Page 63

V

Clement Hall

The last day

Charlotte had written to Jocelyn, of course.

Told her of the impending trip, and got back a single page in her friend’s neat hand, wishing her a pleasant spring.

No mention of the garden, no explanation or excuse for withdrawing in its wake.

A half-blank slip of folded paper. As if nothing had happened.

And yet, if nothing had happened, she surely would have rambled on the way she always did when talk turned to the city and the Season, would have told Charlotte to come back bearing stories and gifts.

If nothing else, she would have come to say goodbye.

But she didn’t.

And less than a week later, as the tulips and hyacinth were giving way to rosebuds, Charlotte Hastings left for London.

The luggage was loaded, the horses waiting, a six-hour ride on bumpy roads.

Her father stood waiting in the foyer, and wrapped her in a firm but brief embrace.

Her brother met her at the door, laid an arm around her shoulders as he told her that the time away would clear her head.

She did not trust herself to speak, so she said nothing, shoes crunching as she walked across the gravel drive, each step a small but audible protest as her legs carried her away from Clement Hall.

Her mother was the last to see her off.

“I don’t want to go,” whispered Charlotte. It was the first time she said the words out loud, and her voice broke beneath the weight of them.

Tears slipped down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to brush them away. But her mother caught her hands.

“Never be sorry,” she said, “for who you are.”

Charlotte understood then that burning the pages of her journal had done nothing.

Her mother already knew. She looked back at her husband and son, standing on the steps.

“Some people keep their heart tucked so deep, they hardly know it’s there.

But you,” she went on, turning back toward Charlotte, “you have always worn it like a second skin.” She ran a hand down her daughter’s arm.

“Open to the world. You feel it all. The love and pain. The joy and hope and sorrow.” She pulled Charlotte close, carrying the scent of the garden. Of home.

“It will make your life harder,” she said into her daughter’s hair. “But it will also make it beautiful.”

Already one of Charlotte’s curls has escaped its hold. Her mother reached up to tuck it back. Her hand lingered, came to rest against her daughter’s cheek, her palm soft from years coated in clay and earth.

“Time is a funny thing,” she said. “It goes racing by right under our noses. I close my eyes and you are eight and climbing trees to get the highest fruit, perching up among the birds to eat your prize. And then I blink, and here you are, all grown, and I don’t know how.

” Her brown eyes—the same shade as Charlotte’s—shimmered with feeling.

“We’ve kept you at Clement Hall too long. ”

“But I am happy here,” pleaded Charlotte, hoping her mother would be the one to give, to let her stay.

But her mother only smiled and shook her head.

“You will be happy there as well,” she said.

“Do you know why?” She took something from her pocket, a small bundle of dried flowers, the ones that grew wild at the edges of the yard.

“Because you are the kind of bloom that thrives in any soil. And who knows, perhaps you will meet a worthy gardener.”

Charlotte winced at the thought, but her mother only pressed the bundle into her hand.

“And barring that,” she went on, “think of all the stories you’ll have to tell when you get back. After all, there is no art without life to inspire it.” She tapped her finger on the very tip of Charlotte’s nose. “So go, and be inspired.”

Charlotte nodded, spirits lifting a little as she climbed up into the carriage.

It was only a season, she told herself, thinking it was true.

She had no way of knowing then.

It would be fifty-two years before she returned to Clement Hall.