“These flowers are so lovely,” she said. “The most beautiful I have ever seen.”
She laid them down on the bench beside him.
He turned to face her and took a deep breath.
“Why?” he asked.
Jane was so calm, so gentle and yet suddenly as she looked into his eyes, she seemed to be very strong as well.
He had the oddest feeling that he would like her to take his hand and hold it in hers and feel her cool slender fingers press against his.
“Let me try and explain,” she suggested.
As he sat beside her on the bench and heard her story, the tale that began on the sunny afternoon in Oxford, when Adella fell in love with Digby in the Botanical Gardens, he felt a strange peace well up inside himself.
She finished and then took his hand, pressing his fingers with hers, as he had imagined, befor
