The Last Garden in England(56)

“Try ‘Stormy Monday’ or ‘Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing.’?”

Two more for the playlist. “We’re in the back garden. Do you want a beer?”

“I wouldn’t say no to one. Who’s ‘we’?”

“Charlie. Best friend and right-hand man. He was my first hire at Turning Back Thyme.”

“Sounds like a good friend to have.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without him,” she said. And it was true. If Charlie ever told her he was moving on, she’d be happy for him and devastated in equal parts.

They stopped in the kitchen long enough for her to pull a beer out of the fridge, pop the top, and hand it to him.

“We have company,” she called to Charlie as she stepped out of the French doors. “Charlie, this is Henry Jones. He’s got Highbury House Farm, right next door to the Wilcoxes.”

“I think you filled in for me at a pub quiz. Nice to meet you in person, mate,” said Henry.

“What brings you over this way?” Charlie asked. The way he relaxed back into his chair might have fooled most, but Emma knew him too well. He was on high alert, scoping out the man. She scowled, and Charlie smirked.

“Emma thought I might have some things that would be useful for her research. Nan was here during the war,” said Henry.

“Oh, you’re the one with the sketches,” said Charlie, glancing at Henry’s shirt as though something had just dawned on him. He swigged the last of his beer and stood. “Well, I’ll leave you two to it, then.”

“You don’t have to go,” she said.

Charlie smiled. “I know. Let me know what you find out, hey?”

After Charlie said his goodbyes, she glanced back at Henry.

“I always wondered what a gardener’s garden would look like,” he said.

She cringed at the patchy grass and the few drab shrubs. “It’s a rental, so I haven’t done anything with it.”

He nodded. “It must be strange being away from your home base for so long.”

“I don’t have one. Once a job is wrapping up and I’m getting ready to transition it over to a team of regular gardeners for maintenance, I’ve usually lined up my next job and am looking for a new place to live.”

“That’s nomadic,” he said.

She shrugged. “I haven’t really had a reason to stay in one place.”

He raised a brow. “What if someone gave you a reason?”

The word “yes” started to form on her lips, but she stopped it before it could be more than an idea. Yes to what exactly? Flirtation was all well and good, but what else could there be with a man she hardly knew?

She cleared her throat and gestured toward the bag. “The sketchbooks?”

“The sketchbooks. There are three.” He dragged his chair closer to hers, and she tried to ignore his heat invading her space as he pulled the sketchbooks out. “The paper’s not great quality.”

“There was a paper ration on during the war.”

“History A levels?” he asked.

“And spending too much time around archivists.”

“Well, you might be happy to know that Nan dated her sketches.” He opened the cover of one of the books. “Like in the bottom right-hand corner here.”

“Very helpful.”

“There are some sketches of people’s faces and hands. I would guess some of them are the patients who were sent here to recover from their injuries. It looks like Nan took a shot at drawing some landscapes—this plane might be from the airfield not too far away. But mostly, it’s drawings of the garden,” he said, flipping to a full-page sketch of what had to be the great lawn, planted with neat rows of vegetables.

“Part of the garden had been requisitioned for agricultural land. I’ve seen pictures of it,” she said, running her finger just under the first row of graphite-sketched plantings.

“My grandfather was to blame for that, I’m afraid, although Dad always said Granddad helped reseed the lawn in the fifties.”

“We’re rebuilding the reflecting pool that used to be right here,” she said, tapping a blunt fingernail on the drawing.

“If you continue, there are a lot of details of plants,” he said.

She saw drawings of velvet-soft sage, reaching hazel trees, elegant lavender, bowing meconopsis, and cloudlike hydrangeas.

“She was very talented,” she said.

They were nearly through the book when he turned a page, and she gasped. A beautiful garden with curving brick walls, tall dogwoods stretching up to the sky, and lush foliage beneath. In the center was a shallow pond made from a gently sloping clay dish of water. And above the drawing, Henry’s nan had written “The Winter Garden.”

“That’s what it was supposed to look like,” she breathed.

“What is it?” he asked, leaning in.

“We haven’t been able to get into this garden yet. We don’t have access through the gate, so we need to spend some time cutting a path in, but there are no detailed plans. I didn’t want to damage something irreplaceable, so it keeps falling to the bottom of the list.”

“And this helps?” he asked.

She nodded. “Now I know what it was supposed to look like when it was mature. It’s not the exact same garden Venetia planted—nothing is ever quite as intended because some plants fail and some thrive. But this at least guides the way.”