A Sprig of Blossomed Thorn Page 2

  I paid for my inattention. Drawing my hand away from the bush, I caught the back of it against a thorn and yelped.

  I switched the rose to my other hand and sucked at the puncture. Stupid; should have worn my gardening gloves. They were for grubbing in the dirt, though, and I hadn't wanted to wear them with my nice tearoom dress.

  I had too many faces, perhaps. Gardener, manager, hostess—not to mention the times when we were so busy I had to step in and help the servers. There had been a week, right after Vi was accepted at the opera, when I'd spent a lot of my time in the butler's pantry.

  Ah, well. I loved it all. The tearoom was worth all the effort I'd put into it so far, and I knew it would only get better.

  I clipped another half inch off the stem of the Sterling bud I had cut before adding it to the vase, then went inside to wash my little wound and comfort myself by arranging my cut roses.

  2

  The next morning I was at my desk when Kris came in to work. She headed straight into her office without pausing to say hello.

  I was sure there was something bothering her. I stood, went to my credenza and picked up a tall Russian tea glass containing a mixed half-dozen of the roses I'd cut the day before, then went to the open archway between our offices and knocked on the sill.

  “Good morning. I cut some roses for your desk.”

  “Thanks,” she said without looking up as I set the flowers in front of her. Her outfit today was a black lace dress with tight-fitting long sleeves and a spray of velvet violets at the point of a rather plunging neckline.

  “Want some tea?” I said.

  “No thanks.”

  “Sympathy?”

  That got her to look up, at least. “For what?”

  I shrugged. “Anything. I'm a good listener, you know.”

  Her skeptical look softened and she glanced down. “I know.”

  I kept silent, waiting. She blinked a couple of times, then reached for her mouse. “I have to get these bills entered.”

  I suppressed a sigh. “OK. If I can help with anything, let me know.”

  “I will.”

  I went out to the hallway, rubbing the back of my hand, still sore from the rose scratch. Warm light glowed through the window at the west end of the hall. Soon it would start getting hot upstairs in the afternoons; I needed to think about some thermal drapes, but they'd have to wait.

  I went downstairs to the butler's pantry, where Dee and Rosa were preparing tea trays for our first guests. Dee had her blonde hair up in a knot on top of her head, a style she'd adopted as the weather got warmer. It made her look sweetly innocent, though in fact she was the most intellectual employee I had, next to Kris. We traded “good mornings” as I passed through on my way to the kitchen.

  Julio was dancing to salsa music and working at the long prep table in the center of the kitchen. He wore his usual plain t-shirt over loud, baggy pants—tropical fish, today—and a matching baker’s cap that didn’t quite restrain his wild black curls. He had cucumber sandwiches laid out on the table in long rows, and was garnishing each with a dab of herbed butter and a sprig of fresh dill.

  “You could have the girls do that, Julio,” I said, stepping to the window and lowering the volume on the boombox.

  “Girls are too busy,” Julio said, his face set in artistic concentration. “Rosa keeps running back and forth to Lily.”

  I turned to look at him. “Why?”

  Julio grimaced. “Abuela's coming.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  He nodded. “The matriarch.”

  That might explain Rosa's odd behavior the day before. I glanced toward the pantry but didn't see her.

  “Shall I help?” I asked Julio.

  “Not now. Maybe in a bit.”

  I resisted the urge to pick up one of the sandwiches and instead snagged a bit of trimmed crust from a plate Julio had set aside. The orange I'd had for breakfast wasn't holding me.

  I popped the crust in my mouth and left him to his work, going into the butler’s pantry to scare up some tea. The girls, bless them, had a pot of Assam under a cozy in the far corner of the pantry. I poured myself a cup and added a splash of milk.

  Dee glanced up at me and smiled. I smiled back, then stepped down the hall toward the front parlor to look for Rosa.

  I found her in Lily. Usually she wore her hair braided, but today she had it loose, caught back from her face in a barrette. She was straightening the place setting on the low table and glanced up as I came in.

  “Good morning, Rosa.”

