Saving Grace by Holmes Michele Paige

Author:Holmes, Michele Paige
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Victorian romance, clean romance
Publisher: Mirror Press
Published: 2014-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

How I miss you. My days here are terribly lonely …

No doubt a rusted saw was not the best implement for pruning rosebushes and cutting back overgrown trees. But it was all Grace could find, so she set to work, determined to be done with her idleness and boredom and to become strong once more. And, most importantly, to do something good for both Lord Sutherland and Mr. Preston, both of whom she believed would benefit from the garden being cared for again.

Not that she knew much about caring for a garden.

The meager patch of ground beneath the wash line at their house in London had never yielded much, blocked from the sun by the clothing strung there as it had been most of the time. One summer or two, she’d tried to grow a few vegetables but had eventually given up, knowing that her time was better spent doing the washing and ironing that brought the needed money to purchase their food.

Beyond trimming the dead branches and tidying the paths, Grace could not think of what else Elizabeth’s garden would need. She hoped Nicholas’s library might provide an answer, and when she’d finished with the wild-growing rosebushes along the drive, she intended to search for a book on the care of flowers and shrubs.

With vigor, she set to cutting back the most brittle branches, those obviously long dead, those poking out at odd angles, the ones most liable to catch the clothes of one walking by. Working this way and that, climbing on top of a crate she’d discovered the saw in, and bending beneath the lowest branches, Grace pruned the first bush until she deemed it acceptable. She stepped onto the drive to admire her work just as a carriage turned onto it.

Grace moved out of the way, lest the carriage bear one of Lord Sutherland’s important and impatient visitors from the city. They were oft in a hurry to arrive and in even a greater hurry to leave again. Though many had to travel a great distance, none stayed long at Sutherland Hall.

She took up the broom she’d brought with her, also found in the shed behind the kitchen, and swept cuttings as the carriage passed. Grace was surprised to see the Sutherland crest on its polished side, but it took two more strokes of the broom before she realized the significance.

“Oh no.” Her sweeping ceased, and she turned to the front of the house, where Kingsley, Mrs. James, and Lord Sutherland were just gathering to greet their visitor.

Not a visitor at all. How could I have forgotten that Lord Sutherland’s mother was to arrive this week? Illness had delayed the dowager from her original date of arrival — a reprieve Grace had been most grateful for. Becoming accustomed to Lord Sutherland had been difficult enough. The thought of facing his mother was even more daunting.

Grace did her best to shrink into the shadow of a nearby tree — difficult, as it had already shed the majority of its leaves for winter.

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