A Family of His Own

“There has fallen a splendid tear

From the passion-flower at the gate.

She is coming, my dove, my dear;

She is coming, my life, my fate.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

KAY DIDN’T waste any time. The minute she’d waved Polly goodbye, she loaded up her wheelbarrow with the tools she’d need and headed for Linden Lodge. She’d behaved embarrassingly out of character yesterday and she wanted this over and done with.

She did her bit for the community, helped in the village school, worked hard to support herself and Polly, and she kept her head down. She never stepped out of line, never did anything to attract attention to herself, cause talk. There’d been enough of that to last a lifetime when Amy had first taken them under her wing, then let them move into the cottage.

She couldn’t think what had possessed her.

She stopped, parked the barrow.

She was lying to herself. She knew exactly what had possessed her.

The mystery of a garden locked away from view. That was what had possessed her. A chance to see more than the tantalising glimpses of it she could see from her upstairs windows. She’d wanted to see more. She’d always wanted to see more.

Polly wouldn’t have talked her into trespassing unless she’d been a willing accomplice.

As she pushed back the gate, the mingled scents of crushed grass, germander, valerian gone to seed everywhere, welcomed her. The blackbird, perched in an old apple tree, paused momentarily in his song and then continued. And she felt…accepted.

What utter nonsense.

She set about the grass and weeds behind the gate, making short work of them with her shears, so that she could open it wide enough to manoeuvre her big wheelbarrow inside.

Then, since securing the gate was more important than tidying up some mess no one was likely to see in the very near future—and she was the neighbourhood-watch coordinator—the first thing she did was to replace the bolt. She oiled the hinges, too. It was the neighbourly thing to do and little enough thanks for all the blackberries.

As if anyone would notice. The buyers—and there would be buyers; no one was going to be put off by tired paintwork, a neglected garden…it was rare for a house in Upper Haughton to come on to the market—wouldn’t give a hoot. They’d probably rip it out and replace it with a fancy new one. Which was a shame. The old one, despite the cracked and peeling paint—where paint still remained—had character.

They would probably grub out the high-maintenance cottage garden, too, and replace it with something modern that wouldn’t involve a constant battle with slugs, blackspot on the roses, the rust that attacked the old-fashioned hollyhocks if they weren’t constantly watched. They’d certainly tear down the crumbling summer house.

Maybe they’d put in a swimming pool.

She tossed the oil can into the barrow and looked around. It was still early, quiet as only a village that didn’t lead to anywhere else, tucked away from the main road, could be on a Sunday morning.

Tattered dew-laced spider webs sparkled in the low, slanting sunlight, slender crimson berries of the Berberis thunbergii glistened like droplets of blood against purple leaves that were fading to autumn crimson, and in the little orchard ripe apples were poised in that moment of perfection before they fell to the grass to be plundered by birds and hedgehogs and wasps before the insects and micro-organisms got to work and they rotted away to nothing. The food chain in action.

She walked the overgrown paths, sighing over the horticultural treasures that were struggling to survive against the more robust species. The temptation was to linger, set them free. But what would be the point? Without continuous care nature would rampage into the vacuum she created with renewed vigour. She’d do more harm than good.

She hadn’t needed Amy Hallam’s raised eyebrows to know that wasting her time cutting back the brambles had been plain stupid. In the spring they’d be back, stronger than ever, and in the meantime she was having to pay for her ridiculous gesture with time and effort that would have been better spent on her own garden.

She certainly didn’t have time to waste daydreaming about how this one would look if it was rescued from neglect, she reminded herself, and pulled on thick leather gloves before she set to work chopping up the brambles so that they’d fit into her barrow.

And did her very best to ignore the delicate branches of a witch hazel that was being strangled by bindweed.

Dom started awake and for a moment he had no idea where he was. Knew only that he was cold and stiff from a night spent in an armchair. That at least was a familiar experience.

He rubbed his hands over his face, dragged his fingers through his hair, eased his limbs as he willed himself to face another day. Then, as he sat forward, he saw the garden, sparkling as the sunlight caught the dew.

For a moment it looked like a magical place.

And then, as he caught a glimpse of Sara at work near the summer house, he knew it was. No longer feeling the ache in his limbs, or in his heart, he stood up and walked down the shallow steps into the garden, oblivious to the wet grass soaking his feet.

All that he cared about was that his beloved Sara was here, working in her garden, kneeling in front of a small shrub, gently releasing it from the stranglehold of some weed. And he was going to help her.

Engrossed in her task, taking care not to snap the slender branches of the shrub as she unravelled the bindweed, Kay had scarcely any warning that she wasn’t alone.

Only the rustle of grass that she assumed was a bird, or one of the squirrels which, having already come to give her the once-over and decided she was harmless, had continued their own busy harvest of the hazel copse on the far side of the wall.

Nothing more.

Scarcely a moment to register the presence beside her, a heartbeat for fear to seize her before he was on his knees beside her.

‘Sara…’

His voice shivered through her, held her.

Sara?

The word was spoken soft and low, as if to a nervous colt that might shy away, bolt at the least excuse.

Maybe she had started because, more urgently, he said, ‘Don’t go…’

Soft, low, it was a heartbreaking appeal and she needed no introduction to know that this gaunt, hollow-eyed man was Dominic Ravenscar. Needed none of Amy’s famed insight to make the leap from his low plea to an understanding that, with her back to the sun, her face shadowed by the broad brim of her hat, he thought she was his poor dead wife come back to him.

Needed no feminine intuition to know that whatever she did was going to be wrong. Was going to hurt him. Even as she struggled to find the words, he said, ‘I won’t leave you again. Ever.’

She remained frozen in the act of slicing through the bindweed, unable to think, unable to move.

There were no words.

While she knelt there, trying to decide what to do, he reached out and, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, began to unravel the bindweed she’d cut through. As his hand brushed against hers a jolt, like the discharge of static electricity, shot through her and she dropped the pocket knife.

As if afraid that she would disappear, he caught her hand, held it for a moment. His fingers were long and wrapped around her own hand with ease. His hand and wrist were deeply tanned, strong, attenuated like those of a fasting saint in some medieval painting.

He traced the scratch on the back of her hand where the bramble had caught her with his thumb.

‘You aren’t wearing gloves,’ he said. ‘How many times have I told you that you should wear gloves?’

‘No… Yes…’ She mouthed the words, but her voice, thick with the choking rush of emotional overload, didn’t make it past her throat.

Maybe he heard her anyway, or maybe he just read her lips. Maybe he thought she was making him a promise instead of desperately searching for the words to tell him, make him see that she was someone else, because he reached out with his other hand, cupping her face in his long palm. And while she remained locked between the need to run and the certainty that she must stay and convince him of the reality of the situation, he leaned forward and kissed her.

It had been a lifetime since she’d been kissed and never with this sweetness, this gentleness. As if she was something precious but fragile that might shatter to dust if he was careless.