Robert Timmins held out his arms, and slowly and surely James Dowland toppled into them. It was the second time in as many weeks that he had fallen from a horse's back but somehow this time he managed to do it without injuring himself further, although as he sagged against Robert's shoulder he was scarcely more than semi-conscious.

"My son hates me," he said, thickly, his face pressed against Robert's dusty old work-shirt. It had only been a few days since James had discovered that he had a son at all, and they had been days full of incident. At first he had been perfectly content to leave the boy at school and just take over responsibility for paying his fees, but Dorcas Lane had somehow managed to convince herself that young Sidney was unhappy and had talked James into sending for him to Candleford. Even that might not have turned out quite so awkwardly, had James not then suffered the first of his riding accidents and spent several days in hospital. By the time he had fully recovered his senses, Sidney was firmly installed with Dorcas at the Candleford Post Office and showing very few signs of any desire to leave.

"He doesn't hate you, James. He doesn't know you."

It had been 'sir' and 'Mr Dowland' only moments before, but the membrane of formality had now been pierced. After all, they had known one another as younger men, a long time ago, when there had been no difference in their status. If James had gone out into the world and made something of his life, while Robert had stayed behind and done likewise, they were still, underneath, the same people they had been then.

"He'll hate me when he knows me. Everybody does."

Growing impatient with this exhibition of self-pity, Robert snorted. "Everybody! Everybody doesn't hate you!" Carefully, he eased James down into a sitting position on a large boundary stone which had been incorporated into a flower border. James crumpled against him, struggling for breath, his legs weak and scarcely under his control.

"Dorcas does. You do."

Robert crouched, slinging a muscular arm around James's shoulders. The sun was shining into the injured man's eyes and he held up a hand to block it out.

"I can't speak for Dorcas Lane, but I don't believe hating's much in her nature. She strikes me as a fair-enough minded woman and generous of spirit, for the most part, although I don’t say anyone who hurts her might not suffer for it. As for me, you haven't given me reason to hate you. I'll not waste my energy hating where it's not needed."

James groaned. "There's nothing I can do," he said. "My business partners will take the hotel. I'll have to start again, somewhere far away from here."

"Hmmm." Robert adjusted his grip, his large hand wrapping itself firmly around James's waist and his square shoulder bracing for the other man's weight. "If you'll forgive me saying so, Mr Dowland, sir," he said, in a gently mocking tone of self-parody, "it seems to me you're not in any condition to be making business decisions at the moment. Let me help you back on your horse and walk you down to Lark Rise; Queenie'll know what to do with you, and she won't charge half as much as they do in that fancy hospital."

James's fair head nodded slightly, his mouth curving and the heavy lashes drooping over his sore and straining eyes. "If only people weren't so complicated, Robert," he whispered. "If only everybody was as straightforward as you."

"I'm not straightforward, James," was the quiet response as Robert hauled him easily to his feet. "Not one least, not one tiniest little bit."

The arrival of her beloved James in the company of Robert Timmins threw Queenie Turrill into the closest she ever got to a nervous flutter. Normally the most competent and able of women, she had loved this young man since his mother died and his wretched condition now distressed her considerably.

"Oh, James," she said, in a tone of exaggerated concern. "What've you been doing to yourself?"

On the edge of a swoon, James allowed himself to be lifted from the horse's back again and half-carried indoors.

"Left hospital before he was properly well, in my opinion," Robert said, briskly, setting his burden down onto an ancient wooden chair and tugging away the restricting cravat from around James's neck. "Too much on his mind to rest," he added, more sympathetically.

Queenie paused in readying her kettle for the stove and looked over at him, sharp eyes studying his face carefully. "You never said a truer word," she nodded. "I've been trying to persuade him, but he doesn't listen to me. Maybe you'll have better luck. I don't," she went on, "ever recall the two of you being great friends before, but you're a good neighbour, Robert Timmins, and a sensible man."

"I was just the one who happened to be by him when he fell, Queenie."

"So you were," she replied. "So you were." Then, more decisively, "He should be put to bed as soon as possible. Can you help him up the stairs for me and get his boots off?"

Robert's dark eyebrows lifted. Queenie's cottage was much like his own; each had two small bedrooms under the eaves and more inhabitants already than it had ever been intended to house. In each case the stairs were narrow and bent in a tight dog-leg, over which he had helped many a wilting wife or sickly child through the years. He was rarely, however, called upon to assist a man built nearly as strongly as himself.

"How about it, James?" he asked, solicitously. "Will you let me help you?"

James nodded, but made no attempt to speak.

"All right, then, we'll see how it goes. Where shall I put him, Queenie?"

"In mine and Twister's bed," was the reply. "He'll have to share it with Twister, and I'll go in with the girls."

"What do you say to that, then, Mr Dowland?" Robert asked, as he hefted the man across the kitchen. "Not many men can say they've slept with Twister Turrill. Not an' lived to tell the tale, anyway."

There was an inaudible murmur from James.

"What's that?" Robert, struggling to turn him at the foot of the stairs, was only half listening.

"He says he's grateful to have a bed at all," Queenie put in, from her place by the stove. "Go on with you, Robert, and get him out of those clothes if you can. I'll bring tea as soon as the kettle's boiled, and then we'll let him sleep."

The turn in the stairs was nearly the death of them both. James was heavy enough, for all his slim build, and seemed entirely unable to help himself. The tiny bedroom was almost too small to contain the pair of them; indeed, it only just had enough space for a large old wooden bedstead covered in a faded patchwork quilt. A bolster and a pair of much-darned and mended sheets were its only other accoutrements.

"Sit you down," Robert gasped, turning and lowering him with care, "and let me get your boots off at least."

Having settled James against the bedhead he knelt, grasped one immaculate brown riding boot and hauled it off with a flourish. The second followed, and he stood them tidy beside the partition before returning his attention to the fainting man. It was not difficult to wrench him out of his coat and waistcoat, which were soon out of the way, but the riding breeches were a close fit and it would require care and dexterity to extract James from them without multiple embarrassments.

"Well, then," he decided, quietly, "there's no help for it." His fingers at the fly efficiently unfastened five buttons, one after the other. "You'll have to help me, James. Put your arms around my neck to that I can lift you."

How many times had he had to do this for one or other of his children, or for neighbours in distress? More than he could count. It was always more intimate than he would have wanted it to be, but nine times out of ten, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they were grateful for his care. Robert did not consider himself much of a nurse, but he had a manner that ill people found soothing and whenever one of the men of the village needed to be lifted it would usually be Robert who was called in to lend his broad back to the cause. Thus he had held and lifted nearly everybody he knew, at one time or another, but few of them had ever affected him the way this one did. Indeed, when James's arms slid weakly around his neck and James's hands locked behind his head it was almost too much like an embrace for him to bear with continued fortitude.

"Hush now," he said, lifting the younger man just far enough to ease him out of his breeches. What he was wearing under them was so thin as to scarcely be classed as underwear, and fitted so tightly that it could be nothing but silk, but at least it preserved the decencies even if it did nothing to hide the contours of the manly form beneath.

"Long time," James murmured, as Robert set him down again.

"What?"

The arms were still around his neck.

"Since … a man."

At first the words made no sense at all, but all of a sudden they clicked into place like the mechanism of a gun and with a potential that was just as deadly. Something about being undressed by a man had started a memory in James's mind, and Robert found that knowledge extremely disturbing. That James could be familiar with that particular type of encounter had never entered his head before. Indeed, if pressed, he would have said that but for a few youthful fumbles between farm boys - soon over and even sooner blushed about in recollection - there was no-one in the whole of Lark Rise who had any experience of intimate pleasure between men … with the notable exception of himself.

"It's all right, James," he said, quietly. "There's nothing to worry about. I won’t hurt you."

"You could," was the breathed reply, very close to his ear. From a man in full possession of his senses it was a remark that might have led to something brief and passionate and dangerous; from James, it was merely wistful and lonely and more than a little tragic.

"I shouldn't want to," Robert told him, softly. Somehow he had managed to extract the corner of the quilt from underneath James and now turned him to lay him on the bed in underwear and shirt, but still James's arms were looped around his neck and still he could not quite bring himself to pull away. He was being clung to, but there was also a sense in which he was clinging back; he had not known this closeness to a willing male body for a long, long time, and the unexpectedness and open intention even from someone half-crazed with illness made him remember things he had wanted to believe were no longer part of his life. He had enjoyed men, but he had thought that wanting to had been left behind in his frivolous past. James, however, was beginning to make him believe that it might not always be so.

"Robert?"

"Yes?"

"It would be good."

A shiver ran through Robert's whole body at the words, and he was obliged to acknowledge that he did not doubt it for a moment.

"You're ill," he said. "Let Queenie take care of you. Anything else can wait until you're better."

Gently he reached around and freed the clutching fingers, bending so low over James that he could almost taste the sweetness of the younger man's breath.

"You would?" James whispered, neither quite coherent not yet completely numb.

"I might," Robert told him, stroking his cheek gently, and thereby surprising even himself.

It was a further half-hour before Robert was free of the little cottage, and when he stepped out into the sunshine it was only to walk half a dozen steps to his own front door and sit down with his wife to a hunk of bread and cheese and a couple of pickled onions. One of the boys had agreed to look after James's horse, taking off its saddle and bridle and pushing it into a small paddock that was used for sheep in the winter-time.

"How's James?" Emma asked, putting her husband's plate before him and settling down to her own. It had not taken five minutes for word to get around Lark Rise that Robert had brought him home in a state of collapse.

"I don't know," he said. He had torn the crust off the bread and was breaking it thoughtfully in his fingers. "The man's troubled, I can see that, but it's difficult to know what it is that ails him."

"He's afraid his boy won’t love him," was the wise response. "That's just like a father. You were the same when Laura was born; you didn’t know how to make her love you."

Robert nodded. "True," he conceded. "And you put me right on that. You said nobody could ever make anybody love them; they either would or they wouldn't, according to how they were treated."

"And according to their own inclination," Emma added. "With a babe, you don't have to worry whether they will or not; it's in them to love whoever treats them well, right from the moment they open their eyes. With children and grown-ups it's more difficult; sometimes they've been hurt, and they're not so willing to trust again. That's what he's afraid of, Robert; that Sidney's been so badly damaged he won't know how to love."

"Well," he answered, taking a bite of his bread and cheese and chewing enthusiastically as he spoke, "there's nobody can ease his mind about that except the lad, and from what I can tell there doesn't seem much hope of that."

"Not yet, maybe," said Emma, "but that doesn't mean the same as not ever. He's a bright little boy. He'll come round in the end. James is just going to have to wait until his son's good and ready for him, that's all."

Later the same day, just as the numerous Timmins family was finishing supper and starting to think about preparing for bed, Queenie stepped into their kitchen. Robert, who had been reading to two of the younger ones, looked up immediately, and his face creased into a smile of welcome when he saw who it was.

"How is he, Queenie?" he asked, folding the book away.

"Better than he has a right to be," came the indulgent answer. "I told him he was a fool to risk himself. I told him he was lucky to run across someone to take care of him the way you did."

"Oh. He was awake enough to hear you, then?"

"For a little while. Came to his senses and wondered how he got where he was, all tucked up in my half of the bed and his breeches folded over the rail. Then he went red as a beetroot when he realised somebody'd had to undress him. That was a tidy job you did, Robert."

Robert nodded, easing the infant from his lap and handing her over to Emma. "No, not tonight, children; we'll have to finish the story tomorrow. Run along with your mother, now."

Amid a chorus of disappointment, goodnight kisses were given and received. When the children had gone Queenie seated herself comfortably in Emma's chair, facing Robert.

"James is hurting inside," she said. "Not just in his body but in his mind, too. What I can give him will only cure his body."

"Oh." His face contorted as if reacting to a spasm of pain.

"So far," Queenie went on, "there's nothing I know of that will help his mind. It's love that hurt him and it should be love that makes him well again, but there's no arranging for that no matter how much we might like to. It'll either come of its own accord, or it won't."

"I know. Emma was saying the same; there's no forcing the boy to love him."

"None at all," Queenie confirmed. "Nor anybody else, for that matter. But love comes along all by itself, and when it does we only have to be able to recognise it." She looked away, into the fire. "When he's well enough," she went on, "I'll read the tea-leaves and see if there's anyone coming into his life that might mend his heart even a little. Until then, it's good to know he's got a friend he can rely on. I told him that, too, after I'd dosed him and left him to sleep."

"Oh, you did, did you? And what did he say to that?"

"He said he knew it, Robert, and it made him very happy."

Robert smiled. "Well, then," he said. "It seems the young man's learned a little sense at last."

At bed-time, when he blew out the candle and slid between the sheets alongside Emma, Robert still had Queenie's words echoing in his mind. The uncovered window showed him a glimpse of the edge of the moon where it hung over the hayfield like a big silver dish, and from outside there came the high-pitched complaint of Twister informing his wife in no uncertain terms that he would not be sharing his bed with no great hairy lump of a man thank you very much. Queenie's unsympathetic response - that he could sleep on the hearth-rug for all she cared - seemed to set the seal on the discussion, and after that a mellow silence fell once more upon the hamlet.

"He don't like having to share with James," Robert laughed, softly.

Emma was drifting in and out of sleep but roused herself enough to reply. "He wants to be cock of his own dunghill," she said. "He doesn't like it when Queenie makes decisions without consulting him. He forgets that half the time nobody knows where he is - and that's the way he likes it, so he only has himself to blame. That was a good thing you did today, Robert."

"I wish everybody would stop saying that," he groaned. "It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, only catching a man when he fell off his horse." But the memory seemed to suggest that it had been no such simple matter. He had been astonished, at first, to find James sliding inevitably into his arms, but he had learned very quickly that it did not feel particularly wrong to care for James and treat him with the kind of tenderness only rarely shown by a man towards another man. He tried to convince himself it was what the Good Samaritan would have done, but he doubted the Samaritan would have taken any pleasure from it other than that of doing his duty. Robert, on the other hand, had enjoyed it for entirely different reasons.

