Page 53 of Not Just Any Earl
Phee remained quiet as she pushed her needle into the fabric stretched across her embroidery frame, then pulled the long thread out the other side. “Nothing about this has been easy for either of you, Emmeline.”
Emmeline looked down at her hands. “No.”
Silence fell, broken only by the crackle of the fireplace until Phee drew in a deep breath. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have—” she began, then startled as Emmeline jumped to her feet. “Emmeline?”
“I think I will go and muck about in Papa’s garden, after all. It’s not as if it’s going to get any warmer, is it?” Emmeline attempted a smile, but she could see by the way Phee flinched it was a poor effort, indeed. She didn’t want to worry Phee, but she couldn’t bear to talk about it. Not yet. It was like poking at a raw, bleeding wound. “I won’t be long.”
Running away again. It was becoming rather a habit.
It was cold, she discovered as she hurried down the pathway of cracked stones that bisected the tiny patch of grass and led to the walled garden beyond. Even colder than she’d anticipated, the brisk wind cutting through the worn material of her brown cloak and sneaking underneath her battered straw hat.
She rubbed her arms, the wind leaving a sudden chill in its wake that pulled goosebumps to the surface of her skin. The sky was filled with moody, fitful clouds, and she could taste the first bite of fall in the air.
The gate surrounding the walled garden was rustier than she remembered, and a small section of the stacked stone wall had collapsed, but it was the same beloved place Emmeline remembered.
Now she was here, though, she could only stare dumbly around her, uncertain what to do. This garden was nothing like Lady Fosberry’s—there was no intimidating perfection to be found here—but instead of inspiring, the gnarled roots and mass of tangled weeds exhausted her in a way they never had before.
Would it ever give her pleasure again? Or would she think of Johnathan with every bloom she sniffed, every petal she caressed? Would his face continue to haunt her, his cornflower-blue eyes always at the edges of her mind?
She touched her hand to her mouth, recalling the soft drag of petals against her lips just before Johnathan had kissed her among Lady Hammond’s roses, and knew she already had her answer.
She’d never come across the damask rose she needed to recreate her father’s scent, despite having visited several of England’s finest gardens and sniffed dozens of different roses, some of them quite rare. It must have been one of her father’s hybrids after all, because if such a damask rose was still in existence, she would have found it.
There would be no perfume. That her father’s scent had died with him was one of the more painful outcomes from her ill-fated trip to London.
Not the most painful, but one thorn among the dozens piercing her heart.
She stomped on a dry clod of dirt, felt it crumble under her boot heel, and wished it were as easy to crush her dark thoughts. She’d have a dreary time of it, indeed, if she persisted in indulging in self-pity. It wasn’t as if the Templetons had gained nothing from their time in London. Once Juliet and Johnathan married—
Not Johnathan. Lord Melrose. I must start thinking of him as Lord Melrose.
Her heart gave a pitiful throb as the thorns sank deeper, tearing at the tender flesh, and she raised a hand to her chest to sooth the pang. Perhaps she wouldn’t think of that just yet.
But it wasn’t as if London had been all bad.
She smiled a little as she recalled Mr. Beale’s enthusiasm for her father’s scent, his surprise at her ability to differentiate the subtleties of fragrance. She’d planted and grafted and harvested petals by her father’s side for so long she no longer thought of any of her skills as remarkable, but Johnathan had thought they were.
Perhaps she didn’t give herself enough credit.
She could create her own scent, something like her father’s, or perhaps even something of her own. She’d have petals from the Hambleden Glory as soon as it bloomed. Lady Fosberry would see to that, and she’d brought cuttings back to Hambleden Manor with her, so she might grow her own. One could hardly go wrong with such a stunning scent as a base note.
All she needed to do was find the scents to harmonize with it, and while that was far more difficult than it sounded, she’d done it dozens of times before. She could make use of her father’s workroom, which needed only cleaning and organizing to set it to rights.
She pictured her father bent over the long table with a glass bottle in his hand, dark tufts of his hair sticking up in tousled wisps around his head. The familiarity of that picture, the memory of his dear face made her nose tingle, her eyes sting, but there was joy there too, slumbering still, but swelling with promise. How he would have loved to see her carry on his work! How he would have encouraged her, and how proud he would have been, had he been alive to see it.
He’d always been so proud of all of them, so delighted by them.
She glanced around at the crumbling wall, the rusted gate, the brown edges tarnishing the petals of the few roses that had bloomed while she’d been gone. The garden needed a great deal of work, but she had all the time in the world to devote to it, and she could begin slowly, one corner at a time.
She crossed over to the side of the garden where what remained of the roses made a weak attempt to bloom. There weren’t many colors—one pink, a yellow, and there in the back corner an ordinary white, but it was something.
She sank to her knees at one end of the row and began to clear away the debris so she might see what she had, and soon she became lost in the familiar sensation of rich soil between her fingers, and the scent of green, growing things in her head. When she came back to herself hours had passed, she was streaked with dirt, and the light was fading as the sun meandered ever closer to the horizon.
She dropped back on her heels and drew the back of her grimy hand across her forehead. She’d discarded her hat some time ago, and she suspected there were leaves caught in her hair. If Lady Fosberry could see her now, she’d be horrified, but it had been so good to feel the earth working its way under her fingernails once again.
She was tempted to stay in the garden until the light was gone, but Phee would be pacing in front of the windows by now, wondering where she was.
On her way back toward the gate, Emmeline paused to have a look at the white rose in the corner of the garden that had somehow managed to bloom despite its shady location and poor soil. It was a common tea rose, nothing special about it, but it was one of the few in the garden that had blossomed, and Emmeline rather admired its spirit.
