“All he did was stare at me with ox-eyes. Like a great, sad ox. I spoke to him once, and he dribbled.”

“Like this?” Toby made a grotesque face, drooling at the same time.

“Stop it. You’ll frighten Mildred.”

He laughed. “Ferraby’s nervous of you.”

“I can’t think why. Is he really to marry Caroline? He’s so young!”

“He probably is.” He grinned at her. “Money.”

“I didn’t think it was for his looks.”

Toby gave her a slow smile. “I shall marry you for your looks.”

“Will you now?”

“Yes.” He twisted around so he was kneeling in front of her. “For your hair, your eyes, your mouth, and for the big, brown mole that you have,” he paused, his finger hovering just above her navel. He stabbed it down on to her stomach. “There.”

“Toby!”

He laughed. “I’m right, there’s no use in denying it.”

He was right. She was blushing. “Toby?”

“My love?” He spoke in pure innocence.

“How do you know?” She spoke loudly enough to disturb the dogs who opened their eyes, saw it was not time for breakfast, and slumped back into growly comfort. The kitten stretched its claws.

Toby was grinning. “When you catch trout with your bare hands, you must move very, very slowly, and very, very quietly.”

“You saw me?” He nodded. She could feel her face redden. “You should have made a noise!”

“I’d have frightened the fish!” he said indignantly. He laughed. “I just looked through the reeds and there you were. The nymph of the stream.”

“Then, I suppose, your feet got stuck and you couldn’t move?”

“That’s exactly what happened.” He smiled. “And when I’d seen all there was to see I went back downstream, splashed about a bit, and came back. And you said you hadn’t been swimming.”

“And you pretended you hadn’t seen anything!”

“You didn’t ask me!” He pretended to be as indignant as Campion.

“Toby! You’re dreadful!”

“I know, but you’ll still marry me?”

She looked at him, loving his smile, but one thing worried her. “When you were in the stream, Toby…”

“Yes?”

She was hesitant. “Your mother says…” She stopped and waved a hand over her breasts. “She says…”

He laughed at her confusion. “Mother doesn’t know tits from trout.”

“Toby!” The dogs stirred again.

He laughed. “I’ll tell you, then. They’re beautiful.”

“You’re sure?”

“You want me to make certain?” He smiled. “Will you marry me?”

“If you promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

She leaned forward, kissed him swiftly on the forehead and stood up, clutching Mildred in her arms. “That sometimes you’ll leave your boots on.”

“Whatever does that mean?”

She walked away from him, imitating Lady Margaret’s voice. “Nothing. There are some things that should not be told to the young.”

He caught up with her under the mistletoe, but she did eventually climb the stairs, regretting that she had to leave him, wishing she could wake next to him in the morning.

Yet, as she undressed in her room, it seemed to her that their future was once more a seamless blue sky of happiness, that her past was a fading, irrelevant memory of unhappy people who blamed their God for their own inadequacies. She had a whole life ahead of her, a life she would share with love, and she smiled when she thought that not once in three months had she given any thought to the Recording Angel with his massive, accusing book. He had been replaced by a guardian angel, shining and happy, and, as she knelt beside the bed in which the warming pan had long gone cold, she prayed in the chill bedroom, giving thanks to her God for a life that had become happy, as He wanted lives to be, and she prayed for the turn of the year, for the spring, when she could seal that seamless, happy, innocent future.