Then came the dark brooding face of Sir Oliver. Matthias gave an ironic laugh. There was a man who would certainly know all there was to know about women and the wooing of them – and their conquest. But he was away, and even if he hadn’t been absent, Matthias wasn’t sure he could have brought himself to confide in his master, although Sir Oliver always gave a sympathetic ear to requests for help. Jack? He was too young. Jake Angove, too old. Nathan O’Flynn – of course! Nathan! He had been successful in courting Polly although a confirmed bachelor in his late twenties. He would ask Nathan what the best approach was.

Nathan advised Matthias to give Rosie flowers, the perfect gift to give to any woman on any occasion, but especially for the kindling of a romance. But what flowers grew in this wild-weathered month of February, the month known as the gateway to the year? Matthias knew that like most country girls Rosie preferred wild flowers. Perhaps the right bouquet could lead him through the gateway to a new life.

The eventual bunch of flowers and leaves was a resplendent host of mainly subdued colours gathered with the greatest of care from the roadside, grassy banks and coastline. Fluffy yellow lamb’s tails mingled with the vanilla-scented flowers of winter heliotrope, white and purple scurvy grass, male ferns, coltsfoot, chickweed, strawberry leaves, and alexander – a tall bushy plant with pale yellow flowers. Cautiously set in the middle were a few prickly teasles and budding golden gorse.

Matthias set off with the bouquet tied firmly with a length of bright purple ribbon, the effect finished off with a delicate bow at the front. The ribbon had been left, long forgotten, in Ker-an-Mor’s farmhouse parlour by Kerensa.

As he crossed over from Ker-an-Mor to Trecath-en farmland he was pleased he had got thus far without anyone seeing him. He sighed with relief that Ricketty Jim was not to be found about his ditch home. Ricketty Jim, who swore he had seen the spirit of an ancient Guise Dancer moaning up in the branches of a hawthorn tree on Twelfth Night this year, never missed a body walking or riding, even if you tried to slip by him. With his gossipy disposition he would have wanted to know whom the flowers were for and might have spread the information around. Matthias didn’t want it known that the ‘young preacher’ was calling on the ‘young maid of Trecath-en Farm’ all spruced up and armed with a great big bunch of flowers. Then, on another thought that threatened to upset Matthias’s fragile confidence, what if it spurred the rover on to make a play for Rosie? Some women seemed to find him attractive. Matthias decided he didn’t like Ricketty Jim living this close to Rosie.