seek me out in the house!

Sarah is over her head cold, by the way, and has quit speaking in such a low, stuffy voice, which I find a pity (the voice, not the recovery!) because she did sound so very amusing when she spoke—rather like an aged intemperate uncle, if I had an uncle, which I do not.

Do you remember the leaky ceiling in the washroom? Last sennight it rained cats and dogs, and what do you think? The ceiling fell entirely in. Quite frightened Cook, I’m told (by Daniels) because it fell in the middle of the night and apparently Cook mistook the crash for the Second Coming. (A religious sort is Cook, everyone says so.) Anyway, Cook spent the rest of the night in prayer, which is why we had cold biscuits for breakfast that morning. Cook says it wasn’t her fault. She’d been expecting the dead to rise, but only old Battlefield the butler greeted her at dawn. (Though I did hear Sarah mutter that Battlefield could easily be mistaken for the dead.)

Bother! I’ve run out of paper, so I must remain

Affectionately Yours,

Megs

A typical missive from her: quick, witty, full of the life she’d made for herself at his country estate.

Full of life itself.

Carefully, he folded the letter and placed it back with its brethren. He couldn’t betray Clara and the memory of their love, but that didn’t stop the fact that he was lying by omission to Margaret. The truth was that he’d not been unmoved by her embrace. Her kiss had been so essentially her: unplanned, reckless, without studied skill—and all the more erotic because of it.

She made something deep inside of him wake and stir as if he still lived and had hope for this life.

Godric closed the drawer and carefully locked it before pulling off his banyan and nightshirt. He blew out the candles and climbed into his cold bed nude, turning on his side to stare at the dying fire.

No matter how seductive Margaret’s offer of life was, it was an illusion.

He’d died the night Clara last drew breath.

“THAT THERE TREE is dead, m’lady,” Higgins the gardener said with absolute certainty the next morning. To emphasize his point, he spat into the decayed leaf litter that blanketed Saint House’s garden.

Or what was left of its garden.

Megs regarded the tree. It was without a doubt one of the ugliest specimens she’d ever seen. At one point it had been some type of fruit tree, but age and neglect had twisted the heavy lower branches. At the same time, thin, whiplike water sprouts had shot up all over the limbs and suckers crowded the base.

“It might not be dead,” she said with very little conviction. “It’s been a cold spring.”

Higgins grunted with patent disbelief.

The tree stood in the center of the garden. Without it, there would be no vertical interest.

She took a twig and bent it. It came off with a snap and she examined the center. Brown. The tree certainly looked dead.

Megs tossed aside the broken twig with a grimace. Dead. Well, she was tired of dead. Tired of a certain someone refusing to help her produce life. If she couldn’t convince him—yet—to fall in with her plans, well then she’d occupy herself with other matters in the meantime.

“Cut away all these suckers and water sprouts,” she ordered Higgins, ignoring the gardener’s ominous throat clearing. Megs fingered a brown, twisting vine wrapped around the tree’s trunk. “And cut away whatever this is.”

“M’lady …,” Higgins began.

“Please?” She glanced at him. “I know I’m being silly, but even if it’s dead, we can grow a … a climbing rose up it. Or something similar. I just don’t want to give up quite yet.”

Higgins heaved a deep sigh. He was a bandy-legged man of fifty or so, his upper chest and shoulders heavy and slightly bent forward as if his lower half had trouble carrying the weight of the upper. Higgins had quite definite ideas of garden care—ideas that had meant he’d been let go from more than one position. In fact, he’d been without work when Upper Hornsfield’s vicar had reluctantly given his name to Megs. She’d been looking for an experienced gardener to oversee the renovations at Laurelwood, and though she’d never once seen Higgins smile, she’d always been glad of the impulse that had made her hire him. He might be blunt, but he knew his plants.

“It’s a fool idea, right enough, but I’ll do it, m’lady,” he muttered now.

“Thank you, Higgins.” She smiled at him, feeling affectionate.

He couldn’t help being an old curmudgeon, and she rather thought the fact that in a year and a half of employment he hadn’t yet threatened to quit meant he must like her as well.

Or at least it was nice to think so.

“What about that bed there?” She pointed and soon Higgins was scratching his head and giving his blunt opinion of the rather scraggly looking boxwoods lining the garden.

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