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Back Under a Dancing Star
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for Laura Wood
  3. Dedication
  4. Part One: England
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Part Two: Villa di Stelle
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. Chapter Eighteen
  24. Part Three: Villa di Stelle
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-One
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Part Four: Florence
  36. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  37. Chapter Thirty
  38. Chapter Thirty-One
  39. Chapter Thirty-Two
  40. Part Five: Villa Di Stelle
  41. Chapter Thirty-Three
  42. Chapter Thirty-Four
  43. Chapter Thirty-Five
  44. Chapter Thirty-Six
  45. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  46. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  47. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  48. Chapter Forty
  49. Epilogue: England
  50. Acknowledgements
  51. About the Author

“What does that mean?” Hero wrinkles her brow.

“It means love,” I say, and I let go, watching the gardenia dance across the water.

Epilogue: England

Epilogue: England

July, 1937

I know you of old.

– Much Ado about Nothing, Act I, Scene 1

“We have guests arriving,” my uncle says, coming into the room with a telegram in his hands. “Including some old friends.”

“Oh?” I say, lifting my eyes rather grudgingly from my textbook. It may be the summer break, but that’s no excuse for falling behind on my studies. Mother and Father used all the emotional blackmail at their disposal to get me to visit Leo and Hero in Suffolk for a couple of weeks, but as I told them, the examination period at Oxford is not something to be taken lightly.

At least it means I will escape their matchmaking efforts – I hear poor Cuthbert Astley is due a visit, and my parents still find the idea of him a compelling one. If I had hoped that my scholarship to study medicine would quell their urges to interfere, then that hope was rather swiftly revealed to be a naive one. After all, as the saying goes, a leopard can’t change its spots. (Though, of course, a leopard’s spots do change significantly as it matures into adulthood.) I might have changed that summer, but my parents hadn’t, and they’re still very much a work in progress.

Still, it is certainly easier to bear now that I have a life of my own – one not confined to the draughty hallways at Langton.

And last week I overheard Mother talking to the vicar.

“Of course, Beatrice is practically a doctor,” she said. “Top of her class.” The words, carefully casual as they were, betrayed a tremor of pride that left me stunned.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” was the vicar’s sour rejoinder.

“Who are the guests?” Hero leaps to her feet, dancing excitedly towards her father. In moments like this she still seems so young, and despite her eighteen years I see my little cousin, the one who asked over and over for the tale of the toad.

Perhaps her youthfulness is down to the way Leo dotes on her. Thankfully, his association with Lady Frances Bowling lasted a scant few months, and after a – mercifully brief – flirtation with Moseley’s British Union of Fascists, Leo seems to have given in to a happy bachelorhood, devoting his attention to his daughter.

“An old army friend of mine, Peter – and his brother John,” Leo says.

Hero’s nose wrinkles. “I don’t know them,” she says.

“Peter did meet you as a baby,” Leo says. “But it wasn’t them I was referring to. They’re bringing a group of youngsters with them who have been out fighting in Spain.”