Read Online My Only Love by Katherine Sutcliffe - Free Book Online

thought she caught a glimpse of the youth's eyes that had
looked out upon a garden of sweet-smelling roses and found pleasure.
    "I
would sit in the window and watch Dame's mother work with the flowers; I'd
watch her hands, how gently she caressed the tiny buds; she touched her
children with the same tenderness, and I'd catch myself wishing ..."
Frowning, he pressed one finger to a single droplet of condensation on the
glass and rubbed it vigorously, as if doing his best to scrub away the mental
imagery that had wormed its way from his memory.
    "If
the roses bring you such pleasure," she ventured, "why do you allow
them to die?" They were dead by the time I took residence." "Are
you certain?"
    He
looked at her at last, and though she refused to meet his gaze directly, she
continued to regard his reflection in the window. "Is there a way to the
garden from this room?" she asked.
    He
pointed to a single French door near the corner of the room. Olivia moved to
the door, and finding it unlocked, opened it and stepped out onto the veranda.
Here, the driving wind was blocked by two sprawling wings of the house, and
though the icy drizzle continued to fall from the black sky, the cold did not
seem so unbearable.
    The
light from the house enabled her to make out the brick walkways that divided
the garden into neat sections. Stepping from the veranda and into the damp
semidarkness, she searched out the nearest rosebush and stooped beside it.
Weeds and brown leaves, having grown sodden and dense through years of neglect,
had piled thickly around the base of the bush. With some effort, Olivia raked
them away from the prickly stalk, and locating a solitary thorn, snapped it
from the stem.
    "Mr.
Warwick!" she called. Getting no reply, she glanced over her shoulder to
find his tall frame silhouetted against the light. "Come here," she
beseeched him. "Make haste, if you please. I don't intend to catch my
death of cold while you continue to stand there and brood."
    With
some reluctance, he joined her, going down to one knee beside her. Pointing one
shivering finger at the stalk, she said, "There's life yet. Do you see it?
There. Where I broke away the thorn. I wager, sir, that if you were to cut away
all the undesirable refuse, you'd find that there's hope for your garden."
    "Do
you think so?" His voice sounded uncharacteristically soft and hopeful,
and so very near.
    "Of
course." Her voice didn't fluctuate, but kept the indifferent monotone
that she had perfected over the years. "Once the bad is cleared away, and
that which has been buried is given sunlight once more, I'm certain you'd
discover a rebirth of the bushes. Nothing good can come of complete darkness,
after all."
    He
neither moved nor spoke as the cold drizzle whispered amid the dead leaves
blanketing the ground. At last, unable to refrain, she allowed her gaze to
drift to his face, unnerved to discover that he was regarding her, and not the
plant. She stared at him through the beads of moisture on her glasses, and
didn't breathe, wishing to all the saints in heaven that she had removed her
glasses as he'd asked her to minutes before. And she wished that she'd worn
another dress, one that wasn't so atrocious—but then again, she didn't own
anything prettier. To spend money on fashionable attire for herself had always
seemed wasteful.
    Standing,
she did her best to slap the mud from her hands, then hurried back to the house
and to the fireplace, where she closed her eyes and allowed the heat to thaw
her. A moment passed before the door closed behind her. Now he would tell her
to leave and remind her that she was an unwelcome and uninvited intruder. And
that she had no business digging about in his garden of dead roses, and—
    "You'll
catch your death," came the quiet words. A blanket slid around her
shoulders. Clutching it to her and staring into the fire, she tried to say
thank you, mortified because she could accomplish nothing more than a soundless
twitch of her