Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
“Mind the delphiniums, Miss Marjorie. They have suffered enough from your affection.”
“I only touched one.”
“You embraced it.”
“It was falling.”
“It began falling after you embraced it.”
Mr. Wilkes spoke without looking up from the border he was tending, his voice carrying the weary disapproval of a man unfairly burdened with the world’s foolishness. He knelt on one knee on a worn leather pad, loosening the soil around a row of young plants with a narrow hand fork.
Sophia noticed, however, that he had already moved his basket from the path so Marjorie would not trip over it. A pair of small gardening gloves rested upon the low stone wall, one pair for each girl, and beside them lay a little bunch of sweet peas tied with string.
A man who disliked visitors, Sophia thought, did not generally prepare flowers for them.
Mr. Wilkes was slight and stooped, with silver hair beneath an old felt hat and hands permanently marked by soil.
His coat had once been brown, but years of sun, rain, and honest labor had faded it to a color known only to gardeners.
When Amelia approached him, his stern expression softened for half a moment before he evidently remembered he was displeased with the whole of creation.
“Good morning, Mr. Wilkes,” Amelia said.
“Morning, Miss Amelia. You are late.”
“It is only ten minutes past nine.”
“Flowers do not keep drawing-room hours.”
Mr. Wilkes rose slowly to his feet. Sophia waited while he brushed the earth from his knees.
The garden spread around them in orderly abundance, bordered on one side by warm red brick and on the other by clipped yew.
Roses climbed the walls in heavy clusters of cream, pink, and deepest crimson.
Foxgloves stood in purple and white towers among clouds of lady’s mantle, while bees moved lazily between lavender, thyme, and catmint.
For the first time since arriving at Rivermere as its duchess, Sophia felt she had entered a part of the estate that did not expect anything of her. Flowers did not curtsy. They did not call her Your Grace and wait for an answer of consequence. They simply grew, or refused to, as the case might be.
“Mr. Wilkes,” Amelia said, with quiet ceremony, “this is the Duchess of Rivermere.”
Sophia resisted the impulse to glance behind her. The gardener removed his hat. “Your Grace.”
Sophia smiled uncertainly. “Good morning.”
Mr. Wilkes replaced his hat and regarded her with an expression suggesting that duchesses, while not necessarily troublesome, ought to prove themselves before being permitted near the roses.
“This is the old rose garden,” Amelia told Sophia. “Mr. Wilkes planted most of it.”
“The flowers planted themselves,” he corrected. “I merely prevent people from treading upon them.” He looked pointedly at Marjorie.
“I have not trodden upon anything today.”
“The day is young.”
Marjorie gave Sophia a long-suffering look. “He always expects the worst of me.”
“I expect experience to repeat itself.”
Sophia hid a smile and moved closer to the first bed. The roses there were not the perfectly shaped, fashionable blooms she had often seen arranged in drawing rooms. Their petals opened more loosely, some cupped, others almost flat, their beauty irregular and generous.
She leaned toward one of the darker bushes.
“Is this Rosa gallica?”
Mr. Wilkes turned to her. “It is.”
“The darker variety?”
“Officinalis. The apothecary’s rose.” The answer came more slowly than before, as though he expected a polite compliment and instead received a password.
Sophia bent nearer to the deep crimson bloom. Its fragrance was rich and almost spicy beneath the sweetness, very different from the paler climbing roses trained against the wall.
“I read that its petals were once used in medicines as well as preserves and rose-water,” she mused. “And that it tolerates poorer soil better than many of the newer varieties.”
Mr. Wilkes regarded her with sudden attention. “That is correct.”
Marjorie looked between them. “I knew that.”
Amelia gave her a doubtful glance. “You called it ‘the red one.’”
“It is red.”
Mr. Wilkes made a low sound in his throat.
Sophia suspected it was a laugh that had been denied permission to escape.
She kept asking about the garden, and Mr. Wilkes kept pretending he did not enjoy answering her.
At first, his replies were short and practical.
The rose against the eastern wall flowered only once.
The lavender border needed cutting after blooming.
The foxgloves had planted themselves and would be tolerated so long as they remained respectful of the path.
But with each question, his answers grew longer. Within several minutes, he was explaining why certain roses flowered on old wood, how the southern border retained warmth after sunset, and why one must never water lavender too generously merely because the rest of the garden looked thirsty.
He showed Sophia a cluster of pale auriculas sheltered beneath a small wooden frame. “A late frost nearly destroyed the lot three years ago,” he explained. “Covered them with straw mats before midnight. Peters said I had lost my senses.”
