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Drew pressed his forehead against the rough wood walls of the gardening shed at the back of his mother’s rose gardens, where he used to retreat as a child. Normally he didn’t like small, enclosed spaces but this one was familiar. Comforting.
A small thing had happened—inconsequential to everyone else in the ballroom. The candles had sputtered overhead and one small drop of wax had hit his cheek.
Smell of beeswax filling his nostrils.
Only it wasn’t beeswax, but tallow. The cheapest, foulest tallow, which smelled of burned animal hair. Tallow mixed with the odor of bilgewater. Floor beginning to sway.
Irrational fear intruding on his mind.
It was London that dragged this out of him, this lingering edge of madness.
London, gossips, large gatherings of people, unfamiliar carriages, unfamiliar small spaces.
A drop of wax on his cheek.
Many things triggered his attacks, or had triggered them until he left London and built a new life. He thought he’d mastered his emotions, that nothing could take him back over the side and plunge him into the storm waters again.
He ran his hands over the walls. He hadn’t brought a lantern. There had been enough moonlight to walk along the garden path. Cold metal. A three-pronged gardening fork hanging on the wall. A good, sturdy shape for his palm to enclose.
He pressed harder with his fingertips on the sharp tines of the fork. If the gossips could see him now they would have their proof that he wasn’t right in the head, that he’d gone mad.
When he’d left London for Thornhill House, he’d only been dimly aware of the army of servants it took to keep his life humming along smoothly.
As far as he’d known, food had arrived on the table in seven courses prepared by a French cook. He’d certainly known nothing about growing and harvesting plants.
The tool in his palm reminded him of the work he had to do at Thornhill. When he had first arrived there he hadn’t known the sharp end of a spade from the handle.
Old Caleb, the gardener here when Drew was a child, was buried and gone, but his roses lived on, unfurling every year in brilliant crimson, waxy white, and a heated fuchsia color that seemed to pulse when you looked at it.
Most of the bushes were naked right now, snipped to the bone so that the ballroom could be festooned for the night.
The new gardener wasn’t so careful with his tools as Caleb had been. Things were scattered about. Seeds in muslin bags not put away in their proper wooden boxes.
He sifted through the seeds, as if sorting them into piles would do something similar in his mind, every thought in its place, orderly and neat.
Nothing mixed up or out of place.
Just a little longer in the velvet caress of utter solitude.
A few more breaths and he would go back inside.
Think about the life of a seed, how if it rains and then the sun shines, it can seem like a fresh green seedling appears overnight, so eager and hopeful, stretching thin fibers to the sun.
For some unaccountable reason, instead of a green seedling his mind’s eye pictured MissPenny. She’d been the most interesting thing to happen to him tonight. While he’d been talking to her he’d forgotten to be wary, forgotten all of the people watching them.
He pressed his cheek against the rough wall and thought about the smooth line of her profile, that plump lower lip, and the mystery in her blue-gray eyes.
Why had she been so intent on making him dislike her? Had he lost his charm, along with his sanity?
The door of the shed scraped open. For a moment he wondered if he’d imagined it, but then a slight figure dressed in shimmering white appeared.
He flattened against the back wall, hidden by the wooden shelves.
The woman carried a small lantern, which she placed on the hook near the door. When she turned toward him he nearly betrayed his presence with a surprised sound.
MissPenny.
He could almost believe her to be a ghost... except that she glowed with life. She was so very alive. She was muttering to herself. She made these little impatient gestures. He couldn’t make out all the words but she was angry about something.
