The Unfinished Garden (23 page)

Chapter 23

Tilly breathed in the orangey perfume of Lady Roxton’s
philadelphus and enjoyed a rare moment of nothingness. Except that James’s
gardening notebook lay temptingly close on the bench next to her, his Montblanc
rollerball marking his last entry. One peek wouldn’t hurt, would it? She would
never commit the sin of privacy invasion, but scribblings about plants could
hardly reveal intimacies. Beside, James didn’t have the brain circuitry for
mixed content. On the other hand, he might go nuclear if she messed with his
possessions. Everything in James’s world had its place.

A tractor rumbled in the distance and Tilly swallowed. Her
throat was sore from hours of prattling. Lecturing, while James hung back and
scribbled in his little book. Black, of course, since everything about James was
black today, from his earrings to his mood. He had expressed no interest in the
Woburn jaunt and had ignored her probes about his day alone. Not that she needed
to ask how he’d spent his time, since mounds of rosemary now circled evenly
spaced rows of thyme, sage and rue. Clearly, he’d fobbed her off with that crap
about
personal matters.
Tilly gnawed on a hangnail.
Frustrated didn’t begin to explain how she felt. But then again, all things
James had become wrapped in barbed wire since his bombshell about David. Maybe
gardening was all they had left to share.

James had certainly been an eager pupil that morning, sparking
with energy. “Elaborate,” he kept saying, his fingers jiggling as if he were
speed learning. When she explained that gardening was plagued by the unexpected
but offered so many comeback lines that defeat was never an option, he wrote it
down and underlined it twice. The trick, she told him, was to adapt to every
curveball that nature threw at you. If a plant had outgrown its space, you cut
it back. If a plant wasn’t thriving, you moved it.

Tilly glanced at the notebook again. How long had James been
gone? Five minutes? She had explained elevenses—English snack—during their first
day in the walled garden, and every morning, when the clock on the stable block
chimed eleven, James disappeared and returned with treats. She never put in a
request; she didn’t need to. He kept a Tupperware of her favorite chocolate in
the Hall fridge. Tilly’s stash, Rowena called it. What would James bring her
this morning? Easy-peasy, a Cadbury flake. Perfect for a sunny, sixty-degree
day. He had studied her well. By the time he flew home, James would have learned
more about her than about gardening. And what would she have learned about
him?

She set the pen aside and pried open the nappa-covered
notebook. For a moment Tilly stared at James’s writing without seeing words.
Then she stroked the small, compact letters, so different from her large, loopy
style. He took notes in complete sentences, each line of text a grammatically
correct, self-contained thought with no abbreviations. She flipped through,
stopping when she reached an angry doodle that spread like a bloodstain over an
entire page. Every line was sharpened to a point, the pen strokes carved with
such force that they had broken through the paper in several places. James
hadn’t drawn a single curve.

“Find anything interesting?” he said.

Tilly shrieked and dropped the notebook. How could she not have
heard him approach?

He positioned one of the two mugs he was carrying on the
armrest next to Tilly and then fished out a Cadbury flake from his jean
pocket.

Tilly thanked him and tried not to think about the reason for
the flake’s slight warmth.

She retrieved the notebook from the ground, dusted it off on
her T-shirt and flicked through to find the right page to mark with his pen.
“Why’re you taking notes today?” she said.

He pushed up his sunglasses, scraping his hair back to expose
his high, pale forehead. At some point in his life he must have worn his hair
short. Is this how he would have looked? His thick, dark eyebrows were now his
most prominent feature, and his cheekbones were more pronounced. Only the eyes
remained the same.

“I don’t want to forget anything you’ve taught me—” he watched
her “—after I leave on Friday.”

“What!” She shot forward and spat out a mouthful of coffee.
“But I thought you were staying until I have my results?”

“I am.” He sat next to her. “Which is why I booked a Friday
flight.”

“But what if it’s malignant?”

“Then a stranger won’t be much help.”

“Crap.” She thumped her cup down on the ground, spilling coffee
over her Wellington boot. “This is crap, and you know it. Been there, done that,
had the conversation. You’re not a stranger. And if this is some lame excuse to
get me to confess….”

He pulled his sunglasses off his head and shook his hair free.
“Confess to what?” He sounded so indifferent she expected him to yawn.

Tilly gave a snort and stared at the puddle of coffee
glistening on her boot. She wasn’t claiming feelings she didn’t own, or
suspected she didn’t own. “The garden—” She pointed at the rose bed with its
pruned canes, excavated edge and compost-rich soil. “We’re not done with the
garden.”

