‘I stopped to take the posset,’ he said.

Gabriel nodded. ‘I will join you.’

Blinking in the shade, they sat under a tree, each looking carefully at his own flagon. Only the faint sound of the sheep chewing as they dried in the sun.

‘Still tupping that lass, are ye?’ Gabriel asked at last.

Daniel met his eye, said nothing. God had intended this soul to inhabit a boar or bull, surely. He was not fit to carry the body of a man.

Under the steadiness of Daniel’s stare Gabriel flushed, took a gulp of drink and wiped his mouth. Belched quietly. Jiggled his right leg.

Daniel drank his fill of the posset, stood and brushed down his breeches.

‘Dairymaid’s a pretty little bantam,’ Gabriel said.

Daniel stopped. He felt the ground shift beneath him.

‘The – Sarah?’

‘Aye. There’s something about her.’

Daniel’s breath stuck in his throat like straw and he remembered how Gabriel had felt he recognised Sarah when she first came to the farm. Did he know?

Gabriel downed his drink, placed the flagon back. ‘Think she’d look at the likes of me?’

Daniel waited, taking in the words, letting his mind catch up with their meaning. Was this a trick? There was an uncomfortable sincerity in Gabriel’s expression. He spoke the truth, Daniel knew it, though he hardly dared to trust it.

There was such naked yearning in Gabriel’s eyes that Daniel was moved to pity. Even now.

‘I’ve had lasses before,’ Gabriel said, lifting his chin, ‘many a times, I’m no innocent.’

‘I – I do not doubt it.’

‘But now I’m thought to take a wife.’

Daniel shook out his shoulders, cleared his throat, relieved.

‘I know my way around the cockles, I’ll not be asking a whelp like you about that,’ Gabriel said, leaning forward, hands clenched. ‘Not be asking any man about that.’

Daniel quelled the image this brought to his mind. Gabriel was sweating, face the colour of a setting sun. Daniel could see that each word pained him like a hot ember on the tongue. Yet he persevered. ‘I’ve seen you with her,’ he said.

Daniel waited to hear what Gabriel said next before refuting this. Still on edge. Watched the oldest ewe, the one destined for the midsummer feast, shake herself free of water and close her eyes against the sun.

‘Talking. She smiles when you speak with her. She never smiles at me. I need to know what to say.’

He looked at Daniel, waited, daring him to mock.

‘I’m sure you have no need of my help,’ he said carefully.

Gabriel scowled and waved away a cloud of midges. ‘I’ve just asked for it.’

‘She is a modest girl,’ Daniel said. ‘Reserved. She would need approaching gently.’

‘Quiet, like?’

‘Yes. Like an unknown animal.’

Gabriel thumped one of his fists lightly on the ground. ‘All right, then. I can do that.’