"He's a big man," Emma mused. "I'm surprised you could carry him."

"I didn't carry him. The horse did."

"You lifted him onto it. He must be as tall as you."

"Near enough," Robert agreed.

"Well, I just wish I'd seen it, that's all."

"T'wasn't done for your benefit," he remarked, with an edge of annoyance in his tone. Her words were doing nothing to drive the images from his mind, nor the recollection of what he had felt when he was holding James against his chest. Feelings like that were usually a sign that something was too exciting not to be completely wrong and Robert had enough wickedness in his background to know that forbidden fruit always had the sweetest flavour.

"No, I know," Emma soothed, sleepily.

Still troubled, he edged closer to her. There were ways to quench the urgent clamour of his body that did not involve unlawful notions about James Dowland; however pleasurable such thoughts may be, there was danger in allowing them to continue.

"You still thinking you might want another baby?" he asked, in what he honestly believed was an attempt at subtlety.

In the darkness Emma laughed. "Why?" she challenged. "You thinking you might want to start one now?"

"Well," he admitted, "I'm feeling in need of something of the sort, so tell me whether or not you want me to pull out when the time comes."

"No," she said, her hand sliding down in the bed to catch hold of the hem of her night-dress and pull it up above her waist. "Stay and finish inside me; God'll decide if it's to be a baby or not."

"True enough," he whispered. "I just wish everything that troubles us was as easily solved."

And if he was thinking of someone else when he slipped quietly into her warm and familiar body, or when he emptied into her all the fierce remnants of an illicit desire, it did not become apparent to either one of them at the time.

*

The next day there was little or no sign of the continued presence of James Dowland in Lark Rise. His horse grazed in the paddock, and Twister muttered darkly under his breath about wives who ought to care more for their husbands than for other men, but nothing more. The morning after that, however, when Robert set off, in the first brilliant flourish of a blue and gold dawn, to walk across the fields to his place of work, he quickly became aware that there was a figure sitting on a milking stool outside Queenie's cottage and leaning against the wall with his face turned up towards the sun.

James's eyes were closed, and although his hair was neatly brushed he had a growth of stubble on his chin and wore the same clothes he had worn when he arrived. His long, narrow feet were bare, his ankles crossed, and he looked - for once in his life - perfectly at his ease.

"James?"

The smile that greeted Robert's arrival was dazzling. "Good morning!"

"How are you feeling today?"

"Foolish," was the quiet reply. "Everyone warned me against leaving hospital before I was fully rested, but I thought I knew better. Who knows what might have happened if you hadn't been around to catch me?"

"It's a good job I was, then."

Robert had by now crossed the kitchen garden and set down his knapsack at James's feet. There had been a considerable change in this man since his arrival in Candleford only a few months before; at first rather too keen to impress old friends and neighbours with his wealth and social accomplishments, he had nevertheless managed to retain enough of a sense of humour about himself to blunt the inevitable criticism. James was a Lark Rise boy who had made good, one who had started with less than nothing and carved out a place for himself in the world; it was no wonder that at times he tried too hard, and that there were people around who took pleasure in reminding him of his humble origins.

Robert had not always been one of his critics. He saw James as someone who had fought to earn a position and was prepared to respect that, even if James's manner had been more than a little bumptious at times. These were young men's faults, and although there was only a gap of five years between their ages there were occasions when Robert felt considerably older; constant physical labour and a brood of children had long ago separated him from the carefree existence he had once enjoyed. Nor did he often resent it, although from time to time when he looked at James there were distinct moments of regret for what he had lost.

A long time ago, when he first came to Lark Rise, Robert had been aware of a tall, skinny youth with blue eyes who acted as though the world had hurt him badly. 'Ragged-arsed James' had slipped away from the village before Robert married Emma, and if Queenie knew where he had gone she had not told anyone. Robert had sometimes wondered where he was and what he was doing, and whether the terrible pain in the boy's soul had found its answer somewhere, but his own life had been much too full to spare any thought for a man he had never expected to meet again.

Now here he was, six feet tall and built in proportion, his hair an odd colour that could not quite make its mind up between fair and light brown, his eyes a faraway blue, his two-days' shirt open to the waist and his once-cream riding breeches clinging to every curve. Over the years he had turned into an exceptionally handsome man, and there had been a time in Robert's life when handsome men were of particular interest to him.

"Let me look at you," he said, in a tone the younger Timminses would have recognised only too well. His big hand reached out and cupped the other man's jaw with the unquestioning familiarity he would have used with his own children.

James's hand flew up and his fingers wrapped Robert's wrist, not in an attempt to break his hold so much as to reinforce it. His grip was just as firm as Robert's, and just as assured; apparently neither one of them had even the remotest idea that his touch might not be received with appreciation. There was no possibility of denying the fact that James understood, and was capable of responding to, an attraction between men. Well, that made sense; brought up in a small God-fearing village he had probably known from an early age that he could never hope to meet a man of similar inclinations until he had access to more varied society. Robert himself had concealed his own preference - or, rather, his lack of preference - so ably that nobody would have suspected that men rather than women had comprised the majority of his sexual conquests. And now here they were, discovering one another in looks and silent touches, unable to express whatever it might be that they felt in this moment but with a flame of undeniable interest leaping between them.

"You need a shave," Robert rumbled, affectionately.

"I know." However the words were entirely incidental to the emotions passing back and forth between Robert's warm brown eyes and James's pale blue, gazes traded across tiny but infinite distance. "Thank you." Barely a whisper, more a silent but expressive movement of the lips.

Robert's mouth pursed into a shape somewhere between denial and the precursor to a kiss, but he moved no closer and the moment could not be prolonged; in so small a place as Lark Rise, where everybody knew everybody else's business, the aberration of two grown men smiling fondly into one another's eyes would be noticed and widely discussed if it was allowed to continue. Robert's hand therefore fell away, and in that moment so did James's gaze.

"Perhaps," he suggested cautiously, and Robert could almost hear his heart thumping, "you'll allow me to stand you a dinner at the Golden Lion some time? Just you, I mean; would that be possible?"

"If you like. I can come to Candleford on Saturday after I finish work. Mind, I'll be in my working clothes and probably covered in dust, so I won't be a pretty sight."

The look on James's face begged to differ. "I'll be in my working clothes, too," he smiled. "There's nothing wrong with honest dirt when a man works hard for a living. But we needn't eat in public, anyway. I often dine with friends in my sitting-room. It's a little more … retired."

Robert nodded thoughtfully. "Some around here who consider themselves quality object to a man having the signs of his labour upon him," he remarked.

"Some around here," countered James combatively, "are a little too refined for their own good. You're welcome in my establishment, Robert - as long as it still is my establishment - whatever your condition. Is there some reason you can give Emma for coming over alone?"

"There is." But Robert did not elaborate, and after a moment James allowed the subject to drop.

"Well, then," he said, "Saturday."

"Saturday," Robert repeated huskily, and it felt wrong on many levels but gloriously right on others, as if beneath the surface civility there was a current of something barely controllable drawing them towards one another that simply could not be resisted.

"I'll look forward to it." James was smiling up at him, the light of mischief in his eyes, and it was all Robert could do to tear himself away from this source of renewed temptation. He did not trust himself to speak but merely smiled back, lifted one hand in a casual parting wave, and turned away.

James, well content, rested his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, let the warmth of the early morning sunshine seep into his body, and allowed the steady process of healing to continue.

James had gone from the hamlet by the time Robert returned from work that evening. Queenie was down the garden shutting up her bees for the night, and called out to him as he passed.

"Step inside a moment, Robert, I've got something for you to take to Emma."

He did not trouble to ask why she had not made the short journey to his cottage herself to hand over whatever it might be; the ways of Lark Rise, and particularly of its women, were enigmatic at the best of times. There were days when he saw the whole business as a kind of slow, stately dance in which people met and parted for reasons he could never quite understand. Queenie would know what she was doing, however, and that was usually good enough for him.

"James got away all right, then?" he asked, favouring the milking stool beside the door with only the swiftest of sidelong glances.

"He promised he'd go slowly and not overtire himself," she informed him, taking a small earthen crock down from a shelf. "I gave him one of these, and your Emma should have the other. It's royal jelly, finest remedy in the world for anyone who finds himself a little short of strength." She scarcely seemed to notice his muttered thanks. "Sit down, Robert, and have a cup of tea."

He sat, but watched her with a trace of suspicion dawning on his broad, good-natured features.

"You wouldn't be trying to read the leaves for me now, Queenie, would you?"

She could not quite meet his gaze. "'Twouldn't do you any harm," she informed him, stubbornly. "There's things I need to find out about James and his future. Important things."

Robert laughed at her. "Don’t be daft. How could you hope to read anything about James Dowland's future in my tea-leaves?"

"You can scoff," was the firm reply, "but if I'd read for you a week ago I would have known you'd help him - and that would have been a comfort. I read for James before he left; he had the shape of a man - a dark haired man," she added, defiant in the face of his amusement. "That's usually a friend in time of trouble. He asked if I thought it might be you."

Submitting to the inevitable, Robert accepted the tea she handed him and drank most of it at a single swallow. After a hard and dry day working at his trade there was nothing finer than a strong cup of tea and he certainly appreciated it for its own sake. He was less comfortable with her attempts at divination from the leaves but she was a harmless soul, always glad to help out in an emergency, and he saw little wrong in humouring her.

"And how will you tell if it is?" he wanted to know.

"There could be some sign of you coming to his aid," was the simple response. "Or something to show why you might be needed."

"Well," he said, "if you think it might do some good, go ahead."

He finished the drink, swirled the leaves anti-clockwise in the cup, and upended it into the saucer. Queenie took it from him, turned the cup three more times anti-clockwise, then drew a breath to clear her mind before tilting the cup and looking inside.

"Well," she began, after staring at it in silence for long moments, "this here is a necklace. That's friendship, all right. You'll be there again, the next time James needs help." She held the cup where he could see it, and indicated the figure she was describing.

"A necklace? Why is it a necklace and not a fairy ring or the mouth of a well?" he wanted to know. "Why on Earth would anybody believe in all this?"

"Because it works, that's why. You don't have to have a scientific explanation for the works of the Almighty, do you? If it suits him to hide his purpose in signs and symbols that only some of his people can read, who are you to argue?"

Robert held up a defensive hand. "All right, I take it back. What's this, then? It looks like an animal of some kind."

Queenie glanced at him sharply. "Yes," she said, "that's the interesting one. What kind of animal do you think it is?"

He examined it more closely. "A donkey with only one ear. Or maybe a deer with only one antler."

"It could be," Queenie mused. "Or a unicorn, perhaps."

"A unicorn?"

"They're good omens, all of them," was the non-committal response. "A donkey means hard work rewarded; a deer means patching up a quarrel."

"And how about the unicorn?"

"Just good luck," shrugged the old woman. "Nothing to worry about."

"When people say there's nothing to worry about," he told her, wryly, "it usually means there is. Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Nothing you won’t find out soon enough," was the brusque response.

"To do with James?" Sudden presentiment washed coldly down his spine.

"It could be." Queenie's tone suggested that it almost certainly was. "I can’t say for sure. We shouldn’t rush to meet these things; sometimes they're trial enough without worrying about them in advance."

"Ah," he said. "That would be why you're trying to look into my future, then, Queenie, would it?"

"It's not your future, it's James's," she said, her patience apparently beginning to evaporate, "although yours and his are so mixed up together that I can't tell which is which. Whichever it is, it helps to know what's round the corner so that we can find the strength to deal with it. It isn't everyone who understands what to do with that kind of knowledge, that's all."

"And you do, I suppose?"

"I do. Forewarned is forearmed, Robert Timmins," Queenie told him, and her words sounded ominously in the kitchen of the tiny cottage. "That's what I always say, forewarned is forearmed."

Sleep did not favour Robert that night. Once he had delivered Queenie's gift to Emma, sat down to his supper of cold pork, salad and mashed potato, and heard his children's bedtime prayers, he was as alert as ever. Even a belated visit to the Wagon and Horses did not serve to settle him, as a minor dispute erupting between Twister and Alf Arless over which had taken a drink from the other's tankard threatened to erupt into a full-scale war.

Robert retreated into a corner and signified a desire for his own company by picking up a newspaper and pretending to read it. There had been some great railway accident less than fifty miles from Candleford, but as he scanned the details he was aware that his mind had wandered far away from the present day and time - although whether back to a past which had not taken place or forward into a future which never would, it was impossible to say.

Touching James had been innocent enough at first. There had been no intent in it other than the desire to be helpful. By the time he had wrestled James as far as Queenie and Twister's bedroom, however, he had begun to experience a very different set of sensations. Sublimating them in Emma had given him some relief, but the same passions had been aroused again the next time he saw James, and they had returned stronger and with a greater sense of urgency than before. No amount of self-denial would serve to counter the overpowering discovery that, after years and years of being faithful to Emma, he wanted James Dowland. It had taken him completely by surprise, roused feelings he thought he had got the better of two decades earlier, and made him start all over again to question who he was, what he was, and whether he had done the right thing by marrying at all.

During the hours of darkness, while his wife slept quietly beside him, Robert lay between sleep and waking and his mind was full of James. He knew beyond doubt that he should not go to the Golden Lion on the coming Saturday, and at the same time he knew beyond doubt that he would.

