“What? I was just checking to be sure everything still fit,” Andrew said.
“Everything but the pants?” Sorrel asked.
“My trousers, if you must know, are a bit tight, but I’ve still got time to slim down a tad.”
“I do like a man in uniform,” Sorrel said as she sat up. “Come over here and I’ll take it off for you.”
“I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but let’s wait,” Andrew said. “You are covered with garden detritus and I am spackled in road grime. Perhaps we should bathe before we throw ourselves on each other?”
“Oh, let’s,” Sorrel said and peeled away her clothes.
“HAVE YOU EVER noticed that if we aren’t eating, we seem to be in bed?” Sorrel asked Andrew and sat up, pulling the sheet with her. Her hair was still wet and her sunburned shoulders were beginning to sting.
Andrew lay with his hands behind his head. “I have absolutely no problem with that,” he said.
“We never just sit around and talk,” she said. “No, that’s not exactly what I mean.”
Andrew sat up. “Tell me.”
“We’re both on these tracks that will meet on the solstice, but we aren’t really working together.”
“As I remember, you’re the one who kept me out of the garden,” Andrew said. “A peek here and there is hardly enough. I can’t imagine anything better than spending time there with you.”
Sorrel was unused to sharing her work in progress with anyone but her sisters, but Andrew was right.
“Tomorrow, OK?” she said. “Let’s do it tomorrow.”
Andrew nodded. He felt hopeful, nearly giddy with the prospect of finally seeing Sorrel in her element as she planted. He shifted and put his arms around her.
“I am hugely, enormously, ridiculously happy,” he said. “You’ve done that for me, Sorrel.”
Sorrel leaned back against him and nodded.
“But now I am also very hungry,” Andrew said. “I brought some wonderful provisions back from Harvey Nicks. Let’s get ourselves together and head over to the big house.”
“It never ends,” Sorrel said.
CHAPTER 16
Rue
Sorrel woke Andrew at dawn. He might have slept on for hours, and the sky was still a milky blue against the big windows, but Sorrel had plans.
“Come on then, you asked for this,” she said.
“I haven’t had a coffee,” Andrew pointed out, “and neither have you.”
“Gabe brings tea for me. You can share.”
“That sounds strangely charming but if you don’t mind, my love, Wags and I will join you after our coffee.”
Sorrel was secretly relieved. This moment each morning with Gabe was both a ritual of beginning and a time for both to reorient themselves to the work. She found him sitting on the edge of a large crate. Two cups steamed beside him.
“The sundial?” Sorrel asked.
Gabe nodded.
“That’s good. I didn’t expect it till the end of the week.”
Sorrel wanted to open the crate, but while Gabe had a crowbar right there, she decided to wait, finish the plants, and then have the whole family join in to place the sundial. The image made her smile, and she told Gabe her plan.
“Andrew will be coming by this morning,” Sorrel said.
Gabe looked surprised. Sorrel was so self-contained when she worked that he had a difficult time seeing her with any sort of company. Even Gabe didn’t dare enter into Sorrel’s presence without her permission.
Sorrel drew on her gloves and walked into the garden.
It was overcast and mild, which was just as well, given Sorrel’s sunburn. First she walked the paths from one end to the other, all four that met where the sundial would live. Then she examined each bed with attention to insects and black spot. Finally she went back for her wheelbarrow and began to load up the rest of the florae. Trip by trip the plants went in until Sorrel’s shoulders pinched, and Gabe returned with water. She beckoned him in, and they stood together, two tall, silent gardeners waiting for the magic to emerge.
Andrew came upon them just that way. Their hands were on their hips, backs long and strong, side by side. They seemed more siblings than cohorts. He wondered if Gabe had ever had this kind of connection before, kindred spirits with the same goal. It gave him a jolt of pure envy for a moment, but he pushed it away and entered the garden.
The scent struck Andrew first, then the color and finally the impossibility. It was a transformed place in the space of a night. Under Sorrel’s hands everything seemed to be blooming madly, and at once. What had been spindly and frail now looked lush and inviting. He paused to look more closely at a rose whose blossom was as big as a saucer and whose scent reminded him of elderflower cordial. He bent lower, invited in by the smell and the spiral of petals, and took a stem into his fingers. There were no thorns, not one. Andrew thought that was quite the horticultural invention.
“Sorrel,” he called out and she turned, tapping Gabe on the arm.
“Come see how we’re making out,” Sorrel said.
They were standing before the new physic garden, which only the day before had seemed unfinished in the extreme. Now the tender herbs and flowers were standing at attention, and the soil around them was deep and rich and dark.
“What a difference a day and some compost tea make, right?” Sorrel said. She brushed her fingers over the plants, humming softly. Andrew swore they leaned into her, certain he saw a change in the light as she moved through it.
Gabe watched Andrew. He too saw what Sorrel’s touch created but, unlike Andrew, he was pretty sure that it was more powerful than feed or time. Andrew stood with his head cocked and tried to reconcile the abundance all around him with the barren place he’d avoided. He acknowledged that Sorrel was a gifted horticulturist, for all her self-taught skills, but this kind of radiance brought forth from such thick shadow, such buried rage, this was something he struggled to process.
“I don’t understand what you’ve done here, Sorrel,” he said. “It hardly seems conceivable, let alone real, this transformation in what feels like moments.”
Sorrel was accustomed to the wonder her gardens engendered, but there was more than wonder in Andrew’s voice. There was disbelief and even a hint of trepidation. At once the old sorrow swept over her. Sorrel had heard this tone before in the questions from the prosecutor as he tried to discredit Patience, her gift, and her sisters. She’d felt the fear of the unknown barreling off the men who confronted the Sisters as they tried to reclaim their own garden.
“Hold it, Andrew,” she said. “I don’t like the sound of your voice.”