The girl nodded.
“If you remember what they looked like, we could plant them here, too.”
“Mama’s roses weren’t as pretty as these.” Sophie touched the nearest bloom.
Joseph could see now that the roses weren’t truly flesh-colored. He examined them in awe. The blossoms were golden at their centers, then peach till they flushed pink at the tips of their petals.
“Can you imagine anything more beautiful?” Tessa asked.
He couldn’t—at least, not in a rose.
“They’re called Jaune Desprez. They were the first Noisettes toshow any yellow. They’ve been quite the sensation—and not only for their appearance. What doyouthink these roses smell like, Sophie?”
The girl sniffed, then hesitated. “Peaches?”
“There isn’t a wrong answer,” Tessa assured her. “But they make me think of Passion fruit. Did you have Passion vines in Missouri?”
Sophie stuck out her lower lip in thought.
“We called them maypops,” David interjected quietly.
His sister gasped and nodded.
“Your Uncle Joseph has a Passion vine in his garden at the cathedral,” Tessa told the children. “If you ask him, I’m sure he’ll bring you a few fruits next summer.”
He promised to do so.
“Now you try it, Uncle Joseph!” Sophie commanded, pointing at the nearest rose.
He closed his eyes and obeyed. The scent of the Jaune Desprez proved even more complex than its color, luscious yet elusive. Beneath the sweetness of fruit came a hint of musk, perhaps jasmine… “It reminds me of pineapple,” he decided. He’d tasted pineapple only once.Thismust be the ambrosia of the gods,he’d thought, in a moment of pagan fancy.
Sophie didn’t understand. “What kind of apple?”
Joseph smiled. “Pineapples grow in places even warmer than Charleston, and they’remuchbetter than apples.”
“Sometimes ships bring us pineapples,” Tessa told Sophie. “I’ll ask our cook to watch for them at the market, so you and your brother can try one.”
Joseph’s mouth watered at the mere thought.
Tessa looked to David. “Would you like that?”
The boy nodded wordlessly, then mumbled: “May I go back inside now?”
“A-All right.” Joseph could hear the disappointment in Tessa’s voice. David slunk away.
Sophie turned back to the Jaune Desprez and inhaled again. “I wish we could eatthese!”
Tessa smiled. “We can, if you’ll help me candy some of the petals.”
Sophie’s eyes widened, and she nodded eagerly.
“Perhaps your uncle will help us pick the blossoms at the top of the wall, so we can still enjoy the lower ones?”
He bowed. “I am at your service, ladies.”
CHAPTER 36
In the devil’s mirror the loveliestlandscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the handsomest persons appeared hideous… The mirror fell to the Earth, where it shattered… When a fragment flew into a person’s eye, it stuck there unknown to him, and from that moment, he saw everything the wrong way…
