As soon as Eleanor had left Jack in the garden, she’d gone in search of her father to seek his permission for Jack to work in the walled garden. She was still seized by the reckless, restless energy that had taken hold of her while in the garden with Jack.
And so she strode through the house, threw open the door to her father’s study, and hurried inside, breathless and flushed.
Andrew looked up from his sermon notes, alarmed. His study had always been considered a private sanctum, and he was not to be disturbed except in the direst of emergencies. Tilly had been known to leave his dinner on a covered plate by the door rather than interrupt his theological musings.
“Eleanor!” He half rose from his chair, his expression caught between alarm and anger. “What is the meaning of this?”
Too late, Eleanor realized what she had done. She was still gasping for breath, and her hair had come half undone.
“Your dress is torn,” Andrew continued, his voice rising in anxiety. “What has happened?”
“Nothing, Father,” Eleanor said quickly. Her dress was badly torn from the thorns, and muddy as well. She brushed at it ineffectually. “Nothing like that,” she said quickly, and her father’s eyebrows rose towards his hairline.
“Like that? And what do you imagine I was thinking of?” His voice had taken on the stentorian quality it possessed when he was in the pulpit.
“Nothing,” Eleanor said even more quickly, for she knew she was just getting herself into more and more trouble. At this rate, her father would not countenance her going in the garden ever again.
“Then what is the meaning of your bursting into my study in this hoydenish manner?” Andrew demanded. Her father did not often lose his temper, but when he did it was a fearsome sight. Eleanor fought the urge to stammer an apology and back out of his study.
“I’m sorry, Father, but I just had an idea about the garden and I wanted to ask you—”
“The garden?” Andrew interjected. He sat back down with a sigh, his temper, for the moment, curbed. “And it couldn’t wait?”
“I suppose it could have,” Eleanor allowed, “but it was about the herb garden. You know, the one I want to make in Walter’s memory.”
“Yes.” Andrew’s face was solemn, all traces of his irritation gone, as Eleanor knew they would be when she invoked Walter’s name. And if she felt a flicker of guilt for using her brother’s death to her own ends, she banished it at once. The garden would be for Walter’s memory, after all. “What about it?” Andrew asked, and Eleanor took a deep breath.
“I want to use the walled garden by Grandmama’s house. It used to be a herb garden for the monastery, and it’s perfect. And the flower beds in the vicarage garden are too small.”
Andrew frowned. “Eleanor, my dear, that is quite a large undertaking. And Mr Taylor has not even finished with the vicarage garden. I don’t think he should take on something else as well.”
“Oh, but…” Eleanor could not think of an adequate reason to use the walled garden; the flower beds might be small, but they were also currently empty. It bordered on the absurd to have Jack turn his hand to another garden entirely.
And yet… it was what she wanted. She could picture the walled garden full of herbs and flowers, and perhaps even vegetables and fruit. Burgeoning with life and beauty, and she would help him with it all.
“Please, Father,” she said, taking a step closer to him, her hands pleated together in front of her. “The walled garden isn’t used for anything any more. It’s just a big empty space, and think how beautiful it could be!” Andrew still looked unconvinced and Eleanor thought of what she’d said to Jack. “I want it to be a place of peace and beauty, a place where anyone can go and sit and be quiet and remember.” Her voice choked a little as she finished, “I think we all need that. Don’t you?”
“Oh, Eleanor…” Andrew looked torn, and Eleanor waited, sensing her advantage now was in silence. After a few seconds he relented with a sigh as he sat back in his chair. “Very well. I shall tell Mr Taylor that he may work on the walled garden. But I do hope you realize what you’re asking him to take on—”
“I do, Father, and I’ll help him. I want to get involved in the garden, I truly do.” She gave him a beatific smile before turning from the room. “I’ll go and tell him now.”
And leaving her father to ponder that, she practically flew from the room. Jack had returned to the vicarage garden when Eleanor came out; he paused when he saw her hurrying towards him, and Eleanor could not read the expression on his face.
She stopped short, uncertainty replacing the reckless excitement that had propelled her to run from garden to house and back again. She was, she knew, being incredibly forward; what had thrilled her moments ago now brought her the first stirrings of unease and even shame.
