“Then what is keeping us?” he asked. “Let’s go back to the drawing room and have your father make the announcement, shall we?”
“Yes.” She smiled radiantly at him.
“Ah,” he said, drawing her against him again as she was about to move away, “I have forgotten one thing.”
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t believe I have wished you a happy birthday, have I?” he said. “Or given you a happy birthday kiss.”
She laughed. “Is a short memory a symptom of being in your dotage?” she asked. “You have wished me happy birthday about five times. And have you forgotten the conservatory this morning?”
He grinned and rubbed his nose against hers. “Absolutely,” he said. “You had better remind me, Constance.”
“Oh,” she said, laughing again and feeling that there could not possibly be one more ounce of happiness in life. “Very well, then.”
But it took him a long time to remember. All of thirty minutes had passed before Sir Howard Manning announced their betrothal in the drawing room.
The Forbidden Daffodils
She stood with her forearms resting along the rough top of the wooden stile, gazing into the woods beyond, wondering if she would climb over to stroll among the trees. Normally she would not have hesitated. It was one of her favorite places to walk, though the country lanes, bordered by ferns and wildflowers, always beckoned when she wanted more brisk exercise, and the wide golden sands were her choice when she wanted solitude but did not want to be cooped up in her room. One could never be low in spirits when one was on the sands, with all the elemental force of the sea just beyond. One could only be uplifted and reminded of the littleness of one’s own troubles in the vast scheme of things.
But the woods offered solitude of a different sort. She always had a feeling entering the woods rather similar to the one she had when she entered a cathedral—not that she had entered any for many years. There was quietness in the woods and a sense of the closeness of God. And the woods were in some ways better than a cathedral because they were living and changing.
She loved the woods at all seasons. She loved them when the trees, still essentially bare, were greening with spring buds, and when the ground was colored with bluebells, and when the leaves were so thick on the branches that it seemed almost as if there were a roof overhead. She loved the many colors of autumn, both when the colors were above her head and when they were spread on the ground at her feet, at first a soft carpet and then a crunchy delight. She loved the time of the snowdrops, the first sign of spring, and the time of the primroses that followed after.
But most of all she loved the time of the daffodils.
Aunt Hetty grew daffodils in the flower beds beneath the front windows of the house—vast numbers of them. They provided floral arrangements for the house and the church for several weeks each spring. Aunt Hetty was famous for her daffodils, even in a country famed for them—Wales had made the daffodil its floral emblem. And yet ironically Aunt Hetty was English.
But the daffodils in the woods were different. They bloomed wild there and grew in disorganized clumps. Fortunately no one had ever thought to try to cultivate them, to force them to grow in a pattern pleasing to a rational human mind.
And daffodils growing among trees, splashes of sunshine in the shade, always seemed more glorious than daffodils growing in flower beds.
The snowdrops and the primroses always brought hope with them, the hope of a new year, of a new beginning, of a renewed life. But the daffodils brought more than hope. They were like a blaze of glorious defiance, their bright color and their reaching trumpets and stretching petals bold and vivid in contrast to the delicate pastel shades of spring around them.
The daffodils were a startling reaffirmation of life.
They were beginning to bud now. In a few more days, in a week at the longest, they would burst into full bloom. She had watched them for the past few weeks as their green shoots pushed up through the soil and the grass, at first tentative and then unmistakable. And yet now, on a pilgrimage she made almost daily, she hesitated, her forearms resting on the top of the stile.
Every time she went over it—she must have crossed it more than a thousand times—she was trespassing. The wood was part of the park belonging to Ty Mawr, the Big House, perhaps literally called that in Welsh by some humorist of the past who could think of no other suitable name to give it. Or perhaps no one had tried to give it a name and so it had been called Ty Mawr until the name came to be official. It had stood empty for years, its owner now living in England and apparently not considering this wild and beautiful corner of Wales worth even a summer visit. But now someone had leased it for an indeterminate length of time—a single gentleman, according to local gossip, English of course. And he had arrived. The rector’s wife had brought word yesterday afternoon, when she had called to take tea with Aunt Hetty and Aunt Martha, that he was expected at any moment. And the milkman had brought the news of his actual arrival when he made his delivery early this morning and passed the word across the doorstep to the servants, who carried it upstairs with the morning tea. A proper gentleman he was, it seemed, with a carriage grand enough for a duke, and enough baggage loaded onto the accompanying coach to provision an army. And so the woods were now to be off-limits. They were his, and one did not yet know how he felt about young ladies wandering about there to feel close to God and to observe the changing of the seasons. He might at least have waited until after the blooming of the daffodils, the would-be trespasser thought crossly. But it was very unlikely he would have the woods patrolled, she thought, tempted again. And very unlikely that he would set foot in them himself, at least today. He had arrived only yesterday. And it was early morning. Early for an English gentleman, anyway. She knew a thing or two about English gentlemen. And about English ladies, too. She had been one herself until five years ago. She used to sleep until noon and dance until dawn.
No, there was no danger whatsoever ths morning. And surely within the next few days she would meet him and be able to guess whether he was the type of man who would resent a trespasser who did nothing but admire the beauty around her. She had never picked any of the daffodils or any of the other wildflowers. She liked to see them bloom where they were.
She set a foot on the lower step of the stile, throwing back her cloak and hitching the skirt of her dress as she did so.
Aunt Martha had wondered if he would be a young man. She had looked sidelong at her niece and nodded significantly. And a handsome man, perhaps.
Aunt Hetty had said that it was very unlikely that a young, handsome gentleman would he coming alone to this rural corner of Wales at this time of year. Such a man would he in London for the Season.
“But the Season does not begin until April, Hetty dear,” Aunt Martha had said. “It is not even March yet. Perhaps Kate, my love—”
But she had not been allowed to complete her thought.
“You know that Kate could have no dealings with a gentleman of ton, Martha,” Aunt Hetty had said quite firmly.
Or with a gentleman of any rank, her words had implied, though she had not spoken unkindly.
Kate sat on top of the stile and swung her legs over to the other side. Perpetual exile. That was what the was living in. Sometimes she almost forgot. It really had not turned out as badly as she had feared, nor as badly as Papa doubtlessly had hoped. She would go and live with her mother’s sisters in their cottage on the remote Gower Peninsula in Wales, he had told her on that terrible morning after bending her over his desk and whipping her—the only time he had ever done so. He would make them an allowance for her keep, but none for herself. She would live there for the rest of her life.