In the morning they had scarcely finished breakfast when Miss Margaret Ellison arrived. She, too, was troubled, although from a very different cause. With less than a week to go before her marriage to Thomas Brown she had suddenly begun to wonder if she was making the right decision. It had occurred to her, at this very late stage, that she had been brought up in a household where love was absent, and now that the time had come to make a promise to love someone for the rest of her life she doubted her ability to do so. More uncomfortably still, she had fixed on Robert as a substitute father-figure and asked him to give her away in marriage. He had not, at first, understood her reasoning for this, but had no desire to refuse anything that would give her comfort. Now, however, as he sat across the table and tried to answer her questions, he could only see the conflict raging inside himself. It was not easy to explain the nature of love to someone whilst simultaneously wrestling with the same dilemma on his own account.

"But you and Emma," she said, plaintively. "You seem so suited, so settled; there must have been a moment when you realised that neither of you would ever wish to look elsewhere."

"There was," Robert acknowledged. "Although I don’t know as it was an actual moment," he amended, thoughtfully. "It was a series of moments, a progression of them, a lot of little pieces that came together to make a picture."

Margaret's brown eyes on him were like those of a frightened animal. He had seen a faun caught in a thicket, once, with eyes like that.

"That sounds," she said, "so reassuring. But how does one know … when one has enough pieces?"

"When … when one can see the picture, I suppose," Robert told her, and did not mention that the picture in his mind was that of a fair-haired man with blue eyes and breath that smelled beguilingly sweet.

"Oh." And she looked away, as though consulting her recollection and wondering whether she had assembled enough of her own picture to be able to decide with confidence what it portrayed. "I'm not … " she began, and choked, and then started again; "Robert, I'm not at all sure that I have sufficient pieces. My father always used to chide me for being indecisive," she added, with a startling lack of self-confidence. "Now, I suppose, he will be proved right."

Robert's gentle voice cut across her reproaches. "Miss Ellison," he said, softly, "your father would want you to be sure. He would approve of you taking the time and trouble to think through your decision. He would not see it as hesitation but natural caution. You are about to make a vow before God; your father would not expect you to do so unless you intended to keep it."

And therein, he thought, observing confusion stealing across her narrow features, lay the whole dilemma. One might promise to be faithful, and one might intend to keep such a promise, but to make a vow at the age of twenty or twenty-one as most people did and expect it to hold good for the next fifty years was optimism bordering on insanity. Even those who placed their whole trust in the Lord would sometimes find themselves facing challenges they were not equipped to deal with. He could reassure Miss Margaret, but they would be empty words. He was sharply aware how unworthy an advisor he had proved himself to be, but he could not deceive her with the pretence that marital fidelity was easy or even always possible. Whatever illusions he had harboured himself in that regard had been shattered by his overwhelming attraction to James Dowland, and he had learned from it the hardest of all lessons - that life is unpredictable, and human nature irrevocably flawed.

Miss Ellison's anxiety, however, had the additional unfortunate effect of producing a nervous rash across her face and neck which made her look as if she had been scalded. With all the available remedies proving ineffective, there was little alternative but for her to remain concealed in the Timmins' cottage in the hope that the affliction would fade in time for her wedding. Her unexpected absence from her usual haunts was among the major topics of conversation around the Timmins family table late that Friday afternoon, when Robert and Emma were joined by their eldest daughter, Laura, fresh from Candleford and with a delightful budget of gossip to impart.

"Miss Pearl and Miss Ruby," she began enthusiastically, "have been in a fine state about it. They came into the Post Office and just wouldn't stop talking."

"Well, it stands to reason," Emma said, calmly. "They'll be wanting a final fitting for the wedding dress."

"They'll be wanting to pry into Miss Margaret's business," Robert replied, sourly. "Those woman have to know the far end of everything."

"Robert," his wife chided. "It takes time to make a dress properly."

"I know," said Laura. "There's forty buttonholes on Miss Margaret's dress, and Miss Ruby's still working on the veil. She does lovely work, Ma, doesn't she?"

"She does. Cousin Dorcas always says, Miss Ruby has a particularly fine eye for embellishment."

Laura laughed. "She didn’t have much sympathy for them, though. She said they should hire the fly from the Lion and come over and see for themselves that everything's all right, but they said they were too busy. And Miss Lane said," she went on, gleefully, "that if they were really worried about Miss Margaret maybe they ought to report her disappearance to Constable Patterson, and Miss Pearl went a funny colour and changed the subject." Her mouth pressed into a fine line, dimples appeared in her cheeks. "The top and bottom of it is I'm to report back and tell them how she is and where she's staying, and when they can come over and bring the dress. They're bound to ask me if I've seen her."

"She doesn’t want to be seen," Emma said, sympathetically. "Tell them she'd stepped next door for a nettle poultice when you called."

"They won’t believe it."

"Well," said Robert, "I would think that was their problem, not yours; you can only say what you know to be true. You get into so much trouble otherwise."

Laura was inspecting her fingernails in some chagrin. "I know," she admitted, seriously. "How's Alf and Nan?" Her intervention, in trying to prevent Alf Arless being hurt when she believed his sweetheart had been unfaithful, had been calamitous for them all.

"Still at arms' length," Emma told her. "Best leave it alone for now, Laura; I know he's your friend, but sometimes we have to let people make their own mistakes. And that reminds me; where do you suppose your father is going tomorrow?"

Laura shook her head. "I don’t know. Pa?"

"Candleford," said Robert, without elaboration.

"Oh?"

"Tell her where," his wife insisted.

"The Golden Lion."

Mystified, Laura pursed her mouth into a tight little shape. "Has Mr Dowland asked you to do some work for him?"

"Not he," grumbled Robert, pleased with the note of disdain that had entered his voice.

"No," rejoined Emma, her tone teasing. "He's asked your pa to have dinner at the hotel, in return for helping him when he was taken ill."

"Just Pa? Not both of you?" Laura appeared shocked at the omission.

"No, not both of us," Robert put in, exasperatedly, as if he had been over this too many times already. "He's looking for advice about his boy, and he's too proud to ask for it in front of a woman."

"You're sure it's not just an excuse to sample the contents of his cellar, Pa?"

Robert sighed. "I don’t believe Mr Dowland is the man to give away beer in any great quantity," he said, firmly. "It's a dinner, that's all, and only because he didn’t have a shilling to give me."

"That's what he says," returned Emma, smiling. "But I'm thinking of asking Miss Ellison to sleep upstairs tomorrow, and letting your father have the kitchen. At least that way he won’t wake the children when he comes in."

"Dinner at the Lion?" Laura was obviously struggling to imagine it. "Will you have to dress up smart?"

"I will not," said Robert. "I'll go from work. I can lock my tools in the church porch and pick them up on Sunday. Dowland will have to make do with me just as I am, and if he doesn’t like it he'll have to - do the other thing," he finished, severely.

"That's right," approved Laura, as usual stepping in with uncontrollable enthusiasm where she had absolutely no comprehension of the territory before her. "If my pa's not good enough for the Golden Lion, then the Golden Lion's not good enough for my pa, and that's all there is to it."

*

The next day, hot and dusty from his work, Robert rolled down his shirtsleeves, slung his jacket over his shoulder, and set off to Candleford through a mellow evening. He turned away from Lark Rise without a thought for home and family other than, just this once, a profound desire to be leaving them behind him. The advent of Miss Margaret had been enough to upset his family's equilibrium, although he could never turn away a soul in need; whatever little they had the Timmins family would gladly share it with Miss Margaret, who would not have asked for their help had she not desperately needed it. However he had been unable to give her the answers she wanted - or, indeed, any answers at all.

He pondered the question now, as he made his way out along the churchyard wall and down into a little valley with a tinkling river at the bottom. There were usually villagers clustered in this dell on summer evenings, boys who stretched on their bellies on the stones and looked for pollywogs in the stream, couples who ignored the insects to bed down among the cow-parsley and steal precious moments of privacy together. On just such a night he had pushed Emma down among the wild-flowers and made her put her hand on his prick; she had demurred at first, but had soon become used to the size of it and brought him off in sweating and grunting chaos. The way she looked at him after that made him wonder if he hadn't broken some precious thread of trust between them, but she had grown out of her misgivings soon enough.

Not so himself. It had taken a long time to rid himself of memories of lads and young men encountered at fairs and other anonymous locations up and down the county. They never asked one another's names, but their hands were good and hard and sometimes they'd even let him into their narrow little backsides. More than one boy he'd fucked against a tree trunk or in the bed of a cart, then left him without a word of thanks. That was simply the way such things were done; 'least said, soonest mended' was the watchword, and if you ploughed a shepherd lad or a squire's son you never knew the difference.

Until he had decided to marry Emma - or she had decided to marry him - he had been as much for men as for women. It was easy to be that way if nobody cared what you did. Public men who sinned with their own kind were slaughtered publicly; country boys like Robert Timmins dallied well away from the sight of their neighbours, took their satisfaction, did not linger. It had been a life of fleeting pleasures, though, so that by the time he met Emma he was ready for something that would last longer - and his was not a world in which permanence was possible with a man.

Or so, at the time, he had believed.

Now, he wondered whether James Dowland could have been the one to make him think otherwise.

If it had been James offering himself under the May blossom, rather than Emma, Robert would have taken him with a clear conscience and perhaps he would not have felt the need to walk away. There was more to this than there had ever been with those nameless boys. What he had seen when he looked at James was someone who needed him; Emma hadn't needed him like that for years. Confident and self-assured, she had been his life's companion and mother of his five - or would it soon be six? - children, without ever really understanding him beyond the basic knowledge that he was a man. With James that was irrelevant; with James, it was possible to believe he was capable of falling in love.

These troubling notions still attended Robert when, half an hour later, he strode down the main street of Candleford. The Post Office had already closed for business for the day, and at the fashionable establishment of the Misses Pratt blinds were drawn down over the windows to prevent the late-striking sun fading the merchandise. The ironmonger's boy was out sweeping the step and called a greeting as Robert paused to shake out his jacket and slide back into it, mindful of the formal ambience of the Golden Lion. Robert responded with an absent-minded wave. It would, perhaps, have been overstating the case to suggest that he was nervous in any way, but there was certainly something unsettled in his manner as he crossed the threshold of the hotel and was plunged into the cool gloom of its interior.

Almost before his eyes had adjusted to the light he was aware of a figure approaching at unseemly speed.

"Jug an' bottle's round the back," someone told him, officiously. "No service in here for the likes of you."

Robert blinked. The man was small, bespectacled and utterly lacking in charm. He looked like a rich woman's idle lap-dog suddenly given authority.

"I'm here … " he began, firmly, squaring his shoulders to destroy the nuisance without mercy.

" … as my guest," completed a third voice. "Robert, come in, you must be tired from your journey."

Robert glanced at the flunky, and then up the stairs to the man who stood at their head, resplendent in frock coat, figured velvet waistcoat and a shirt that looked as if it had been sculpted from snow. Around his neck was a silk cravat the colour of a new leaf, secured with a single pearl. James Dowland, when dressed to impress, cut as fine a figure as even the Misses Pratt could have wished; in the formal clothing his profession required he was a credit to his tailor, his barber and his shoemaker, and a feast for the eyes of everyone else who saw him. Robert, for his part, had never expected to be immune to the man's considerable charms.

"James," he said, elbowing past the hall porter, "I hope I'm not late?"

"Not at all. I knew you'd get here as soon as you could. Barton, would you please let the kitchen know my guest has arrived? Mr Timmins and I will be dining upstairs. I wish you had let me send the fly to pick you up," James added, clapping Robert's shoulder warmly as he drew level. The small cloud of white stone dust which rose from his clothing fully justified Robert's warning that he might not be arriving in clean enough condition to be considered acceptable in a high-class establishment, but tactfully James ignored it.

"I didn't know what time I'd finish," Robert explained, calmly. "It's a question of letting the stone dictate; you can't rush it."

"Of course." James was pressing his lips into a firm line as he struggled against a burst of mischievous laughter, but his smile would not quite be hidden and there was welcome in his eyes. "Let me show you to my rooms, I'm sure you'd like to rest before dinner."

"Thank you." Robert glanced back down briefly at the hall porter, then dismissed the man from his thoughts entirely.

"He will consider you further evidence of my unsuitability," James remarked, as they strode along the landing. "No doubt my business partners have already been told that I associate myself with all kinds of riffraff. Inviting the population of Lark Rise to celebrate with me when I opened the hotel could hardly have made me popular, and to the many nails in my coffin will now be added intimate dinners with working men. My staff are dreadful snobs," he concluded, with a forced little laugh. "At least, some of them are. And admittedly a hall porter is paid to be a snob."

Robert shrugged. "I could never afford to eat here," he said. "At most I could buy a jug of porter from the back door. He was right, James; you and I are the most unlikely of friends."

"That depends," said James, "on your definition of friendship. For myself," he added, "I don’t imagine that I will ever have a better friend than you."

"You don’t know me," protested Robert, smiling.

James paused with his hand on the handle of a door marked 'Private'.

"I know enough," he said, and calmly ushered Robert inside.

James's living quarters comprised a sitting room with a bedroom opening off it, on the side of the hotel which overlooked the entrance to the stable yard. Over the cobbles beneath his windows rattled the horses and carriages of the better-class guests, as well as those kept at the Lion for public hire. It was an area that was never quiet, and as a result the windows were furnished with thick veils of lace to afford him a certain amount of privacy.

The rooms showed a female hand in their decoration. Heavy bullion fringing adorned the velvet curtains, a pleasant sprigged wallpaper clothed the walls, and the furniture was neither delicately feminine nor aggressively masculine; the effect was airy, practical, acceptable to all tastes, neutral to the point of self-effacement. Robert, glancing around, felt that the rooms offered no insight whatsoever into the character of the man who occupied them.

James had taken a lot of trouble over closing the door to the passage outside, and now leaned against it observing his guest from a distance.

"You're comfortably situated here," Robert said, after a while.

"Very. But hardly any of this is my own."

Robert nodded. "It's an unsettled life," he said, with unexpected insight. "Is that why you've never married?"

"It's one of the reasons." James cleared his throat. "I'm glad you're here, Robert," he added, cautiously.

