Page 16 of Atone, Adonis

He turned his head down to her. “It’s in need of repair.”

She knew that. Everyone knew how he’d let the once beautiful home fall to ruin.

But before she could say more, he pointed at a stone on the side of the road. “Look there. Is that one of your mushrooms?”

Julianna’s gaze followed his finger. “That’s a rock.”

“Are you certain?”

She almost said Shall I pick it up and throw it at you to be sure? but stopped, because behind the rock—between the outcropping and the hedge—was indeed a patch of mushrooms. The first of the season. The soil must be slightly warmer here, insulated as it was. She’d have to remember to mark it down in her notebook.

She brushed aside a cluster of damp leaves. Beneath them pale, bulbous mushrooms pushed through the soil. “Look at that,” she said with satisfaction as she gathered them up.

Fred regarded her skeptically. “Just as I said.”

“You pointed to the rock.”

“And yet here you stand, hands full of fungus.”

She straightened up to better scowl at him. “They are delicious.”

“They grow out of rotting leaves.”

“And the other kind of oyster grows in rocks covered in bird droppings, and yet I’m certain you eat those.”

Fred was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Point taken,” and held out his hands.

“So now you want my mushrooms?”

“I certainly do not. But I will carry them for you. Give them here.”

“No.”

He sounded frustrated and she enjoyed it. “I am trying to be civil, Miss Farrow. Hand over your damned fungus.”

She shoved them into his hands, not bothering to wipe the dirt or leaves off first. They did not speak again until they came within sight of the Manor.

The great stone house she remembered from her childhood suddenly loomed at the end of the drive as it always had, but that did not lessen the shock of seeing it there. Nor had the rumors that he’d let the place go to ruin. She’d heard them all and yet her mouth still hung open in surprise.

Sedgewick Manor was truly in shambles. Ivy climbed the walls in unruly swaths, covering doors and windows both, and the once-careful lawns had been entirely surrendered to weeds and decay.

“You aren’t living there,” she said.

Fred glanced at her. “No. I’m at the coaching inn.” She had no idea what expression her face was making but it must have been in quite the state because then he said, “Have you something to say about my abode, Miss Farrow?”

She had many things to say: That the house was far worse than she’d imagined. That she oughtn’t be surprised, it was only fitting that he should let this once beautiful house rot away, feckless creature that he was.

She settled on, “It suits you.”

His mouth twitched again. “I thought just the same yesterday.”

And that—made her turn to look at him. She would not have pegged the Local Adonis as a man of introspection. But there was no way to take what she’d said as a compliment, which meant he’d understood the insult and…agreed with it?

No.

Fred was without humility in every way.

Her eyes moved over the gardens as they approached the house. They were, somehow, worse than the lawns. She remembered the terraced beds that had been here. The roses and clipped hedges and gravel paths. Now everything had collapsed into a snarling mass of thorn and vine.