  “Morning, Ms. R.,” she said, sounding slightly nervous.

  “Ellen, please.” I glanced at the table set for one. “Special customer?”

  “My grandmother’s coming. I’ve been telling her about the tearoom and she finally decided to come.”

  I smiled and sipped my tea. “That’s wonderful! I look forward to meeting her.”

  Rosa straightened the spoon beside the teacup. “I was going to put her in Rose, but then I thought she’d like to look out at the garden.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Rosa bit her lip. “Maybe I should switch her to Rose, though.”

  Aha.

  “Well,” I said, “This is one of our prettiest views, and the roses are blooming like crazy.”

  “Yes. She loves roses,” Rosa said. “They’re her big hobby. She’s in the Rose Guild. That’s why I couldn’t decide.”

  “Well, Rose doesn’t have a window. Would she enjoy the name more, or the view?”

  Rosa smiled. “The view. You’re right, I’ll leave her here. I just want to make sure today is special for her. She hasn’t been very well lately.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She fell and broke her hip a few months ago. She’s just starting to go out a little again.”

  “Well, we’ll make sure she has a wonderful tea. If you know of anything she’d especially like, tell Julio. He can probably whip it up.”

  “She’ll love everything.” Rosa smiled brightly. “Thanks, Ms. R.—Ellen. I guess I’m just a little nervous.”

  I patted her shoulder. “Don’t fret. She’ll have a lovely time.”

  I had finished my tea. Leaving Rosa to perfect Lily for her grandmother, I went back to the kitchen and set my cup and saucer on the windowsill, out of the way.

  “Julio, you know those rose petal jam sandwiches we’ve been talking about?”

  “Mm-hm.” He was still garnishing, and didn’t look up.

  “Why don't you whip up a couple for your grandmother? I’d like to do something special for her.”

  That made him look up. “You know her?”

  “No, but if my grandmother was coming to tea, I'd want to give her the royal treatment.”

  He tilted his head, thinking. At first the hard line of his jaw made me think he was about to refuse, then his face relaxed. “Yeah, OK. After I get the brioches in the oven.”

  “Why don’t you let me finish garnishing those sandwiches, so you can get started on the brioches?”

  He handed me the sack from which he’d been piping herbed butter. I set it down to wash my hands and put on an apron before working with the food, then covered and put the trays of finished sandwiches in the refrigerator to make room for Julio to work. While he wrapped tidbits of brie in puff pastry, I finished garnishing the sandwiches and got them all into the fridge, ready to be placed on tea trays just before serving.

  “Where’s the jam?” Julio asked as he slid a tray of brioches into the oven.

  “In the pantry. I’ll get it.”

  I fetched a jar of the rose petal jam I’d made a few days earlier and gave it to Julio, then hurried out to the garden to clip a red rose to use for garnish on the sandwiches. A bush of peace roses caught my notice, the perfume from their blooms filling the morning air. I clipped a handful of them, too, and took them inside.

  Rosa passed me in the hall and I stopped her and offered her the peace roses. “Pick a vase and
put these in it, then put them in Lily for your grandmother.”

  “There’s already a vase of roses there!”

  “I know, but you can never have too many. Careful—I didn't trim the thorns,” I added as Rosa reached for the roses.

  She took them gingerly and held them to her face. “Mmm. They smell wonderful! Thanks, Ellen!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I took the red rose to the kitchen and washed it, then pulled off the petals and put them in a small bowl. Julio had already mixed some of the rose petal jam with soft butter and spread it on a slice of thin, white bread. He spread more jam on another slice, then put the two together and cut three small rounds out of the sandwich with a cookie cutter. He garnished each with a red rose petal and arranged them on a small plate.

  “Bueno?” he asked, glancing up at me.

  “Bueno. Thank you, Julio.”

  “De nada.”

  I put the rose sandwiches in the fridge, then took the rest of the petals to the pantry, adding them to the larger bowl of rose petals the girls were using to decorate the tea trays. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was almost time to open.

