Page 140

Miss Pearce cut her a look, and she thought that the woman might chastise her for impertinence, but instead Miss Pearce sighed.

“Is the reason Matt doesn’t know his grandfather worked for you because there was something going on between you and Alex Macalister?” Theresa asked gently.

Miss Pearce gazed out into the garden bathed in the soft blue light of early dawn. “I would be fully within my rights to refuse to answer that question.”

“In which case, I would remind you that a biography will not be complete without a full reckoning of the events of your life.” Theresa paused. “Or at least the events that matter enough to be recorded, because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You want to write everything down for Matt.”

Miss Pearce pulled her blanket a little closer around her shoulders. “Yes.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because he has a right to know,” said Miss Pearce.

“To know what?”

Both women turned to find Matt standing in the open doorway, his hair mussed and his clothes rumpled.

“I thought you were asleep,” said Miss Pearce.

“I heard Theresa get up,” he said. “What is it that you want me to know that you couldn’t just tell me yourself? Why hire Theresa to write a biography rather than just speak to me?”

“Because it isn’t quite as simple as that,” said Miss Pearce. “Your grandfather… He meant a great deal to me.”

“Did you have an affair?” asked Matt.

“Do not be crass, Matthew,” said Miss Pearce sharply.

“It feels like a perfectly reasonable question to me,” he said.

“I will not have you reducing Alex Macalister to a scandal,” said Miss Pearce.

“Then tell us what we need to know to understand,” said Theresa. “Please.”

Miss Pearce closed her eyes. “I have never been the sort of woman who had great, sweeping romances, but in my own manner, I loved your grandfather very much. He was a good man, and in his own quiet way he encouraged me to become the person that I never thought I could be.

“When I came to Rosewood House, he was living in the caretaker’s cottage, where you live, Matthew, but his life was not entirely here. Once a month, he would leave for four days and ride back home to visit his wife over in Sun Valley. You must remember that it was several hours away by horse, not a mere drive like it is now.”

“Mrs. Macalister was ill, wasn’t she?” asked Theresa, remembering Miss Pearce’s passing comments about Macalister’s wife, Annabel.

“A lifelong invalid, apparently. Their families had known one another for years, and it was their parents’ dearest wish that they should marry,” said Miss Pearce. “But then Alex came to work for me and live in the caretaker’s cottage at Rosewood House.”

chapter fifty-nine ADELE

October 1907

It rained the entire day, and when the weather finally broke the next morning, the air was fresh and the sky a bright blue, as though nothing had happened.

Adele dressed quickly and found Alex sitting on the caretaker’s cottage porch, coffee in hand. There was, she was delighted to see, a second cup ready for her.

“Worst of it should be behind us,” he said as she took the seat next to him.

“If I never have to haul another bucket from that pump, I will die a happy woman,” she said.

He smiled into his mug, and something fluttered in her chest. Now that the danger of fire had passed, she allowed herself to remember the way it had felt when he’d wrapped his arms around her to offer comfort and—perhaps—the possibility of something more.

Before she could say anything, he stood. “I was thinking I should ride into town, get some more supplies. Pick up the mail.”

She glanced at the paddock, where their horses were happily nibbling away at the grass. Tempting as it was to hide away in her house up in Altadena, she knew that she would have to return to Pasadena and face what was waiting for her.