For once, Cynthia was silent as Diana shut the billiards room door behind her.
* * *
Still seething, Diana made her way to the mudroom off the kitchen—too small a space for the convalescent home to commandeer—and pulled on Murray’s old waxed jacket and a well-worn pair of leather loafers. She wrapped her hair up in an old scarf that she kept on a hook by the door and gathered up her trug and secateurs.
She threw open the side door to the kitchen garden and crunched across the gravel to the gate. It wasn’t raining, but she could smell it in the air. It was her favorite time to be in the garden, with the urgency of impending weather hurrying her along.
She was not a great gardener by any means. But then, none of the women in Murray’s family had been. Murray’s grandfather, Arthur Melcourt, had brought in a woman named Venetia Smith to do the design. Even decades later, the effect was breathtaking any month of the year, and Diana was determined to be an excellent caretaker of the grounds. However, after four and a half years at war, she was beginning to admit that bare competence was more realistic.
When Murray was alive, six gardeners on staff were led by a head gardener named John Hillock. After the declaration of war, though, half of the young men had enlisted, with the others called up one by one. Then Mr. Hillock, who had worked on Venetia Smith’s designs under the direction of his father, had died of a heart attack while dividing bleeding hearts in the lovers’ garden. Now two men who were too old to fight came up from the village every other day to tend to what they could, calling on a pair of young boys to do any heavy lifting they couldn’t manage. The garden had taken on a loose, shaggy quality, with faded blooms that desperately needed deadheading. Even the yew had become more wild shrub than wall as it waited for a much-needed trimming.
Still, Diana loved the garden because it was fully her own. For a time, Murray had taken an interest in the redecoration of the house, but he’d left the grounds to her, saying it was a good hobby for a lady. Now, when everything became too much, she could hide in the garden rooms and pretend that her home wasn’t overrun, her husband wasn’t dead, and life wasn’t slipping through her fingers.
That afternoon, she made for the water garden. She liked its cool calm, even in the depths of winter. She should clean the pond out before the spring, but that task was for another day when she wasn’t expecting company. A war wasn’t an excuse to let standards slip, and if she became dirty, she would have to endure a cold bath before her guests arrived.
She set about pruning the late-flowering clematis, cutting the long vines back to a healthy bud and pulling away the old growth from the plant. The pieces went into her trug, destined for the great compost heaps near the greenhouses at the bottom of the property.
After ten minutes, an uneven shuffling came from the other side of the garden wall. She straightened just as a large man in a uniform walking with the help of a pair of crutches rounded a gap in the brick wall.
“Mrs. Symonds, I presume?” he asked through huffs and puffs.
“You wouldn’t happen to be Father Devlin, would you?” she asked, sliding her secateurs into Murray’s coat pocket.
He smiled. “Miss Symonds told you about me, did she?”
“You’ll find that there aren’t many secrets at Highbury House these days.” She gestured to a teak bench. “Would you like to sit down?”
“I would, thank you,” he said.
She watched as he slowly eased himself down and propped his crutches next to him.
“What is it, if you don’t mind my asking?” she said, nodding to the crutches.
“My hip. I’m afraid I rather shattered it. Very inconvenient.”
She smiled a little. “Shattered bones seem to be a specialty of this house. How did it happen?”
He looked sheepish. “I’m afraid I’ve no story of derring-do.”
“We have rather enough of those around here.”
“Quite. The truth is, I fell off a tank, and the ground broke my fall. And then broke my hip.”
“How inconsiderate of it,” she said.
“I thought so, too. So what did our dear commandant Miss Symonds tell you about me?”
“She suggested that I might like to talk to you,” said Diana.
“Well, we’re talking now, so you clearly didn’t object to the idea.”
She raised a brow.
“Ah, I see. It was one of those ‘Speak with the man of God’ suggestions. Do you think you need to talk to an old army chaplain?”