  I took off my apron and went up to the gift shop to check the reservations sheet. Party of one in Lily: Maria Garcia. Two other parties were coming in at eleven, when we opened. By noon all the seating areas would be full, even the dining parlor, which was booked for a bridal shower.

  I made the rounds, checking to make sure everything was in place. The lights were on in the dining parlor. I hadn't done it, and my first thought was that Captain Dusenberry was at it again.

  Or it could have been one of the girls, getting a head start on setting up for the bridal shower. I left the lights on and went to the kitchen to deprive Julio of his salsa music. He took it philosophically, donning a pair of ear buds and switching to the music player in his pocket when I turned on the house stereo.

  String quartet music began to play softly throughout the tearoom. In the pantry, the girls were busy brewing tea and setting up the tiered trays of food for the first customers. I took down a teapot to make tea for Kris and myself.

  “There are some rose petal sandwiches in the fridge for your grandmother, Rosa.”

  Her face lit with a surprised smile. “Thank you! You didn’t have to go to all that trouble!”

  “It’s no trouble. Julio and I have been talking about adding them to the menu, so this will be a test. Let me know how she likes them.”

  “I will.”

  “Kris was looking for you,” Dee said, glancing up at me.

  “Is she downstairs?”

  Dee nodded as she set a dish of lemon curd on a tray. “In the front parlor, last I saw.”

  “Thank you.”

  I set the tea to brew, then hurried to the parlor and found Kris standing in Lily, gazing out the front window. The wisteria vines cast a deep shade on the west-facing portal in the morning. Beyond them, the roses glowed in the sunshine.

  “Dee said you were looking for me,” I said.

  Kris jumped slightly, then turned from the window. “Yeah. Got a call from Johnson’s. The cream delivery’s going to be short next week.”

  “Oh, no! What happened?”

  “They had a spoiled batch, had to throw it all out. Two days’ worth.”

  “Ouch. Are we going to get anything?”

  Kris nodded. “Half what we ordered.”

  I bit my lip. We used fresh local cream to make our clotted cream, no small feat at over a mile above sea level. Julio had spent weeks perfecting his recipe.

  “We’d better call Hooper, then.” Hooper Dairy was all organic and charged accordingly, but they were my best fallback when Johnson’s couldn’t fill our orders.

  Kris nodded. “How much should I ask them for? The full difference?”

  “Let me check with Julio.” Movement outside the window caught my eye, a trio of ladies in summery dresses coming up the path to the tearoom. “I’ll be upstairs in a few minutes, after we open. Oh, I brewed us some tea.”

  We went back to the butler’s pantry where I gave her the teapot, then Kris headed up to her office while I went to open the front door and greet the waiting guests. I showed them in and got them seated, then returned to the front door.

  As I opened it to greet the ladies, my gaze slid past them and caught an unusual sight. A van from El Vaquero restaurant, one of my many competitors, was parked by my front gate.

  3

  The van’s driver, an Hispanic man of about forty, came around to the passenger side, took an aluminum-framed walker from the back and set it up, then helped a frail-looking, elderly Hispanic woman out of the front seat. This must be Julio and Rosa’s grandmother.

  Suddenly the van made sense. I remembered from Rosa’s employment application that she had previously worked in a New Mexican restaurant, though I had forgotten which one. It appeared she had stronger ties to the place than I’d known.

  I hurried out and down the path to open the front gate, smiling at the Hispanic lady. “Good morning! Are you Mrs. Garcia?”

  She looked up at me as she leaned on the walker, dark eyes bright and curious, a lopsided smile of amusement on her wrinkled lips. She was dressed in Sunday best, a flowered dress with lace trim at the collar and cuffs, and modest jewelry glinting at her ears and neck. Her hair, black with a peppering of white throughout, was freshly coiffed. Clearly she’d taken pains to look nice for her solitary visit to the tearoom.

  “Yes,” she said in a voice rather stronger than I’d expected.

  “I’m Ellen Rosings. Welcome to the Wisteria Tearoom.”

