laughed gruffly. ‘I’m tempted, just to test you, but I am pretty sure there’s a woman of iron inside that dainty front you present to the world. Come on, then, let’s see what you’ve done to the walled garden. I seem to recall some excitement in one of your letters a few years back over some plans you recovered from the attic.’
‘Estelle found them—they were your mother’s original drawings.’
She nudged him towards the door. The town coach wheels had left big gouges in the carriageway.
‘Sir Marcus and his sidekick must have been anxious to get back to London,’ she said, for Daniel was staring at the tracks.
‘Lord Henry Armstrong.’ Daniel made his way down the steps and after a brief hesitation took the correct turn to the right. ‘He is one of Wellington’s most trusted men, if you believe what he says of himself. Personally, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. He has two daughters married to desert sheikhs in neighbouring Arabian kingdoms, and it’s through them that he wields what influence he has in trade.’
‘What has that to do with you?’
‘As of today, absolutely nothing. My role in that arena has been played out.’
‘Daniel, what was your role?’
‘I’m afraid there’s no point in you asking me questions about the specifics of what I was involved in because I won’t be able to answer them. So it’s better not to ask, and then I won’t offend you by my silence.’
‘Very well, then, I will curb my curiosity.’
‘I’m sorry. For not being able to satisfy your very natural curiosity and for behaving like a spoilt child too,’ Daniel said awkwardly. ‘It’s not like me.’
‘We’re neither of us behaving like ourselves. The circumstances are rather unusual, to say the least.’
He laughed dryly, running his hand over his closely shaved head. ‘I had been working on an assignment for five years. Let’s just say that my assumed identity was compromised and I was captured. I’m not sure exactly how long I languished in prison—it was probably the best part of a year before the British government got me out.’
‘So for the last five years you’ve been pretending to be someone else?’
‘I have been someone else.’
Semantics, it seemed to her, but she decided not to say so. ‘And when this was discovered by the authorities they imprisoned you for it. So what you were doing was illegal?’
‘That depends very much upon who is defining the terms.’
‘Were you the only one on this—assignment? Were there others captured with you? Did Sir Marcus help anyone else escape along with you?’
‘As far as Sir Marcus is concerned,’ Daniel said, his lips thinning, ‘everyone save his blue-eyed boys are considered collateral damage. It’s one of the reasons I’m in his bad books.’
‘Because you saved someone?’
‘Because I ensured they did not become collateral damage,’ he said sardonically. ‘And broke with protocol by risking the mission and ultimately compromising it.’
‘To save someone!’ Kate exclaimed indignantly. ‘Are you seriously saying that Sir Marcus is punishing you—?’
‘Asserting his authority,’ Daniel said grimly. ‘He knows damned well that I hate this place, and how little I relish being told what to do.’
‘For heaven’s sake, you make him sound like a school bully. Surely he cannot be so petty?’
‘More like a school prefect. He is a stickler for the rules.’
‘But in the circumstances…’
‘Kate, I’ve told you far too much already. If Sir Marcus had overheard this conversation he’d extend my sentence. It’s over. Whatever happens next, I won’t be going back there. Time to draw a veil over it all—save for my report and the debrief that will follow it when I’m well enough.’
‘How long did he sentence you to?’
‘Three months. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault. And this is your…’
Home, she had been about to say, but Daniel had made his thoughts on that extremely clear.
‘This is the walled garden,’ she said, though that fact was rather obvious. ‘I had the door rebuilt, as you can see.’
Daniel visibly relaxed at the change of subject. ‘I have only the dimmest of memories of being able to get in this way. I usually climbed over the wall. No one ever came here save me.’
‘The girls—I mean Eloise, Estelle and Phoebe—were fascinated by this place when they first came here. Eloise, especially, was a great one for climbing trees. But there’s something about a walled garden, I think, that capture’s everyone’s imagination, isn’t there?’
‘It’s because of the enclosing walls—and even more so when the door doesn’t open. It feels like a secret place. It used to be mine.’
‘Really?’ Kate let go of Daniel’s arm to allow him to step through. ‘I hope you approve of what I’ve done, then. What do you think?’
Daniel was standing stock-still, staring around him. ‘Would you mind if I took a few moments to myself? I promise I’m in no danger of a relapse, but I’d like to—I’d like to be alone for a bit, that’s all.’
‘It’s fine. I am happy to do the same. Where will I…?’
‘I’ll come and find you.’
He waited, clearly wanting her to move on, so she did, planning a clockwise circuit.
The air was distinctly warmer within the walls, perfumed by a complex and distinct bouquet that for the first time made her feel that she had come home. She could hear the industrious drone of honey bees from the hives which were over in the far corner.
She stopped on the path for a moment, closing her eyes, the better to sift through the various scents: grass, new mown, from the central lawn around which each of the other garden ‘rooms’ were set out; the moist, peaty smell of rich earth from the vegetable and flowerbeds; honeysuckle, always distinctive; the sharp, almost tangy smell of fresh foliage from the trees.
This was home.
This garden that she’d worked so hard to restore and to enhance had always been her own special project, her sanctuary, and dearer to her than anything else at Elmswood, from the restoration of the house to the modernisation of the farms.
Forgetting Daniel for the moment, she gave herself over to the charms of the garden, which had always been able to restore her equilibrium. It was laid out in discrete areas, separated by gravelled paths, with the kitchen garden on her left and the soft fruit trees opposite, peaches espaliered on the south-facing wall. Next came the flowerbeds, and the little pagoda she’d had built beside the succession house for arranging and drying. The beds were a riot of colour, with phlox and sweet peas, larkspur and delphinium, scabious and snapdragons and campanula. Clematis rioted over the trellising, and the borders of alternating mint, lavender and thyme gave off a delicious scent as her skirts brushed against them.
The windows and doors of the succession house were wide open. Oliver, who had first started work here as a young man around the time she had married Daniel, and was now responsible for of all Elmswood’s grounds, had left his tankard on the bench outside the tool shed, as he was prone to do.
The nascent vineyard, about which he’d been so sceptical, was starting to take shape, she noted with quiet satisfaction, though it would be a few years yet before it would become productive.
The area the girls called ‘the wilderness’ occupied the