Robert looked down at the floor. "To tell you the truth," he said, glancing up again with misgiving, "I have had my doubts about it."

"Yes." The words did not seem to surprise James at all. "What did you say to Emma?"

"That you wanted my advice about Sidney. She thinks you'll take the opportunity to send me home the worse for drink, so Miss Ellison is sleeping in our bed tonight and I'm to make do with the floor."

"Miss Ellison?"

"Don't ask, James; the woman's paralysed with fear at the thought of marrying Thomas Brown - and who wouldn’t be?"

Smiling, James shook his head. "Well, he's too virtuous for my liking," he said, "although it's obvious she cares for him. But even without the moralising it would be difficult to discover many attractive qualities in him."

Robert took a deep breath and relaxed a little. "If I was the sort of man who noticed other men," he countered, eyes betraying amusement, "I doubt I would find much to admire, either."

"Your tastes would be otherwise?" James whispered, hopefully.

"Very much otherwise," was the emphatic response.

James's fair eyebrows lifted, and he seemed about to speak again when a little silver clock on the mantelpiece recollected them to their circumstances. "If you'd like to refresh yourself before we eat," he said, in the tone of a professional host, "my bedroom is at your disposal."

"I'll wash my face and hands," Robert agreed. "It's been a dry day, and the dust clings. I did warn you."

"You did." James ushered him through the curtained archway into a slightly smaller room dominated by an enormous wardrobe. A heavy iron bed with a green silk counterpane seemed almost incidental to the purpose of the room, and there was a washstand canted across one corner with a creamware jug and basin set on top. "If the water isn't warm enough I'll ring for more."

Robert laughed. "At this end of the day," he said, "I'm lucky to wash under a pump in someone's yard. Often as not it's a cattle trough."

"Let me take your jacket."

James was close to him as he shrugged out of it, and without appearing to have much idea what he was doing he took a brush from the dressing-table and brushed Robert's jacket before hanging it up. Robert unfastened his waistcoat and shirt, poured water into the basin and bent low to wash his face and neck. He was very conscious of the fact that James was watching his every move, and as a result made no attempt to hurry.

He was a big man, muscles and fat contending for supremacy on a sturdy frame, and he'd always been that way even when there hadn't been enough food to go around. Men had liked that, in the past; sometimes, even now when he had the cares of the world upon him, he might be aware of a quickening interest from some stranger who passed through Candleford on fair days, or who stayed in town on business. Not that he had been in the market for anything of the sort, right up until the moment James's graceful swan-dive into his arms had re-awakened the longing for intimate contact with his own sex. Now, despite his long absence from the milieu, he was beginning to remember how such scenes were sometimes played; despite the years and the distresses that had stolen away the greater vigour of his youth, he could recollect how it felt to have a man's gaze moving slowly and appreciatively across him.

"Well, James?" he asked, straightening and dabbing the water from his face with a small towel. His shirt had fallen open to the waist, displaying a deep wedge of sunburned neck and collarbone with paler skin below, enhanced by enough crisp dark body hair to suggest an interesting contrast of textures.

James reached out, taking the edge of Robert's shirt and holding it open, his expression serious and questioning.

"Very well indeed," he breathed in approval. His fingertips strayed to warm skin, ghosting elusively down Robert's chest. This was no accidental gesture, no friendship misconstrued, nothing that could be explained by even the most agile of excuses; this was such a caress as Robert had not received from a man in years, and exactly what his life had been lacking. And this was James, calm and still, his eyes full of intent, his mouth lifting slowly towards Robert's.

A movement outside in the passage snapped the mounting tension between them. James stepped away, his face pale.

"That will be our meal," he said. "I should leave you to finish your preparations in peace."

Robert had turned away and was already re-buttoning his shirt and tucking it into his trousers. He did not trust himself to speak, but confined himself to a glance back over his shoulder and a wordless nod of reassurance as the sea-grey gaze, with great reluctance, tore itself away.

Robert returned to the sitting room a few minutes later, respectably dressed, hair neatly brushed and a sheepish expression on his face. In the interim a table had been set across the fireplace - decorously screened and hidden behind a vase of flowers, since at this season fires were unheard-of except for those who were ill - with a chair at either side. A white damask cloth and fine tableware had been laid, and a hotel servant was even now delivering two covered plates of food.

"I ordered beefsteak pie and new potatoes," James said, as they seated themselves. His tone was almost normal, only the shuttered look in his eyes betraying any agitation. "I was sure you'd be hungry." Then, as if the circumstances were nothing out of the ordinary, he arranged his napkin and removed the cover from his plate. "There's wine, unless you prefer beer?"

"No, thank you." The servant was dismissed with a nod of the head. "I'm not usually a wine drinker," Robert continued, as the door closed, "but I'll try it."

"This is from France," James told him. "I hope you'll like it."

"I'll be guided by you," was the unexpectedly docile response.

James's hands shook as he poured. "I doubt I'd get a job in my own dining room," he smiled, pushing a full measure unsteadily towards his guest. "But I managed to keep most of it inside the glass." He leaned back in his chair and crumpled his napkin impatiently, his meal apparently a matter of irrelevance to him now. "This is ridiculous, isn't it?"

"Ridiculous?" Uncertain whether or not he was being mocked, Robert watched him with concern.

"It's true we've never been friends. I've thought about that a lot. I've asked myself what it is that's happening between us, and so far there are no answers."

"James," Robert told him, "people find each other in strange ways and for strange reasons. Only a fool expects it to make sense." Determinedly he cut into his plate of food and conveyed a forkful to his mouth. "You're not a fool," he added, around a smile.

"Then you understand," James whispered, "why I asked you here?"

"I understand." Robert leaned towards him. "My past is a closed book. I'm a family man, with a wife and children; nobody here knows more about me than that. But it isn't the whole story."

Tension drained from James's body. "No," he said, almost casually, taking up his cutlery again and making a further half-hearted attempt to begin his meal, "I assumed not. You must realise that this isn't a conversation I expected ever to be having with you; you are the last man in the world I would have imagined capable of appreciating male companionship." His eyes were serious, enquiring.

"It was a long time ago," Robert conceded, "with people I've never seen since. I thought I had left that part of my life behind for good. And I had, too, until Queenie asked me to undress you."

"It was you, then? She didn’t say. She has a rather odd idea … " James stopped abruptly. "I'm sorry, that isn't … Go on."

"There's no more. Things don't always happen for a reason, James; sometimes they just happen. I thought I'd grown out of such things, but seeing you stretched out like that on that bed … " He flushed. "Emma wants another child, and after that … I couldn’t help myself. If it's a boy," he concluded, weakly, "we'll have to call him 'James'."

"Oh!" James had no idea what to say. "I'm sorry," he managed, at last.

"You needn't be. Emma was grateful, and I got you out of my system for a while. Only it didn’t last." He stopped. He was getting in deeper and deeper with every word, but he had truly been committed since the moment he walked in under the portico of the hotel. It would not do now to pretend there was any reticence left in him; he knew what he wanted, and he saw that James did, too. "You'd better tell me what it is you're looking for," he suggested, calmly.

Such frankness from a man was unusual in James's experience, and it was a moment before he could respond coherently. "Nothing outlandish; a man who knows how to be affectionate - they're in surprisingly short supply. I always seem to meet the ones who are ashamed of themselves and want it over quickly, and they can be rough. It would be nice for once to be treated with respect - perhaps even to have the illusion of being cared for."

The words, though chosen carefully, betrayed such deep-seated hunger for affection that Robert could not help being moved. James did the best he could to avoid his gaze, however, and seemed embarrassed at having given way to inappropriate sentimentality.

"And that was why you chose me?" Robert asked him.

"I didn’t choose you, Robert, you chose yourself. There must have been a dozen men in the district capable of picking me up and putting me back on my horse that day, but none would have touched me the way you did. Even without my senses I would always have known it was you; you were very gentle."

"It seemed right. I have no desire to hurt you."

"I know."

For a short while they were able to resume eating, although whether or not either could taste the food at all would remain open to question. Then, into a silence that was beginning to be burdensome, Robert said; "I imagine you've had more experience than I have."

James studied his face anxiously. "What? Oh, I suppose so. Probably. Everything can be obtained in London, at a price. But my life has been a chapter of disasters, especially in the bedroom. Many of the people I found myself being intimate with were … less than ideal. For a while, I was the kept plaything of a wealthy woman - which I can assure you is not nearly as entertaining as many men would like to believe."

"You've been unhappy."

"Dreadfully. But one tries again. One never entirely loses hope that sooner or later there will be someone more … considerate."

Robert was nodding thoughtfully. "I can't make any promises, James, except one. You will never have cause to reproach me for not treating you kindly."

James raised his eyes to Robert's and his mouth curved into the closest to a smile he had managed for some time. "You don’t need to tell me that. If you were a bully, a sensible woman like Emma would hardly have been willing to give you six children - or, if she had, she would certainly not have been so happy about it."

Robert laughed. "So because I have a wife and I haven't broken her yet, you're convinced I'm the man for you?" It sounded both utterly rational and also at the same time the maddest thing he had ever heard in his life - as indeed, without a shadow of a doubt, it was.

"Yes," urged James, and there could be no misapprehending the sincerity that now inflected his tone. "For that reason, and more others than I can ever begin to tell you, Robert, I'm absolutely certain that you are."

*

Dessert was pears poached in wine. By the time it arrived, both men had begun to relax and enjoy one another's company and the open acknowledgement of the attraction between them. For each, there was considerable novelty value in having the leisure to establish something of a rapport with a potential lover. Robert's conquests had usually taken place after an evening of immoderate drinking in some roadside establishment, back in his days of itinerant wandering; he would find himself sitting a little too closely to a lad whose hand might accidentally slip to Robert's thigh, and the preliminaries would be lost in a general atmosphere of smoky ribaldry and song.

Later, when everyone concerned had taken on board just enough beer or cider to forget his inhibitions, there would be a purposeful exit and a hurried unfastening of buttons, and hands would delve into wicked warmth and move with obscene urgency. Sometimes - rarely - the boy would whisper, "You can 'ave me if you want," and he would always have something either with him or hidden about the place - a pot of grease or a pat of butter, perhaps - and then Robert would know that he could take his time, and he would give this unknown boy everything that had been building up inside him since the last one.

He'd never offered himself in a similar way, but then he'd never encountered anyone he felt capable of trusting to that extent. When he looked now at James and considered what they had already discussed, he began to feel more certain than ever that he had done the right thing. James had allowed it, and James had been damaged - both physically and mentally. Was that what Queenie had meant about him hurting both in body and mind?

"Queenie knows, doesn't she?" he asked abruptly. "About you?"

James's eyebrows lifted. "Yes," he said. "Of course. She's known since I was a boy."

"That was why she didn't tell anybody where you were?"

"That was why. She's been more than a mother to me, Robert. She's been like a guardian angel. She's one of the very few people in this world who truly understands me."

"She loves you."

"Faults and all," James agreed, smiling.

"So when she told me that she had seen a dark-haired man in your tea-leaves … ?"

"She meant a lover."

"And when she read for me, she was looking for the same in my cup?"

"Yes. What did she find?"

"A necklace. And a unicorn, which she said was friendship."

James looked away. "The necklace is love," he said. "Was it closed or open, did she say?"

"I saw it myself. It was closed."

"Then it's meant to last. An open necklace is love that fails. The unicorn," he added, "is a secret marriage." He grimaced, as though painfully aware how outrageous his words must sound. "Of course, we needn't believe it."

"Queenie is not often wrong. I don’t understand everything she does, but I've never had reason to doubt her. She used my name, didn’t she?"

Uncomfortable with this turn in the conversation James set aside his dessert spoon and faced Robert. His fingers laced together in the way Laura's did when she wanted to protect herself from possible harm.

"She believes you're the one," he admitted, softly.

"The one?"

"The only love. She's always said it was someone I already knew - a man I had known for years. Only the people of Lark Rise and Candleford fall into that category. I asked her outright whether it was you. She wouldn’t lie to me about a thing like that."

"So you came back here … ?"

"No. That wasn't how it happened, or why. You have a family, and Emma is my friend - when we were children we used to pretend that one day we'd be married. How could I think of trying to take my friend's husband from her, even if I had known that you might be willing to be … seduced?"

The cautious selection of the last word drove a knife into Robert's heart. James was being so very considerate of his feelings, taking nothing for granted, that he was almost overpowered by a desire to reach across the table and hold the man close, swearing improbable oaths to protect and cherish him forever. It did not seem right that he was prepared to ask for so little.

"I came to Candleford to open this hotel," James went on. "I was opposed to the idea at first, but then I realised it would give me a chance to convince myself you were happy with Emma and nothing would ever disturb it. I satisfied myself that was the case, and I was ready to leave again and forget you. Another few days, Robert, and I would have been gone."

Robert had rested his elbows on the table, folded his hands, and was now looking at James steadily through the candle flame.

"You didn’t swoon at my feet deliberately?" he asked, with quiet humour.

"No." The beseeching expression in James's eyes underlined the desperate tone of the denial. "Believe me, I would sooner have tipped head-first into the quarry. When I realised whose arms were around me, I felt as if the sky had fallen. I wanted to die."

One large hand reached out and gently patted James's fingers. "Don’t think about it," Robert said.

"I must. It's the one thing in my life I don’t want to get wrong."

"You won't," Robert assured him. "I'm not here because you lied or stole or deceived me in any way, James, nor because Queenie saw it in my tea leaves. I'm here because I want to be with you."

"Oh Robert," James gasped, and the words were forced out with all the power of a dam breaking, with a dynamism that threatened to overwhelm them both, "I have wanted you so much."

"I know. I wanted you, too."

James's eyes closed and he sank back in his chair, his head slowly moving from side to side in what was either disbelief or incredulity although it could have been both. It was some time before he could control his flooding emotions, but when he did manage to speak again he said something completely unexpected.