“I think we are, Tilly.”

“But the tree house.”

“I’ll finish on Thursday, while we wait for the surgeon’s
call.”

“Why, James? Why are you leaving?” She swallowed the word
me,
worried it would sound petulant.

“I butted into your world, forced you to take me on.” James
gave a rueful smile. “We both know it’s time I reconnected with my own life. I
need to check on the house, and then I’ll drive to Chicago to visit friends,
leave the Alfa there and fly to Seattle for an extended trip.” He raised his
mug, with both hands, to his lips. “I haven’t seen Daniel in twelve months.”

“Who’s Daniel?”

“My son. He lives in Seattle.”

The breeze brought the faint, but discernible, scent of wild
honeysuckle from The Chase, and the echo of a pheasant’s cough. Tilly could
almost hear the morning ticking away as she sat in Rowena’s walled garden
exchanging words with a stranger.

She prodded a stray rose petal with her foot. “If you’re
leaving at the end of the week, it’s time I showed you how to plant.”

* * *

“Promise one last time that I can’t catch cancer from
the soil.” His words spilled out as he crouched on the thyme-covered walk.

“I’ve promised five times already,” Tilly said. “That’s
enough.”

But she hadn’t made it to six. “Please?”

“No. That’s your OCD asking, not you.”

A mob of starlings flew over the walled garden cackling and
James imagined shooting them. He hadn’t fired his dad’s rifle in three decades,
but today he felt primal, like a Neanderthal hunter waiting to kill. And it
disgusted him. Vile images hijacked his mind. He saw himself with his fingers
clasped around a bird’s neck, wringing the life out of it, which was bogus. He
knew in his soul he could never kill a bird. He’d felt bad enough about
flattening that moth in his bedroom the other night, and moths creeped him
out.

James took off his sunglasses and pinched the bridge of his
nose. A headache was drilling through his skull. His bangs, now long enough to
tuck behind his ears, flopped forward. Pinpricks of anger jabbed at him. Why did
he ever think he had the patience to grow his hair? He wanted to jerk it out by
the roots.

“Come on, James. What are the chances of catching cancer from
soil?”

He looked up. “Less than zero?”

“Exactly.” Tilly smiled, but he couldn’t imagine why. Quite
possibly she was relieved this would be their last gardening lesson. “Ready to
try again?” she asked.

No.
He didn’t want to disappoint
her, but his focus was broken. He needed to distance himself—from this garden,
from Tilly. In his mind he had left already.

“No. I’m done,” he said, and used his wrist to force the web of
hair from his face. He eyed the discarded gardening gloves, ripped off and
abandoned after his abortive attempt to dig up a daylily. An excellent plant,
Tilly had told him, for a first lesson on subdividing. Even Isaac couldn’t kill
a daylily. No, but James could.

“Listen,” she said. “Hear that song?
Tsee-tsee-tsu-hu-hu-hu.
It’s a blue tit.”

And doubt about leaving returned. But doubt was part of his
DNA, and he had to find the strength to ignore it. That had been his goal before
he’d met Tilly, before he had allowed jealousy and desire to distract him.

The agony of leaving her had begun, but heartbreak, like
anxiety, faded. And even if he couldn’t tackle the ultimate exposure, did it
matter? Thanks to Tilly, he had made incredible progress. He would never forget
the hope that she had given him by caring, by reminding him to laugh. But the
fantasy was over. He knew it; so did she.

“I’m going to miss sharing my private hell.” James stared at a
topiary of ivy that had long since broken free of its shape.

“Me, too,” Tilly sighed. “Me, too.”

Chapter 24

She…was going…to die. How insane was it to strap
toy-size wheels to your feet with the sole purpose of tearing along like a
bullet train? She was a single parent desperate to survive to her next birthday,
not a bachelor happily risking life for asinine thrills. Leg muscles Tilly had
never been aware of ached, and her feet were as heavy as blocks of concrete.

“I’m done.” She plopped, bottom first, onto the verge and
picked at the weld of knots James had tied on her right boot.

Ignoring her whinges of protest, he bent down and hoisted her
back up.

He smelled of satsumas today, which was hardly surprising.
Glass jars of satsuma soap sat by every washbasin in Bramwell Hall, as if Rowena
were terrified that she could run out. Tilly loved the scent of satsumas, too,
although maybe not today, when it distracted her with Christmas memories—the
crackle of the drawing room fire, the aroma of mince pies baking, choral
descants on the radio. The first time she and David toured the house at Creeping
Cedars, Tilly bounded into the great room and announced, “That’s the spot for a
Christmas tree.” But David overruled her. Once they had kids, he explained, a
Christmas tree would overshadow Hanukkah. Why had she abandoned her cherished
family traditions without a fight? And why had she conceded on the in-line
skating? Was she, yet again, contorting herself to fit someone else’s
expectations?

