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“An unwilling one.”

“Yes, well, that is a complaint you must take up with my husband,” she said.

“I cannot believe he forced a grieving widow to give up her home,” Mama spat.

Adele pressed her temple, willing away the headache that threatened. “Guy did not force you to do anything. He gave you a choice: take over the payments, or come live with us. He has fulfilled his duty to you many times over, or have you forgotten to whom you send your bills every month?”

“I would ask you not to be so vulgar as to discuss money,” said Mama.

“It is not vulgarity, it is fact.”

“You have spent too much time among investors and businessmen,” said Mama. “I had not thought that you of all people would lose your refinement by continuing to remain in this place, but I suppose I should not be surprised, given the man you married.”

Adele’s eyes narrowed. “Do you not mean the man you steered me toward, telling me in no uncertain terms that I must marry or our family would be destitute?”

“What other options did I have, Adele? Have you never thought of how humiliating it was for me to be forced to push my only child in the path of men whom I never would have considered worthy in London? Do you know how ashamed I felt writing to Hyacinth to tell her that you had married an American hotelier with no breeding and no family to speak of?”

“It was you who taught me that things are different in Pasadena and that one could not expect to hold the men here to the same standards as English gentlemen,” said Adele.

Mama sniffed, turning her head as though ignoring the comment could erase the past.

Immediately, Adele understood that, despite her mother’s professions that being a gentleman meant something different in America, Mama’s old prejudices were still firmly in place.

“If you felt such humiliation at the prospect of having Guy for a son-in-law, you should have allowed me to go back to London and take my chances on another Season,” she said.

“That was never an option, as you well know.”

“Well, then we can agree that we have all made our compromises, Mama. Now we must live with the consequences.”

“I could very well give you the same counsel, Adele.” Mama slowly rose. “I find myself with a headache. You may tell Mrs. Jarrett that I will have my supper on a tray in my room.”

“With pleasure.” The prospect of supper alone was more pleasant than the idea of sharing the table with Mama and the weight of her disappointments.

However, if Adele thought her mother would leave without one final parting shot, she was sorely mistaken, for when Mama reached the door she paused and asked, “What does your husband think of you spending so much time at Rosewood House?”

Adele pursed her lips. The truth was, Guy didn’t seem particularly interested in how she occupied her time now that she was in mourning and couldn’t accompany him out. He paid Rosewood House’s bills as she presented them, occasionally grumbling about the need for so many tools or some other such expense, but otherwise he never asked about the garden or the house.

She suspected that, now that the Colorado Grand was open, he had turned his thoughts to the San Gabriel Mountain Lodge. From the few scraps of conversation she’d managed to have with him about the project, she knew that the logistics of building up in the mountains were complicated, and that balancing the project with his two operational hotels required a great deal of dexterity.

In a way, it suited her to be left to her own devices. She did not wish for Guy’s interference at Rosewood House, so the less interest he showed in her plans the better.

“I doubt Guy gives it much thought at all, Mama,” she said honestly.

Mama studied her for a moment, and it was everything Adele could do not to shift under her mother’s scrutiny. Finally, Mama lifted her chin and said, “Perhaps, Adele, he should.”

chapter forty ADELE

After their argument, Adele and Mama seemed to reach an unspoken, uneasy sort of agreement that they would avoid one another even more than usual, meeting only over those suppers Mama did not take on a tray in her room.

It was all made easier by Adele’s visits to Rosewood House, and with spring transforming into summer there was so very much for her to do.

At the beginning of May, Macalister had warned Adele not to expect the garden to be entirely transformed in one season.

“It takes time for plants to mature, even here where they grow so quickly,” he’d said.

Despite his warning, when she looked out over the newly created borders, she could see the structure beginning to come together. She could imagine how the groupings of roses—a combination of the ones Macalister had saved and new ones he’d ordered from a grower—the obelisks of sweet peas, and various shrubs created the structure for the garden, but it was the filling in of space with other plants that transformed the place into a wash of color.

Nothing delighted Adele as much as watching what she’d sown sprout and grow from seedling to full plants ready to be planted out in the flower beds. She found an immense satisfaction in seeing them bloom—one far deeper than any dinner party or ball had ever given her.