She turned abruptly.
‘Forgive me, I’ve startled you.’
A young man’s slim form appeared from behind one of the prostrate columns. At the sound of his voice, she half turned back. He was hardly the threatening figure her mother had warned of. She fixed her eyes on his face, looking at him as closely as she dared, and was sure she had seen him before. She had seen him before, if only from a distance.
‘Are you the architect?’ she said uncertainly.
‘Not quite.’ He gave a slightly crooked smile. ‘I’m the architect’s assistant, at least until the end of this summer.’
She found herself smiling back. ‘And what happens at the end of the summer?’
‘My apprenticeship will be over. I’ll be the architect you took me for.’ He strode towards her, holding out his hand. ‘I should introduce myself. My name is Aiden Kellaway.’
‘Elizabeth Summer,’ she said, trying not to think what Alice would say to this unconventional meeting. Aiden Kellaway’s grasp was firm and warm.
‘I know who you are. I’ve seen you on the terrace when you take a stroll with your mother.’ He had an attractive face, she couldn’t help noticing. He was clean shaven but his light brown hair was luxuriant, falling in an unruly wave above soft green eyes.
Those eyes were resting on her and she said hastily, ‘You seem to have met a problem here.’ She waved a cuff of shadow lace towards the quagmire.
‘The gardeners have certainly. Mr Simmonds and I will keep supervising the building work, but a temple without its lake is a sad sight. Do you know why this has happened?’
‘Why there’s no water?’
‘I know why there’s no water – I walked upstream for half a mile and saw the dam that’s been built.’
The Amberley estate lay above Summerhayes and Henry Fitzroy had evidently used this advantage to divert the river and render Joshua’s beloved garden a sad joke. Elizabeth felt intensely sorry for her father. He was a rough man. A life devoted to making buttons had not conferred the polish needed to succeed in the highest circles, but for all that her father possessed a deep and instinctive love of beauty.
Aiden Kellaway was looking at her enquiringly. ‘I meant why your uncle – I’m presuming it is your uncle who ordered the diversion – why he should wish to ruin the most beautiful part of a very beautiful garden.’
She wasn’t sure how to answer. She knew the reason only too well but Mr Kellaway was a stranger and she had no wish to confess the family feud. Something in his face, though, invited her to be honest. ‘There is enmity between Amberley and Summerhayes. There has been for years and most local people know of it. Anything Uncle Henry can do to upset my father, he will.’
Aiden shook his head. ‘That’s sad. And to hurt his own sister, too.’
‘I doubt he cares much about my mother. He’s not that kind of man.’ She stopped abruptly. Honesty was one thing, gossiping in this unguarded fashion quite another. ‘In any case,’ she hurried on, ‘the Italian Garden is my father’s idea. Mama never ventures further than the lawn.’
‘Why Italian? Does your father have connections there?’
‘None that I know of, but when he was very young, he travelled to Italy and spent several months journeying northwards from Rome. He still talks of it. He told me one day that it was a revelation to him, how people all those years ago had created a beauty that endured for centuries. I think it made him want to create something himself – something that would delight people for generations.’
Her father’s one Italian excursion, it seemed, had crystallised a yearning that until then had lived only in his heart.
‘Your father is a visionary man. Summerhayes is a wonderful project,’ Aiden said warmly. ‘He can be rightfully proud of creating a glorious site out of what was once barren pasture. Or so I understand.’
‘The gardens are my father’s pride and joy. But the barren pasture, as you call it, once belonged to Amberley.’ She would not spell out her uncle’s jealousy, she had said too much already, but she saw from the young man’s expression that he understood.
He simply nodded and looked out across the swathe of mud to the laurel arch, now faded to shades of grey in the disappearing light. ‘I wonder, though, why your uncle is so opposed. Having such a magnificent garden as a neighbour must add distinction to his own property.’
‘I doubt he’d agree. Amberley is an old estate and Uncle Henry clings to its past glory. My father has the money to indulge himself with projects such as this.’
‘And your uncle does not?’
She would say no more. The subject was too intimate and too painful. Any more and she might reveal the whole sorry business, the transaction between Amberley Hall and her father. A transaction of which for years she’d been only dimly aware.
‘I see,’ was all he said. But she knew that he was thinking through the answer to a question he couldn’t ask: why her mother, a Fitzroy of Amberley, with a family history stretching back to the Conqueror, had married a man like Joshua Summer.
The dusk was closing in and the crêpe de chine dress she had donned for dinner was proving uncomfortably thin. She shivered slightly and he noticed. ‘It’s getting chilly. May I escort you back to the house?’
‘I won’t trouble you, Mr Kellaway. You will wish to be getting home and I can find my own way back, even in the gloom. I know the gardens too well to get lost.’
‘I’m sure.’ He smiled the slightly crooked smile again. ‘But I’m walking your way. My bicycle is waiting for me outside the bothy, though I must be quiet collecting it. The boy on duty has to be up and dressed before five.’
She hadn’t noticed the bicycle when she’d passed by, but that wasn’t surprising. How her father’s men came and went barely impinged on her. Why would it? She lived in a bubble, an affluent bubble, but real life went on elsewhere. Or so it had always seemed.
‘Do you live far from Summerhayes?’
The bicycle had prompted the question but she was genuinely interested. Then she worried that she had been too personal. The rigours of a London Season had not cured her of the candour her mother deplored. Alice’s strictures rang loudly in her ears. They had been repeated often enough for her to know them by heart: A girl should keep her distance from anyone who is not family or a family friend.
Aiden seemed to find nothing amiss with her question and answered readily enough: ‘I have lodgings in the village. A room with board in one of the cottages by the church.’