The Gardener (23 page)

One day, Tom surprised his host by saying, “Perhaps, sir, I know something about the ancient world you do not.”

Mr. Woodbury’s eyes lit up under the bushy gray brows, and he leaned forward. “Well, then, young man, what is it?”

“Those roses out front.” Tom nodded in the direction of the window.  “They happen to be Damask roses, prized for their perfume."

"Oh?" Mr. Woodbury glanced toward where the rose bushes were planted, although they were not visible in the dark. "Isn't one rose very much like another?"

"Not those, sir. A crusader is said to have brought that variety back from Damascus more than five hundred years ago, while other accounts say it was the Romans who brought them to England, from whence they were brought to America. That means in front of your house grows a link to the ancient world!” Tom leaned back in his chair, grinning like a schoolboy who completed his recitation satisfactorily.

Mr. Woodbury stared at him for a moment, then gave a loud, whooping laugh. He leaned over and clapped Tom on the shoulder. “Well done! Well done! You've taught me something about the ancient world I did not know.”

Tom's face grew red with pleasure, and Abigail looked on with pride, as if Cromwell had sat up and performed a new trick.

“I cannot take credit for my knowledge, sir,” Tom said, although his grin widened. “I learned the information from this book.” He held out a battered volume that Abigail had seen on his nightstand, holding it as if it were a valued treasure. “I've been studying this at night, before going to bed. At first, I had trouble understanding the words, but it comes easily now.”

Other than the clothes on Tom's back, the book appeared to be his only possession. Once, when he was away, Abigail had curiously flipped through a few of its pages, but it seemed to be nothing but a book on farming, and she had quickly lost interest.

Mr. Woodbury nodded approvingly, however. “That is a well-known book on horticulture. Although I have not read it myself, I've seen it in the libraries of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom are interested in husbandry. I’m impressed that you have a copy.”

As they pored over the book, Abigail watched the men's heads bent together, one grizzled, the other golden, and an odd feeling filled her chest. Pride, perhaps. After all, she had rescued Tom, found him employment, nursed him back to health, and as a result, her father had found a reason to come out of his study and rejoin the living. Tom West fit into their household as if he had always belonged there, like a missing piece of a puzzle. Life now seemed complete, or nearly so.

She was congratulating herself on her own good judgment and feeling pleased that Mrs. Parker had sent him to their home when a disturbing thought occurred to her. Her hands fell into her lap, along with her sewing.

How had she not seen it before? Her feelings for Tom West were neither pride nor curiosity nor pity. She was in love with him.

Chapter Seventeen

The next day Abigail gathered the courage to tell Benjamin Pinckney no longer to call. For the first time, she now realized why it was that whenever Tom was near, her awareness of him affected her every action, why she was as attuned to him as a violin to the strings of a bow. Why, if a constable were to turn up tomorrow saying Tom West was wanted for a crime, she would even lie to protect him. But then, hadn’t she already done that?

That night, she sat by the fire with the unfinished sewing in her lap. The scene was the same as before, the men animatedly discussing something or other, but Abigail knew everything had changed forever. What a fool! she told herself, jabbing herself with a needle and sucking the blood. Her friends would say she was nothing but a spinster desperately looking for someone to pin her heart on, that the stranger had come along at the right time. They may well be right. But knowing she was a fool made no difference. She had fallen in love with a man she had no hope of marrying even if he returned her affection, as he so clearly did not.

Marrying
. Now where had that thought come from? Worse and worse!

With a pang, she confronted the fact that she had never detected the least
soupçon
of affection on Tom's part. No tenderness in those well shaped, deep-blue eyes, no sentimental gestures to indicate a soft spot in his heart for her. Oh, there was nothing to complain of. He was unfailingly courteous, remote, and punctiliously observant of the difference in their stations. In fact, his behavior, she thought bitterly, had been beyond reproach.

Tom never initiated conversations with her, never looked at her directly unless she spoke to him. He appeared to prefer her father's company or solitude. On the occasions when she entered a room and found him alone, he would immediately excuse himself and leave. He’d rather read the dry historical tomes her father pressed on him or that silly book on agriculture than spend an unsupervised minute in her presence.

She threw down her sewing and, muttering an excuse to the startled men, hurried from the sitting room, slammed the door to her bedroom, and burst into tears.

Later, Abigail dried her face and looked in the mirror glumly. She wasn't bad looking, she thought, trying to be objective despite her red nose, tear-streaked cheeks, and disheveled hair. Not a great beauty, perhaps, but she had never seen a man back away from her in horror. She had a neat little figure, and, her friends seemed to think, a pleasant personality. She had turned down three proposals simply because none of the swains had stirred her heart, and it was not her fault that since her mother's death, her retreat from society had brought fewer opportunities for marriage.

