“Damn,” Andrew said and ran back into the flat. He went into the bedroom and opened his bedside drawer. Poppy would never be recruited by MI6: Andrew had found the remedy in the pantry soon after she hid it. The little blue phial rolled to the front, and Andrew pocketed it. He was on the road minutes later.
ANDREW ARRIVED BY midafternoon, and the first thing he did was go to the garden. He thought that if he didn’t have Sorrel in his arms in the coming seconds, he might just explode. But when he got to the gate, he was so captured by the fact of her after the hours of dreaming of her that he stilled. She was on her knees in one of the beds; her sundress spread out around her like petals and her hair was tucked under one of Stella’s wide straw hats. A bird came to rest on the handle of the wheelbarrow beside her. It watched Sorrel as intently as Andrew, fearless and focused. Andrew shook himself just as the bird ruffled its feathers, both resurfacing from the spell Sorrel cast over the garden. He took only a few steps on the newly laid gravel before she turned and saw him. Her smile was instant and, given how crisply they’d parted, very warm.
“You’re back!” she called and stood, wiping her hands on a towel.
“I am, and I don’t think I can stand another moment without you right here,” Andrew pointed at his chest and then held out his arms as he approached.
Sorrel moved just as quickly, tossing her hat aside, and found herself pressed up against Andrew’s starched shirt. He smelled of soap and petrol fumes, and Sorrel breathed deeply. For his part Andrew sighed and rested his cheek on Sorrel’s warm hair. There was a new herby smell to her, something green and fresh that he couldn’t name.
“Can you take a break and perhaps consider a bumble?” Andrew asked, already laughing. “An apology bumble for my abrupt departure.”
“Oh, to bumble again when summer is near,” Sorrel crooned. “But I can’t. I need to get these herbs in now so that they have time to catch up to everything else.”
Andrew looked past Sorrel at the small knot garden she’d carved out of the corner lawn. It was no more than four feet across and was already jam-packed with tidy whirls of what to Andrew looked an awful lot like leafy sticks and patchy grass tufts with a few tatty flowers thrown in.
“Is that it?” he asked. “Because, if I may say, it looks a little tired. Kind of like I feel at the mo’.”
“Listen, Mister,” Sorrel said, “that tiny patch will become our very own physic garden as per Lady Elizabeth’s diary, so watch yourself.”
“OK, first, it’s Reverend Darling to you and second, what have you kids been up to?”
Sorrel had already gone back to her knees, so Andrew joined her, landing prettily on his ass when his footing failed.
“Look away, look away,” he said when Sorrel glanced over at the thump.
Sorrel snorted, offering her elbow, which Andrew refused as he crawled closer. As she worked, she told him about the discovery in the crypt, and as she talked, she was again struck by the near impossibility of all of the puzzle pieces coming together.
“Without Gabe,” Andrew said, “it wouldn’t have mattered how many pieces you had, you’d never have made them a whole.”
He was right, and that morning when Sorrel and Delphine had gone to the nursery to pick out the apothecary herbs, Delphine had said as much. She was, however, not as self-satisfied as the rest of the Kirkwood clan.
“You know,” Delphine said as Sorrel handed her peat pots one by one, “we cannot be distracted by the diary from finding the tapestry.”
Sorrel demurred. The last thing she wanted was to keep picking at that scab.
“Perhaps,” she said, trying to sound interested but not terribly, “We don’t need a last panel to solve the mystery. We certainly don’t need it now to plant the garden; Elizabeth has given me the perfect template.”
“Alors,” Delphine said, her accent thickening along with her temper. “We have no idea why the garden failed, so how will you prevent it from doing so again?”
“Technically, I’m not tasked with keeping the garden healthy, only with giving it the best start,” Sorrel said. She was embarrassed that her temper was rising as well. And besides, she planned to make a garden that would not fail.
Delphine looked at Sorrel for a long moment.
“As you say, Sorrel.” Delphine turned away. “I will go get a place in the queue. The tills are always busy here.”
Crap, Sorrel thought. It’s going to be a long ride back.
Perhaps that was why she was so eager to see Andrew. Surely no Englishman, no matter how toffee-nosed, could match the condescending sniff of a pissed-off Delphine. Sorrel already planned to make her a beautiful bouquet for the long zinc bar at the inn. If she tucked a single stem of holy basil into the center, Sorrel was sure Delphine’s strain would abate. She carefully snipped one from the plant in her barrow and put it in a bucket in the shade until she was finished. She let Andrew collect the little empty peat pots while she surveyed her work. Then they went together to the cutting garden to assemble Delphine’s bouquet.
“I am sorry I was unpleasant when we parted,” Andrew said. “I am still weighing exactly how much I want to take up my duties again. Or perhaps I should say where to take them up.”
“What did your boss say?” Sorrel asked.
Andrew told her of his meeting and how, if nothing else, the reopening of the estate chapel would put him before a congregation again and then he’d know if he could still feel the joy he missed. He didn’t exactly lay out that, if all went well, he might indeed stay. London or Kirkwood Hall, he realized with a dropping heart, neither was any closer to Granite Point and Sorrel.
“What will you say, I mean what will your sermon be about?”
“Lord knows,” Andrew said and held out the basket for Sorrel. “And let’s hope he really does.”
Sorrel gently stacked the delphinium and bells of Ireland. Next she bent to the peonies. Beneath the glossy leaves there were blossoms still unfolding and she carefully cut one or two from each bush without disturbing the round crown of the plant.
“If you aren’t totally hypnotizing in your oratory, I’ll sit in the front pew and make faces,” Sorrel said. “My sisters and I used to get so antsy in church that Mrs. Bartlett would separate us.”
“Did that work?”
“Absolutely not. Patience got wise and started slipping sage oil onto Mrs. Bartlett’s hankie. The scent was enough to make her drowsy and vague, so we just went on with our shenanigans.”
“Please don’t mess about when I’m preaching, Sorrel,” Andrew said. “It will be hard enough just seeing you before me. I don’t want to have to leap off the altar and wrestle you into appropriate respect, or better, inappropriate canoodling.”