“And had you?”
“Not regarding the auriculas.”
Marjorie picked up one of the small gloves from the wall. “He stayed outside until morning.”
Mr. Wilkes looked offended. “Someone had to watch the temperature.”
Amelia added. “Cook sent him coffee.”
“She sent dishwater in a cup.”
“You drank three of them.”
“A man must sometimes endure hardship.”
Sophia looked at the delicate plants. “They were worth saving.”
The gardener’s gaze moved to her face. For a moment, his habitual irritation vanished entirely. “Yes,” he said. “They were.”
He cleared his throat and led them onward.
Sophia followed, with the girls on either side of her.
She expected to feel foolish asking questions of a man who had spent his life cultivating the estate.
Books could describe a flower's structure and the conditions it preferred, but they could not replace decades spent watching the soil change beneath rain, frost, and human hands.
Yet Mr. Wilkes never treated her curiosity as foolish. He corrected her twice, approved of her once, and grunted in a manner which Sophia was beginning to understand meant she had said something sensible. At last, he stopped before a bed of tall blue campanulas.
“You know a surprising amount, Your Grace,” he admitted.
Sophia turned from the flowers. “Do I?”
“More than most people who come through that gate.”
“Perhaps they are too intimidated to speak.”
“They should be.”
“Mr. Wilkes,” Amelia whispered, though she looked amused.
He ignored her. “Most ladies ask which flower best matches their drawing room.”
“I should not know how to answer that.”
“Neither should the flower.”
Sophia laughed softly.
Mr. Wilkes replaced a loosened plant label, though his gaze remained curious. “Where did you learn it all?”
“I love to read. My father’s library had several books on botany, and I fear I read nearly everything that was not locked away.”
“Why would books about flowers be locked away?” Amelia asked.
“They were not. My father’s political pamphlets were.”
“Were they dangerous?” Marjorie asked at once.
“Only to conversation at dinner.”
Mr. Wilkes chuckled openly this time. He appeared surprised by the sound and immediately restored his frown.
He led them to the small beds Amelia and Marjorie had been permitted to tend themselves.
Amelia’s contained sweet peas trained upon a neat little frame, with violets and pinks arranged in careful rows.
Marjorie’s held three marigolds, one struggling nasturtium, a wooden sword, four polished stones, and what appeared to be a wheel from a toy carriage.
Sophia crouched to examine the marigolds. “They appear healthy.”
Marjorie brightened. “Do you think so?”
“I do.”
The child beamed as though Sophia had praised an entire estate. Beyond the girls’ plots, one section of the garden appeared strangely barren.
The contrast immediately drew Sophia’s eye.
Everywhere else, leaves crowded over one another in green abundance.
In that small bed, the earth was pale and cracked.
Several plants drooped at the edges, their stems thin and their leaves curled brown.
A few dead stalks remained at the center, tied to supporting sticks that now served no purpose.
“What happened there?” she asked.
Mr. Wilkes’s expression darkened. “That,” he said, “is a personal insult.”
Sophia stepped nearer. “Nothing will grow?”
“Nothing worth keeping. Stocks first. They withered. Then phlox. The same. I tried asters last season, and they survived just long enough to encourage me before giving up.”
“Even the nasturtiums died,” Amelia said solemnly.
“They generally thrive wherever they are least wanted,” Mr. Wilkes added. “I have seen them grow out of cracks in stone. Yet place one there, and it behaves like a duchess denied a cushion.”
Sophia glanced at him. Mr. Wilkes suddenly appeared to remember that he was speaking to an actual duchess.
Marjorie began laughing.
“I assure you, I have survived without several cushions,” Sophia smiled.
“Present company excepted,” Mr. Wilkes muttered.
Sophia approached the edge of the bed. “What have you tried?”
“Everything short of prayer.” He thrust both hands into his coat pockets.
“watered at dawn. Watered at dusk. Dug in manure, leaf mold and sharp sand. Changed the top soil. Cut back the hedge roots. Tried soot, wood ash and tobacco water.” He glared at the barren earth. “Nothing. Stubborn thing, this bed.”
Sophia crouched at the edge and pressed her fingers lightly into the earth. The surface was dry and powdery. Beneath it, however, the soil felt cooler and strangely heavy. It clung to her fingertip rather than crumbling.
“Does water gather here after rain?” she asked.
Mr. Wilkes frowned. “More than it should.”
“And then the ground hardens quickly afterward?”
“That it does.”