She looked down at the giant dog that crouched at her feet, jowls on his front legs. “I’m in love with a man who cares nothing for me, Cromwell,” she said sadly. “A man about whom I know nothing except he is a fugitive.”

Cromwell watched her silently as she contemplated this demoralizing thought but offered no advice. Finally, she jumped up and went to wash her face. “I can mope and feel sorry for myself,” she firmly told the wan image in the mirror, “or I can do something about it."

It took all morning to screw up her courage. She found herself turning back several times, but finally she found him out back, painting the roof of the henhouse. She hid her trembling hands in her full skirts and took several deep breaths before approaching. Cromwell abandoned her and loped over to Tom, who stepped off the stepstool and gave the dog an absent-minded scratch behind the ear.

“Yes, Miss Woodbury?” he asked, straightening and wiping his hands on a rag.

She gulped. No turning back now. She might be a forward hussy, but she was no coward. “Please do not call me Miss Woodbury,” she said, meeting his eyes directly. “After all this time, we consider you part of the family. I would prefer you to call me Abigail.”

“Thank you, Miss Woodbury, but that wouldn't be proper.”

With a sound of exasperation, she put her hand on his forearm. It was the first time she had touched him, an act of boldness equal to that of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. He flinched slightly, and she was very aware of rock-hard muscles under the tanned flesh under his rolled-up sleeves.

“Come, now, Tom,” she said beseechingly. “You mustn’t treat me as if I were a stranger. You seem to like my father well enough. Aren't we friends, too?”

His reserve wrapped around him like armor protecting a knight. His rigid posture made him seem even taller than she remembered, and she had to tilt her head to see his face. Cromwell sat on his haunches, looking back and forth at them, as if sensing tension between his two favorite humans.

“You are my employer, Miss Woodbury.”

“I’m not your employer! We pay you nothing. You are our guest, Tom, a member of this household.”

He did not answer, but his lashes dropped over his eyes, and she wondered what thoughts were going through his mind. When it came, Tom's response was toneless.

“Your father may claim that there is no difference between people of different stations, Miss Woodbury, but as you know, the professor … the professor is a very unusual man.” The afternoon sun turned his hair into a bright golden nimbus and threw his eyes into shadow. After a moment, he gently began to withdraw his arm.

Instinctively she tightened her grip. “My father and I have no secrets from you, Tom. Why have you never told us anything about yourself?"

He looked down at her fingers and a muscle worked in his temple. She sensed that his rigidity was not from anger, as she had first supposed, but from some other emotion that she could not identify.

“What is it that you wish to know?”

She blinked, surprised at his apparent acquiescence. “Where you're from," she said immediately. "Who you are.”

“You already know. My name is Tom West, and I come from England.”

She expelled an impatient gust of air.

He shrugged. “Very well. If you must know, I used to live on a large estate in Kent. One of the finest in Britain.”

It was as if she had pried a door ajar and glimpsed what lay behind it, confirming much of what she had suspected. “I visited a large English estate once,” she said, eagerly. “The house was beautiful, and so were the gardens. It must have been very difficult for you to leave.”

His eyes grew far away, but she couldn't identify their expression. “It's the gardens I miss most,” he said, as if to himself. “But yes, the house was beautiful too, in its own way. I was a footman there.”

Her eyes flew wide. So that was why Tom knew so much about art, wine, and fine things. A servant, and she had mistaken him for a nobleman! She almost laughed at herself. It made no difference, though, to her feelings. “If it was so beautiful, why did you leave?” she asked.

The shutters closed again. “That need not concern you.” He looked at the pot of paint next to the ladder, as if impatient to return to work.

Abigail suspected that he was leaving something out, something important. But Tom had provided more information than she had hoped, and she would content herself with that—for now. She dropped her hand from his forearm, but she was not quite finished. “Do you ever want to go back?"

“I cannot.” His voice was flat as his shadowed eyes. “But it doesn’t matter. My future lies in the west. As soon as I've saved enough for a wagon and supplies, I shall leave Cambridge.”

His words shot through her like a barbed arrow, and sensing her distress, Cromwell growled low in his throat, nudging her gently with his muzzle. “But why?" Abigail exclaimed. "Why must you leave Cambridge? Do you not like it here?”

“I told you my plans from the beginning,” he said, as if she were a dull student and he were a tutor explaining a concept for the third time. She had seen that patient expression on her father’s face before. “All my life I've worked for others, and now I want to work for no one but myself.” He added under his breath, “You Americans seem to feel the same; why shouldn’t I?”

