“Two answers. I’ll marry you if you’re the poorest girl in the kingdom. Second answer. Yes we do. Lazen’s been in the family since anyone knows. I’d like to buy it back one day, God knows when, but I’d like to do it before mother dies.”

She nodded.

He smiled at her. “But if you tell me that you don’t want the seals, that you want to be rid of Sir Grenville and your brother, then I’ll throw this one away right now. I’ll marry you and think myself lucky.”

“Don’t throw it away.” She smiled at him. “We’ll buy Lazen Castle with it.”

He smiled. “And you’ll be Campion Lazender.”

She laughed at that. It sounded strange. She remembered how he had seen the campion flowers in her rush basket and picked the name for her. She laughed again. “If I hadn’t met you I’d still be called Dorcas.”

“Dorcas.” Toby said the name with lugubrious relish. “Dorcas. Dorcas. Dorcas.”

“Stop it! I hate that name.”

“I shall call you Dorcas when you upset me.”

She waved a fly away from her face. “Campion.” She said it experimentally. “I like that name.”

“I love it.” He grinned. “I’m just glad you hadn’t picked cow parsley on the day I met you. Lady Cow Parsley Lazender doesn’t sound right.”

“Or deadly nightshade.”

“Or gooseberry.”

“Lady Wortleberry Lazender.” She laughed. “I like Campion.”

Toby plucked the seeds from meadow oat grass. “There was a poet called Campion.”

“I know.”

“Only because I told you.” He grinned at her, then levered himself forward on his elbows so he was close to her, his face smiling down at her. “Listen.” He thought for a few seconds.

Lost is our freedom,

When we submit to women so:

Why do we need them,

When in their best they work our woe?

She laughed at him. “Did Campion write that?”

“He did.”

“It’s not very good, is it?”

He shrugged, tickling her face with the grass stem. “You’re not supposed to like it. You’re supposed to get angry with me and tell me I’m a woman-hater.”

“I’m too hot to get angry. Tell me something else he wrote and if I don’t like it then I won’t marry you.”

He nodded. “Agreed.” He frowned, pretending to think again, then ducked his head, kissed her lightly on the lips, and quoted again, his eyes on hers.

Heaven is music, and thy beauty’s

Birth is heavenly.

It was Campion’s turn to pretend to think. She stared into his green eyes, then nodded. “I’ll marry you.”

“You liked it?”

“I liked it.”

“I thought you would.”

“Is that why you learned it by heart for today?”

He laughed. “How do you know?”

“Because the only poems you know are the ones your father used to sing at Christmas, and because you left a book of Campion’s poetry on the garden table and it got wet in the night.”

He grinned. “Women shouldn’t be so clever.”

“We need to be, Toby dear, considering what we marry.”