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reaction. “You don’t think I’d like to spend time with your mom?”
    He looked taken aback. “No, not that at all.”
    “What, then? My aversion to publicity? You already know that.”
    His hand raked through his unruly hair. “I don’t know. Look, it’s not that. It doesn’t matter.” He came around the bed in long strides and sat on the end of it in front of me.
    It squeaked.
    Awesome.
    We both cringed. “You need to get some damn clothes on before I embarrass my mother. I’m getting to the point I might not care what sounds emanate from this bedroom.”
    He was deflecting from the issue at hand. The issue being more than just me not wanting to deal with a media frenzy. Something was weighing on his mind. I’d caught glimpses of it now and then. But what was it?
     

     
    “IT’S CALLED A stile.” Jack stood by the wet mossy wooden contraption, holding out his hand in the cold, damp white-misted air. Did England, in fact, even have a sky? This was our second walk since our arrival yesterday, and I’d yet to see one.
    I looked at his hand dubiously, then at the nonchalant looking bull in the distance behind his head while I breathed in the faint smell of cow dung and earthy wet stone. England. I kind of always thought it would feel, smell, and look like this. I loved it. It was so different from anything I’d grown up with.
    “You just climb up on the board and swing your leg over the fence,” Jack said patiently. He was wearing jeans, dark grey green wellington boots, “wellies,” a dark green waxed Barbour rain jacket, and a tartan Burberry scarf wrapped around his neck. I didn’t look much different. Although my “wellies” were dark brown as was my ladies’ version of the jacket—the spoils of the many packages that had arrived. I felt like I was in a Town & Country photo spread.
    “Are you sure we’re allowed to?” I asked. “I mean why wouldn’t they just put a gate in if they wanted people to pass.”
    “Well, they put the gates where it suits for farming, that doesn’t always gel with where the footpaths are. A stile is just saying, look, I realize this is a public footpath that goes right through my land. You can go through it, but I don’t have to like it.”
    “I’m sure they don’t want anyone going through a field with a horny bull in it.”
    Jack chuckled at my expression and turned his dark head toward the creature in the distance. His hair ruffled in the arctic breeze, and the tips of his ears were tinged pink with cold. “He doesn’t look horny.”
    “ You don’t look horny, but I bet I could get you there in two seconds flat.”
    Jack’s raised his eyebrows, then dropped them, resigned. “That’s a challenge I’ll lose.”
    “Wait. So people can own land, but anyone has the right to walk through it?”
    “Pretty much. If it has a Public Right of Way through it, it’s illegal not to allow access. Hurry up, are you going over or what?”
    The bull snorted. It was staring at me.
    Us.
    No, me. Definitely me. “But they’re letting us go into a field with a lone, irritated looking bull. And I’m wearing a red scarf!” A soft and luxurious scarf made of something called vicuña, courtesy of Jack’s twelve days of Christmas, day six gift. I loved it. It was the softest thing, and probably the most expensive thing, I owned. “Is there a warning posted?”
    “I guess it’s the farmer’s way of expressing his irritation at having to let people wander through. Keep us on edge a bit. I’m pretty sure they also have to legally post if it’s a dangerous bull and not a juvenile. Or have a heifer in here with him to relieve him. Come on, already.”
    The bull resumed munching grass so I took Jack’s hand and climbed up on the stile, swinging my leg over the fence, careful not to tear my jeans. I made it over and jumped down onto the thick, wet clumpy grass. Jack followed. The path, which was really more of a worn, flattened grassy line amongst the not so