zero tolerance in the classroom long before American educators adopted the phrase. “I’m perfectly fine. Feeling a tad foolish is all. I called to commiserate, not cause worry. It’s perfect gardening weather, and I’m confined to the drawing room with my feet up. My list for today included tying back the sweet peas.”
Typical, her mother was upset by the disruption, not the accident. Apart from the summer of her breakdown, Mrs. Virginia Haddington lived a neat life, greeting each day with a list written in specially ordered blue fountain pen ink. Oh God. In the ten years since her father’s death, Tilly had been the gatekeeper of her mother’s mental health, making sure she was taking time to garden, to read, to enjoy a social life. But in all those years, Tilly had never once worried about her mother’s physical well-being. Sure, she was only seventy, but her mother had never broken a bone before.
Mrs. Haddington gave a sniff. “It’s that blasted muntjac’s fault, the one that treats my vegetable garden as an all-night buffet. I’m at my wit’s end, Tilly. My broad beans are gone. Simply gone. When I was up at the Hall the other day, trying to persuade Rowena to join the rota for the church flowers—”
Tilly snorted. Her mother had to be joking. Rowena could barely tell the difference between a stinging nettle and a rose. And she had no interest in learning otherwise.
Her mother ignored the interruption and kept going. “I bumped into the gamekeeper and asked if I could borrow his shotgun, but the blighter refused to lend it to me.”
Tilly rolled her eyes. Her mother had known the gamekeeper for thirty years, but still refused to call him John. Of course, the only person in the village who used his real name was Rowena, his boss. The Roxtons, Rowena’s family, had owned and managed the three thousand acres of woods and farmland surrounding the village for generations. But on Rowena’s thirtieth birthday, Lord and Lady Roxton gifted the property to their only child and skipped off to a new life on Crete. A dumbfounded Rowena, left only with a vague reassurance that she wouldn’t be clobbered with inheritance tax provided Lord Roxton outlived the gift by seven years, had quit a successful career in the London art world to save her ailing inheritance: the Bramwell Chase estate and Bramwell Hall. As the new lady of the manor, she had hired contract farmers, financed a roof for her crumbling historic mansion by renting it to a movie crew, and had just scraped past the seven-year marker. Considering she was mining a financial dinosaur, Ro was holding her own, but no thanks to her parents.
“Wait a minute,” Tilly said. “You were planning to shoot Bambi?” She imagined a new version of the Daddy game. What would Grammy do about the copperhead? Easy-peasy. Bash in the snake’s head with the hoe and then put the kettle on for tea. “You’ve never fired a gun.”
“Nonsense. I was a dab hand with your uncle’s air rifle. Deer are large rodents, Tilly, and one should treat them as such. When I have rats, I pay the rat catcher to kill them. Why is shooting a deer any different?”
Tilly chewed her lip, determined not to swallow the bait. Her mother and Rowena had collaborated many times to accuse anti-beagling, anti-fox-hunting, anti-pheasant-shooting Tilly of being a namby-pamby country dweller.
“I’m sorry, Mum. My head’s spinning, and I’m barely awake.” Although her heart, galloping every which way, suggested otherwise. “How did we get from hedgehogs to deer?”
“A hedgehog. Singular.”
Tilly rolled her eyes and silently renewed her vow never to be a mother who grasped every teachable moment and strode forth with it.
“Well, since the gamekeeper wouldn’t help, I came up with my own solution. Very creative, too. When I took Monty out for his bedtime turn around the garden, I brought along that giant water blaster Rowena gave Isaac. Thought I’d soak the muntjac if I saw him. Works with next door’s Lab when he bursts through the hedge to attack poor Monty.”
Poor was hardly an adjective to describe her mother’s dog. Not since he’d mauled a baby rabbit to death and terrorized the window cleaner with the carcass.
“What a ridiculous gift that water gun was. If only Rowena would settle down with a nice man, start a family….”
“The deer, Mum?”
“The deer? Oh, right. The deer.”
Anxiety returned in waves. When she and Isaac were home at Christmas, Tilly had noticed her mother developing a new habit of becoming lost in her speech, as if she couldn’t retain her thoughts. Was this early-onset dementia, history about to repeat itself, or wet brain from decades of drinking gin?
“It’s quite simple really. Instead of a deer, Monty found a hedgehog. I tripped over the blessed thing in the dark, and then everything degenerated into a Dad’s Army sketch.”
Tilly laughed, remembering her’s father favorite television sitcom, but stopped when she heard only silence from her mother. “How long till the plaster comes off?”
“Eight weeks.”
“Eight weeks! Who’s going to help you bathe, get dressed, walk Monty?”
“I’ll muddle through. The twins don’t leave for Australia for two weeks, which is an absolute stroke of luck. And Marigold’s rallied my support system. Bless her, she does have a tendency towards drama.” That was an understatement. Marigold, her mother’s bosom pal of forty years, could create drama out of a downed washing line. “Trust me, darling—” Mrs. Haddington lowered her voice and sounded so far away “—this is nothing like before.”
“You’ve had another panic attack,” Tilly said. “Haven’t you?”
Her mother hesitated for a second too long. “It was nothing.”
“Right, we’ll arrive after the twins leave and stay until the plaster comes off. Can you spring for the tickets? I’m strapped for cash since the electrics went on my truck.”
If the panic attacks had returned, what choice did Tilly have? She had safeguarded her mother’s secrets once. If need be, she would do so again.
“Darling, don’t be rash. What will happen to the nursery if you leave for six weeks during the peak season?”
“Sari’ll happen. She can take over.” Bummer, she couldn’t fire Sari after all.
The night before, Tilly had found the phone message explaining Sari’s impromptu beach getaway and how, in the excitement, she had misplaced James’s number and been unable to cancel his appointment. Right, that made sense. Clearly, Sari had forgotten blabbing about her terror of oceans—despite her love of sleeping with a sound machine set to play waves. Tilly had ignored the confession as an attempt at girl bonding. Besides, once you understood someone’s fears, you were trapped in her world.
Could she trust the daily grind of the nursery to a person who had lied so blatantly? An employee who couldn’t sit still for ten minutes let alone direct nothing but a hose for five hours a day? But Tilly felt oddly disconnected, aware only of Woodend lit up ahead, waiting for her.
“Besides, how can I miss seeing you recline the summer away like Lady Muck?”
Tilly loved her mother’s bawdy laugh, so unexpected for a petite woman who came down to cook breakfast every morning wearing red lipstick and Chanel No. 5 eau de parfum. But the laughter ended. “There’s another reason you might not want to come home.”
“The village cut off with foot and mouth again? More mad cow disease?”
“Rowena has a new tenant at Manor Farm.” Her mother took a deep breath. “Tilly, it’s Sebastian. He’s living in Bramwell Chase.”
Tilly dropped the phone.
Chapter 4
James slid from Warrior I to Warrior II and deepened the stretch. The warrior poses are about strength and endurance. The muscles in his calf tightened as a warm current of energy flowed through his body and into the ground, rooting him, making him strong. Defective, but