  “You’re Rosa’s employer.” Her voice was slightly slurred, making me wonder if she might recently have suffered a stroke. Rosa hadn't mentioned it, if she had. Perhaps it was just general frailty, after her injury.

  “That’s right,” I said. “We're very glad to have Rosa here. Won’t you come inside and make yourself comfortable?”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  I held open the gate while she slowly pushed the walker through it. The Hispanic man who had driven her hovered anxiously in her wake. Something about his jawline—firm, determined—made me think he resembled Mrs. Garcia.

  Rosa came running down the path and confirmed my suspicion by giving the driver a hug. “Thank you, Papa!” she said, then turned to Mrs. Garcia. “Thank you for coming, Nana!”

  Mrs. Garcia paused to receive a dutiful kiss on the cheek from Rosa. “Gracias, hija. You can go, now, Ricardo. Thank you for bringing me.”

  “Have a good time, Mama.” He kissed her on the cheek as well, then watched her continue up the path toward the tearoom under Rosa’s escort. “What time should I pick her up?”

  “We like to allow our guests plenty of time to relax and enjoy themselves,” I said. “Between twelve-thirty and one would work, but isn’t that your lunch rush?”

  I nodded toward the restaurant logo painted on the van. He glanced at his wristwatch.

  “Yeah. And I’ve got to get back.”

  “You’re the owner of El Vaquero, aren’t you?”

  “Manager. Mama still owns the place.” He stuck out a hand. “Rick Garcia.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking hands. “I love your rellenos.”

  His brows rose a little. “Thanks. So, I’ll come back at one.”

  “Could Rosa drive her home?” I suggested. “It would save you a trip.”

  “No, no, I don’t want her skipping work.”

  “She can stay a little late to make up for it.”

  He paused and gave me a long look. “That’s nice of you. Gracias.”

  I smiled. “De nada.”

  He flashed a brief smile in return and climbed into his van. I hurried back to the tearoom, where Rosa was settling her grandmother in Lily.

  The third party scheduled for eleven o’clock arrived shortly thereafter, and I had my hands full for a few minutes. When I finally had a moment to look in on the seated guests, I f
ound Mrs. Garcia sipping tea and gazing out the window.

  “Your roses are very lovely,” she said, glancing up at me.

  I smiled. “Thank you.”

  “The leaves are a little yellow on that Grande Dame. You might want to give it some iron chelate.”

  “I just gave it some last Sunday, actually. Rosa tells me you’re a gardener.”

  “I like to grow roses, yes. I have been a member of the Rose Guild for twenty years,” she said proudly, almost defiantly.

  I smiled. “Well, I’m nowhere near so experienced. I appreciate your advice.”

  “If you want to learn about growing roses, join the Rose Guild.” She smiled. “You’d be welcome there.”

  “Thank you. I’ll consider it.”

  She lifted her cup and saucer, and her hands shook so much that the china clattered. Weathered hands, spotted with age. She ignored their shaking and with slow determination raised the teacup to her lips.

  I noticed a bandage hidden by the lace cuff of one wrist, leftover from an IV, perhaps, from when she’d been in the hospital with her broken hip. I felt deeply sorry for her, and at the same time I admired her courage. To stay active in the face of such physical challenges was no mean feat.

  Rosa came in with a three-tiered tea tray of savories, scones, and sweets, scattered with rose petals, and placed it on the low tea table before her grandmother. Mrs. Garcia carefully put down her cup and clasped her hands.

  “Oh, it’s so beautiful!”

  I couldn’t help feeling a little swell of pride. We work hard to make the trays beautiful, and always hope for just this kind of reaction.

  “These are rose petal sandwiches,” Rosa said, pointing to the little rounds on the top tier of the tray. “Ms. Rosings had them made specially for you.”

  Her grandmother’s bright eyes fixed on me. “That’s so kind of you! Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. Enjoy your tea.”

  I slipped out, leaving Rosa to explain the menu—and probably to serve her grandmother—while I looked in on the other customers. Everything was going smoothly, so I snatched the opportunity to consult Julio about next week’s cream and run upstairs to tell Kris to order just two extra gallons from Hooper.