Daisychain Summer. Elizabeth Elgin

so think on. And I’d best not stay too long – not tonight.’

      Wouldn’t be polite, for one thing, and for another, Daisy Dwerryhouse would soon be clamouring for her evening feed and there was no one but she could give it her.

      ‘You’ll come again tomorrow, lass?’

      ‘I’ll come, Reuben – and Daisy and Drew. I promise.’

      The air held a hint of chill as she walked back to Rowangarth and dusk came suddenly as it always did, in late September.

      Dear Reuben, Alice thought dreamily as Daisy fed gently at her breast. He hadn’t changed in the almost two years since she left. He was snug in the little almshouse with his dogs for company and Percy not far down the road when he needed to talk about the old days; times when there had been two coachmen at Rowangarth and three gardeners – and three apprentices living in the bothy: Robert and Giles away at school and Miss Julia a tomboy who would one day grow up to beauty.

      They had been good days, and her ladyship so fair and beautiful that just to look at her made you think of fairy-tales and happy-ever-afters. Alice called back the golden days. Fourteen, she had been, with all memory of Aunt Bella behind her and Rowangarth her first real home.

      Yet still she had not been prepared for the feeling of homecoming that this afternoon had reached out to gather her close. To turn the sweep of the drive and see the old house, unchanged and unchanging, made her want to weep with joy.

      And then the scent and sound and feel of the house. The slightly musty, slightly smoky smell that came from old books and wide chimney flues; beech logs snapping in stone hearths, flames flickering on old wood and old, uneven walls. Dear, safe Rowangarth that would one day belong to Drew. She had been so happy, so in love in that precious summer of ’fourteen. And then war had come.

      She laid Daisy against her shoulder, patting her back, rocking her gently as Tom always did. Tom would be missing his little girl tonight. Happen he’d have taken the dogs to walk the game covers and let it be known the keeper was not sleeping, or maybe he’d have called on Polly and Dickon; shared a sup of tea with them. They would do all right in Willow End. Dickon had a settled look about him, now, and young Keth had stopped sucking his thumb and smiled more often.

      Yet nothing could change the fact that Keth Purvis was dark – Mary Anne Pendennis dark – because from way back he was related to her. Did that mean, she frowned, he would grow up in the image of Elliot Sutton, with the same gypsy looks; grow up to remind her?

      Not that the boy could help the way he was. Nature could be capricious. Drew, who should have been dark, had been born Sutton fair. During the long weeks of his coming it was the thing she most dreaded; that the rape child she carried would be born to father himself and make a nonsense of the fact that Giles had claimed him.

      Yet Drew had been lucky and because of that luck she should be grateful to the Fates who had decreed it and not harbour suspicions about the young boy at Willow End.

      ‘Asleep?’ The voice from the doorway broke into her thoughts.

      ‘No, Julia. Just thinking – about Keth Purvis, if you must know.’

      ‘The child you say looks like Elliot Sutton? Surely you don’t hold that against him?’

      ‘Not really. Keth’s a nice little boy.’ Of course he was. Keth would be company for Daisy; would walk with her the mile to school and back, four summers from now.

      But why did he have to remind her, every time she saw him, of a March evening and a stable in a French village called Celverte? The twenty-sixth day of March. The day they told her that Tom had been killed; the night Elliot lurched down the path towards her. The last day, come to think of it, that Julia was ever to see Andrew. A black day.

      ‘A nice little boy,’ she repeated, firmly. A little lad who came to her door for dripping toast. An ordinary, dark-haired child, for goodness sake, and shame on Alice Dwerryhouse for thinking otherwise! ‘And would you mind, Julia, if I slipped down to the kitchen for a chat? If I remember rightly, Mrs Shaw always puts the kettle on, just about this time.’

      A chat with Cook and Mary and Tilda, just like it used to be, before she climbed into bed and listened to the night sounds she remembered so well; to creaking boards and rattling window frames and outside, in Brattocks, the cries of hunting owls.

      ‘I’ll come with you. Bet you anything,’ Julia smiled, ‘that Cook has made cherry scones.’ Mrs Shaw always made cherry scones on special days. ‘And I do so wish you were staying, Alice. For ever, I mean. I wish you were in the sewing-room again and you and I sharing secrets like we used to. And Andrew with me, still, and Tom waiting for Reuben to retire so he could leave the bothy and live with you in Keeper’s Cottage.’