Page 19 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

In the twenty years Amelia had lived in her aunt and uncle’s home, she’d very seldom truly had her feelings hurt.

Looking back, she felt it was as much a testament to the fact that they were more indifferent than cruel as it was to her resilience.

She’d never been one to dwell overly long or overly much on slights or insults.

She didn’t dismiss people’s misbehavior or refuse to acknowledge that people could be hurtful.

She simply hadn’t the disposition for dwelling on such things.

But that history made it all the more baffling that her heart still ached the next morning when she thought of the long hours she’d spent in the drawing room, waiting for Mr. Summerfield to join her there the evening before.

The evening they’d spent at the pianoforte had, she thought, been pleasant. They’d had a friendly conversation walking back from the lighthouse. She’d thought he had developed some degree of a fondness for her and would have looked forward, just as she had, to spending time together.

She’d waited for hours, but he’d never come to the drawing room. And she’d been very alone, as she so often was.

As she made her way to the walled garden this morning after breakfast, she leaned not only on her cane but on her tried-and-true method for regaining her equilibrium after life set her figuratively off balance.

“This morning, I am grateful for ...” The sound of waves crashing made it difficult to think. The frustrating realization that her heart was broken only added to that struggle. “I am grateful that Kipling Summerfield is kind even if he isn’t ... interested.”

She refused to ponder her choice of the word interested . It was far more comfortable to focus on the garden.

With so much else to do, tending the gardens seemed, on the surface, like a wasted effort.

But she’d discovered that improving the grounds of Guilford helped the house itself seem in less disrepair.

When viewing the house from the area of the garden that she had tamed and tended and fixed, it looked more impressive.

The next time her uncle and the solicitor came to check, she would make certain they were able to see the house from the right angle in the garden.

It would help; she knew it would.

And her next task in the garden was trimming a misshapen and overgrown boxwood. It was something of a tall ask, literally and figuratively. She didn’t feel entirely equal to it, but it had to be done.

In her gardening shed, she tied on her apron.

She put on her wide straw hat and tied it in place with the sturdy ribbon attached to it, then tucked the gloves into her apron pocket.

Amelia took the old but serviceable hedge shears from their nail on the wall and tucked them into the large pocket of her apron as well.

The more difficult part was going to be transporting the ladder.

It wasn’t truly heavy, but its length and width made it awkward.

And she couldn’t carry it with just one hand, which meant she couldn’t use her cane.

She could walk without her cane, though doing so was precarious and necessarily slow.

But what choice was there? She alone looked after the garden, and the entirety of the estate had to be put to rights.

She began the painstaking journey from the shed along the garden paths.

An extra moment’s care accompanied every step of her right foot; she needed to make certain her balance wasn’t off or that the damp pathway wasn’t dangerously slick.

She also needed to be very careful not to get entangled in the overgrown shrubs and plants and even more careful not to do damage to the area of the garden she had worked so hard on already.

By the time she reached the boxwood, she was already tired. Guilford, she sometimes suspected, was actively trying to crush her. But life had tried that often enough that she knew herself able to rise to the occasion.

“Today, I’m grateful to know I’m not easily defeated.”

The boxwood was at least two feet taller than she was.

She was actually a very ordinary and common height for a woman, but people were forever describing her as small, likely owing to the fact that she was “wispy,” as her aunt so often put it, and quiet, as a poor relation was generally required to be.

She turned the ladder upright and leaned the top into the boxwood shrub.

She had to move it a few times before she found a position that seemed likely to hold.

She even nudged it a smidge so that it was wedged between a couple of branches.

That would do well enough for her to see to her task.

The day was misty, which meant the ladder was already wet.

And there was a breeze, which simply blew more moisture onto the rungs.

It was more than mildly dangerous . But she couldn’t simply wait around for the weather to improve or an army of helpers to unexpectedly arrive.

