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“I am going to Rosewood House,” Adele decided all at once. “I hired my gardener and then left him these past weeks with little instruction. I don’t even know if the man is aware of what has happened. I need to go see what he has done.”
“Surely that is not necessary.”
“It is,” she said firmly.
“If you insist,” said Margot, slowly rising to her feet. “I will just fetch my things.”
“No!” She stopped herself and took a breath. “No. The house is isolated. I would not forgive myself if you took a turn while we are there. Spend the day resting here. I will not be very long.”
Margot looked as though she was about to protest but then thought better of it. “If that is what you wish.”
She gave her cousin a curt nod. “Thank you, Margot. It is.”
chapter thirty-four ADELE
Adele tilted her face up to the late December sun, not caring that she was undoing all the good protection her broad-brimmed black hat was meant to afford her. She was outside of her house and free.
She guided her buggy onto Rosewood House’s drive, stopping a few feet away from the foot of the steps. The front door stayed firmly shut because she hadn’t asked Mrs. Jarrett to send Hildy ahead to open the house. Adele’s interest was solely in the garden.
As she climbed down from the buggy, she heard the crack and snap of twigs under boot heels. She looked up and saw Macalister round the house in filthy clothes. A pair of secateurs hung from his right hand, and he lifted his left hand to shield his eyes against the sun that crept below the brim of a battered straw hat that looked as though it had been stomped on.
“Mrs. Whitley,” he called.
“Good afternoon, Macalister. I have come to see how you are getting on with the garden,” she said, holding her horse’s leads.
He tilted his head as though studying her.
“You are in mourning,” he finally said.
“My father,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
She gave a shallow nod, bracing herself for the inevitable, jumbled words that everyone seemed to try to stammer out to express that they understood her loss. “Thank you.”
He stepped forward, sliding the secateurs into his back pocket. “I’ll help you with the horse.”
He took the leads from her and then set about swiftly unhitching the horse from the buggy.
“There’s a trough around the caretaker’s cottage,” he said.
She noticed that he did not yet call it his cottage.
She walked beside him as he silently led her down a bend in the drive she hadn’t realized existed.
“I cleared it,” he said when she mentioned it. “Seemed the logical thing to do with the help here to do it.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could feel his gaze slide to her to gauge her reaction.
“That seems entirely sensible to me,” she said.
“Good. I made some changes around the place, too.”
The brush opened up, and she realized that that was a vast understatement. On the porch of the cottage sat the pair of wicker chairs she’d added at the last minute to the cart of furniture she’d sent up from the Gables. She saw, too, that he’d found the time to repaint the front door.
Perhaps most striking were the new camellia bushes with glossy deep green leaves and white cupped flowers that framed either side of the front porch steps.
“The cottage looks very smart,” she said.
