First Impressions Read online

  “Country in the city.”

  “More or less. In Williamsburg, the houses had half-acre lots, and it is amazing that they could fit so many plantings into that small space. Every inch of their lots was used. And nothing was barren. They didn’t have the luxury of space.”

  Jared looked as though he wanted her to go on.

  “Take herbs, for instance. Today, if an American wants to plant herbs, they put in an herb garden. They tend to separate everything. Herbs are here, fruit trees are there, vegetables are there, and flowers are over there. All separate. But the colonials mixed things up—which, today, we’re rediscovering is a better idea.”

  “A cottage garden,” Jared said, looking pleased with himself.

  “No. A cottage garden prides itself on having twenty-five different species in one bed, and everything is free-form. The colonials couldn’t have stood that. They wanted order and symmetry, so they’d make a design, architectural really, and each shape would be bordered by a hedge of one plant, such as boxwood, or lavender. Then, inside, they’d put their flowers or vegetables. And they would put plants together that helped each other.”

  “How do plants help each other?”

  Eden opened a new book put out by her publishing house on companion gardening. “Certain plants like each other, and there’s a theory that if you have problems with bugs on your crop, then you should plant something else nearby that the bugs like more than your crop. In the Middle Ages, no one would plant strawberries without planting borage next to it. Lovage goes near the tomatoes, and hyssop has to be with grapes. They’re best friends. You grow catnip and use the branches as a mulch to repel the odious Japanese beetles—which, thankfully, the colonials didn’t have. Valerian draws worms to the surface to aerate the soil, and it adds minerals to the compost pile. And marigolds should be everywhere. Bugs hate the smell of marigolds.”

  Jared blinked at her. “And you say you’ve forgotten what you knew.”

  Eden smiled at his praise. “I think I can remember most of it with some study, and of course there’s so much more that’s been published since I was gardening. Back then, people didn’t even believe in mulch, and only a few people had any idea what a compost heap was.”

  “Imagine that.”

  Eden laughed. “It’s a matter of what’s old is new again. We’re finally learning that nature and our ancestors knew what they were doing. They were organic gardeners out of necessity, and now a lot of people are looking into how they did it.” She looked down at her paper. “Designing these gardens for other people is my problem. How do I do that? The colonials could get four gardens out of a half-acre lot.”

  “How big are the lots at Queen Anne?”

  She looked at him. “Unfortunately, I don’t know, but I assume the ones not on the water are from one to three acres.”

  “What would you do with three acres?”

  “In colonial times it would have been pastureland, with sheep, cows, and horses, but now it could be a croquet lawn or a putting green. Just so it’s not two and a half acres of lawn that has to be mowed.” When she looked down at her pad and began to write, Jared leaned across the table and looked at the paper. “Must have,” she’d written at the top of the page.

  must be enclosed

  must have outdoor structure(s)

  must have walkways

  must re-create the past

  “So show me a hypothetical design,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, glad for his interest, because she needed someone to run her ideas past. “It’s like this. Here’s the house.” She drew a rectangle near one end of the paper. “I’d bring in at least one old building and have it restored—and thank you for that idea. I’ll be sure and give you credit.” She drew a small square to the left of the page. “Now we connect the buildings with a walkway. Colonials didn’t have a huge lawn where people could walk anywhere they pleased.”

  “And these were the guys fighting for freedom?”

  “Before power mowers, having an acre of lawn to mow wasn’t freedom.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Here, near the house, we enclose a place for a pleasure garden that would be used for picnics and just sitting outside on warm evenings.” She drew a rectangle near the house, then surrounded it with what looked like rounded shrubs. “Trees at each corner, and over here a little gazebo, but you have to be careful of gazebos so you don’t make it look Victorian.”

  “Then what?” Jared asked.

  “The kitchen garden. Not too far from the house, but not too close either. A colonial kitchen garden was a thing of beauty and didn’t need to be hidden.” She drew six narrow rectangles, then a square with a diamond in the center. As Jared watched, she drew paths off the diamond.

  “I see. You could put a fountain there in the middle. An authentic-looking fountain, of course.”

  She smiled at him. “Now, curving pathways to connect all the spaces, and they’d all be tree-lined, of course. This was before air-conditioning, so shade was important. And, depending on the size of the property…” She turned the pages in the book to the plan for the Governor’s Palace and described the various “rooms.” There was a “ballroom garden” filled with topiaries, a maze made from hedges of American holly, a canal stocked with fish, and a bowling green. It was a garden that nearly bankrupted the government, but Eden thought it was worth every cent.

  Jared looked up from the book. “So where do the ATVs race?”

  “On the highway, with the eighteen-wheelers,” she said instantly, and he laughed.

  “I’ll take you on one for a spin one day, and you’ll love it.”

  “I doubt it,” she said, then looked at her watch. “I have to go meet Brad.” Her eyes pleaded with him to not go with her.

  “Sorry,” he said, “but it’s my duty to keep you safe. Tell Mr.—”

  She gave him a look to cut it out.

  “Granville,” Jared said. “Tell him that I’m going to help you with the designing.”

  She started to protest but stopped herself. What good would it do? “You wouldn’t happen to have a camera, would you?”

  “Digital, five million pixels, with a one gigabyte card.”

  She raised her eyebrows, impressed. “Okay, you can take pictures of everything for me.”

  “Meant to do that anyway,” he said softly. “I want you to get us into that house where Tess lived, okay?”

  Eden nodded. She wasn’t sure how she was going to ask Brad, but she’d figure out something. She smiled at McBride, and he smiled back. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

  “So what’s for lunch?” he asked, and she groaned.

  Chapter Thirteen

  WHEN Eden saw Brad, she again marveled at how comfortable she felt with him. She wondered if it was because he was part of the Arundel family that Mrs. Farrington had been part of. For all that Brad was, more or less, a stranger, she felt as though she’d known him forever. Mrs. Farrington said that when you met the man, THE man, you started planning your wedding dress. So far in her life, every time Eden had dated a man for more than three months, she started planning how she was going to let him down easily. Never in her life had she been dropped by a man, but she’d had to tell several of them that it was over between them.

  But Brad was different, and she knew it—and so did he. When he saw her, his face lit up. Like a child at Christmas. Like she was a gift that he’d wanted all his life. We’ve had similar bad experiences, she thought, and we’ve never come close to finding that Great Love.

  Brad hurried forward, took both her hands in his, and kissed her cheeks. He looked like he wanted to do more, but instead he just stood there, holding her hands and looking into her eyes.

  “I hate to break this up,” Jared said from behind them, “but the architect is waggling at you.”

  “Waggling?” Brad said, smiling at the old-fashioned word. Still holding Eden’s hands, he turned to Drake Haughton, who looked exaggeratedly at his watch. “Sorry,”