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They walked from morning room to dining room to kitchen before taking the bare oak stairs to the second story. She poked her head into the three bedrooms, each with its own fireplace and built-in cabinets. Even though a thick layer of dust covered everything, she noticed little details as she went. The rose motif from the doors downstairs was repeated in the upstairs windows, and the iron drawer pulls and cabinet handles in the bedrooms were all roses, too.

Finally, Guy walked her around the back of the property.

“The land needs work,” he admitted, nodding to the overgrown mess that had taken over the property. “I’m told that beyond the patio there are a rose garden and a citrus orchard. We could spare the gardeners from the Gables to clear it, and we could hire someone to manage it and oversee the property. There’s a caretaker’s cottage where he could live.”

She nodded, her eyes skimming over the promised garden with slight disbelief.

“Adele.” There was a slight panicked tone to Guy’s voice that made her turn to him. “Tell me you like it.”

She studied his face, his expression so open and eager to please her. In that moment, her objections to the fact that he’d purchased a property that was meant to be hers and hers alone without even showing it to her melted away. He wanted to please her, this new husband of hers.

She reached out and took his hand. “I think it has great potential.”

When he let out a sigh of relief, she hurried to add, “But it will take a great deal of work.”

He laughed. “That sounds expensive.”

She smiled. “Oh, I expect it will be. However, the first order of business won’t cost us a thing.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“I’d like to give it a new name. Rosewood House,” she said, recalling all the roses throughout the interiors.

He squeezed her hand. “Then we’ll call it Rosewood House.”

After that first visit, Guy stepped back, leaving the renovation of Rosewood House to her. It was, it transpired, a larger project than she’d anticipated even that first day. First the chimney needed to be rebuilt and several windows replaced. The shingles on the exterior needed to be checked and replaced, and all the shutters were rehung. Then there was the sanding and oiling of all that beautiful, neglected oak.

Soon enough, the little study she had claimed for herself at the Gables had filled with blueprints and plans, fabric booklets for soft furnishings and catalogues for furniture. Guy grumbled about the number of bills coming every week for a house that they didn’t even live in, but then she would kiss his cheek and remind him that this was the house he’d chosen for her. He would then carry the bills off to his study and write instructions to his bank manager to pay them.

It took nearly a year and a half, but when finally Rosewood House had been finished at the beginning of 1906, even Guy had to admit that all the expense had been worth it.

After what felt like an age later, Dr. Morris withdrew the speculum, folded down the crisp bedsheet that had covered her from waist to knee, as though there was any of Adele’s modesty left to preserve, and stood. Then he set about wiping down his instruments, the strong scent of alcohol tainting her bedroom.

She cleared her throat. “Is there any cause for concern, doctor?”

Dr. Morris glanced at her and smiled. “All in good time, Mrs. Whitley. I must first discuss matters with your husband.”

She bit back a retort that surely she should hear the doctor’s conclusions first given that it was her body under scrutiny. Instead, she fixed her eyes on the ceiling once again as he packed the last of his tools into his black leather medical bag and slipped out the door.

Adele waited a moment, listening to the fall of Dr. Morris’s feet dulled by the thick carpet that lined the hall of the Gables. With its three drawing rooms, library, dining room that could seat thirty, seven bedrooms, and formal gardens, the Gables had demanded her time and energy in a different way than Rosewood House. There, she had picked every paper, curtain, and cushion that came through the front door for the impact that it would have on their guests. This was, after all, not only her marital home but where she and Guy had staged their ascent to the top of Pasadena society.

At the Gables, she’d held her first tea as a married woman in the drawing room, pouring cups for Mrs. Barnes, Mrs. Gill, and even the new Mrs. Blakeney—née Gorman—as they exclaimed over how well marriage made her look. In the dining room, she’d begun hosting the carefully crafted dinner parties that helped her husband entertain and befriend businessmen and socialites alike, and in the manicured gardens cared for by a team of men, she’d hosted the spring garden parties that had become such an event that women began cultivating her friendship in hopes of securing one of the coveted invitations.

Yet for all of her triumphs, the Gables had also been the site of her greatest failures. It had been in that very bedroom where the doctor examined her that, six months after their marriage, she had first realized that her monthly courses had not come as usual, only to begin to bleed a few weeks later. After the first time, she had begun to keep more careful watch, marking down her dates in a diary, and when it happened again a few months later, she hardly let herself believe until she was seven weeks late. This time, when the blood came there had been cramps, and a horrible night alone where she had wept not from the loss but from the pain. In the morning, Maggie, her maid, had quietly swept away the stained bed linens.

What had followed had been nearly two years of nothing.

Compelled more by a sense of deeply ingrained duty than by maternal feeling, Adele had forced herself to think of other things. She threw herself into Pasadena society. There was not a charity ball, dinner party, or race she did not attend. She became a fixture of the Valley Hunt Club, organizing tableaux and finding herself on the committee that ran the Tournament of Roses every new year. Occupation could not replace the deep sense that she was somehow failing as a wife, but if she strung enough moments of distraction together, she found she could almost bear Guy’s clear disappointment when he asked every month if she had bled.

Then, last month, she’d been late again. This time her courses came after only a fortnight—hardly enough time to confirm that she had been with child but enough for Guy to convince her to allow Dr. Morris to examine her.

“He is the best,” her husband had said over a rare supper eaten at home with just the two of them. “He’d better be, given what he charges.”

Now, Adele slowly rose to her elbows. She removed the sheet and pushed down the layers of skirt and petticoat. Then she went to her mirror, touching her hair to ensure that none of it had come out of place as she lay down.

With nothing to do but wait for her husband, Adele went to the little sitting room attached to her bedroom and took up the book Mrs. Barnes had lent her the last time Adele had taken tea with her. Although she opened the cover and began flipping through the pages, she absorbed nothing.

Finally, there was a knock on her door. Her heart leapt, but she forced herself to close the book calmly. “Come in,” she called.