"It isn't ten o'clock yet. Until the bar has closed and the staff have gone to bed, we could be interrupted at any time. Will you take brandy?"

Robert nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"Let's move to the armchairs and I'll ring for someone to clear the table."

In a fog of stupefaction Robert managed to persuade his limbs to obey the suggestion. It took considerable ingenuity to arrange himself in the chair in a way that would not betray his more than half-aroused condition, and he scarcely dared look at James whose frock coat was doing little to disguise a similar problem. As he was handed a glass globe filled with the tawny mystery of fine cognac, Robert felt his fingers being stroked with the most delicate of touches.

"Cigar?" James tilted open the lid of a mahogany box.

"No, thank you."

"You won’t mind if I do?"

Robert shook his head, mesmerised by the quick actions of James's fingers. The cutting of the cigar, the insertion between the lips and the application of the flame all seemed to have other meanings now, and so did the shape made by James's mouth as he exhaled a first stream of smoke and sighed in luxurious contentment.

They were decorously arrayed in armchairs on opposite sides of the room, drinking brandy and talking in civilised tones, when two members of the hotel staff appeared and began to clear away the debris of their dinner. The chambermaid went into the bedroom and drew the curtains, then returned to the sitting room and did the same there, shutting out the last bruised purple of a fading sunset.

"Will there be anything else, sir?" she asked, picking up the tray and preparing to leave. Her colleague had already disposed of the folding table and returned the dining chairs to their original positions.

"No, thank you, Elsie, I'll show Mr Timmins out when he leaves. Tell Mr Barton he can go to bed as soon as the doors are locked."

"Yes sir."

She nodded her head politely and succeeded in negotiating the doorway safely. When she had gone, and taken the everyday world away with her, there was a quiet sense of expectation present in the room. Robert, relaxing in his armchair, felt more like a gentleman at ease in his own quarters than a common stonemason in unfamiliar surroundings; he was aware of James's eyes on him as he drank his brandy, watching every nuance of the way the glass tilted towards his lips while he sipped, savoured, and ultimately swallowed.

"If Queenie's right," Robert said, after a long pause, "neither one of us will emerge from this unscathed."

"Why talk about the end, when it hasn't properly begun yet?"

"Because I am not Thomas Brown and you are not Margaret Ellison, and there will have to be an end. Twenty years ago we could have had each other in a haystack and never thought about it again, but now … it's more complicated. We know what we're doing, and we know how many people we can hurt."

James leaned forward. "Would it ease your mind," he said, "if I promised you that nobody will ever be hurt by this except ourselves?"

"It would," said Robert, "if I was sure I could believe you."

Into the quiet that followed this remark dropped the tinny sound of the church bell striking the hour. From below in the hotel came a heavy movement of doors and locks, a shuffling of feet and the voices of the departing casual patrons as they called out good-natured farewells and took their several journeys home. Upstairs, in the stillness of the sitting room, these sounds became unnaturally magnified, imbued with deeper significance, woven into and amongst the forthright exchange of sympathies between two men briefly diverted from lives that ordinarily would not include one another. As the echoes of departure died away and the ambience in the Lion tilted gently downhill towards sleep, they remained staring wordlessly at one another until, at last, James crushed his cigar into the base of a heavy glass ashtray and threw back the remainder of his brandy in one convulsive swallow. He rose to his feet and took a step forward, holding out one hand to Robert across the breadth of the small sitting room.

"Will you come to bed?" he asked, although he already knew the answer.

Robert's fingers tangled with his as he stood up. "I will," he said, and moved towards him.

They met in the doorway to the bedroom, and with almost seigniorial assurance Robert's hand slid slowly around James's waist, between the silk lining of the frock coat and the warm silk back of the waistcoat, curling him in and holding him carefully. James's hands moved across Robert's chest, taking the long route over battered corduroy and a shirt that was little more than a rag; James's touch was light on the side of Robert's neck and behind his ear as his fingers worked their way into Robert's hair. Robert's calloused palm shaped itself to James's cheek, thumb firm at the corner of his lips, and in a moment more James's head was tilted back and Robert's mouth was on his.

Someone gasped, and they clashed again and held, and Robert began to understand; all those unskilled boys with their fumbling hands were chaff on the wind compared to the truth of James Dowland in his arms. James had divided opinion in Candleford; for everyone who had hailed him as a moderniser and a breath of fresh air there had been another to call him a bad influence and hate the very ground he walked on. Robert had never been completely sure whether he liked the man despite himself or loathed him utterly, but now at last he knew.

James's mouth opened beneath his. Robert's tongue drove into it forcefully, taking control, tasting pears and honey, smoke and wine, responding as James thrust back at him with a fervour equal to his own and finally wriggled out of his arms, wild eyed, his face flushed.

"Let me lock the door."

Robert watched him move economically about the room, locking the outer door, unhitching the curtains that separated the two chambers, fetching the brandy decanter and the glasses and setting them on the bedside table.

"It's been a long time," he said, in a small voice. Robert stood behind him and wrapped both arms around his waist.

"For me, too, but I think I can just about remember how everything works."

James reached back and touched his face gently. "Good. But just to be on the safe side … " He stretched to the dressing-table drawer and took out a small glass jar. "My barber in Jermyn Street sells it; it's made from honey and rosewater and beeswax. It's remarkably good for cooling … and soothing … and … "

Robert stopped him speaking with a kiss. His fingers were on the buttons of James's waistcoat, and then on those of his shirt, and his hardworking hands were inside the shirt and rasping over sensitive skin, and this was no longer any time for idle conversation.

"James? James?"

James rolled over into warmth, into kisses, into a body larger and stronger than his own, and clung.

"Robert?"

He was nuzzling gently at the growth of hair below Robert's collarbone and inhaling the warm scents of skin and sweat and passion. It had been very thorough, a most complete ravishment, and he looked as if he could not have raised so much as a coherent thought, yet his body was already reacting with enthusiasm as he slid his bony leg between Robert's thighs and pulled him closer.

"James? Wake up, love."

When, in those secret hours, Robert had first used that word, it had sounded so right and so appropriate that James hadn't even seemed to notice it. Now it was familiar and comfortable in a way no other word could be, as though it had always belonged between them.

"Oh, Robert," he whispered. "Please."

"Hush." Robert kissed him again, on his face, in his hair, down the side of his neck. "It's gone midnight," he said, with obvious reluctance. "I must go."

James pulled back out of his arms and looked at him. The candle-light, small in the corner of the room, carefully situated where it would not shed any tell-tale silhouettes across the window, showed only the deep shadows in his eyes.

"I wish you didn't have to."

"So do I, but unfortunately there's no choice. It's the price we pay." He kissed James again, his mouth lingering. "'Had we but world enough and time'," he quoted, softly. Then; "You think you're the only one around here who ever looked for inspiration beyond the boundaries of Lark Rise?"

"No." James shook his head indulgently. "My rustic poet," he whispered, and there was genuine feeling behind the words. "Am I really going to lose you so soon?"

"Lose me now or lose your reputation forever," Robert told him, calmly.

"I've almost stopped caring about that."

"Almost," was the gentle rejoinder. "But not quite."

"Not quite, no."

"Then as long as there's still something worth saving, we should at least try."

"I know. And I'm not the only one with a reputation to maintain." James reached up and ran a line of kisses down the curve of Robert's jaw. "How will you explain it to Emma, being so late home?"

"You got me drunk and I fell asleep. I may not mention that you introduced me to French wine and French practices."

"To which you needed no introduction." A hand slid sinuously into Robert's groin, stroking wistfully. Robert arrested the hand before it caused more mischief than either of them could cope with, and kissed its palm in obvious regret.

"To which I needed no introduction," he agreed, with humour. "There's thunder in the distance. If I don’t leave soon, I'm likely to get a soaking on the way home." He stared at James with a disarming frankness in his expression. "Will you be all right?"

James smiled. "If you mean, will I miss you - of course I will. If you mean, will my life continue without you - it must. In the morning I'll get up and do my job and it will be as if none of this had happened. Except," he added, "that I'll still be able to feel what we did together."

"You said it didn’t hurt."

"I lied. Of course it hurt, at first. And then it stopped hurting, and then I wanted you to hurt me like that again. Robert," he said, anxiously, "you must understand, I didn’t really believe it would be you. I have never wanted to disrupt your family life or harm you in any way. You were a dream I had, nothing more."

"I know. I realised that as soon as I worked out what I wanted, that first day. Emma and the children are another part of my life; I thought they were all of it, but I was wrong. Now there's you, too."

"You really feel as strongly as that?"

"Yes. I didn’t know I was a man with only half a soul."

"Oh." It was not the first time some simple declaration from Robert had reduced James to incoherence, but now he could do no more than throw himself back into the man's arms and claw at him wildly as though trying to fix him into this reality forever. "We can't lose this, Robert! Perhaps we can meet from time to time? Would you come to London? Or I could come to Oxford."

"Or we could do it behind a haystack, or in someone's barn?" Robert told him, with painful irony. His head was shaking in denial. "If it was a man with a girl it would be difficult enough, but two men … in a place the size of Candleford … "

"If we were careful … ? Surely we can't be the only ones?"

"Perhaps we're not." Robert gathered him in and held him tight. "But some go to prison, and some are hanged, for doing less than we did tonight."

James clung to him still, naked and wild-haired. "It might be worth it," he said, and in that moment he meant it.

"No, it wouldn't," was the more considered reply. "Nothing is worth losing your life over, and I refuse to be the cause of your destruction. I would rather you were free and a thousand miles away. I would rather see you with anyone else, man or woman, than know I had given you a moment's grief." He sighed, deeply. "And that's why I must go," he added, in a whisper.

"Yes." James melted out of his arms without resistance. "You must."

With a movement as apocalyptic as an earthquake Robert turned away from him, set his feet on the bedroom floor, and began to reassemble his everyday clothing. After a moment or two James, too, rolled off the bed and enfolded himself in the luxurious depths of a silk dressing-gown.

"I'll have to come down and let you out," he explained, in answer to the enquiring look.

"Dressed like that? What if you're seen?"

"I'll think of something," was the distracted response. "Will I see you again?"

Robert had clambered back into his clothes, and now patted himself down as though checking and itemising everything he had brought with him. "I don’t know," he said at last. "I don’t know if it would be wise."

"Then, is this the end?"

Robert stepped closer. "Do you want it to be?"

"No." He settled Robert's untidy hair with a careful hand. "I wish I was going with you, side by side under the moon."

"Romantic." Robert kissed him again. "Let me say 'goodbye' to you here, where nobody can see us. And promise you won't try to hold me back."

"I promise." It was easy, now, for James to slide back into his arms; they had become so used to one another in a short time that there was a wonderful familiarity about the way James's mouth turned upwards to greet Robert's, and about the way their still-tingling lips moved together. If James held a little more tightly than he needed to, if Robert became just a little more breathless than the situation demanded, neither one of them seemed at all inclined to remark on it.

"You've been a revelation to me tonight, Mr Dowland," Robert told him. "I wish I had found you many years since."

"I wish you had," was the artless response. "I love you."

"You shouldn't."

"I know. But I do."

"I know." And it seemed that it was to be left to Robert, as the elder, to be the sensible one. "I love you, too, in my way, but I must still go."

James nodded his head, carefully swallowing his emotions. "Quietly, then," he said, taking up the candle and moving past him to the door. "And quickly, or I won't be able to let you."

The hotel was in darkness, and they moved through it softly but with no attempt to disguise their movements. After all, Robert had arrived as a legitimate visitor and must be seen to leave in the same way if he was seen at all. Their footsteps were muffled by the carpet on the stairs, but when they reached the tiled hallway Robert's boots made audible sounds and so did the drawing back of bolts and the operation of the lock on the front door. Outside the evening smelled damp and cold and a breeze tugged fitfully at the candle flame.

"Go in," Robert whispered to him. "You'll freeze, you're almost naked."

"I'll wait until you've gone."

"All right then. Goodnight."

James looked as if he would have liked to kiss him again, but did not dare. Instead he let his eyes convey all the messages a kiss could possibly have carried and more. "Goodnight, Robert."

Robert smiled at him, a happily conspiratorial smile, then turned away, his lips shaping a silent whistle as he strode off down the street. He had scarcely gone a couple of steps, however, before an ominous cold blast sliced across the sky and a rumble of thunder was answered by the barking of a chained dog somewhere behind the forge.

"Wait!" James told him, distinctly. He had not raised his voice, but his tone carried clearly through the air. In a moment he was alongside Robert again, pushing an umbrella into his hands. "It's going to rain," he said, by way of explanation.

Robert sniffed the air. "I think," he said, "it will be more like the second deluge. Now go inside; you have nothing on your feet." And, almost absent-mindedly, he bent his head and kissed James's mouth once again and quickly, as if for luck. "Goodnight, love."

James, sliding out of his arms, obeyed without a word, his bare feet on the muddy Candleford street already being splattered with fat, heavy raindrops falling like coins from the sky. Robert stayed and wrestled with the umbrella only because he knew it would hurt James's feelings not to do so, and when he had finally managed to push it open and lock the canopy into place he glanced up idly towards the Post Office.

There, in a gap between curtains, standing by the open casement of a window, was the white-faced figure of a woman. She had narrow features, dark hair, and deep, lost eyes, and even from a distance he could plainly see that it was Dorcas Lane herself.

She did not move, and neither did he, but her eyes and his met across the night; he knew she had seen him kissing James, and he was not prepared to be ashamed of it. Nor did she seem to expect it, although her expression suggested that she was disappointed to catch him in such an egregious indiscretion. Then he heard the bolts being thrown on the front door of the Golden Lion and his head turned back instinctively towards the sound, and when he looked around again the Post Office curtains were drawn and the pale apparition at the window had gone.

