“I think that Stella always loved the idea of having the house and the land for their family,” Andrew said. “The Warburtons are an old family as well, but we grew up in a pleasant suburban house in Wimbledon. The Common was our playground and it could be a wild and wonderful place. I think that’s where Stella began to feel most comfortable in a grander landscape than our back garden. There were only the two of us, and ten years between us at that, so I spent a lot of time marching around behind Stella as she made up complicated games involving meadows and woods and windmills. I think Stella wanted her children to have the same kind of happy childhood we had, as Gray and Fiona did, one foot in town, the other in the country, hands and knees dirty and hearts filled with nature.”
“And she has, hasn’t she?” Sorrel asked.
“Oh, that she has,” Andrew said. “All three of the kids are as much at home mucking around in Wiltshire as they are at a formal dinner in London.”
Fiona and Graham had spent summers and school holidays running around the hundreds of acres and tearing through the huge house, filling it with laughter and mud, dogs—and once a pony—in the great hall. Sorrel had no trouble imagining those scenes; after their father’s death the four sisters had defied their housekeeper at every turn, dragging sunflowers with their drifting pollen through the hall, tucking an abandoned bird’s nest into the Christmas tree one year, stowing a foundling chipmunk in a padded shoebox by the warm stove the April it snowed a foot, and experimenting with their garden compost mix in the pantry sink. Sorrel knew how a well-loved house looked and sounded. She already had fond feelings for Kirkwood Hall.
“Well, we never brought a pony into our house,” Sorrel said, “but one time Nettie and Patience convinced our housekeeper that a baby raccoon was the neighbor’s kitten.”
Andrew snorted. “I suspect that housekeeper had her hands full with you all.”
“Mrs. Batlett, as Patience called her, was a saint,” Sorrel said. “Four parentless girls and a house with plenty of places to make trouble.”
“Wait till you see Kirkwood Hall,” Andrew said. “More places and more acres to make trouble in than a carnival, and I suspect it has always been that way.”
WHILE AT FIRST the estate had been more of a family retreat for the current Kirkwood clan rather than a full working farm, the stables still kept horses, including a great draft horse that was used by all the locals on the days that Christmas trees were cut from the Kirkwood Hall forest. An organic orchard planted the year Sophia went away to school had begun to pay off in heirloom apples and pears for the tonier London markets. Then cashmere and milk goats joined the sheep, and both provided wool and cheeses to those same clients. Preserves made from Damson plums, golden raspberries, and scarlet wild strawberries could be found on the shelves of Harvey Nichols and Harrods, as well as on those of the farm shop. As for the unexpected profits, they were funneled through the Kirkwood Trust for Children and Animals. Graham Kirkwood always said that children and animals were so interconnected that it made sense to ensure that his charity benefited both. So it was that the estate became nearly as active as it had been when entire villages existed simply to serve the land. It was certainly a good deal happier. It was no surprise to Sorrel that the Kirkwood legacy was becoming as defined by the care and nourishment it provided today as it was by its past.
The drive out took over two hours, so there was plenty of time to get a feel for what was waiting for Sorrel in Wiltshire. The first hour, though, was spent just getting out of London. Then quiet descended as they each sank into their own thoughts. Within miles of the last sprawl of pebble-dashed houses, worn caravans, and garden gnomes, there was a great opening up. The downs swept away on either side of the motorway, some green with rye, others carpeted with the golden yellow of rapeseed. And everywhere sheep grazed in random puffs of white. Since the thirteenth century, the sheep had stood as sentries around the hills and dales of Wiltshire. The Salisbury Plain stretches for hundreds of miles, broken only by Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral itself—monuments to faith past and present and the site of British army training in the fields once painted by John Constable.
“So, Sorrel.” Andrew’s voice surprised her. She was lost in the rumble of the little engine and the rattle of the wind through the loose windows. “What do you think will happen in your village now that the world has been let in and you’ve been let out?”
Sorrel assumed that, given his job, Andrew was probably most attentive to the fear and distrust that had consumed Granite Point to the point that any faith-based kindness was swallowed up by anger. And, naturally, how anyone pulled their hearts back to the light. But Sorrel was tired of her town, tired of explaining the strange events and their aftermath. Why else would she be here, as far away as she’d ever been from home and from her sisters? Sorrel was more interested in how Andrew might accept her abilities, acknowledged or not. Graham Kirkwood had clearly hired Sorrel because he knew her carefully constructed landscapes were precisely what he was looking for. His sister, Fiona, must have told him more than just the summer story. Her host must suspect that Sorrel was bringing more than her green thumb to England. Sorrel imagined that it was his fascination with the extraordinary grace the Sparrows brought to everything they touched that led Lord Kirkwood to fold her into his family with such obvious pleasure. She feared that Andrew might not share that affection once he heard that the girls simply accepted their gifts for what they were: gifts. After all, if you hadn’t spent your life watching the Sparrow Sisters weave enchantment through your town, you might well wonder just what these women were. Then again, even if you had, the Sisters remained a mysterious thing.
“The death of a child is a tragedy beyond measure,” Sorrel said at last.
Andrew nodded. “It is the darkest of grief.”
“It can poison even the sweetest memories.” Sorrel stopped. This was as much as she wanted to say.
“How did you recover?” Andrew asked. “How did you manage to stay on in a place that made you all so unhappy?”
“If you’re asking how we forgave the people we have lived beside all our lives, the people who became more venomous than anything Patience could dream up, well, I have to say that I’m still struggling with that. Perhaps I should ask your help.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be of much use there, I’m afraid,” Andrew murmured. “I’ve my own forgiveness to find. Still, it’s good that you are away. Perspective can be a healing thing, and it can only be gained through distance, I know.”
“And you? Is perspective what you need, too?” Sorrel asked. “Isn’t that the point of a sabbatical? Or are you fleeing a sorrow of your own?”
At this Andrew stiffened, and Sorrel regretted that she’d pressed.
“Perhaps you should keep to bringing forth fruit from the gardens,” he said. “I am, at this moment, not for tending.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Sorrel said.
“Yet you did.” Andrew shook his head. “We’re here now anyway.”