I’ll Bring You Buttercups. Elizabeth Elgin

her. ‘Can we walk in the woods, do you think?’

      ‘I think we’d better.’ She lifted her eyes to his, loving him, wanting him. ‘Because I need to kiss you, too. And don’t say you don’t want to, because I know you do. Your voice changes when you want me – did you know it? You speak to me with a – a lover’s voice and it makes me – oh, I don’t know …’

      ‘You do know, Julia, and one day we will – only don’t make me wait too long?’

      ‘I won’t. I promise I won’t. And can we please find a place where no one can see us?’

      ‘See us!’ he exulted. ‘But we are walking out, you and I, and in a year we shall announce our engagement. So let’s tell the world about it –’ he tilted her chin with his forefinger and laid his lips gently on hers – ‘with a kiss.’

      It was, said Bess, who had been carrying coal to the library and was passing the window in the front hall when she saw it, so romantic you wouldn’t believe it. The way he’d kissed her, chin tilted, and she with her eyes closed, just like in a love book.

      ‘And then she picked a rosebud, and put it in his buttonhole,’ she sighed, misty-eyed. ‘I stood there and saw her do it and if you don’t believe me, then Mary’ll tell you when she serves luncheon. You’ll see that rosebud, Mary, then you’ll know I’m not making it up.’

      ‘Hm,’ grunted Tilda, annoyed that kitchenmaids saw nothing, stuck downstairs, whilst Bess and Mary had a better time of it altogether. ‘I never said I didn’t believe you.’ Tilda, who knew everything there was to know about falling in love from books in the penny library, had suspected all along that something was going on, and that Alice knew more about it than she was letting on. ‘And what’s more, I’ll bet you anything you like that Hawthorn knows more’n she’ll admit to.’

      ‘Alice?’ Cook demanded in a voice that commanded obedience.

      ‘I know no more than any of you,’ she offered reluctantly, ‘and that’s –’ That’s the truth, she’d been going to say, but when she thought about it, when there was one extra for luncheon and Miss Julia getting herself kissed in full view of the entire household … ‘that’s all I can say, except maybe that his name is Andrew MacMalcolm, and he’s a doctor, in London. And when Miss Julia fell and hurt herself –’

      ‘It was him!’ Tilda supplied triumphantly. ‘Him that brought her round and tended her, and saved her life!’

      ‘Him,’ Alice confirmed, pink-cheeked. ‘And if any one of you breathes so much as a word of what I’ve told you in the village, then I’ll never tell you anything again!’

      They said they wouldn’t; never a word of it, and demanded of Bess what had happened then – after he’d kissed her, that was, and Miss Julia had picked the rosebud. And Bess said she couldn’t rightly say, as they’d climbed the park fence, then, and made hand in hand for the woods.

      ‘The woods,’ Mrs Shaw repeated, her mouth screwed up as if she had just swallowed vinegar.

      ‘Ooooh, the woods,’ Tilda sighed, closing her eyes in a shudder of purest bliss. ‘The woods …’

      ‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ Alice snapped, annoyed she had told them anything at all. ‘Where’s the wrong in her walking in her own woods, will you tell me, with a guest?’

      She wished she could talk to Miss Julia; tell her the cat was out of the bag. And she couldn’t wait to see Tom and tell him all about it, from first to last. It was awful, having to help out in the kitchen and not being able to take Morgan for his afternoon run and wanting, so much, to hold Tom, and kiss him – just as Miss Julia and Doctor Andrew were doing now, she fervently hoped.

      She closed her eyes and crossed her fingers, wishing that tonight Mr Giles would be too busy to take Morgan out, because if she didn’t see Tom soon, she would die. She really would.

      ‘Hawthorn! That is enough!’

      ‘Well, if you’re set on wearing the green tonight, miss,’ Alice gave another determined tug on the corset laces, ‘they’ll have to be tighter.’

      ‘Ouch! Did you know that Doctor MacMalcolm does not approve of corsets? He says that tight lacing is unnatural and the cause of a lot of ailments in women. He blames them entirely for the vapours.’

      ‘Ooh, miss. You don’t talk to him about corsets?’ My word, but things had come on apace, if they were talking about unmentionables!

      ‘Indeed I do, and he said that two weeks free from corsets would do most women more good than two weeks at the seaside. But aren’t we both lucky? You and Dwerryhouse sharing a pew in church for all to see, and Andrew and me …’

      ‘Yes?’ Now at last they were getting down to brass tacks.

      ‘We-e-ell, since you were the cause of it – in a roundabout way, that is –’ How indeed would they have met if Hawthorn hadn’t sent the policeman flying? – ‘I want you to be the first to know. It’s going to be all right!’

      ‘Me, miss – the first? But they all know.’ Carefully Alice knotted the laces. ‘They put two and two together. You were seen in the garden, and that settled it. They’d all been wondering who the caller was, and when Mary came downstairs and told Cook there was one extra for lunch …’ She shrugged eloquently.

      ‘So did you tell them?’

      ‘N-not exactly. I kept getting looks from Mrs Shaw, but when Bess said she’d seen you and him – well –’

      ‘Kissing?’ Julia laughed.

      ‘Yes. That an’ all. I had to admit, then, that he was the doctor who’d taken care of your bruises. No more’n that though – honest.’

      ‘Hawthorn, it doesn’t matter. It’s all right for us to write and to meet, you see, but not to be engaged – not just yet. I’ve promised Mama we’d wait a year and then, if we are both of the same mind –’

      ‘Which you will be …’

      ‘Nothing is more certain! Anyway, in a year we can be properly engaged – isn’t it wonderful? And Andrew is invited to visit again, tomorrow, because Mama likes him. I could tell she was going to, right from the start.’

      ‘Yes, miss, and I’m glad. But what am I to tell them downstairs?’ Alice pleaded. ‘They’ll give me no peace till they’re told something.’

      ‘Poor Hawthorn. Never mind. Thank you for helping. I can finish dressing myself, now. And you mustn’t tell them anything at all, except –’ She smiled, then, and her eyes shone and she was all of a sudden so beautiful, Alice thought, that it fair took her breath away. ‘Except that tomorrow, when Doctor MacMalcolm visits again, I shall take him downstairs to meet them all.

      ‘And sorry – I’m in such a tizzy that I forgot. Giles said I was to ask if you could possibly find time to give that dog a run tonight – if Mrs Shaw will allow it, that is.’

      ‘I think,’ Alice smiled impishly, ‘that she will.’ Mrs Shaw would be in such a bother of delight when she heard that Miss Julia’s young man would be visiting her kitchen, that she would agree to anything. ‘And, miss, I’m that happy for you both, and I’ll come and unlace you at bedtime,’ she added soberly. ‘And thanks about Morgan.’

      Because Miss Julia, bless her, had arranged it. Miss Julia was a dear, kind young lady who would grow to be like her mother; beautiful, and mindful of those around her, for she was beautiful – just like Cook said she would be, and she and the doctor would have beautiful children together and live happily ever after.

      She hugged herself with sheer happiness, then ran to the kitchen with her news.

      ‘Off you go, then.’ Alice slipped the spaniel’s lead at the woodland fence, watching him go, nose down; sniffing, snuffling, scenting rabbit and partridge