“You’ve mastered the basics,” James said. “Now it’s time for
some speed.”

Great, just what she needed—a little speed to ensure she
embraced death at full tilt.

“No, no and no.” Tilly tried to shrug him off, but wobbled like
a marionette with broken strings. She grabbed at the solid warmth of his
forearms.

Her stomach lurched and her pulse danced to some hot-blooded
Latin beat. This was such a bad idea on so many levels.

“If I fall,” she said, “the tarmac will tear me to pieces.” And
that would be the least of her problems. If she pulled him down on top of her
they could end up entwined heart-to-heart, groin-to-groin.
Oh, bugger.

His muscles tensed under her grip. “Do you think I could let
you fall?” There was a sharp edge to his voice, but his face spoke only of hurt.
Devastating hurt, as if she had betrayed him.

“James, I would trust you with my life.” Wasn’t she, in fact?
“But you and I get our jollies differently. I’m a coward at heart, and this is
way outside my comfort zone.”

A smile tugged at the right corner of his mouth. He was too
close, but she couldn’t let go. Without him, she wouldn’t survive this
ridiculous ordeal.

“We’re going to roll forward, just a little momentum,
okay?”

“Not okay, far from okay.” Tilly scrabbled at him, her heart
now pumping terror, not lust.

“Remember—ankles strong. Don’t let them sink inward. Left foot
forward a little, then push. Right foot forward a little, then push. As if
you’re marching. And brake gradually.”

“Ankles strong, got it. Left foot, push. Right foot…bugger.”
She collapsed around her waist, twisting his skin as she clasped his arm. “I
have
so
not got it.”

“Relax.” He was gliding backward, dragging her with him. “Let
me do what I do best—worry enough for both of us.”

Okay, she would focus on his mouth, on that seductive smile
unwrapping like a slow stretch at the end of a day. Of all the ways he could
decompress, he chose this?

As he offered his face to the sky, the cleft in his chin became
an inky hollow. She had called him handsome a few days earlier as a joke, but
she wasn’t laughing now. David was flat-out stunning with his dark ringlets and
uncanny resemblance to Botticelli’s Mars. And Sebastian’s refined features made
his face close to perfection. But James? He was breath-stealingly gorgeous, and,
quite possibly, the sexiest man she had ever met.

They whizzed past the crinkle-crankle yew hedge. Wait! How had
they picked up speed so quickly? They were going too fast too soon. His hair
whipped across his face, obscuring his mouth, and Tilly tried to speak but
couldn’t force out
stop,
let alone add
please.
Drowning, she was drowning in air. But then
James caressed the inside of her elbow, and the restriction in her throat
vanished. She laughed; she actually laughed. He was leading her somewhere she
could never have imagined she wanted to go. And it was kinda fun.

She threw back her head and shrieked into the cloud-covered
sky. James answered with a rich, sultry laugh that was even more precious than
one of his smiles. The terror, the sore muscles, the imminent heart failure, all
were worthwhile for that laugh. Which was just as well, since it was, quite
possibly, the last thing she would ever hear.

Time stretched to accommodate multiple sounds and thoughts:
tires whooshing on the tarmac; the honk of a horn; panic racking her body—
how do I brake;
her breath escaping with an
ouff
as she flew into James; her heart crashing
against her ribs—a wrecking ball smashing apart every preconception about how it
would feel to hold James.

Many times—more than she wanted to admit but when death hurtled
toward you in a muddy Discovery, self-honesty was the least of your problems—she
had wondered how their bodies would fit together.
Awkwardly
was the adverb she’d settled on, given the disparity in
their heights, her wonky torso and his lean frame of hard muscle. How wrong she
had been. His body cushioned hers and his arms secured her like a
custom-designed harness. A perfect fit.

She followed the tempo of his pulse, heard him breathe and
imbibed the feeling of James. Gradually, she stopped shaking and screamed a
silent
yes.

“Having fun, are we?” Rowena leaned out of the driver’s
window.

“Hi, Mom! Hi, James!” Isaac called from inside the car. “Can I
join in?”

Tilly snapped back, her cheeks on fire. She pushed free of
James, shimmied, and flopped over the hood of the Discovery.

“No,” she said to both questions and instantly regretted her
answer.