Then Jack smiled and raised his eyebrows, spade in hand. “You’ve already spoken to your father, haven’t you?”
Eleanor laughed breathlessly. “How did you know?”
“You don’t do anything by halves,” Jack reminded her, still smiling, and the shame and unease melted away.
“He said yes. He thinks it’s a grand idea.” This, Eleanor knew, was not exactly what her father thought, but she felt reckless again, heady with the euphoria of having succeeded. “We should start right away!”
Jack shook his head. “It will take me ages to clear that garden,” he said with a nod towards the walls. “It’s almost as big as the entire vicarage garden, and it took me a week to do this.” He nodded towards the flower beds.
“Oh.” Eleanor’s euphoria flagged slightly. “Yes, of course.” She realized how foolish she’d been, plunging into this plan without thinking it through at all. “I didn’t mean to create extra work for you…”
“I’m glad for it,” Jack told her frankly. “Keeps me busy longer, maybe even through the summer.”
“And then?” Eleanor pressed her hands against her heart. “Will you leave Goswell then?”
Jack shrugged. “If there’s no work to be had, I suppose I’ll have to.”
“What brought you here in the first place? Katherine said it was an awfully long way for a Yorkshireman to go, just to find work.”
Jack’s expression didn’t change, but Eleanor sensed a wariness in him, a certain stillness. “Did she?” he said, his voice carefully bland. “I suppose she’s right.”
“Was there nothing to be had where you’re from? Where are you from?” she asked, the questions tripping from her tongue. “I don’t know Yorkshire, but…” She trailed off hopefully, waiting for him to answer. She wanted to know more about Jack Taylor, even if it was just where he came from.
“Just a small village near Halifax,” he said and turned away. “I should get to these flower beds,” he added over his shoulder, his gaze not quite meeting hers. “I ought to finish the job your father hired me for before I do anything with that walled garden.”
Which meant an even longer wait, Eleanor realized. “I’ll help you,” she offered, but Jack shook his head.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said, his tone so final that Eleanor felt she could not insist, not again. With a nod, a lump forming in her throat, she turned back to the house.
It was another week before Jack finished planting the flower beds, filling them with flowers and seedlings that Eleanor had picked out from the catalogue. She watched from the window as he trundled the wheelbarrow along, planting one tender shoot after another, carefully raking the dirt back over the seeds he planted.
“Have you lost interest in your garden, then?” Katherine asked one morning as she prepared to leave for Carlisle. Although she’d been busy with wedding preparations, she was volunteering again, at least until the Care Committee stopped. “Or is it Mr Taylor you’ve lost interest in?” she added, a note of spite entering her voice, and Eleanor threw down the book she hadn’t been able to read.
“I haven’t lost interest in anything,” she replied. “I’m planning a herb garden, a memorial for Walter.”
“A herb garden? Where on earth are you going to put that?”
“In the old walled garden where Grandmama planted potatoes. Jack just has to clear it first.”
“Jack, is it?” Katherine noted shrewdly, and Eleanor fought a blush.
“We’re friends, which I think is perfectly proper,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “He lost everyone in the war, Katherine – both brothers and his father, and his mother before.”
“So you’ve been having quite a few conversations, have you?”
“Oh, don’t,” Eleanor returned crossly. She glanced up at Katherine, her eyes narrowed. “I think you’re just jealous.”
“Jealous!” Katherine let out a bark of disbelieving laughter. “Of what?”
“Of the fact that I’m actually friends with a man. With someone who listens to what I say and who – who cares for me, even if just a little.” A very little, perhaps, but despite Jack’s reticence Eleanor felt he had cared when he’d comforted her. He understood her as no one else had been able to.
Katherine’s mouth tightened. “Eleanor, if that’s true, your friendship with Jack Taylor is far from proper.”
“It’s more than you have with James,” Eleanor fired back. “You barely talk to each other!”
