Lily looked hesitant, though, as if she hated the idea of the extra expense. His heart clutched a little. ‘You could. But we have so much ivy at the estate. In fact,’ he shrugged, ‘the wine barrels, the wine boxes and this stuff,’ he said, gesturing to the fronds of small white flowers, ‘we’ve got it all already. You could even take some of the blue hydrangea if you wanted?’

She turned and looked at him.

‘You’re right. Yes, there are things we’d need, the fairy lights, candles—’

‘The hurricane lamps,’ he inserted.

‘They are beautiful.’

‘They are,’ he agreed, ready to say almost anything to make her smile.

‘We’d still need to rent chairs for the outside seating, but a lot of the rest of the things could easily come from the estate.’

‘I’m not being tight,’ Henry said quickly, worried that she might think he was trying to save money.

‘No, I know that. I think it’s a wonderful idea. It would just take a lot of time and energy, which—’

‘Is fine. Lily. I have the time and the energy. And it would be in keeping with your eco-friendly, locally sourced—’

‘Are you mocking me?’

He held his hands up in front of him in surrender. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Just embracing your philosophy.’

She looked up at him, a smile on her face, her eyes lit with excitement. ‘It would be beautiful,’ she claimed as if she could see it, not him, before her. And suddenly he wondered what it would take for her to look at him that way. With awe, excitement, and joy. Right then, she could have asked for the whole damn store and he would have bought it for her. Because in his heart, he knew that he couldn’t give her the one thing she would truly want.

She caught something over his shoulder and her eyes widened even more.

‘Wedding arch!’

He couldn’t help the small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth as he spun the trolley around in the wide aisle and followed her to the back of the warehouse.

Even he was impressed when he saw what Lily had been drawn to. Across the back wall, there was a series of many different arches. Some rectangular in design, some trailed with white silk, frothy cream creations, others bursting with trailing flowers. They might have been artificial for display purposes but they were all exquisite, making it easy to imagine how real ones would look on the wedding day. Some boughs were wistful and whimsical, some so inconceivably abundant he was surprised the arch hadn’t fallen over, and one with such an explosion of rich-coloured silk flowers, he could only think of doilies and old ladies.