“Thou’rt like the trees, he and thee,” Dickon tells her, lifting his chin to the glory of the old tree in the garden’s corner, covered in a profusion of roses, budding out into full bloom, making of it a bower; Mary blushes to think of what she and Colin had been doing there when he’d arrived. “Colin now, he’s the flowers,” Dickon says, watching her carefully, the light dancing in his hair, bringing out the red, just as it brings forth the gold in her own, “a thing of beauty to see, but nowt much without the base to hold him steady - and that’s for thee to do.”

“And you?” she asks, smiling up at his sun-haloed face; though she already suspects she knows what he’ll say, and he confirms it when he says, “Ah, me, I’m like the little birds and squirrels and other wild things that creep in to visit now and then, to claim their share of that beauty,” before kissing her softly, square on the mouth.