"Well, then, Miss Lane," he muttered to himself under his breath, bending his head to the rising storm, "you've seen us, and there's no help for that. I wonder what you'll say - and who you'll say it to - now that you know exactly what we are?"

*

Robert's awakening the following morning was unceremonious and abrupt. Emma stepped over him where he lay on the rag rug in front of the hearth, pillowed among the ash and cinder dust, directly in line with the breeze that crept in through the gap under the door and with his head on his folded, still damp, work jacket. Arriving back rain-soaked and dirty he had huddled close to the stove rather than occupying Miss Margaret's empty shake bed in the corner; Emma had left out a blanket for him, but he had also appropriated the shawl from her chair - a move he realised was not particularly popular when she took it back from him and muttered the closest she ever came to an oath.

"Don't let the children see you like that."

His back creaked as he levered himself upright, and he rubbed a hand blearily across his stubbled chin and remembered kissing James.

"Beer, was it?" Emma wanted to know, her wrath evaporating slightly in view of the awfulness of the spectacle he presented.

"Wine." His tongue was thick in his mouth, and as he clambered to his feet he was certain he must be producing an authentically dilapidated impression.

"What sort?"

"Wine," he said again. "French. It was red," he added.

"What did you eat?"

"Beef. Pears."

Emma's brows lifted. She was sorting out bread and butter for the children's breakfast and putting a kettle on for tea for herself and Miss Margaret who could be heard, even now, supervising one of the younger Timminses in the matter of a clean collar.

"Sounds like you were well fed."

"It was a good meal," Robert agreed, although he could scarcely recollect the taste of it.

"And good drink afterwards?"

"Brandy," Robert said, indicating convincingly that it had made him feel queasy. "And he offered me a cigar."

Emma smiled. "Treated you like a gentleman, did he? You didn’t smoke it?"

"No." But the taste of James's cigar-smoke was still on his lips, and when he looked down at himself there were a couple of strands of James's brown-blond hair tangled in the buttons of his waistcoat. He removed them without comment and let them fall into the fire.

"Well, that's something."

Robert dropped into one of the chairs at the table. "It was a neighbourly invitation," he said, without inflexion.

"It was. What did you talk about?"

For a moment he could think of nothing that had not been of an exceptionally personal nature. He remembered James saying "Yes, more," and "Deeper," and himself answering, "Like this?" and James being unable to respond.

"Things men talk about," he shrugged. "Business. Sidney. Poetry."

"Poetry?" Emma reacted as if he had told her a joke. "I wouldn't have thought James had much poetry in his soul, would you?"

"I think you’d be surprised," was his quiet reply. "He talked about you, too. About how you used to say you'd get married, you and him."

"Robert! We were five and six, we didn’t know what getting married was! We thought it was flowers and singing in the church. And that reminds me," she went on, in her capable but slightly hectoring manner. "You're not fit to be seen there this morning. Edmund can carry your tool-bag back for you. You go this evening if you've sobered up by then, but I'm not having you make an exhibition of yourself in front of the whole village in that state."

He looked up at her with the truculent expression of a schoolboy caught with his hand in the pickle jar. "Emma!"

"I mean it, Robert. You need to shave and wash and find some clean clothes from somewhere before people start saying your wife doesn't know how to take care of you. Miss Margaret's not going, either; she can't bring herself to appear in public until her rash has gone. She'll give you your breakfast."

His mouth twisted. "You two sleep well together?"

"Yes," she said. "Very. She doesn't snore nearly as loud as you do. It was a pleasure to have some civilised company for a change."

"Well," he said, with a twinkle in his eye, "if you like her so much, maybe you should keep her." The image in his mind was a wicked one; separated by miles of darkened countryside, his wife and Margaret Ellison sleeping side by side like innocent babes in Lark Rise, himself and James Dowland wide awake and committing the sins of the flesh in Candleford.

"Or maybe not," she added. "Do you want some tea?"

He managed to look pathetic as she put a cup down in front of him. "My mouth's dry," he said, and she took that as a 'yes'.

"I don’t know, Robert," she said, in gentle amusement. "Maybe you should stick to the Wagon and Horses in future, with Twister and Alf; at least you know what it is you're drinking there. Maybe French wine's not for you."

He nodded his head as though it might fall off at any moment.

"Well," he said, "you're probably right. Not that I'm likely to get another invitation. In fact I don’t think we'll be seeing much more of James, one way and another. And that's a shame," he added, unable to stop himself.

"It is," his wife replied, but her mind was not on her words, and in the next moment the children and Miss Margaret began tumbling down the stairs in search of breakfast, and Emma was obliged to give her whole attention to them.

Those who walked to church at Fordlow always set off early, with one of the women by turns staying behind to look after children too young to behave themselves during the sermon. Robert and Emma's youngest remained with her father and Miss Margaret, the latter happy to entertain the little one and squatting with her on the rug in front of the hearth to play with painted wooden blocks. After less than half an hour of this Robert, now clean and breakfasted but still restless, could no longer continue with the pretence of a splitting headache and felt he must be out of doors or he would suffocate. In a decisive move he pushed his chair back, and Margaret's sweet face turned towards him in enquiry.

"Robert? Are you feeling worse?"

"No." He regretted any necessity for deceiving a woman who had shown such flattering faith in him. "I think I'll walk around outside, if you don't mind watching the baby a while longer?"

Miss Margaret smiled. In the past he had often wondered if she was a little simple-minded, but as he had come to know her better it had become apparent that she was simple in a different sense - that her pleasures were gentle and uncomplicated, and that as she had such an unassuming personality it would be rather too easy to assume she had none. It took a long time to get to know Miss Ellison, but it was definitely worth the effort.

"I don’t mind at all," she said. "'Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven'."

"Thank you."

He did not trouble with a jacket. Instead he stepped out in his shirt-sleeves, hands in pockets, eyes screwed up against the brilliance of the sun. The storm had left only occasional signs of its passing except where some of the more delicate plants had been battered back by the force of the rain. Over in Queenie's garden the pea-sticks had collapsed and the old woman was bending at the waist trying to reconstruct their delicate framework. Robert paused to watch her for a moment, then walked over and volunteered to help.

Queenie turned to him with a wry look on her face.

"You should be ashamed of yourself, Robert Timmins. That's offering to work on the Sabbath."

"Something that never seems to trouble the women around here," he commented, taking the bundle of pea-sticks from her and shoving them one by one back into the ground.

"Women work all the days God sends," she told him, quietly. "So do men who run hotels. I don’t suppose James has gone to church either, do you?"

"Probably not." He did not meet her eyes. "Did you lose much in the storm?"

"Not as much as some," was the enigmatic reply. When the last cane had been pushed into the soil she stood up, wiped her hands on her sacking apron, and took hold of Robert's wrist. "Come with me," she said, and hauled him off between the rows of her productive garden towards the place by the fence-line where she kept the hives. As they neared the site, he realised that each hive had been decorated with a small garland of wildflowers and provided with a shallow saucer of beer.

"Bees," Queenie said to them, in the smallest of voices, "here's what you should know. There's been a weddin' in the family. Do you take a drink and celebrate with us."

Embarrassed, Robert snatched his hand away. "Wedding!"

Queenie rounded on him, not angry but definitely concerned. "It's no good attempting to deceive the bees," she pointed out, her tone elevated. "You know as well as I do James is family to me - and to these bees, too. That makes you and them family and there's no escaping that. It's truth that bees want, and what harm does it do to admit it to them? Emma may not know what to look for, but I know you were with James last night and I don’t have any doubts about how you left him. He was happy, Robert, wasn't he?"

He looked around, hoping that divine intervention might rescue him from his predicament, but the kindness in Queenie's eyes was not to be gainsaid. If she asked awkward questions, she did so because she felt it would be for the best in the long run. Having once acknowledged her goodwill, therefore, he could only make up his mind to accept it.

"Yes," he said. "Very happy."

Her arms were around him in a moment, her old countrywoman's clothes smelling of lavender and pickling herbs, her crumpled hands clutching at his sleeves.

"Robert, he's the only son I'll ever have; all I care about is seeing him settled with someone who'll look after him when I'm gone."

Bewildered, Robert hugged back. "You should be telling me I've betrayed Emma and the children and everybody who knows me," he told her, ruefully.

"No, I shouldn't. Loving him more doesn't mean you love them less, does it?"

"Of course not."

Abashed, she detached herself from his hold. "Well, then, whoever said love had to be convenient? Look at me an' Twister. Look at Dorcas Lane. People love all the time where they're not supposed to; that doesn't make it a bad love. There's no such thing as a bad love."

"But there's such a thing as a dangerous one," Robert reminded her. "When it can lead to the gallows."

A shadow fell across Queenie's eyes, but she did not let go of Robert's hands. "There'll be no gallows for either of you," she told him. "If I told you one day you and James could live together and nobody would say a word against you, what would you say to that?"

Robert considered for a moment. "I would say," he answered, "that a thing like that could never happen while Emma was alive."

"Aye, well," Queenie conceded, sadly, "that's true enough. Let's say, then, that we hope we never see the day." She glanced around. "You see over there, that pile of stones? That's the cottage where James was born, and where his mother lived. She was a lovely woman, Robert, a dear friend of mine. She begged me to take care of her child when she died. Of course I didn’t know then that there was to be no children for me and Twister, but James was a son without a mother and I was a mother without a son."

"I know." He wondered where all this was leading, but was reluctant to interrupt the flow of her narrative.

"He always wished he could build it up again," Queenie continued, turning towards what was essentially a robbed-out pile of rubble which had been quarried for stone to repair every other house in the hamlet. "If he had the help of a skilled man, how long do you think it would take him?"

Robert shook his head. "Six months," he said, carelessly, "if the weather's right. You can't expect mortar to set when it's cold, and it doesn't like the heat either. Spring or Autumn are the best times for building houses."

"Six months," Queenie mused. "A lot can happen in six months. Births, deaths, marriages. And everything we see, everything we know, we have to remember to tell the bees."

A silence fell between them then, underscored by a contented buzzing from within the hives and enlivened by the occasional drunken bee slipping sideways out of the saucer. Nevertheless the air of contentment in that small corner of the garden was so thick that it could have been cut with a knife until Robert said, an edge of anxiety to his tone, "Will it break Emma's heart?"

"Break her heart? No, I don't think so," was the considered response. "Your Emma's too strong a woman to have her heart broken by something like this, especially when she knows there's nothing you could have done to prevent it; you might as well expect it to be broken by a thunderstorm or a blizzard. Nature isn’t something we should fight against, Robert, not in my opinion. She'd be sad, but it wouldn’t stop her loving you."

"D'you reckon I ought to tell her?"

Queenie looked at the ground as though trying to suppress a grin, and when she looked up again her face was as straight and solemn as it would have been in church.

"It's not for me to interfere between man and wife," she told him, kindly, "or between man and man, if it comes to that, so I won't give you an answer to that question, but I'll ask you another one instead."

"Oh?" he said, intrigued. "And what would that be, then?"

"Just this," Queenie smiled, with a strange other-worldly sadness lurking in the corners of her eyes. "What on Earth makes you think that your Emma would ever need to be told?"

On Sunday evening Robert went to church as instructed, and Queenie went with him. On Monday he got up and went to work, taking up his tools from where Edmund had left them, and succeeded so well in concentrating on the matter in hand that he reached the end of the day without thinking about James more than constantly. When he walked home to his tea, however, he discovered the cottage in a ferment of excitement which seemed to be affecting the whole of the village in one form or another.

"It's Thomas Brown," Emma told him, as she put his meal in front of him. The children had already eaten and were outside hunting for moths. Miss Margaret, taking advantage of the momentary peace and quiet, was bathing in Robert and Emma's bedroom.

"What's he been doing?" He cut without enthusiasm into the limp piece of boiled bacon that lay on his plate.

"Spying on his bride," chuckled Emma. "Miss Pearl and Miss Ruby came over this morning, in the fly from the Lion; they brought Miss Margaret's wedding dress for the final fitting. Thomas was so desperate to see what was going on that he got himself into trouble; the log-pile fell on him and hurt his foot. By the time he'd walked back to Candleford he was in no condition to come out again this afternoon, so our Laura brought the second post. She left you this."

It was a small book of inspirational poems; Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron, Kipling, the poets whose work was most often recited in church halls and at village social occasions. Robert was fond of a well-chosen phrase, but if he never again had to sit through some hack who fancied himself as an actor battling with "Harfleeg harfleeg harfleeg onward" it would be too soon.

"She told me James was taken ill again yesterday. At tea-time, at the Post Office, he almost fainted."

Robert felt himself becoming very still and the book's pages turning to ice beneath his fingers. "Was he all right?" he asked, tightly.

"So Laura says. But Dorcas is in a taking about it; there's been seven kinds of rumpus about where Sidney's to live, and who with. The boy loves the Post Office and it's obvious he loves Dorcas and Minnie and Laura. Why couldn’t James just leave him there?"

"Maybe he will," Robert said, but did not look at her.

"I don’t know." Emma sounded puzzled. "James Dowland is not a man to give up on anything once he's got his hooks into it. He's determined, is James."

Carefully he set the book down and returned his attention to his meal. "That's harsh," he said, mildly. "The man may be single-minded but he's not … he's not Machiavellian."

Emma's mouth had folded into a tight purse-shape. "I don’t know what that means," she said, crisply. "I don’t have a lot of time for reading, having a house to run and five children to feed and clothe. But whether he's Macki-whatever-it-is or not, Laura says he's in pain. She says she and Dorcas cried over it yesterday. She says Dorcas has never been so upset in all her life."

Recollecting the pale face glimpsed between the Post Office curtains on Saturday night, Robert could well believe it. Dorcas Lane was no innocent, she had a perfectly adequate grasp of the way the world worked, but doubtless she would have preferred not to know how James and Robert had spent their evening. Now she would be faced with the question of whether or not to tell Emma what she knew. The fact that he was still being treated by his wife with something less than open hostility indicated that Dorcas had not yet made any kind of decision.

