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Adele

chapter thirty-nine ADELE

Adele settled into a routine over the next weeks, rising earlier than usual on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to eat a hearty breakfast and then dress in her simplest black day dress, because even if her destination was Rosewood House, it would not do to be seen riding through Pasadena out of mourning.

When she pulled up to the house, Macalister would unhitch her horse, and she would retreat into the house. Since learning of her mistress’s intentions to spend more time at Rosewood House, Mrs. Jarrett had taken to sending Hildy ahead with a basket full of things for luncheon and tea, and the girl would play lady’s maid to Adele, helping her change into her gardening things.

One Wednesday at the end of May after changing, Adele walked out of the doors off the dining room and rounded the house to find Macalister leaning on a shovel next to two wheelbarrows on the edge of the newly created borders where once the old rose garden had stood. Already, Adele could feel the warmth of the sun through her linen shirtwaist, and she smelled an earthy sweetness as she approached.

“What did you have in mind today, Macalister?” Adele asked.

He jerked his head to gesture at the newly planted border to his left. “I was going to mulch today, but if you’d like to do something else…”

“Mulch,” she repeated.

“Tree bark. We lay it down to keep moisture in the ground longer and to suppress weeds. It’s hard work shoveling mulch,” he said, his warning clear.

Adele rolled her shoulders back. A few weeks ago, she would have balked at the idea of doing anything more physical than riding a horse, but she was also loath to admit to Macalister that she wasn’t up to the task. There was something about his manner that set off an inherent competitive streak in her. Or perhaps she wished to prove to him that everything he no doubt thought of her—wealthy, spoiled, indulged—was wrong.

She held out her hand for the shovel. “Teach me what to do.”

Mulching, it turned out, was a very difficult task indeed, and when Adele climbed onto the bench seat of her buggy in the lengthening shadows of the early evening, she found herself beset by a bone-deep weariness.

After she’d watched him drive his shovel into the wheelbarrow of bark he’d prepared for them and then scatter it thickly underneath and around several roses he’d planted earlier that week, Macalister had stepped aside to allow her a chance to try her hand. With great determination to prove that she could, she’d lifted the heavy wood-and-iron shovel and driven it into the mulch and then lifted with an unladylike grunt. With considerable effort, she’d swung the tool awkwardly out and then tried to scatter the mulch as he’d done. All she’d managed to do was drop the entire contents of her shovel onto the ground in front of her.

Macalister had let out an unexpected laugh from where he stood watching her.

“Well,” she’d said, one hand on her hip as she glared at the pile of bark at her feet.

“Maybe you want to leave this one to me.”

She shook her head. “I can do it.”

And she had. As they’d worked, she’d become more comfortable with maneuvering the shovel, learning that it was best to load less bark onto it so that she could better control it. She even grew to like the sweet, woody smell of the material as she threw it down around the roses.

They worked side by side in companionable silence while one of the young men Macalister had hired to help him kept them well supplied with wheelbarrows of mulch. There was no denying that Macalister made his way around the flower beds far faster than she did, but she refused to be bested by some tree bark.

By the end of a half hour, her arms were aching. An hour in, her shoulders and her back had begun to scream at her in a way she’d never experienced before.

“That’s enough for now,” Macalister announced, jabbing his shovel into the ground so that it stood up.

“I can keep going,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter. My team takes breaks because a bone-tired gardener isn’t any use to me,” he said.

“I suppose that makes sense. I’ll ask Hildy to fetch us some lemonade.”

“Would be nice if Hildy would bring out glasses for Harry and Adam, too,” he said, nodding toward his hired hands.

“Of course,” she said, a little embarrassed that the thought hadn’t occurred to her.

After Hildy came out with the lemonade, laughing prettily as Harry and Adam thanked her, Macalister had suggested that they spend the afternoon when the sun was at its hottest pricking out seedlings to pot in large containers. It was a gracious move, one that saved Adele from needing to ask to do less arduous work because her body clearly was more suited to sitting in drawing rooms than it was wielding gardening shovels.

Now, drawing up to the Gables, Adele was glad that mourning meant she had no parties to attend, nowhere she needed to be. Guy would be out that evening at a supper given by Mrs. Cooper, whose husband owned a Los Angeles bank. When the invitation had first come in, Adele had felt a pang of jealousy and annoyance that Mrs. Cooper would have invited her husband knowing that Adele was still restricted by her mourning. However, Guy had reasonably said that his attendance would be good for business.

“Yes, Mr. Cooper fancies himself something of a mover and shaker, a modest Vanderbilt, if you will,” said Mrs. Barnes when Adele had mentioned the invitation over tea. “Truth be told, I find the Coopers rather tiring myself, but I am loath to decline when Elizabeth is so keen to find a husband.”

Not for the first time, Adele found herself wondering that her friend, who spoke so ill of her New York society roots, seemed so ready to adhere to the manner in which Pasadena society married off its young women.