When at last he pulled back, I leaned against his chest, and his arms wrapped around me. I knew I should step away. If I had done that, I might have been able to wake up the next morning and go back to my life as it was before. I might have pretended that I am passionate only about my gardens. Yet I knew what it was to be touched—longed for—and I ached for this long-neglected part of me.
This time I was the one who kissed him. I slid my hands into his hair. I breathed in the smell of him. I angled myself into the warmth of his body.
A laugh from somewhere nearby broke the spell, and both of us stumbled back a step.
The laugh came again, further off than we realized. Both of us breathed a sigh of relief.
He lowered his forehead to rest against mine, and he took my hand again, his thumb playing circles along the back of it.
“Venetia.” He said my name like a prayer.
It was that reverence that made me whisper, “Come to my cottage.”
“Someone might see us together.”
“Wait here for ten minutes before following me. No one will be suspicious about you visiting the greenhouses.”
“In the dead of night?” he asked.
“It will only add to your reputation as an eccentric horticulturalist.”
He huffed a laugh and shoved a hand through his hair. “I will follow you after ten minutes.”
My heart was in my throat as I followed the winding path through the garden rooms and across the ramble. Once in my cottage, I went to my vanity and began unwinding my hair from the elaborate knot the maid had dressed it in earlier that evening. I dropped pin after pin into a little china dish, each ping punctuating my wait.
A soft knock sounded at the door—exactly ten minutes after I left him. When I reached the front room, he was already inside, his jacket off and his necktie hung in two long strips against his shirt.
Without a word, I offered him my back. Chin resting on my shoulder, I watched him undo each and every button of my dress with a steady, patient hand.
• BETH •
21 May 1944
Dearest Beth,
I know it’s been too long since I’ve written to you last. It’s just that this war… it weighs so heavily on the mind.
The men in my unit don’t talk about these sorts of things, but I can tell. Just the other day, Parker came out of a fog he’d been in for weeks because he got a letter from his wife. He’s a proud father to a little girl he will not meet for weeks or months if he manages to survive this war at all.
I sometimes wonder if I was unfair asking you to be mine. The truth is, I’ve always wondered what would have happened if your aunt had lived closer to the farm. What if you hadn’t moved away when we were children or if I’d said the right things to you the few times we saw each other last year.
That is too many ifs for one letter. Just know that I look forward to your letters always.
With all my affection,
Colin
“Stop fussing your hem.” Ruth knocked Beth’s hand away from, once again, tugging at her borrowed dress.
“You look fine,” said Petunia with a laugh as they walked up the long crushed lime drive of Highbury House.
Six land girls had all come together to the dance, moving like a pack of excitable parrots in all their finery. Christine and Anne had ridden on a pair of old bicycles to Temple Fosse Farm to pick up Beth and Ruth. Petunia and a girl named Jemima, who was new to South Warwickshire and still growing the calluses on her hands, had joined as well.
Captain Hastings—Graeme he’d asked her to call him—had tried to insist on picking Beth up at Temple Fosse Farm.
“It’s the proper thing to do,” he’d said just the day before.
She’d laughed. “What’s proper during this war? Besides, it doesn’t make any sense for you to go all that way only to come right back to where you started. I’ll walk over with the other girls, and you can meet me there. I’ll feel like Cinderella entering the ball.”
He’d grudgingly agreed, and she was glad, for it had been fun getting ready together. Almost like having a mismatched band of sisters all rushing around her. Ruth had taught Christine how to pin up her curls at each temple, and Anne had tried a swatch of every single lipstick in the farmhouse before deciding on a coral. Beth wouldn’t have traded anything for the moment when they’d all cheered because Mrs. Penworthy’d convinced her husband to drive them to the big house in the horse and cart.
“I wonder if there will be soldiers,” said Anne in her breathy voice when the house came into view.
“Pilots. Many, many pilots,” said Ruth with the sort of determination that almost made Beth feel sorry for the men.
She smiled at her usually sullen roommate. It was hard not to be caught up in the excitement. The dance was a proper one, with decorations pulled from the house’s huge attics and a band from the local air base. Rumor had it that Mrs. Symonds had opened up the wine cellar, although Stella had told Beth she would believe it when she saw it.
And the best part of all was that a man she liked was waiting for her.
Maybe she should feel a bit more guilty. Just that morning, another letter from Colin had arrived in the post. She’d read it and tucked it into the box by her bedside to deal with later.
She couldn’t continue this way. She’d said yes to being his girl because she hadn’t known how to say no, but their correspondence had never sat comfortably with her. Now that her world had grown, she was another person from that girl he’d telephoned before shipping out. Now his letters were not enough.
Petunia squeezed her hand as they approached Highbury House’s front door. “Are you excited to see your captain?”
“I am,” she said, brightness glowing past her guilt.
“Then let’s go find him.”
The entryway was already heaving with men and women in a mix of uniforms and civilian clothes. The dance would start at six o’clock to take advantage of the lengthening late-spring days and to avoid violating the blackout. No one here cared that six would have been unthinkably early in peacetime. They would all squeeze as much joy out of the night as they could.
Beth floated through the brightly lit entryway toward the French doors thrown open to the veranda and the sound of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Sister Wharton collected their tickets, and they handed off their coats to Dorothy, a maid who looked desperate to be asked to dance.
Fighting her niggling fears, Beth’s eyes swept the crowded dance floor as she looked for Graeme. What if he’d fallen ill? Or perhaps he’d been discharged earlier than he thought, and he couldn’t get word to her. Or maybe he’d changed his mind about her.
“There you are.”
She spun on her heel with a smile of relief. There he stood, tall in his dress uniform, a spray of orchids in his right hand.
“You look beautiful,” he said, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek.
She pressed a hand to her chest, still not used to its flutter every time he drew that close. “Thank you.”
He held up the flowers. “For you.”
“They’re beautiful,” she said, smelling them. A pin secured the ribbon wrapping the stems: a corsage. The man had managed to find her a corsage in the middle of rural Warwickshire during a war.