"What else did she say?" he asked, scooping up potato, peas and mustard.

"Our Laura? She feels sorry for James. She says everyone seems to have turned against him and he needs a friend. There's no-one in Candleford with a good word for him at the moment, except Dorcas."

"The man's been hurt," Robert told her. "Why can't people see that?"

"I don’t know, Robert. Maybe the question should really be, why can you? You and James don’t even like each other. Or, at least, I thought you didn’t. Now you're defending him - and to me, that grew up with him. I don’t understand it, that's all; are you and him friends or enemies?"

He lifted his head and stared at her. "I don’t know," he said. "Friends, I suppose. He's always been civil to me."

"And you did help him when he needed someone," Emma mused. "It's funny it should have been you."

"Is it? Why?"

"Because of all the things you used to say about him. 'He who sups with the Devil needs a long spoon'."

"James Dowland is not the Devil," he said, firmly.

"I know that. But there was a time when you treated him as if he was."

Robert abandoned all pretence at eating and pushed his plate away. "I was wrong," he said.

"Or you could be wrong now," she suggested, with the air of one who has no intention of letting the subject go.

"I could be," Robert acknowledged, "but I'm not."

Emma's eyes grew large. "Well," she said, "that's a good thing, then, because somebody should walk over there this evening, to take his umbrella back and find out whether there's anything we can do to help. You and I may be the last friends he has around here, so one of us will have to go - and it might as well be you. We should at least let the poor man know he's not alone."

Robert looked at her in bewilderment. She was speaking as if she only intended him to do his Christian duty as a neighbour and friend in time of trouble, but there was a sadness about her too - almost as if she had somehow begun to recognise, perhaps even to condone, the recent unexpected closeness between himself and James. It was not a thing any wife could have been expected to forgive if confronted with it directly, but if she had only caught a glimpse of it, seen the hem of its shadow as it flickered past, she might perhaps have allowed herself to respond in a very different way.

"Don't let him give you anything to drink," she was saying. "And be home by midnight, or you'll find the door locked against you." It was more than he could do to disobey her in this sort of mood. Her patience with him was legendary but not inexhaustible, and he had already tried her limits most severely.

Heavily, he got to his feet. By the time he had his jacket on Emma was standing beside him holding out James's umbrella.

"Thank you," he said, and kissed her cheek.

"Don’t be late," she repeated, and he didn’t like the tremor in her voice.

"I won’t."

Robert let himself out of the cottage and set off with the umbrella over his shoulder, his mind in turmoil and his heart on fire. This was obviously not the end of the matter as far as Emma was concerned; they would return to the topic of James Dowland sooner or later, he had no doubt. For now, though, he was bound for Candleford, and for James, with Emma's full knowledge and consent, and with every instinct in his entire body telling him that, for once in his life, he was doing exactly the right thing.

*

As he drew near to the Lion, almost the first person Robert ran into was Elsie, the chambermaid, without her apron and cap and with a little flowered hat skewered to her head. She appeared to be walking out with a Fordlow boy who was waiting for her on the corner of the street opposite the hotel.

"Elsie," he nodded.

"Oh, Mr Timmins," she exclaimed, sounding genuinely relieved to have met with him, "there's been such a to-do!"

Despite himself Robert stopped and turned, aware of her escort looming in the background. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"It's Mr Barton," Elsie told him, alarm in her tone. "Mr Dowland caught him going through his personal possessions. Mr Barton said Mr Dowland was guilty of something he didn’t want the world to know about."

Robert's heart did a cartwheel. "The hall porter?" he asked, in a feeble attempt to keep up.

"Yes. He's been dismissed without a character, for thieving. Are you looking for Mr Dowland?"

Robert acknowledged that he was. "I wanted to return his umbrella. He lent it to me on Saturday."

"You'll find him down the back, where we burn things, out past the yard. He's very angry, Mr Timmins."

Robert's eyes turned automatically in the direction of a thin curl of smoke that rose at the very edge of the woodland which encircled this side of Candleford. It was part of Sir Timothy Midwinter's estate, as was most of the surrounding land, and the baronet had chosen to leave it untouched so that it afforded shelter to the houses at the end of the village.

"Yes," he said, quietly, "I can understand why."

"Let me take that indoors for you." Elsie lifted the umbrella out of Robert's hands. "I'll leave it behind Mr Dowland's desk. You can tell him where it is."

"Thank you." But he was already turning in James's direction, and barely noticed that Elsie and her swain had already moved away.

He found James outside the gate from the Lion's yard, industriously feeding items into a busy little fire. The look he received when James glanced up and saw him was one of welcoming delight mingled with embarrassment and a kind of controlled despair.

"I brought your umbrella back," Robert said, by way of explanation. "I've left it with Elsie."

James nodded acknowledgement. "Come and sit with me for god's sake; I need your company."

This place was obviously a regular haunt for hotel staff and their hangers-on; it was sheltered from view on all sides and there were a few old wooden chairs scattered about and a good many pipe stems trodden into the scuffed soil to indicate that it received plenty of casual use. Nevertheless it was an unlikely place of resort for anyone dressed as elegantly as James, in the frock coat, straight-legged trousers and highly-polished shoes of his working uniform; only something of pressing urgency could have brought him here at this time of night, at the risk of ruining clothes so important to his professional façade.

Robert found a seat and lowered himself into it carefully. "I'm told you were taken ill again on Sunday," he said, softly.

"It was nothing. A dizzy spell." James sought to change the subject. "You may have heard that I've had to dismiss my hall porter?"

"Elsie mentioned it. Is he the one who tried to throw me out?"

"Yes. You shouldn’t take it personally, though; he'd have thrown out anyone below the rank of duke."

"You caught him stealing?"

"Snooping, not stealing. I think blackmail is more in his line than petty larceny."

"Did he find anything?"

"I don’t know. I don’t think so." James sounded defeated. "But there was plenty for him to find." He stopped, then turned to Robert. "I hoped you'd come," he said. "I know you said you might not, but I hoped."

"I'd have been here sooner if I'd had an excuse," Robert told him, with devastating honesty. "Staying away from you almost killed me."

"So why now?"

Robert laughed, a little sourly. "Emma thought I might be needed."

"Emma?"

"Yes. It seems our Laura let slip about you being in distress, and I have instructions to do something about it. I understand Sidney prefers to stay at the Post Office?"

"So it seems." James's shoulders slumped, and he was unwilling to meet Robert's searching gaze. "Would I be abdicating my duty to him if I allowed it? I want to do what's best, but I know nothing about being a parent. Dorcas finds it all so simple - couldn't I leave it to her?"

Robert shrugged. "Women do find it easier than we do," he said. "It comes naturally to them. There's no reason you shouldn't be a good father to your boy, but it may be too much to take on all at once. If he feels safe with Dorcas, perhaps you should let him stay with her."

"Yes, that was the conclusion I had already come to. Unfortunately, though, Sidney is the last tie holding me to Candleford; without him to care for I will definitely have to leave. My partners have asked me to vacate my rooms by the end of the week. Perhaps I could find an excuse to stay in the area. I could get work of some kind, if only in the fields. I'm not exactly useless, you know."

"I never supposed you were." Confident of not being observed, Robert reached out and folded James's slimmer hand into a strong grip, squeezing to reassure him and then loosing his hold. "But you'd be wasted at carting stone or hoeing turnips, James, and we both know it."

"I would stay," James reiterated, stubbornly, "if you gave me a reason."

Robert sighed. "I wish I could, love," he said, very quietly. "But I can't split myself between you and Emma and I wouldn’t want either of you to live half a life. As long as I have my family to think about, you and I can never be more than we have been. If I had my life over again, I would make different choices."

"So would I." James shuffled another bundle of papers into the flames and poked them with a stick to make sure they spread out and were consumed equally.

"What is all this?" Robert asked him, distracted by the action.

"My past. Diaries, photographs, letters - anything not fit for my son to see. I'm sure you'd do the same for Laura if you thought it was necessary."

"I would," Robert admitted. "I have. Was this what Barton was looking at?"

"It's what he was looking for," James conceded. "He didn’t find it, but he obviously had the suspicion it was there to be found. If it doesn’t exist, though, neither he nor anyone else can threaten me with it ever again."

There was one last photograph in his lap, and his fingertips stroked slowly across its faded emulsion as if somehow seeking to touch the figures it portrayed. They were two men, side by side, dressed in the epitome of fashion as it had been twenty years before: One was dignified and had curled side-whiskers and a flourishing moustache; the other was a much younger, fresher-faced version of James Dowland himself.

"You were only a boy," Robert remarked, aware of the emotions the image had provoked.

"It was just before he died. He wanted to leave me provided for, so he gave me my start in business. From then until I came back here I never really felt that I belonged anywhere. Now I do, and it feels very harsh to have to leave again."

"I know. But you shouldn't let anybody keep you in a place that's too small for you, James. Even," he concluded, sadly, "me."

"Dear Robert." The reply was scarcely above a whisper. "If anybody could … But it's a question of courage. Sometimes it takes more to let go than to hold on."

"Courage has never been one of your failings, though, has it? You stand and fight when other men are falling apart. You'd stand and fight for me, if I let you."

"I would. You're one of the few things in my life worth fighting for. But if you think I should go, and leave Sidney to establish himself without my interference, I'd better get it over with quickly - don’t you agree?"

"I do." Robert reached across to rest his hand upon James's where it covered the old photograph. "What was his name?" he asked, softly.

"Edward. I never thought I would come to care for anyone else as much."

"You know, you needn't burn him."

"I know." Nonetheless James's arm stretched out and tilted the image neatly into the fire. They watched together as the edges singed, as the picture curled, as slowly and surely the figure of the older man was consumed by flames and only the bright, eager-eyed smile of the younger remained. "It all seemed so simple then," sighed James.

"It will again," was the quiet counsel. "Let me read you a poem; it's in a book Laura gave me. She thought there might be something that would give courage to Miss Ellison, but there's one here that reminds me of you, too."

He pulled the book from his pocket and, in his quiet countryman's burr, read completely without affectation.

"My daughter has contributed greatly to my education," he finished, half-sheepishly. "Sometimes I think that's the real purpose of children."

James manufactured a cough to cover his embarrassment. "Is that really how you see me?" he asked. "'Bloody but unbowed'?"

"It is."

"Thank you. I wish I had something to give you in return - a parting gift."

"You gave me yourself," Robert reminded him. "I don't need more."

"No, I want you to have something tangible. A remembrance." Casting about for inspiration, James detached the pearl pin from his cravat. "Here. Tell Emma it's only worth a few shillings and she may let you wear it occasionally, but if you ever need the money you should get at least twenty pounds for it in Oxford. I won’t be offended."

Robert's fingers closed on the tiny object. "Pearls are for tears," he observed, sadly.

"They are. But you and I are used to tears, Robert. I'm certainly not afraid of a few more."

"Nor am I." Unaccustomed to handling such a delicate item of jewellery, Robert struggled to attach it to the front of his shirt. After a moment James took it back and worked the pin through the fabric, trying for detachment and succeeding almost completely.

"I'll speak to Dorcas about Sidney tomorrow. I can leave before the wedding. No sense prolonging the agony, is there?"

"None."

"You won't come to bed, I suppose?"

"Not tonight." Robert shook his head. "It's a long walk back to Lark Rise. I should go."

"Stay and I'll drive you. It will only take a few minutes to get out the pony and trap."

"And how would that look?" Robert asked, aware it would be nothing like as simple as James wanted to believe. "We've already been indiscreet enough." He paused, head hanging. "Dorcas Lane saw us on Saturday."

"Dorcas?"

Briefly Robert recounted details of the incident.

"She has treated me perfectly correctly since," James said, wondering.

"And Queenie's treated me as if I had married you in church," was the quiet response. "We have allies, James, but we'll lose them if we're rash enough to flaunt something the world believes to be a sin. This is no time to be selfish."

"I know. You understand, though, don’t you, that when I leave … I'll be leaving a piece of my heart behind?"

"And taking away a piece of mine. I never realised it could be like this - not between men."

"It can," James told him. "More often than you might imagine. I don’t think it will be possible just … to stop loving each other."

"Then don't," said Robert. "And I won’t, either." Reluctantly, he got to his feet. "You should go in. The night's getting cold."

"Not yet." James turned back towards the fire. "I want to stay and crush the ashes. I want there to be nothing left to show I was ever here."

The waver in his voice made Robert wonder whether James was crying. Instead of turning his face to find out, however, he bent low over him from behind, wrapped both arms affectionately round his neck and dropped a kiss on his upturned brow.

"You've left your mark," he said. "Just not where anyone but me can read it. Like a mason's mark, hidden away where it takes another craftsman to find."

"I'm glad."

"So am I," said Robert. "I always will be. Don't turn around, now, or I'll never be able to walk away."

"I won’t," said James. "Only, if you love me at all, Robert, go quickly."

Robert loosed the grip of his arms and paused for one heart-stopping moment as if after all he would throw caution to the winds and remain; then, with a groan of almost unendurable anguish, he turned his back to James, strode manfully away, and did exactly as he had been instructed to do.

Robert had not intended to show his face in Candleford again before he received word of James's departure, but around the middle part of the day on Tuesday an ill-considered stroke of the chisel resulted in part of its tip breaking off and leaving him with something that made an ugly, ragged cut-mark in the stone. He stood and looked at it for a long time, muttering under his breath about his own carelessness, then stowed his tools again in the church porch and pocketed the chisel. It was probably too far gone to be re-forged, but he could pick up a replacement blade at the ironmonger's for only a few pence. Fortunately he had an account there and would not need to have cash about him, saving himself a trip home beforehand.

