The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley Page B

of 1715, when Jacobites—the followers of James—were plotting armed rebellion, making plans to rise in arms and bring young James himself across to claim his throne.
    It seemed most people’s sympathies in Cornwall had been squarely with the Tories and James Stuart, and they hadn’t tried to hide the fact. And so King George’s parliament, controlled by Whigs, had swiftly moved to stamp out any smolderings that might ignite the fires of a dangerous rebellion.
    The Duke of Ormonde, hero of the people, had been right there in the thick of it. Three years earlier, when the mighty Duke of Marlborough had fallen out of favor, the dashing Ormonde had replaced him as commander of the British armies fighting on the Continent, and his patriotic exploits had increased his popularity to the point that the Whigs had grown uneasy. When Ormonde had taken the side of the Jacobites, the Whigs had moved against him too. He and another leading Tory, Lord Bolingbroke, had been charged with high treason, and though both men had managed to evade arrest and imprisonment by fleeing the country, Parliament had gone ahead and impeached them in their absence, stripped them of their rights and status, left them both as marked and wanted men.
    I had his portrait on the monitor when Susan came back.
    ‘Who is that?’ she asked.
    ‘James Butler, second Duke of Ormonde.’ A man I’d never heard of until yesterday. A man who was as real as the red dressing gown. And how could I have even known his name, I wondered, if I hadn’t traveled to the past?
    ‘And who is he?’ asked Susan.
    I gave her a summary of his biography, adding, ‘He played a big part in the Jacobite uprisings down here in Cornwall. Maybe I’ll find he’s connected somehow to Trelowarth. You never know.’
    She frowned. ‘I thought the Jacobites were Scottish.’
    ‘So did I. But there were lots of them in England too, apparently.’
    She leaned closer, studying the picture. ‘Nice wig.’
    ‘Yes, well, most men wore them back then.’ I knew one man who didn’t, or at least he hadn’t worn one either time that I had met him, but I couldn’t say that either. Instead I looked more closely at the portrait, searching for some small resemblance to the man in brown who’d said, about the duke, that he was ‘bound to him by blood’. If they were relatives, that blood appeared to be the only thing they shared. The Duke of Ormonde’s face was soft and overfed, his nose too long and large, his gaze too proud and condescending.
    ‘What year were the uprisings?’ asked Susan.
    ‘1715.’
    ‘Before the Halletts came here, then. Well, as you say, you never know. It would be fun to have some kind of tale to tell to tourists, and a Jacobite rebellion’s always good.’
    Not for the Jacobites, I thought. Things never had gone very well for them. At least the Irishman named Fergal had appeared to sense that it was not a fight worth fighting, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever managed to convince the man in brown. Perhaps I’d never know.
    I pushed the thought aside and settled in to work with Susan on the press release, a thing I’d done a hundred times before with other clients, so the process was predictable and calming. Susan had some good ideas.
    ‘We should use the word “romance”,’ she said, ‘and “lost”, because they paint a sort of picture, don’t they? And I think what makes Trelowarth interesting is that we have so many roses here that might otherwise have vanished, been forgotten. It makes Trelowarth like a…’ Pausing as though searching for the proper phrase, she finished, ‘Well, it’s like a time machine. One step into the gardens takes you back a hundred years.’ Her face grew bright. ‘That might make a brilliant heading, don’t you think? “Step back in time—come visit the old roses of Trelowarth”.’
    I kept my fingers steady on the keyboard as I typed. ‘Yes, that’s quite good.’
    Step back in time. Step back in