No one was willing to come to Guilford, and without people to do the work, the work couldn’t get done, and if the work didn’t get done, she could be labeled a failure, incapable of seeing to the inheritance that would be taken from her.

She had just under five months remaining in which to work a miracle. And miracles, in her experience, were fickle things.

It was enough to make a person want to quit before she’d even begun. That, she knew with perfect, horrible clarity, was what her grandfather had counted on. He had set her up to fail.

And that made her ever more determined to try. This was her one chance, and it was supposed to be no chance at all. Even if she did fail in the end, she would do so having accomplished more than any of them would have ever believed she could.

She took a fortifying breath, then stepped onto the lowermost rung with her left foot.

The next step would be the telling one, it requiring her to depend on her less reliable right foot.

She set it on the rung beside her left. Carefully, she raised her left once more.

Her balance held long enough for her to step onto the next rung.

Following her newly established approach, she made her way a few rungs up, stopping at the first place she needed to begin trimming.

She pulled the hedge shears from her apron pocket and set to work.

She pushed repeatedly from her mind the knowledge that, behind her, was a garden with near-endless work needing to be done.

Of course, in front of her was a house with even more needing to be done.

She continued carefully up the ladder, stopping to trim the shrub as she went. A few times, the wind picked up, and she had to pause and hold tight to the ladder and the shrub she was trimming. But she kept at it.

Her inheritance would let her purchase a home of her own, and she would find one not surrounded by the sea.

She would not be left trying to stay ahead of nature and the relentless destruction that time inevitably wreaked on a property that wasn’t maintained.

And she wouldn’t be so alone. She could find a home in a neighborhood, with other families who would welcome her and be her friends, where she could walk to the other homes nearby and pass an afternoon in friendly conversation.

She wouldn’t be dependent on her aunt and uncle, required to adhere to their schedule and their tasks for her.

And she would never again have to bow to the dictates of her late grandfather.

A sudden, sharp whip of wind moved the entire shrub and the ladder with it.

She grabbed hold of the sturdiest branch she could find and held fast. Her unreliable foot didn’t have the sure purchase she needed, and she was high enough on the ladder that she was now trimming the top of the shrub. That would be a long way to fall.

Amelia held her breath, kept her white-knuckle grip, and waited for the wind to die down.

But it didn’t. If anything, it seemed ever more determined to toss her to the ground below.

A quick glance at the sky revealed that it had turned ominous.

She had been told time and again that this area of the Channel, the section stretching from the shoreline around Guilford all the way to the far side of Loftstone Island, was the most prone to sudden and violent storms than any inlet along the southern coast. Some ascribed the tendency to ancient curses and unexplained magic.

Others insisted it was to do with the geography.

In that moment, she didn’t care what was causing it; she simply wanted it to stop.

And almost as suddenly as the thought occurred to her, the ladder grew very steady once more. She looked down and saw Mr. Summerfield holding the base of the ladder.

“What the blazes are you doing?” he demanded.

She was so grateful not to be left clinging to a questionably steady shrub that she would have forgiven him an even sharper tone than he was using. “I’m trimming the shrub,” she said.

“On such a windy day?” he asked incredulously.

“Every day on Guilford is a windy day.” Indeed, if she had to wait for ideal weather to get work done, she would be a failure without question.

“Then at least make certain you’re undertaking this wind--challenged task with someone else nearby to help make certain you don’t fall to your death.”

“I don’t know that I would actually die,” she said. “I might break an arm or something.”

“I would like to request that we not discover what that ‘something’ might be.” He didn’t seem like he meant to abandon her there. If anything, his grip on the ladder appeared to tighten.

“I don’t have very much left to trim. If you’ll hold the ladder steady, I think I could finish quickly.”

“I will hold on tight if you promise to as well.”

“A good arrangement.”

With him there, she felt safe resuming her work. She snipped quickly but carefully. She leaned more on her left foot than her right, not wishing to press her luck beyond bearing.