She showed them the ground-floor rooms first: the drawing room, dining rooms, library and music room. Rose couldn’t resist fingering the pianoforte keys.
“Do you play?” Harriet asked.
“Yes, I love playing,” Rose answered, smiling shyly. Beneath her fingers, the keys were smooth and responsive. She would love to sit down for a while and lose herself in music. Instead, she followed the others back out to the corridor.
The first and second floors contained numerous bedchambers and dressing rooms. Her own suite of rooms included an east-facing sitting room, which would get the morning sun.
Mrs. Hart completed the tour of the house with a visit to the kitchens and laundry. Rose smiled and nodded at the servants as she followed Mrs. Hart around, trying to conceal her nervousness. It was difficult to believe that she was mistress of this house now, and that she would be expected to give the efficient Mrs. Hart her instructions each day. She knew she would feel foolish doing so, at least at first. She was glad Harriet would be here to guide her.
After the tour of the house, Harriet suggested they walk around the grounds. The late countess had been a keen gardener, and Weartham boasted a series of separate gardens, connected by a long, winding walkway. There was a formal garden, a rose garden, a kitchen garden with carrots, peas, asparagus, lettuces and herbs. There was an orchard with apple and pear and plum trees. And beyond all those carefully tended domestic gardens, there was a wild garden.
By the time they reached the orchard, they were both tired.
“Let’s have a rest,” Harriet suggested. She headed toward a bench in the shade of a pear tree and sat down, sighing contentedly.
Rose stayed where she was. “I think I’ll just go and look at the wild garden,” she said. She was bone-weary, but she wanted to see it before they went back. It felt like forever since she’d been in the country.
“All right,” Harriet said placidly, fanning herself. “I’ll wait here.”
The entrance to the wild garden was through a doorway in the wall that surrounded the orchard. As Rose passed through, she left the careful ornamentation of the formal gardens and the useful practicality of the kitchen gardens behind her, and took her first steps into a meadow of wildflowers.
The scent was heavenly. Not the heavy glamour of the hothouse blooms that had filled Papa’s house in London, but a sweet, fresh, grassy scent that reminded her of childhood summers in the country at Uncle Philip’s house or at friends of Papa’s.
A path of sorts led her to a little bridge beneath which babbled a perfectly English brook. A few feet away from the bridge, there was a fairy-sized waterfall that gushed into a clear, cold-looking pool. On the other side of the bridge stood a small, artfully ruined folly, a temple in the classical style, its white stone mouldered with green.
Rose went up the steps of the temple, trailing her fingertips across the cold marble of the pillars as she moved into the centre of it. It was shady and cool, refreshing out of the warmth of the summer day. She turned slowly. One half of the inner wall was blank but there was a fresco on the other half. It depicted Persephone, contemplating a pomegranate. Rose thought she looked rather desperately hungry.
Rose stood there for a few minutes, looking around. She realised, suddenly, that she was smiling. These were the first moments of contentment she had felt in many weeks. This was to be her home, this quiet, welcoming house with its beautiful grounds and its small army of efficient servants. It would be the perfect home, were it not for the man who came with it. But then Waite would probably depart for London soon. And once he was gone, she suspected it might be some time before she saw him again. It was awful, but the thought brought her nothing but relief. Relief tempered with sadness. She wondered if this was how their marriage would be—if she would come to dread her husband’s visits and find all her happiness away from him.
It was a depressing thought, and it shattered her brief moment of happiness. But she could not shake it off as she wandered back over the little tumbledown bridge and through the meadow to Harriet.
If Gil could have justified leaving Weartham within two hours of arriving, he would have done so. As it was, he convinced himself that a week would be a long enough stay. He was foolish enough to mention his plans to Cousin Harriet when she asked about them later that day.
“Surely you should stay a little longer,” she said, plainly shocked. “This is your honeymoon! What can possibly be so urgent in town to require you to leave?”
“I’m afraid,” he lied smoothly, “that I have pressing business that cannot wait longer. I’m quite sure Rose will understand.”