Katherine’s face closed up like the snapping shut of a fan, everything turning pinched. “I won’t dignify that with a reply,” she answered and Eleanor bit her lip as she remembered in a guilty rush everything Katherine had told her about her and James.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it—”
Katherine turned away, busying herself with fixing her hat. “You most certainly did.” She let out a tired sigh. “I don’t begrudge you a little happiness, Eleanor. Jack is a handsome man and he seems to have escaped the war without any scars, physical or emotional, no matter how many people he’s lost.” She turned back to her sister with a direct look. “But you do realize, don’t you, that it can’t go anywhere? You can’t have a flirtation or even a friendship with a gardener, not even in this modern world, and kind as he may be, he might lead you quite merrily down a garden path, no pun intended.” She frowned. “And too many steps down that path could keep you from making a proper alliance.”
“I don’t want an alliance,” Eleanor protested. “Marriage never meant that to me.”
“A proper marriage, then, with someone of your own class and breeding.”
“You sound like such a snob—”
“I sound practical,” Katherine corrected. “Which I must be, even if you never are.” She glanced out the window, where Jack was trundling a wheelbarrow towards the walled garden; Eleanor had curled back up in the dining-room alcove with her book. “Why don’t you come into Carlisle with me today?” Katherine asked, her voice gentling with a sudden sympathy. “The society will be running its courses for veterans for only a few more weeks. I’m sure some of the men would be happy to hear your voice. You could say goodbye to the ones you’ve befriended.”
Eleanor glanced out at the garden; Jack had disappeared around the corner. “All right,” she said after a moment. “I’d like that.”
It was strange to be back at the Station Hotel with the seated rows of blind veterans – strange but also surprisingly comfortable. Eleanor found she settled in far more quickly than before, chatting with the soldiers and pouring cups of tea. Harry Abrams had gone already; another veteran informed her he’d taken a post as a typist in Wigton, and Eleanor was glad he’d been able to find a job in the field he enjoyed.
She remembered how moved by pity she’d been before, thinking these poor men had nothing to look forward to but a life of darkness and drudgery; now she saw hope, just as Katherine had said. Amidst all the wreckage of the war, all the loss and pain and despair, there was, amazingly, a way forward. She felt as if she too were emerging from a cocoon of tragedy, blinking in the sunlight, stretching her still-damp wings.
“I feel different now,” she told Katherine as they boarded the train back to Goswell.
“Do you?” Katherine’s face was pale with strain and weariness; her wedding was less than two weeks away.
“I feel as if there can be a future for all of us, even if it doesn’t look like what we thought it would be or wanted it to be.” She swallowed past a lump that had risen in her throat; Walter had no future. But he would have a garden, Eleanor promised herself. A place to remember him by, and she’d bring the veterans there, the ones who were still around, at least. She’d started the garden as a lark but now she felt a burning need to see it finished, to finish it with Jack.
“I trust,” Katherine said acerbically, breaking into her thoughts, “that this discovered hope of yours isn’t founded on the gardener.”
“No,” Eleanor told her firmly. “The garden.”
A week later Tilly told Eleanor that Jack Taylor had knocked on the kitchen door and asked her to come out to the garden; moments later, Eleanor flew out the front door and hurried across the lawn.
“You have something to show me?” she asked, her eyes alight, her cheeks flushed. She felt as if she could dance across the grass on her tiptoes.
“I’ve cleared the walled garden,” he said, “and I thought you’d like to see it.”
“Oh yes!” Eleanor clasped her hands together as she followed Jack around the house and church to the garden door. It opened with a creak and Eleanor stepped inside, gazing around at the quarter-acre of freshly tilled, rich, black earth. “It looks bigger somehow, now that it’s all cleared of bramble,” she told Jack, and he nodded.
“Plenty big enough, and look here.” He nodded towards the small stone building in the centre of the garden. “I didn’t even know that was there until I cleared all the bramble away.”
“Oh yes, it’s a funny little shed, isn’t it? Mr Lyman used to store some of his tools there, but I don’t know what it used to be for. It doesn’t look old enough to be part of the monastery, does it?”
“No, I wouldn’t say so.”
Eleanor took a step towards the little stone building; the tiles were falling from the roof, and it had two windows, now free of glass, by a weathered wooden door. “It looks like a little shepherd’s hut,” she said with a laugh. “I wonder what it was for, before Mr Lyman took it over.”
“I couldn’t say,” Jack answered, and Eleanor lifted the latch of the door and entered. It was dark and musty inside, the floor no more than packed earth. She blinked in the gloom; Jack had stepped into the doorway, blocking the light.
