Gabe looked back and forth between them. Without actually hearing the words he could pick up on the tension. He found himself bracing, as if he might need to defend Sorrel against, well, he wasn’t quite sure what kind of trouble was brewing, but he was compelled to protect this woman with all her gifts.
“I’m just saying that it’s pretty remarkable, almost indescribable,” Andrew said and walked toward Sorrel. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” He took her hand. “Really, I’m just a fellow in need of a little enlightenment.”
Sorrel looked into Andrew’s eyes. She didn’t see the kind of intimidation and dismissal she expected. Instead there was real curiosity, along with the uncertainty.
“Walk with me,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
Gabe let out his breath and left the garden.
“Is this what happens in Granite Point too?” asked Andrew. “This explosion of bounty, this inexplicable beauty?”
“It’s not inexplicable, Andrew,” Sorrel said. “It’s always been this way for us, ever since we brought my mother’s garden back. My father tore through it after she died, and it was two years before we could set foot in it. And then, with the Nursery, we all found our talents and our rhythms.”
“But it’s all such a contrast, so fine and flourishing, and a little unnerving,” Andrew said.
“Well, I know that at home our Nursery is a very particular spot. I suspect that after I rehabilitated the soil, set just the right plants in the right places, this garden is on its way to being a very particular spot as well.”
“Peculiar, that’s certain, in a lovely way, of course” Andrew said. “Forgive my glazed look and my reservations,” Andrew said. “Let’s just say that you are a very particular gardener and for that I hope the Kirkwoods are suitably grateful.”
The truth was that Andrew suspected that if he looked too closely at this garden, or dug too deeply into Sorrel’s explanation, it would trouble him in a more serious way. Just as he chose not to marvel at how fast they fell for each other, he understood that he mustn’t put too much thought, or science, into how the garden grew. And, if nothing else, Andrew liked being happy and loved being happy with Sorrel. If that meant he looked away now and then—and perhaps restocked his Heart’s Ease—then that’s what would happen. He couldn’t face returning to who he was before, and he wouldn’t give up the small measure of bliss he’d been given. Besides, if he took on the chapel as his new church, Andrew would be faced with the mysterious garden every day. Was this the time to tell Sorrel about that possibility?
“I will endeavor to be open to all the miracles you have wrought,” Andrew said. “I will put away my far too sensible outlook and allow you to enchant me as well.”
Sorrel tried to access her inner Patience and see if Andrew felt, if not exactly smelled, like truth. She stared at him, inventorying his beauty and the persistent sadness that still shadowed him. Andrew stared right back, unsmiling but still hopeful, and Sorrel decided that this fragile, unexpected beginning for them both was precious and worth tending.
“There are all sorts of miracles, you know,” Sorrel said. “Why not grab ours?”
Andrew felt a breath he didn’t know he was holding rush out. Gabe some yards away inhaled and reached for his shovel. It was time to set the boxwood.
By the first streaks of pink in the western sky half the low hedges were in. The rest stood ready, soaked in their small burlap root balls. Andrew’s shirt was sweated through, and Sorrel had long since rolled up her sleeves past her elbows. Gabe was down to his tee shirt, and all three were streaked with dirt and flecked with oval box leaves, sticky and done in. They parted at the gap-toothed gate, knowing that with another good day’s work or so, the Shakespeare Garden would be finished. Then Gabe and his men could replace the ancient bricks and rehang the gate, and Sorrel could finish with ground cover geranium, moss, and creeping phlox to soften the entrance, wisteria to drape the far wall in years to come. When Poppy returned on Saturday, the family could place the sundial and let the garden find its own rhythm in time for the solstice.
Gabe left Andrew and Sorrel and went to his park keeper’s cottage to shower. He felt as content as a lonely man can and even stopped in the great hall to scoop up the three-legged hound puppy. Gabe didn’t keep a dog because he was never without an eddy of hounds as he worked around the Kirkwood estate. There were the hunting dogs that did little of that now, the two labs and the shepherds, and those were enough. Still, this newer addition, an odd spotted runt with a malformed foreleg that left her to lag behind the others appealed to Gabe’s sense of difference. He told himself he wasn’t actually taking the little one on as his own, just giving her a bit of extra care, and who couldn’t use that?
THE FOLLOWING DAY brought a murky dawn. All the leaves on the birch trees were turned over, silvery in the low morning light; rain was coming. Sorrel pulled on a borrowed mackintosh and wellies and walked quickly to the garden. Gabe was there with the tea and an extra man and nodded when she pointed at the sky.
“We’ll move fast and be all but finished before it comes,” she said to both men.
The groundskeeper dug, Sorrel followed with coco fiber soil and fertilizer to line the holes, and Gabe unwrapped the small shrubs, lining them up precisely as Sorrel instructed. Together they planted, as efficient and speedy as an assembly line until the last boxwood went in. Gabe pulled the hose up and down the paths watering in the new plants while Sorrel gathered the burlap and tidied the beds with dark mulch. Now the parterre borders marched away in symmetry, creating an ordered, confident structure to contain the abundance to come.
It was past lunchtime when they stood to survey their work, and Sorrel chuckled as she thought about Andrew surfacing from his sermon-writing fog, no doubt pining for sustenance. Last night they’d piled sliced meats and grilled marinated vegetables, great rounds of focaccia topped with rosemary and olive oil, and a container of new potatoes dressed with mustard and herbs into a canvas sack and carried everything over to Kirkwood Hall. Graham and Stella were in the kitchen, and Graham looked up with relief at the sight of the bag.
“Thank God,” he said. “We’ve managed to let our cupboards go bare and were just about to expire from hunger and distress.”
“What have you brought us?” Stella asked as she made room on the table.
Andrew unpacked to much lip smacking, and Graham went scavenging for cheese and wine.
“How is it that you’re not all poster kids for high cholesterol?” Sorrel asked.
“Oh, Graham is,” Stella said. “It took me months to convince him to take the tablets our GP prescribed. Now he just thinks he’s got leave to eat whatever he wants.”
“On the other hand, my sister and I are genetically blessed,” Andrew said as he held out his arms. “As you can no doubt see.”