But the words were out.

“I would like to show it to you,” he said. “I always make sure that the park is kept tidy and that the house is kept clean, though it is almost a year since the last tenants left.”

“Then I would like to go,” she said. “Thank you. I shall look forward to it.”

They did not speak much after that, but after stepping through the park gates and turning left along the narrow road with its hedgerows on either side and over the stone bridge that spanned the valley, they were soon in the village. It was small and picturesque, its gray stone houses, some thatched, some roofed with gray slate, set back a little way from the road at various angles, a green privet hedge all about the perimeter of each garden, flower beds and grass in front, long lines of vegetables growing at the back. The church was tall with a narrow spire, the chapel more squat and solid-looking a short distance farther along the road.

He did not always attend the chapel. Although he was taking Welsh lessons from Tudor Rhys, the minister, and could both understand and speak a few sentences and read a great deal more, he was quickly lost when people around him started to speak at normal conversational speed, and the lengthy sermons went right over his head. But he did come sometimes. He loved the sound of the language and the fervor of the minister and congregation. It was the music that drew him most, though.

He no longer felt self-conscious with the villagers, who had grown accustomed to his appearance long ago. But he felt self-conscious this morning as he arrived at the chapel with Miss Jewell and was aware of the hush that fell over the congregation and then the renewed whisperings and head noddings. And one glance at her told him that she was feeling equally embarrassed.

But it was a morning service that he knew he would long remember. Perhaps he always would, in fact. Though the villagers and country people were accustomed to him, most of them nevertheless kept their distance from him, perhaps more out of respect than revulsion. He always had the pew to himself-except today.

Today he had a beautiful woman seated beside him for all of an hour and a half and it was just as well no one could read his thoughts. During the long sermon he entertained all sorts of fantasies about her relationship to him.

Most of all, though, he would remember the way she blushed and smiled when Tudor Rhys suddenly switched to English in order to introduce her to his congregation and welcome her. And the way she stood enthralled during every hymn while a hundred or more Welsh men and women around them opened their throats and sang praises in perfect, unrehearsed harmony.

Yes, he thought as they left the chapel after shaking hands with the minister and nodding and smiling at the people grouped outside in the street, gossiping and exchanging news, he would always remember this morning.

He might as well take her to Ty Gwyn one day within the next two weeks and have that to remember too after she had returned to Bath.

He had no idea if he would remember with pain or pleasure-or even indifference. Time would answer that question, he supposed.

“Mr. Butler,” she said as they walked back and paused for a few minutes on the bridge to gaze down into the valley. “I can understand why you have fallen in love with Wales. It is more than just a different country, is it not? It is like a different world. I am so glad I came here.”

“I am glad too,” he said.

And then he felt foolish and even a little alarmed because she did not respond and neither of them moved, and his words seemed to hang in the air before them until they had walked on and turned between the park gates again and he thought of something else to say.

He was not even sure he was glad she had come. His celibacy and womanless state had become bearable to him over the years because there had been no one to remind him of all he had missed since he had been made untouchable.

But then Anne Jewell had arrived at Glandwr and in his life, and as fate would have it she was not only gloriously beautiful, but also chose to be his friend. He must never forget, though, how she had reacted to him at first sight and how she had shrunk from him after inadvertently touching his cheek on the rocks between the two beaches. Or how she had turned and run down the hill a few evenings ago just when he had been about to give in to the temptation to kiss her.

She was his friend-nothing more than that.

He was, he believed, going to have to fight certain demons all over again after she had left.

He was going to miss her-and try his very best to forget her.

After the Sunday morning on which Anne Jewell and Sydnam Butler went to church together and he walked all the way back to the main house with her before returning alone to his cottage, they met almost every day.

Anne had enjoyed that outing more than she could possibly have expected. It was strange, really, in light of the fact that the Welsh service had been quite unintelligible to her. Though that was not strictly true. It had somehow spoken to her heart, bypassing the intellect-not just the music but all of it. And there had been something undeniably seductive about being accompanied by a man, about walking to church with him, sitting beside him on the pew, walking home with him.

