‘You need a drink, boy’ – that’s what Adam would have said if he had witnessed his son’s pique.

‘I can understand why people are tempted,’ Matthias muttered to himself. A short time ago he would have said confidently, ‘Problems are not solved at the bottom of a bottle.’

He knew why he’d written ‘plait’ instead of ‘price’. Rosie Trenchard had that one long plait of silky golden hair running down the middle of her back. Every time he was alone with her he wanted to untie the ribbon at its end and pull apart the soft flowing mass and caress it and…

Matthias shuddered. He had always thought himself protected by his faith from the natural urges of the flesh, but of late he was greatly bothered by a sensation about the body that led to a terror it would grow out of control. It was the reason he took pains not to be alone with Rosie for long. The problem was this did not help with the courtship. Apart from his gift of flowers to her, he had done little to suggest to Rosie he was in fact courting her – trying to court her.

Love was supposed to be in the air in spring. Daffodils and primroses had flourished in the gardens, ditches and hedgerows. Fledgling birds had chirped their way out of their eggshells and went on to sing with joyful abandon in the trees. Streams had sparkled in the warm sun and chuckled over their stony beds. Everywhere he had looked, Matthias saw Mother Nature painting her uncompromising colours and warming the earth for the awakening wildlife. But no new dawn of life had begun for him then, and now it was deep into the heart of summer.

He picked up his pen to make the correction but he did no more than twist it aimlessly between his fingers. What was the matter with him? Other men had no trouble turning the woman they loved into their bride. Why was he so different? Men up to thirteen or fourteen years younger than he was were getting married all the time. Men who once had been boys in his Bible classes were marrying and producing families.

He thought often that his father’s attitude counted towards his difficulty with forming a romantic attachment with a woman. Adam was scornful of his celibacy, at times taunting the strict moral code he lived by with brutal remarks: ‘What you could do with is a bloody good night in a brothel. Tedn’t natural for a man to be going without a woman, what’s the matter with ’ee?’