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bed...' Her mother's voice cracked and she rapidly blinked her eyes.
    Rachel bowed her head, letting the powdery perfumed petals of Sylvie's gift brush her face. 'Poor Isabel,' she softly echoed. 'Poor Papa, too,' she added in a wry tone. 'He has ever been disappointed with me, hasn't he? He would have preferred it if I had been born a boy, I know. Then I might have collected beasts to my heart's content and had Windrush as my inheritance to his heart's content.'
    'All fathers yearn for a son and heir, Rachel,' her mother responded mildly.
    'It's the way of the world.' ' 'It's why he wanted me so soon married, isn't it?
    To get his son at last. I was but nineteen,' she reminded her mother in a raw voice.

    'Not so very young, my dear,' Gloria rebutted. 'I was a month short of my eighteenth birthday when I married your papa. I was a month short of my nineteenth birthday when you were born...'
    'That was then! I feel differently. Six years ago I wasn't ready to be anyone's wife!'
    'You said you were, Rachel. No one coerced you to accept Connor's proposal, certainly not the man himself. You insisted that you were in love.
    Your papa needed to know that before he accepted Connor's suit. Your happiness was paramount. Perhaps I mistake my guess, but I would have said, at first, you were very much in love with your fiance...'
    'I was wrong. I made a mistake when still a teenager, yet I must pay and pay.'
    'That's not true, Rachel,' Gloria soothed with a catch to her voice and a glance at her husband. 'You cannot honestly say that we have persecuted you over this, can you?'
    'Besides, Papa has his son now,' Rachel said, humbled by her mother's gentle honesty. 'William is a fine man; quite the pcrfect addition to any family.'
    'The lilac will be finished when June is married.' Gloria changed the subject after a significant pause, cupping the fragrant floret in her hand. 'Such a pity: the chapel always looks so picturesque when the bushes are in full bloom by the lych-gate.'
    'The roses will be out and the lilies...and the jasmine and sweet peas...'
    Rachel smiled faintly. 'The gardens will look splendid... every thing will be splendid.'
    Rachel knew that her mother needed reassurance on much more than the estate's variety of horticulture. But she hadn't overstated the wonderful show of flowers they could expect next month. If anyone knew Windrush and its natural attributes, Rachel did. She was cognisant with the entire estate: from dry stone wall to chimney stack, from lilac bush to lily pond. Every one of its two hundred acres was familiar, dear to her. And, unusually, despite being female, one day it would be hers. As eldest child it was her inheritance.

    'I don't want to pry, my dear, but was Connor...did he...?'
    Rachel gave a choke of laughter. 'Yes, mama, he did recognise me and, yes, I believe he has an axe to grind, although for the moment he keeps it suitably sheathed. To be fair, he behaved very well...impeccably, as Papa would put it. He came to our assistance, actually, and but for his intervention we might even now be stranded in Charing Cross, watching brave Ralph doing battle with a brewer...' She gave her mother a concise account of what had occurred, and the people involved. Finally she added, 'It's odd; yesterday, I would have sworn I could not have accurately described how he looks after all this time. Yet I recognised him straight away; the moment Lucinda pointed him out...' Tiny lilac buds were absently nipped away with her nails and dropped through the window on to the dry earth below.
    'What did he say to you? What did you say to him? You weren't rude, Rachel, were you? Your papa would be furious if he thought you had again been mean to that man.'
    'Of course not.' Rachel reassured her on a faint laugh, feeling her insides squirm at the fib. In truth, she was remorseful over her behaviour. Lord Devane wasa stranger now and he had given her no real cause to be surly.
    The lilac head was ferociously denuded, then