Yet Mrs. Oakes had evidenced, through the merest of comments and expressions, a wistfulness whenever Lysander mentioned the massive pile of Worthingtons he was usually surrounded by. His family felt like a securely tied burden upon his back, or rather an encompassing swath of suffocating blankets. Or perhaps a tiny closet with nails protruding from every wall so that no matter which way he stepped their need pierced him with his inability to be who they wanted him to be.

But Mrs. Oakes had not known him before. She had no expectation that he ought to return to some former cheerful and easy-going state. Mrs. Oakes didn't want him, Lysander, to be anything other than calm and at ease with himself. He thought he was managing that fairly well — aside from that earlier contretemps with old Goose-Gogs. That hardly been his sole fault.

Yet the silence on the fell was much more than simply lack of expectation. There was a generosity to it, a bounty of stillness that flowed down from the vast sky and up from the ancient earth. Even the noise within his own thoughts faded away.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate."

He'd always liked that line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. He'd found it charming and flirtatious.

Yet this clear, bright day in the high country was not a charming view. The slopes were steep and the living arduous. He knew the winter would be a struggle. It was a hard, demanding place, Yorkshire — and yet he felt his soul lift its wary head and look about in wonder.

It was no garden, no park. It was not beautiful because someone had made it so. It had always been beautiful, long before the first man set foot upon its rolling slopes.

Beautiful just as it was.

Just like her.

GEMMA FOUND HERSELF TALKING more than she usually did. Perhaps it was Mr. Worthington's silence that drew her out. A man so uncommunicative as he must have secrets of his own and would not judge her for hers. Nor would he be inclined to tell anyone.

Or perhaps it was simply that his reticent manner made him an excessively wonderful listener. There was no "that reminds me of something that I experienced" or "do you know what you should do?"

If she felt the need to pause in order to think of just the right words, he simply waited. There was no rush to fill the silence, no hastening to tidy up the space left by her careful selection of phrase. Because of this, her words began to come more quickly and less studied — as if the trickling tap had been opened wide and she felt free to express any and every thought that crossed her mind.