“When will you leave?” Her hands clenched by her sides, and Cromwell made a whining sound. “A few months? A year?”

“Two or three weeks, at most.”

She flinched at the words. So soon? “But surely creating a farm out of wilderness will not be easy by yourself!" she protested. "There will be trees to chop down, Indians to worry about, nowhere to buy food or supplies. You’ll have to do everything alone, with no help.”

“Don't you understand? That’s exactly what I want.”

From the set of his mouth and the stance of his body, it was clear nothing she could say would change his mind. He picked up the paint brush and turned back to his work. This time she did not stop him.

*     *     *

For the next few days, Abigail could think of nothing but Tom’s imminent departure. She lay in bed under her coverlet, staring unseeing at the painted ceiling, imagining the house without his presence. She had forgotten how lonely it had been before he came. Her life had been an endless round of preparing meals, needlework, and paying dwindling visits to friends who were kind and well-meaning but busy with their new lives. For the first time, Abigail could foresee the rest of her life spreading before her: an endless series of days trickling away in inanity until she was old and gray.

A mad impulse came to her. At first, it seemed ridiculous, impossible. But she tossed and turned all night, unable to shake it. The urge grew stronger the next day until that evening she sought Tom out when he returned home. He was behind the house chopping more wood to add to their store, while Cromwell picked up the chips in his muzzle and laid them next to his feet hopefully, as if asking to play a game of fetch.

Abigail hurried up and spoke quickly, before cowardice could stop her. “Take me with you, Tom.”

He set down the axe and straightened, his eyebrows rising. She raised her voice, hoping to drown out his “no” before he could voice it. "It will be dangerous for you to travel so far by yourself. What if you drowned or got sick? There'd be no one to take care of you, no one to get help if necessary. I'm strong and capable. I'd be useful around the house. I can cook, I've been doing it for years. Besides, everyone knows farming is no job for a single man, and where would you find a wife in the Northwest Territories?”

Her words ran together, until she had to stop to catch her breath. There! She had made the shocking proposition and there was no taking it back.

If Tom was taken aback by her boldness, his face did not show it. When she stopped, he appeared to consider his response carefully. His voice sounded controlled, although it held a tinge of impatience. “Begging your pardon, Miss Wood—”

“
Abigail
.”

“—Miss Abigail, but that's impossible. Even if we were of the same rank....”

“You know that we care nothing for rank in America!” she cried, unconsciously echoing her father's words.

“What you ask is impossible. You know nothing about hardships or physical labor.”

Abigail was well aware the life he was headed for would be far more difficult than the one she had known, but she was sure she could handle it. Without a smattering of pride, she cried, “I don't care!”

His voice became deliberately cruel. “Why should I take you? You would only be a burden to me.”

Abigail's head snapped up at that. Cromwell sensed once more that not was all well with the two people he loved most. He gave a whine and paced agitatedly between them. Neither spared him a glance.

“That's not true,” Abigail said hotly. “I can knit, sew and cook. I have been running this household singlehandedly for the past two years by myself.”

“Can you spin? Can you card? Can you weave? One needs cloth to sew into shirts and dresses, and there will be no shops to buy supplies where I am going.”

“I can master those skills. And I can be trained to ride a horse, as well, and shoot a gun, even, and … and whatever else a man or a woman needs to do on the frontier. I’m not an idiot or a weakling, Tom West, for all I am a woman!”

He switched tactics abruptly. “What about your father? You would never see him again.”

“My father?” The point struck home, but she had already considered this. “He'll miss me, but he'll get by. Without my expenses to pay, he can afford to hire a serving girl. And he will not be lonely, either. Visitors come from all over to see him because of his books. He constantly turns them away as it is.”

Tom studied her, his mouth flattened into a line. “Why? Why would you want to accompany me west, Miss ... ah, Abigail?”

“I want change, adventure!” she cried. “I'm tired of this dull house, of my life, where everything is the same day after day!”

“You'll find life on a farm dull enough, and harder work besides. It will not be long until you’ll wish you had never left Cambridge. One more thing ....” He cleared his throat. “How it would appear to your father, to your friends, if you came away with me?”

“What do I care what they think?” she said wildly. “Can't you tell that I love you?”

When he did not respond, a wave of heat spread from her throat to her hairline, and her newfound courage drained away as quickly as water from an overturned bucket. Abigail swallowed and backed away, suddenly realizing the enormity of what she had done. “This isn't the first time, is it?” she said slowly. “This—of course, this has happened to you before.”