They sent the farmhand down to the village proper to beg spare lanterns. "Tell all the wives and daughters," Bing snickered. "That'll light a fire under the lads."

Something did indeed light a fire under the lads, for over the next hours more than a dozen men stomped up the path to the shearing shed. They brought lanterns and roughhewn benches and a brusque, eager energy for the task.

Lysander couldn't imagine why, but to a man they all looked to him for direction. At first, he nodded and gestured. Soon however, he was forced to give proper orders in actual sentences. It wasn't as hard as he thought it would be. After all, giving orders was nothing like carrying on conversation. With that realization, the tightness in his throat eased and he found himself using six or seven words in a row. That had to be some sort of new personal best.

Bing had no problem giving orders. The moment the first bench was set just outside the roof line. Bing enthroned himself upon it, puffing his ever present pipe, and sniped constantly on the speed and quality of work being performed. "When I was your age I'd've had this done already!"

It seemed astonishingly quick to Lysander. In very little time the walls were a respectable limestone gray from floor to ceiling and clean sand had been spread to level the gouged earthen floors. Someone had been out in the pasture scything giant armloads of fresh summer grass to carpet the newly leveled floor.

Bing sat upon his bench throne and passed judgment. "Aye, it's clean. It ain't so much pretty as it orta be."

Lysander realized Bing was quite correct. The village pavilion had been bedecked in colorful bunting and flower garlands woven into willow boughs.

Lysander turned on his heel and stalked away from the shearing shed. "Where is he off to, then?" Orren's eldest son protested.

"He's off to t' river to get thee some willow, ain't he?" Bing announced scornfully.

"Me mam still has a bit of bunting left from doin' up the pavilion. I'll fetch it."

The voices faded behind Lysander until he could hear his own stride crunching on the path, Topknot panting at his heels and the clean Yorkshire breeze calling in his ears.

Willow branches would do all right but he needed something else. Something better. Something worthy.

He reached far back into his memory and found a grand entrance, the doorway to a ballroom, where each couple's arrival would be announced by an impeccably clad butler. All around the ballroom, the dresses would swirl like flowers opening and closing while above them glittered chandeliers of crystal.

He should make the entrance more beautiful. What would Iris do? His mother always made things beautiful, daubing paint on things, strewing lace and roses about.

Roses.