“Careful, Miss. There might be broken glass. A storm blew those windows in, I think.”
As if on cue, Eleanor stepped on a shard, the glass crunching underneath her feet. “Oh—”
Jack reached for her arm to steady her, his fingers gripping the fragile bones of her wrist. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice rough with anxiety. “It didn’t go through your shoe?”
“It might have done,” Eleanor admitted and quickly Jack led her out of the shed and to a pile of tumbled sandstone blocks by the wall, left over from the days of the monastery, no doubt. He sat her down, crouching by her feet; Eleanor watched, bemused, the pain in her foot increasing. She could see now the shard of glass had pierced the sole of her shoe, and blood had welled up, staining it red. She swallowed hard and looked away.
Carefully Jack undid the buckle of her shoe and slipped it off; he glanced up at her with dark eyes, a faint flush staining his cheeks. “You should remove your stocking, Miss,” he said.
“Eleanor,” she whispered back, and Jack’s eyes seemed to go darker still.
“Eleanor,” he agreed quietly, and she felt something pulse between them, almost electric; her foot was throbbing, but her heart was as well. Her fingers trembled as she rolled down her stocking and exposed her bare ankle and foot. If anyone could see them, if Grandmama came out to the garden…
Suddenly she remembered Katherine’s warning. He might lead you quite merrily down the garden path.
But she did not know who might be leading whom as Jack carefully, even tenderly, took her foot in his hands. It was strange to feel his fingers on the arch of her foot, the small bones of her ankle. His thumb pressed into her instep as he examined the wound.
“It’s not too deep, thankfully,” he said, his head lowered. She could not see his face. “But you ought to have it seen to properly and bandaged up.”
“I will,” Eleanor promised. He looked up then, meeting her gaze, her foot still in his hands. Again she felt that leaping pulse, and she did not know if it was excitement or fear. Both, she suspected; she did not move, and neither did Jack. She could still feel his thumb pressing into her instep, his fingers curved around her heel.
She felt Jack’s fingers tighten briefly on her foot and she leaned forward just a little, her lips parting, everything in her straining and waiting, although she did not know what for. She could not name it.
Then her gaze, so intent on Jack’s face, caught sight of the flutter of wings just above his head, beyond her reach, and he let go of her ankle as she started in surprise.
“Oh look, Jack – a butterfly!” Eleanor struggled to stand, one hand outstretched to the delicate creature with its pale-blue wings. “Isn’t it lovely? You see butterflies so rarely here. It’s usually too cold.”
“It is lovely,” Jack agreed. He straightened slowly, running his fingers through his hair before he settled his cap firmly back on his head. “It must be because of the warm weather. I’ve heard it said this is the hottest summer in twenty years.”
“It’s beautiful,” Eleanor breathed, and as lightly as the brush of a butterfly’s wing, Jack touched her shoulder.
“Let me help you into the house, Miss,” he said. “Tilly can take care of that foot for you.”
Nodding, Eleanor turned back to Jack; she felt all jumbled up inside, as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her, or missed the last step on the stairs. She did not know what might have happened, or even what she had wanted to happen. She felt as if she’d come very close to the edge of a precipice, but she had not looked down, and she did not know if she was disappointed or relieved.
She tried to hobble towards the garden door but she couldn’t manage it; her foot really was aching now. Coming quickly beside her, Jack put one hand around her waist and another around her shoulders as he helped her from the garden. She could breathe in the scent of him, soap and earth and a little sweat, and she felt dizzy. Their hips jostled each other as they moved.
Tilly came to the door as they approached. “What on earth has happened?” she exclaimed, and Jack helped Eleanor into the house and Tilly’s waiting arms before replying.
“She stepped on a piece of glass in the garden. It went through her shoe into her foot.” He handed Tilly the shoe, stained red with blood, and the maid exclaimed again in distress.
“Miss Eleanor, let’s get you to the kitchen and wash it off,” she said. She turned back to give Jack a rather appraising look; he suffered it in silence, head bowed. “Thank you for bringing her back, Mr Taylor. I’m sure there’s more work in the garden for you to do.”
Nodding, he stepped back, and she closed the door with a firm click.