Chapter Six #3
‘I’ll send for more scones; they will be waiting when you return,’ May added. She gave Jane a slow, significant nod, but Jane couldn’t quite decipher it. Was she meant to do something in particular? Sometimes society manners eluded her. She would really make a terrible duchess.
She rose to her feet, little Kate scampering around her, and she led Benedict through the glass doors that led outside to the gardens.
She felt his warmth so close to her, smelled his delicious scent of sandalwood soap, and there was such a softness around them, a silent connection that hummed in the summer air. In that moment, even silence felt full.
They walked in silence past the velvet-green lawn and the little teahouse, until they came to the rose garden, May’s pride.
She’d spent most of their time on their European voyage ordering plants when they hadn’t been at Worth or the museums and bookshops.
The air was rich with the perfume of the blooming roses, sweet and earthy.
There were splashes of deep crimson, blush-pink, golden yellow and snowy white.
Bees buzzed lazily from bloom to bloom and a breeze stirred the leaves, making loose petals flutter like confetti at a party.
Paths wound around, bordered by low hedges, inviting slow, thoughtful steps. There was no hurry there.
Kate ran ahead, barking at a few leaves tossing in the breeze. She definitely seemed to have recovered from her ordeal and settled in.
‘I feel rather as if I’ve put you on the spot, Miss O’Neill,’ Benedict said apologetically. ‘Thrusting a dog into your arms and insisting you keep it. It’s just…’ He broke off, his expression chagrined.
As she did so often with him, Jane longed to know what he was really thinking.
Being with Benedict was like standing at the edge of a quiet forest, trying to hear a sound just beyond the trees, possibilities forming from scraps of silence, glances and half-formed words.
Her imagination always filled in blanks with hopes and fears.
‘Just…what?’ she asked.
‘I just knew she would be safe here,’ he said simply. ‘Safe with you.’
Knowing that he thought she was a safe place, a place he could rely on, made her feel a little burst of light inside, sudden, warm and unexpectedly bright.
‘Of course she is. The poor wee thing! She must have been so frightened, and then you came along…’ He’d come along and made Kate feel safe, just as Jane dared to hope she could feel.
Matters were not always out loud with him, but a deep, steady calm that settled into her. She didn’t have to explain herself.
‘She is wonderful,’ Jane went on. ‘Look how happy she is! Just what we needed here at Shore’s Edge. May has made it all so beautiful, but it’s rather enormous and new. Kate will bring it some life.’
Benedict glanced back at the house, gleaming creamy-white in the sunshine.
His expression seemed filled with some kind of quiet longing.
It lingered on the house as though he was trying to bridge a distance words couldn’t cross.
His sky-blue eyes darkened. ‘It is a beautiful place. And it already feels full of life, thanks to your family. They are very kind.’
‘May is so good at making people feel welcome. She has really loved planning this place in every detail, making it a place where she can have parties and make sure everyone has fun.’ She looked around the rose garden, that tumble of colour and scent.
‘This spot is her great pride. There’s no space for such a garden at the New York house, as vast as it is. ’
‘I can see why she loves it here.’ Benedict tossed a stick for Kate, who scampered after it between the vivid, nodding rows of flowers. They followed, their steps perfectly matched, as if they’d walked just so for years. ‘Look at this climber! Next summer, it should cover this trellis.’
Jane studied the garden, so new and bright. She wondered what it was like for him in England, in his gardens that had been there for centuries. ‘May is right, though. It must be as nothing compared to the gardens at Rollston Court. Wasn’t the walled garden there designed by Repton himself?’
He glanced back at her, his brow arched in surprise. ‘You know that about Rollston?’
Jane felt her cheeks turn warm as she was forced to admit to her study of his home.
She’d found a mention of the estate in a book on stately homes tucked in the library, but she didn’t want to admit she’d looked it up.
‘I—might have read a bit about it, yes. It seems a fascinating place. Built in early medieval times…’
‘Only a small section of it. Most of it was added in the eighteenth century, and the gardens redesigned in the Regency by, you’re right, Repton.
’ Benedict studied the little teahouse in the distance.
‘The gardens were once glorious, yes, but I fear they’ve rather fallen into disrepair.
Roses and Tudor knot gardens were the least of my father’s interests.
It’s overgrown and tangled now, nothing like this beauty. ’
Jane imagined that living in such a place would be like standing in front of a closed door with the past breathing just behind it, an invisible thread pulling a person backwards into times only heard about in stories, leaving them wondering what other people had dreamed there, what they’d laughed at, what they’d feared.
‘Still, I think it would be fascinating to live somewhere your ancestors did; to walk where they walked and imagine their lives. Lives that happened right there, on that very spot!’
He smiled, but he looked bemused, pensive. ‘You did like poetry, I remember.’
‘And I still do. I’m sure there is something very poetic indeed in such old places.’ She remembered their long-ago day at the bookshop. ‘Do you still read The Book of the Farm? It must be helpful in managing such an estate.’
‘I hope it will be. Rollston has nearly twenty-five thousand acres, a few hundred just on the home farm, and many tenants. It used to produce enormous yields. But I fear it’s as neglected as the roses, with the economic downturn in agriculture and my father’s indifference. It has caused much suffering lately.’
He suddenly looked much older, sadder. Seeing it made her feel as if a quiet ache opened inside her.
His worry seemed her own, even if she didn’t know why.
He had that furrow in his brow, the far-off look in his eyes.
She found she wanted to protect him, soothe him, though she knew that would never be her place.
That would be for the wife he needed so much to help him.
‘And you want to restore it all,’ she said.
‘I do. Too many depend on it.’ He paused, watching Kate chase more leaves. ‘Miss O’Neill…’
‘Oh, do call me Jane.’ She thought of the young Benedict in the bookshop, how easy it had been just to be themselves then, no titles or grand names.
‘Jane,’ he said quietly. ‘And I am Benedict. No more “Your Grace”. Not here in this lovely place.’
‘Benedict.’ Saying his name felt different from saying any other word. It was like a whisper to herself, echoing with memory for that long-ago day and the girl she’d been then. She wondered if he felt a whisper of it too.
‘You must have heard talk of why I’m in New York. My aunt—many people, actually—think I should look for a wife here. A duchess who could help Rollston.’
Jane didn’t know where to look, what to say.
Of course she knew he was here to marry.
She couldn’t pretend. But hearing it said aloud was somehow different.
She felt as if she was caught in a sudden gust of wind, her thoughts stumbling over each other.
‘I have heard whispers, yes. New York society is quite small, and loves nothing more than gossip. A titled gentleman to talk about… Well, they are in heaven.’ And their daughters, especially.
Ladies such as Regina Van Joort were ecstatic at the prospect.
Benedict gave a bark of surprised laughter. ‘Not so different from London, then. We can never quite swim out of the fishbowl.’
‘No, we can’t. There’s a strange loneliness in it, isn’t there, even though we are never really alone? It’s exhausting to always be judged and speculated about, and it must be a hundred times worse for you. It would be nice to feel, well, unexamined.’