They follow the road into secluded green valleys, before climbing back up into the chalk hills. She looks across at Jack and finds him smiling at her. "Eyes on the road," she warns, but she takes up his hand and places it on her warm thigh, gradually directing it under the edge of her skirt and petticoat. He glances across at her again, his smile broadening. Lillian shifts a little in her seat, parting her legs slightly, releasing a soft sigh as his fingertips graze her inner thigh.

She falls asleep with her head resting in the crook of his arm. Jack lies next to her, listening to the wind moving through the beech trees, watching the gauze curtains lifting in the breeze, gently tracing the delicate bones in her wrist as he stares up into the darkness overhead.

What did you tell him?""The truth: that you're spending your days cloistered away and that you only emerge for sleep and sustenance."Jack seizes her arm and nibbles the crook of her elbow. "I suppose that makes you sustenance, does it?

This spark between us is so strong. Sometimes, I feel it might steal the oxygen from the air around us.""Exactly." He smiles and leans in to kiss her on the mouth.

In the dim light of the swaying Chinese lanterns, it's hard to read his expression but once, as Charles's gaze drifts out across the lawn, she sees his dark eyes slide across to her and wonders if she imagines the slightest twitch of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

It's a little early to be falling asleep," says a voice, soft and low, at her side.Startled, she spins to face the man who seems to have materialized from nowhere."By all accounts," he adds, "there are still hours of this to get through."She doesn't recognize him. In the near-darkness his face is smooth like sculpted marble and his eyes shine almost black; his expression is hard to read- playful, perhaps- but it's his choice of words that intrigues her the most.

It's been years since you opened up the gardens or hosted an event. It used to be de rigueur.""Yes, and didn't it also used to be de rigueur that you'd throw yourself at any new man who arrived in Cloud Green?

Here we are," says Jack.Lillian stops and looks around, marveling at the high, green canopy and the soft light streaming through the branches. Overhead a magpie flits through the branches of a tree, rustling leaves until it takes flight with a mournful cry, its wings beating the air. "This is beautiful," she says."Yes," agrees Jack. "It's like standing inside nature's own cathedral, don't you think?

There is no one in the walled garden for company but the dog and a lone blackbird fluttering hopefully through the espaliered fruit trees and over the netted gooseberry bushes. The sun is still a low rose-gold blush on the horizon. Dew seeps through her silk slippers but she hardly notices.

The scrubbed oak table and the pots of herbs and geraniums growing on the windowsill, the old willow-pattern china standing on the dresser, a jug filled with peonies spilling petals on the floor.