Not the answer he had expected. Perhaps this hurt was what caused her silence. At least it had not come at the hand of someone from the village. He would take her pain a hundred times over to save her from it, felt his new fury rise against the one that struck her. Reaching out, he traced the edge of the mark gently with his thumb. She jerked her face away.

‘Why have you come?’ she asked.

‘I left the stone. I waited for you.’

‘Why?’ The same hardness he had seen in Molly’s eyes, though this time he did not know what he had done to deserve it.

‘Because I wanted to see you. I thought you would – I thought that we were …’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand what you want from me.’

‘I like you.’

She laughed, a sound strung through with bitterness. ‘What can you possibly like? I’ve nothing, Daniel, I am nothing. You see how I live. You should not want to be with me and I cannot be with you. My life should not touch yours.’

‘But it has.’ The distance between them was greater than it had ever been, and he did not understand why.

‘Just go back to the farm and to courting the blacksmith lass, and leave me to my own life.’

Her words like a sunbeam, throwing light on the shadows of confusion.

‘What?’ He laughed a little. Clearly Molly had been less than hasty to spread the news that there was no romance after all.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not—’ He stepped forward, serious now, took one of Sarah’s hands, loosening the clutch of her fingers on the blanket so that he could ease his own in between them. She did not concede easily.

‘Molly did come to my house, she chose me after being crowned May Queen but I – I said no.’

Sarah watched him with an expression that showed nothing of her feelings. His responding smile was too much, too happy he knew, but he could not contain it.

‘And Sarah, I’ve never refused anyone anything they have asked of me in my life before, but this time I did. Because of you.’

He stepped closer to her, took both her hands in his, shook them to show the importance, the joy of what he was trying to tell her. Still her face betrayed nothing.

‘And last time Father hit me, I don’t even know how, I stood up and told him to stop and he did. And that’s never happened before. All these years I’ve been afraid and now you’re here and you showed me how to be strong and to be myself, but a me that I could never have been before, and that’s what I want. This. That happens when we’re together. And you don’t – is this making any sense to you at all?’