“I wonder if I might need a fresh start myself,” Andrew said. “There are pieces of my life that I wish I could release. There are many nights I would give anything to look out at a different sky.”
Sorrel remembered the nights she had spent sitting with Patience on the window seat in her room, how neither one of them could sleep and neither one of them had ever been so tired. She completely understood what Andrew meant. Patience, who had been given an unexpected happiness with Henry, and Sorrel, whose roots ran so deep in Granite Point, wondered if it wasn’t time to walk away from all the trouble.
Andrew Warburton was a terrible sleeper. He’d always been restless, but now he’d begun waking before dawn even if he’d only been asleep for an hour or so. In the hours ahead of him, before first light, Andrew could do nothing more than stare at the walls and remind himself that broken hearts and reputations could be repaired and that he had time now to rebuild his own. In the same way that Sorrel and her sisters couldn’t help where their gifts led them, Andrew reckoned that relearning how to be of some use to others who were despondent was the only way he might be of use to himself. With the chapel he found that he was remembering how to live in the world again without doubt and regret as a constant companion. And now Sorrel, with her own kind of loneliness and her own sort of ministry—might she show him how to grow again?
He turned back to Sorrel. “I am unexpectedly interested in being a part of your project,” he said, surprising himself into a laugh. “I wonder, can I do that?”
“I would welcome your help,” Sorrel said and gave Andrew her first true smile. “I really would.”
CHAPTER 4
Woodbine
Nettie Sparrow unpacked lunch as she watched Patience write labels in her careful hand. A row of small linen pouches lined the worktable in the Nursery shed, and a glass mixing bowl filled with dried herbs and flower petals sat at her elbow. The air was suffused with scents both soothing and invigorating, a combination that only the Sparrow Sisters Nursery could create. Nettie thought perhaps they should have gone home for lunch. She wasn’t sure what remedies Patience was creating, but she was beginning to feel so relaxed she wondered if she might fall off her stool. Patience, on the other hand, was never affected by her own remedies and went about filling each pouch with precisely measured scoops.
Nettie set out a loaf of sourdough bread from Baker’s Way Bakers, a wodge of runny Camembert, and a container of leftover lamb, rich with garlic and rosemary, nestled on a bed of spicy arugula from the home garden. She’d plucked two sharp green apples from one of the trees in their tiny orchard, and she placed a waxed bag of caramel shortbread beside them. Patience moved her work away to make room for the wide plates and heavy cotton napkins Nettie pulled out of her bag.
“What do you think Sorrel is doing today?” Patience asked.
“I am positive that she is elbow deep in soil . . . in her head if not for real,” Nettie answered. “Although, did you notice a certain—oh, I don’t know—lightness to her yesterday when we talked?”
Sorrel had contacted the Sisters on her computer in London, and the three had huddled around their screens watching each other on the spotty video feed, laughing and talking for an hour. The Granite Point Sisters were given a brief tour of the house as Sorrel carried the computer from room to room. Nettie was fascinated by the big red Aga, but Patience began to feel a little dizzy as Sorrel swung around to show her the library. Truth be told, Patience did hear a change in Sorrel’s voice, a lifting of her tone, and she certainly made note of her easy smile.
“I thought she was just happy to see us,” Patience said, “but you’re right, something is up.”
“If only we had smell-o-vision,” Nettie said.
Indeed, a moment’s inhalation would have told Patience exactly what was up. Part of her gift was that Patience Sparrow could read people, particularly the ones she cared about. She was able to sense everything from lost love to envy to the onset of a migraine simply from the scents that only she could detect. Sometimes it worked the other way around, too, but only with Patience. The town of Granite Point had learned years before that what floated into the air from Patience Sparrow’s heart and mind was a faultless indicator of her mood.
“At any rate, Nettie, whatever changes are being wrought by England, they feel good, I think.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Nettie said. “Sorrel looks content somehow, less lonely, right?”
“That’s it,” Patience said, thumping the table, which made the remedies quiver in their pouches and Nettie’s fork clatter from her hand. “She’s found someone!”
She hasn’t!” Nettie squealed.
“She doesn’t know it yet,” Patience said. “Neither does he.”
If Patience had come through the summer intact, although forever altered, it was due to her sisters and to Henry Carlyle, who healed her in ways beyond doctoring. And if Nettie had grown stronger out of trouble, Ben Avellar was certainly her not-so-secret helpmeet. But Sorrel had stumbled through the darkness alone, and at the end of the summer she did not have anyone to hold her hand, to lead her safely into the light again.
So when Patience guessed at the possibility of Andrew, if not the fact of him, she was as surprised at her certainty as Sorrel was by her own contentment so far from her sisters. As for Andrew, he knew nothing at all. And really, neither did Sorrel.
“Do we tell anyone?” Nettie asked.
“It’s not our news to tell,” Patience replied. Stories, news, past heartbreak, future happiness, all these were to be shared by the person at the center of the tale. This the Sisters knew as well as Lord Kirkwood. “We’ll just have to wait until Sorrel comes home.”
“What if she doesn’t want to? Come home, I mean?” Nettie asked.
Patience sat for a moment and let her hands rustle through the leaves in the bowl. She tilted her head to one side and then the other.
“She’ll be home,” she said. “But she might not be alone.”
CHAPTER 5
Gillyvor