She pulled more weeds, liking the warmth of the spring sunshine on her back, and heedless of the stains on the knees of her gown. It was one of her old ones; Jane had tugged it out of the rear of her wardrobe when Adalyn announced her plans for the morning.
The two women had settled quickly into a morning routine that suited them both, so Adalyn's mood was a happy one as she sat back on her heels and proudly surveyed the weed-free turned soil. Everything seemed to be moving ahead in a positive direction.
“You have a gift for the land, dear lady.”
Evan’s voice sounded from above her and she twisted around, realising he’d walked up behind while she’d been lost in her own thoughts. “Why thank you, sir.” She grinned. “Would you hire me? I could perhaps make my living weeding gardens…”
Evan knelt on one side and smiled, his eyes gleaming. “I would hire you in a heartbeat, Adalyn. But I’m not sure I’d allow you to simply weed my garden beds…”
Her body heated at his words, and she felt a flush rise in her cheeks as he leaned in and kissed the side of her neck. “There are other beds that need to be tended…”
“I…I…”
He moved away from her and rose. “Lunch in an hour, my dear.”
She nodded, being incapable of doing more than that little movement. Her mind whirled, filled with erotic images, visions of naked limbs and the heat, always the heat, lashing her with bolts of sensual flame. She trembled, closed her eyes and fought the swelling flood of desire.
How long could she keep it at bay? How much longer before she cracked under the erotic weight of four men lavishing such passionate affection on her? And what would it be like when she did?
“Oh God,” she muttered, seizing her trowel and attacking the soil with renewed fury. Could there be too much of a good thing? Should she dismiss three of them and take the fourth to her bed?
Her heart revolted at the thought. She had come to love each of them, to recognise their differences and celebrate their similarities. How could she choose?
A shadow fell across the garden. “I have not heard of any buried treasure at Wolfbridge, Lady Adalyn.” Giles stood there, a look of curiosity on his face.
She frowned, then realised she had dug quite a respectably sized hole, rather than extracted more weeds. “Ah.” Mentally chastising herself, she rose from her knees, accepting his hand as she did so. “I think my mind must have been elsewhere.” She looked down at the soil. “However, I did get a lot cleared, so I am satisfied. Perhaps we can start our planting in the hole?” She glanced at Giles…then burst out laughing, as did he.
“An oak tree, perhaps?” he chuckled.
“All right, jest if you will. There is something soothing about this work. It does allow one’s concentration to wander a little.”
“I think yours paid a visit to the Antipodes,” answered Giles in a dry tone. “But never mind. Lunch is ready if you’d care to put away your tools for the day?”
She laughed and stood, brushing the worst of the grime from the old pair of gloves she’d used, and then stripping them from her hands. “I rather enjoyed it, to be honest.” She walked alongside him toward the kitchen. “It’s not often one gets the chance to sit in the sunshine—or kneel, in this case—and dig. I suppose I might have done so as a child,” she paused, “but it would have been most unlikely.”
“Did you have a garden?”
“We did. And a gardener, because Mama liked telling people she had one. He was an elderly man who happened to love plants and flowers, and since we only had a small area, he was quite happy there. But to hear my mother talk, you’d think we had an estate and fourteen under-gardeners.” She shook her head. “I will never understand people like that.”
“I believe it is because they feel inadequate. They must emphasise and perhaps enlarge on their possessions to make themselves feel as important as others.”
Adalyn considered his words. “You know, Giles, that could very well be true. My parents were always focussed on moving up in the world, mixing with theTon, being treated with what I constantly felt to be obsequious attentions from toadying neighbours.”
“And yet you never succumbed, you never shared their goals?”
She gave a quick sharp shake of her head. “Absolutely not. I was shy, to begin with, which did not bode well for such mannerisms. I did not consider myself above anyone else, and I couldn’t have been more than a dozen years old when both Mama and Papa gave up on me and reinforced that opinion. From that point on, I was always either kept home or told to hold my tongue if we were in company.”
“The subject of your marriage must have arisen as you grew up, Adalyn,” said Giles gently.
“It did, of course. But I had just turned eighteen when my grandmother passed away. I did not know her well; she was what my parents considered common. But she had left quite a bit of money to my Mama, and a period of mourning was required. When that ended, I was already past my prime, and of little social status according to the Ton. My common background, in addition to my age, pretty much made me ineligible to anyone of consequence who might have been looking for a bride. The money was soon whittled away, but it did purchase my parents enough social standing to make the acquaintance of people like Sir Ridley Wilkerson. Older men looking for a last chance to sire an heir.”
“Oh dear.” Giles sighed. “Yes, there are more than a few.”
“I believe I have met most of them,” she commented. “Some were nice, others less so. I learned to stay silent if I wasaccidentallygroped, and you might be surprised by how often that happened.”
He frowned. “Dear God.”
They stood in sunshine, outside the kitchen door, but for Adalyn it was as if she had returned to her mother’s drawing room and the awful moments when she had been displayed for the delectation of the latest elderly visitor.