Sometimes over the next week and a half she met him by chance-out on the cliffs, for example, when she went walking there one evening after tucking David into bed. More often, though, it was by design, usually in the afternoon when his work was finished and David was busy with the other children about some activity or other.

He took her to see the village school, with Mr. Jones attending them, and since the children were on holiday, they sat, the three of them, at the narrow wooden desks in the single square classroom and conversed for longer than an hour-or, to be more accurate, Anne and Mr. Butler listened while the schoolmaster spoke eloquently of Wales and Welsh history and education. He taught in both English and Welsh, Anne was interested to discover, since he had pupils with both languages. And his pupils almost invariably became bilingual after a few weeks.

Mr. Butler took her to call upon Mr. and Mrs. Llwyd, since she had spoken wistfully of the lovely harp music she had heard, and Mrs. Llwyd spent half an hour or longer with her, showing her the instrument, demonstrating various tones and chords, and playing for her while Mr. Butler talked with Mr. Llwyd about farming. Mrs. Llwyd insisted that they take tea before they left, and they were joined by the two sons of the house, aged eleven and twelve. Both boys wished that David had come too after Anne had mentioned him. And both boys attended the village school.

Anne went walking with Sydnam Butler along country lanes or sat by the stream in the valley with him or strolled on the beach. Once they went for a long walk to the distant outcropping of land that they both spoke of as the Dragon.

“Some people hereabouts have even told me that it is the original Welsh dragon, petrified by a sea deity,” he told her with a laugh. “It is an attractive legend, but I believe they are merely trying to see how gullible an Englishman can be.”

They took a picnic tea with them on that day and sat eating wafer-thin slices of bread and butter with cheese followed by currant cakes and drinking lukewarm lemonade far out from the mainland, the water on three sides of them sparkling in the sunshine.

“I feel as if I am on a ship,” she said, “sailing…oh, somewhere exotic, somewhere wonderful.”

“A journey to forever,” he said. “An enticing, perfect forever.”

“No, not forever,” she told him. “There is much I would miss if I could not come back. And I could not go without David.”

“You are quite right,” he said. “Not forever, then. Just for a long, long afternoon.”

“Agreed,” she said, stretching out on the grass and gazing up at the blue sky as she had gazed at the stars a week earlier. “A long afternoon. Wake me when it is time to go home.”

But he tickled her nose with a long piece of grass only moments after she had closed her eyes, and they both laughed, their faces not very far apart. She closed her eyes again only so that they would not feel the tension and be compelled to move away from each other in order to cover it up.

There was a certain guilty pleasure to be taken from the tension. And yet she could not bear the thought of his actually touching her-and she still did not know if it was his appearance from which she shrank or her own memories of intimacy. Perhaps it was a little-or a lot-of each.

It did not rain once during those days. There was scarcely even a cloud in the sky.

They talked about anything and everything, it seemed to Anne. He was as comfortable to be with as any of the closest of her friends-except that he was a man.

It felt so good to have a man friend. She no longer even minded being seen with him-and inevitably the Bedwyns and the other guests at the house did see them together. Why should she mind, after all? There was nothing between them that needed to be hidden, and no one-not even Joshua-ever teased her about her friendship with Glandwr’s steward.

Even David saw them together one afternoon. He was playing out on the lawn with the other children when Anne and Mr. Butler were coming from the hill and left the group to come dashing toward them.

“Mama,” he cried, “I cut my finger on tree bark, see? But Lady Aidan took me up to the nursery and cleaned it and bandaged it for me, and it really does not hurt very much at all except that it is harder to catch the ball. How do you do, sir? I went painting again this morning, but I can’t wait to get Mr. Upton to teach me to paint with oils. Oh, there is Jacques calling-I must go.”