I would have so loved to learn about the Vikings.” Lillian snorted. “Since when have you been interested in warlike pagans with silly-looking headgear?” Daisy looked up from her book again. “Are we talking about Grandmother again?

She glanced at Evie, who flashed her a smile, and Annabelle, whose face was reassuringly calm. They would help each other through all the challenges and joys and fears of their lives, Daisy thought, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with love for all of them. “I will never live away from you,” she said. “I want the four of us to be together always. I could never bear to lose any of you.” She felt Annabelle’s slippered toe nudge her leg affectionately. “Daisy…you can never lose a true friend.

Daisy had no idea how to put herself to rights again. But she thought it would be a good thing to stop thinking about herself and do something for someone else.

Lillian grimaced. “Bloody hell,” she muttered. “Damn and blast. Son of a—” “When the baby is born,” Daisy said with a faint smile, “you’ll really have to stop using such foul language.” “Then I will indulge myself to the fullest until he gets here.” “Are you certain it’s a he?” “It had better be, since Westcliff needs an heir and I’m never going through this again.

Is that how you play?" Daisy asked breezily. "I just envision how I want the bowl to go, and then I roll it.

All this effort for a man who doesn’t even care,” Daisy muttered to herself, thinking dire thoughts about Matthew Swift. Llandrindon sat a few yards away on the rim of a garden fountain, obediently holding still as she sketched his portrait. She had never been particularly talented at sketching, but she was running out of things to do with him. “What was that?” the Scottish lord called out. “I said you have a fine head of hair!

When one felt like a wasp, one’s main inclination was to sting.

Blast,” Daisy complained. “Blast, blast…Lillian, I had just gotten to the best part!” “As we speak there are at least a half-dozen eligible men who are lawn-bowling outside,” her sister said crisply. “And playing games with them is far more productive than reading by yourself.” “I don’t know anything about bowls.” “Good. Ask them to teach you. If there’s one thing every man loves to do, it’s telling a woman how to do something.

Rather than list all the things I don’t like about him,” Daisy said finally, “it’s far easier to say there is no reason why I should like him.