Sorrel sighed and pulled his hands away. “Come here,” she said and led him to the couch. The fire was dying and there was a bite in the room now that the sun was low.
“I spoke with Patience this morning and she explained Heart’s Ease,” Sorrel said.
“The remedy, inverted commas, right?” Andrew said gesturing with his fingers.
“Right. Now, before you crack any more witch jokes, let me tell you that Patience and her boyfriend, who is a medical doctor, by the way, are both considered Granite Point’s most effective healers.” Sorrel ran her thumb over Andrew’s scarred eyebrow. “Between the two of them there is almost nothing they can’t at least treat if not fix.”
“Lucky town,” Andrew said and caught Sorrel’s thumb. “And you? Do you consider Patience’s work useful?”
“I do,” she said. “As for this particular remedy . . .” Sorrel hesitated. She didn’t want to seem like a lovelorn maiden. “This was made for me.”
Andrew couldn’t imagine why Sorrel would need any help with her heart or her ease. To him she was as clear and cool as spring water, smooth as silk, full of life and perhaps the most sensual person he’d ever met. Everything she touched, including him, seemed to blossom under her hand, and he honestly didn’t think any souped-up tincture could make her any more desirable.
“I’ve told you Patience can divine things about the people who come to her. She sees the world in a highly scented way and, somehow, those scents speak to her.”
“And you can make anything bloom, anytime and anywhere, right?”
“Let’s hope so,” Sorrel said. “My point is that Patience detected a sadness in me that should have lifted once we all got on our feet again. She said I was thwarted.”
“That’s an ugly word.”
“Yeah, it is but, essentially, she was right.” Sorrel folded her feet up under her and shivered.
“I’ll build up the fire and you can talk without my overweening scrutiny,” Andrew said.
So Sorrel told him how everyone in her little world found their way after the summer settled down. She told him about Henry and Patience, how they seemed to cleave together in the forge of her trial. About Nettie, who found her voice and then her love in Ben Avellar, and about Simon and Charlotte, whose new baby had turned both of them to mush. Which left Sorrel, alone.
“I’m fine alone, you know,” she said. “I mean I’ve had to get used to it since Marigold’s death. Sometimes I wonder if being the twin left behind has made me a half instead of a whole.”
Andrew poked the fire once more before he came and knelt in front of Sorrel.
“I cannot even think of the loss of a sibling, let alone a twin,” he said. “I am adept at helping people through their darkest hours, or I was once, but I won’t use that skill now. You see, Sorrel, you are not alone, not anymore. I am here and, since I would never consider you half of anything, together we can be more than whole.”
“You are so lovely, Andrew,” Sorrel said as she stroked his hair. “You are kind and funny and full of all the things I value above all.”
“But?” Andrew said.
“Not a but, just,” Sorrel stopped. “Andrew, what if this isn’t you? What if this is Patience’s gift, her remedy turning you into someone you’re not? What if in a week, or next month or tomorrow, even, you wake up and realize that whatever you feel for me isn’t real at all?”
“I love you, Sorrel Sparrow,” Andrew said. “I don’t know how or why such a startling shift has come over me, and I don’t particularly need an explanation. Until you came along, only weeks ago, I was loathed and loathsome. If your sister’s concoction has released me from that unhappy state, well then, marvelous. If you have somehow punctured my swell of despair, and the remedy is nothing more than a digestive aid, then fabulous. The result is the same, give or take a little gas. I love you and I would very much like to know if you love me.”
Andrew had never made such a speech in his life. It compelled him to realize that he’d never, never felt this way about Miranda. The lightness in his spirit, the goofy humor that had resurfaced, the smiles he’d nearly forgotten how to make, all of it was part of an Andrew he hadn’t known was still alive.
“That was some barnburner,” Sorrel said.
“You mock me.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Sorrel said. “Because I love you. There I said it.”
“It didn’t hurt, did it?” Andrew smiled.
“Not nearly as much as I thought.” Sorrel smiled too.
CHAPTER 13
Pansy
Sorrel was in the garden by dawn. She stood at the very center, where she planned to set the sundial, and surveyed her surroundings. The beds were well wetted even though the watering system had not been turned on yet. It smelled good: loamy, earthy, and ready. Most gardeners would plant parterre by parterre, but Sorrel Sparrow knew that she would choose each plant and the order in which she’d dig them only after she had touched them all. So she wandered from pallet to pallet, brushing her hands softly over leaves and buds. She leaned in to smell the apricot-tinted rose whose petals had just unfolded into a ruffled cup. The scents of lemon, myrrh, and peach floated up, and Sorrel once again wondered why anyone would name a rose Jude the Obscure. Next she adjusted the bamboo stake in a peony bush and checked to be sure the ants had found their way to the buds. There was more wandering, more touching until finally Sorrel had visited every pallet. She pulled the wheelbarrow over and began to fill it with bounty. Once in the garden she knelt and began to place seedlings, plants, and root balls in place. She never wore gloves at this stage; her fingers had to feel every ridge in a stem, every vein in a leaf, and the nap of velvet on a petal.
As the hours passed, Sorrel lost herself in the work as she always did. She went back and forth to the pallets to refill her barrow and stopped now and then to look out over the garden. Occasionally she shifted a grouping from one parterre to the other. The time for that was now before the final mulch was spread and the low box hedges went in. There seemed no rhyme or reason to her planting. In the early stages of any garden Sorrel only listened to the plants; even her beautiful watercolor plans could change if she sensed the need. Tonight, for instance, she might well go back and draw all over the plan that had so entranced Graham Kirkwood. Never mind, she’d make a new one when she was finished.
That is how Graham found Sorrel, on her knees, elbows deep in mulch, rose petals in her hair and dirt on her cheek. She felt him before she saw him: the subtle shift in the air around her as another body entered the space. She turned.
“I am so very sorry, Sorrel,” Graham said. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“You are in the garden, Graham, as am I. What do you think?”
“Well, I could certainly understand if you wanted to throw a sod clod at me.”
“Do you think that because I am in this garden I have any good humor about your secrets?” Sorrel asked.