Page 78
She nodded, and he removed a teacup and a book from the right edges to peel back the top page. As he pulled it free, it revealed a detailed drawing she’d done of one of the borders. She had her books from Vroman’s, but the books she’d sent for from London had not yet arrived, forcing her to dream up the border mostly from memory. She could recall Aunt Hyacinth’s London garden, with its roses, lavender, lilies, and hydrangeas. From her own garden in Pasadena, she’d added star jasmine and agapanthus.
She glanced at Macalister, who was now frowning.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“This is what you want?”
“It’s merely a start,” she said, a little stung by his tone.
He rubbed the back of his neck, still staring at the drawing.
“What is the matter with it?” she asked again.
“A garden isn’t just plants,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The type of garden you want, it’s about balance and symmetry.”
“I don’t want it to look formal,” she said quickly.
He shook his head. “I don’t mean a formal garden. You can have a garden that’s meant to look natural, but it needs structure. Do you have a pencil?”
She looked around, realizing that she did not. “If you will wait one moment, please.”
She left him in the dining room, running almost immediately into Hildy, wielding a dust rag.
“Hildy,” she said. “Is there something that you needed?”
The young woman flushed at having been caught clearly listening at the door. “No, Mrs. Whitley. That is… no.”
“Then perhaps you might dust another part of the house. That side table looks clean enough,” she said.
Hildy hurried off, and Adele shook her head.
In the small secretary in the morning room, she found a pencil. When she returned to the dining room, she found that Macalister had pulled out more pages from her stack of drawings and spread them across the table so he could see several at once.
“Here,” she said, handing him the pencil.
He pulled the first detail of the border in front of him. “Do you see here where you have three roses, a clump of lavender, another rose, and a hydrangea?”
She nodded.
“And across the path you have a row of agapanthus, an obelisk with…?”
“Clematis,” she said.
“And three more roses? None of it is balanced.”
She watched as he began to add to her plan, placing groups of roses at regular intervals, bringing a second and third obelisk into the second border and then distributing three to mirror them in the first border.
“The hydrangea will probably have to go,” he said. “The clematis, too.”
“Why?” she asked, more than a little disappointed because she loved the frothy heads of hydrangeas.
He glanced up at her. “It might be easier if I show you.”
She opened the dining room door and led him onto the patio and through to the rose garden. The spicy scent of eucalyptus drifted up on the light afternoon breeze, and she lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun.