If he had hoped to be able to slip in and out of the town without being noticed, however, he was to be disappointed. Whilst there was no sign of any activity in the vicinity of the Golden Lion, he was intercepted emerging from the ironmonger's by Minnie, the delightfully hapless Post Office maid, who almost grabbed his hand and hauled him away in the direction of her employer's premises.

Dorcas Lane was waiting with a troubled expression on her face, and it was obvious from the first that she had somehow made up her mind to address the subject of the scene she had witnessed. Her steadfast ability to grasp nettles had always impressed him; she was a woman of great courage and no little resolve, qualities he would have found admirable in a man but which he considered even more so in a woman making her way alone in a man's world.

"Robert, I would dearly like to talk to you about something of great importance," she said, in a tone which seemed to suggest that she expected no very civil response.

He nodded.

"Will you step inside? Minnie, perhaps you could ask Miss Pearl and Miss Ruby if they have any embroidery silk in this colour?" She handed over a small twist of thread. "Bring two skeins," she added, "of the nearest match. You may stay and look at patterns if you like, I need to talk to Mr Timmins alone."

"Ma'am." Minnie dropped a respectful little bob, and took the thread and went out again into the street with the air of a child released from school.

"Minnie and Miss Ruby have developed a shared enthusiasm for sensational literature," Dorcas explained, ushering Robert into the scullery, "so there may be some delay. However I doubt we will have more than a few minutes." She paused, and then continued determinedly. "I know you will say it is none of my business, Robert, but I feel I do not have an alternative. I must speak to you about a most troubling matter."

Robert sighed. He felt large and lumpish in her presence, in her home which was so precisely calculated for her own particular character, and felt that he represented something alien and inimical to her peace of mind.

"If you must," he said, as tolerantly as he could, "you must." And he prepared to receive from Dorcas the reprimand he had richly deserved from his wife. However she was looking up at him with pleading in her eyes, and seemed more disposed to cajole than to scold.

"You know," she began, "how Laura got herself into difficulties when you and she saw Nan kissing the farmer's son? Emma told her then that a kiss could be many things, including a seal of friendship and a parting of the ways, but Laura could only see it as Alf being betrayed by the girl he loved."

"I know that," he admitted, uncomfortably.

"Emma's my friend," Dorcas reminded him, "as well as my cousin. If I felt she was being betrayed by someone she loved - Robert, it would be a considerable dilemma for me. I have no desire to hurt either of you, but there is a higher moral duty to be obeyed. A married man has made vows before God, and he ought to keep them if he can."

"A point which you have no doubt made to Sir Timothy Midwinter on more than one occasion," answered Robert, his mouth folding into a stubborn line.

"Oh!" She was temporarily disconcerted by the sharpness of his attack, but recollected herself with monumental effort. "I know I'm no paragon, and I have nothing to plead on my own behalf but foolishness and a weak nature. However I learned a very dreadful lesson, and I would give anything to save you from learning the same; how awful one feels when one has hurt somebody one cares for."

"Dorcas, I know you mean well, but … "

"I'm sorry, Robert." Politely but firmly, she shouted him down without ever raising her voice. "Will you at least tell me what it was?" she continued, more calmly. "Was it friendship, was it love - or was it goodbye?"

He looked away. The little room was not interesting enough to hold his gaze - cream-painted walls, a stone floor, a sink and a table, simple and functional and unattractive - but in any event he could not focus on it; his vision had turned inward, to the main street of Candleford on the edge of an epochal storm, to James's mouth lifting beneath his.

"It was all of those," he told her, and did not shirk the censure in her eyes. "And lust and desire too."

"Oh, Robert … " Unexpectedly, she crossed the room and took his hands in hers, biting her lower lip as if to prevent tears rolling down her face. "I knew it must be. I have never seen you looking at Emma like that."

He hung his head. "Don’t imagine I don’t love Emma," he said, "but there are some things that just can't be helped."

"I know."

"He … " Awkwardly he cleared his throat. "He's leaving Candleford. Tomorrow."

"I know. I received a note this morning, asking if he could talk to me about Sidney. I expect him in an hour," she added, patting the backs of his hands by way of consolation before releasing them. "But I have had Henry Barton in my Post Office this morning dropping the most obscene hints and innuendoes about James. He says he observed him in … in sexual congress … with a person of the male gender. He suggests that for a sufficient sum of money he might be prepared to name the other man. Is he telling the truth?"

"No."

Her eyebrows lifted hopefully. "You did not … ?" she asked.

"He didn't see us," he told her, with some firmness.

Dorcas Lane was far too strong-minded a woman to allow herself to blush at the mental images produced by this frank admission. Indeed, in some small part of her mind, she envied him his easy acceptance not only of a half-inverted sexuality but also of the threat of exposure. She would have been inclined to doubt that anything could unsettle Robert Timmins, had she not so recently been witness to his affectionate relationship with James Dowland.

"Of course not. Men with secrets to keep are never careless enough to allow themselves to behave affectionately in public places." Then, with a further effort at self-control, she continued; "Is there anything you and James wish me to do about Mr Barton?"

"What could you do? You know yourself it's only half a lie. But I'm not afraid of what people will say; nobody who knows me would believe I had strayed, and Emma will never have cause for complaint."

"Then, your affair with James - Is it over?"

"No," he told her. "Any more than yours with Sir Timothy."

"He has a wife," Dorcas said, faintly. "He was obliged to make a choice."

"Exactly."

Dorcas considered for a moment, both what he had said and what he had not.

"Well, I see that you know your own mind, Robert. I would expect nothing less. If you assure me that Emma and the children will not be harmed in any way, I will do whatever I can to see Henry Barton's stories are given no credit. I apologise for asking you something so very intimate, but I hope you feel it is advisable to have at least one person on whose discretion you can rely. I have my own secrets, Robert, and I will not betray yours. Or James's," she added, her mouth twisting into a shallow parody of a smile.

"Thank you." He paused. "I'll leave it to you whether or not to tell him what we discussed; I don’t expect to see him again before he goes."

"Yes," she acknowledged. "I must consider. Will you tell Emma I look forward to seeing her tomorrow?"

"I will."

He turned away, then paused and turned back, and with one hand pulled her to him and dropped a kiss on her flawless cheek. He had never been a man for displays of familial regard, and she now found herself somewhat at a loss for a response. In the end, she settled for a smile that was by no means discouraging.

"Robert," she said, by way of goodbye.

"Cousin Dorcas," he responded with a nod, and took his leave of her without further delay.

*

In the Wagon and Horses that evening the talk was all of the forthcoming wedding. Most of the village had been involved in preparations for it, and in readying Fordlow church for the marriage of its late vicar's daughter. The Reverend Ellison's successor had at last got round to allocating money for repairs, and the old building in its idyllic location on the shoulder of the hill - which had become steadily more decrepit during her father's tenure - had now been swept out, polished, sweetened and decked with flowers for the celebration of Miss Margaret's wedding. It was a measure of the affection with which she was held in all three villages that those who had nothing else to give were unstinting when it came to giving of their time, their labour and their skills on her behalf.

"Never seen so much fuss and palaver," Twister said, sitting down heavily on a stool beside Robert. On the surface of the wooden table a grid of squares had been painted, and Robert and Alf Arless were bending their heads over a game of draughts. "Weddin's. Why women put so much store in them I never understood."

Robert grunted, but did not answer.

"It's because they get to dress up and parade about in front of their friends," Alf said, cheerfully. "An' don’t pretend you don’t like doin' that too, Twister. You'll 'ave a flower in your coat tomorrow same as everybody else."

Twister, however, seemed determined not to see it that way. "Flowers," he moaned, as if it were somehow all their fault. "What's the point, eh?"

"The point," Robert said, leaping his black draughtsman over Alf's white piece with a mischievous flourish, "is that women like to celebrate getting their hands on the man they want, and putting a fence round him so that others know to keep away."

"Is that what it's all about?" Alf asked him, guilelessly. "Marriage? Just about owning somebody so that nobody else don’t get 'em?"

Robert sighed. "You're asking the wrong man," he said. "It's about having children, and helping each other through the bad times, too, but whether that brings you closer together or drives you further apart is another matter."

Alf's eyes grew round. "What, you having troubles at home, then?"

"Me? No." But somehow Robert's denial failed to be entirely convincing.

There was a small bunch of men at the bar, drivers and porters for a carter who ran services to Oxford through the local villages. Most, including Elsie's escort of the previous evening, were from Fordlow, a village with which Lark Rise had something of a troubled relationship. While not especially welcome, the carter's men were usually more or less tolerated on those occasions when they stopped at the Wagon and Horses to enjoy a drink or two comfortably out of range of their employer. This evening, however, they had been there just long enough for the conversation to have taken a decidedly unsavoury turn, and now a man in the midst of the group was speaking to the others in a hoarse, thrilled whisper. All of a sudden the name of "Dowland" floated clear of the hubbub.

"No!" someone said, in delighted disbelief.

"Tis true as I'm standing here, I tell you. Henry Barton saw it with his own eyes."

"No he didn't, he's 'aving you on. Dowland and a man, it don’t make sense."

"'s against nature," someone else suggested, less coherently.

Robert froze, his fingertips resting lightly on the next black draughtsman, his mind elsewhere. Alf, catching his preoccupation, also strained to hear the conversation at the bar.

"They're saying … "

"I know what they're saying," Robert told him, brusquely. His whole body had tensed, and he seemed about to force himself up onto his feet to end the conversation when the decision to do so was taken from him in a most unexpected manner.

"Oy." Twister stood unsteadily, tankard in hand, and took a step towards them. "That's our James you're talking about; me an' my Queenie, we raised him from a nipper. Folks in Lark Rise are proud of that boy, and we won’t hear you Fordlow lot talkin' about him like that."

The biggest of the Fordlow men turned around and faced him. "You know what he is, then, don’t you?" he said, roughly.

Robert moved out of his place to stand behind Twister, and was vaguely aware of Alf coming up next to his shoulder in silent support.

"We know what you think he is," he said, calmly. "A woman-hater. Is that so?"

"Our James?" Twister repeated. "Our James, father of a son, hating women?" He laughed, scornfully. "Not a one of you in Fordlow that's fit to polish his boots."

"That's right," Alf put in. "Some folks do, and other folks criticise."

"Oh aye," said the big man. "We all know what some folks do." He slurped his beer with uncouth relish, then said; "So which one of you three was it, then?"

"What?" Twister, who had started the confrontation, unfortunately lacked the mental agility to continue it. "What you talking about?"

"I think he's suggesting," Robert responded, without apparent emotion, "that one of us has sinned with James Dowland." It had obviously been a random shot, one with no solid information to back it up, yet it had come uncomfortably close to its target. On the other hand, the mere fact of its being inaccurate gave cause for optimism. Barton may have entertained doubts of James's conduct, but no answering suspicion had attached itself to Robert; therefore, Barton had somehow contrived to miss the whole truth, and only to snatch at a corner of it as it passed him by. If he had ambitions of making his living as a blackmailer, Robert reflected, the man would surely profit quite as much as his talent deserved. "Maybe we should explain that we don't like that kind of talk in here," he continued, steadily. "Maybe we should be asking you gentlemen to leave."

"What, three of you and five of us?" the Fordlow man asked, derisively.

"No," said Robert. "Five of you, and all of us. Whatever Dowland may or may not have done, he's Lark Rise through and through. If you want to talk about him - or any of us - like that you won’t do it where we can hear you, that's all."

Elsie's escort was watching him sharply. In the end, it was he who broke the impasse.

"Come along, Jack, let's leave these Lark Risers to their weasel-piss; if we go now, we can just make last call at the Black Swan."

One glance around showed the Fordlow agitator that he and his party would be seriously outnumbered if punches should suddenly be thrown. He thumped his pint pot down on the bar and sniffed contempt at the sullen faces surrounding him.

"Right," he said. "Time we was getting back. Good night, ladies," he added, shouldering his way through the hostile throng. "You make sure you get your beauty sleep, now."

A chorus of derision followed him out through the door, and a moment later the horses and carts of the Fordlow men could be heard drawing away from the Wagon.

Robert sat down heavily, aware that he was shaking and wanting nothing more than to be invisible just for a while.

"Twister," Alf said, "you were brilliant. You showed that lot who was boss."

"Our James," Twister repeated, still indignant. "A woman-hater. Whoever heard the like?"

"It ain't true?" Alf asked, nervously.

"'Course it ain't true," Twister came back. "Can you imagine our James with a man? You only 'as to look at him, all big an' strong as he is; he ain't no delicate little fairy thing. Why'd a man of any sort want to tangle with the likes of James Dowland, eh?"

"It doesn’t seem likely," Robert conceded. "Does it?"

"No, it don’t, Robert Timmins," Twister told him, crossly. "It don’t seem likely at all, because it ain't. And don’t you," he added, with great finality, "ever let me catch you thinkin' otherwise."

There was still work to be done in the morning, and everyone was up early on account of it. Robert's task was to hang two flower-decked rope swags between the church porch and the lych gate, which he and his eldest son accomplished without too much difficulty. When the second one had been secured in place he stepped down from his ladder, stood back to examine his handiwork, and rubbed his palms together in overt satisfaction.

"What d'you think, Edmund?" he asked, brightly.

"It looks nice, pa."

"Well, I hope the happy couple approve," Robert said. "Go and put the ladder away in the tower for me, son, and then we'll go home and see if your ma's got breakfast ready yet."

Edmund completed his task and returned to his father's side in moments, and they began to stroll quietly back to Lark Rise.

"Good to have a day off school, eh?" Robert asked, smiling.

Edmund nodded. "Except it's like an extra Sunday," he said. "With having to get dressed up and go to church."

"Well, that's true," Robert admitted. "Although there's a party afterwards, and to judge by the fuss your ma and Queenie have been making all week it'll be a banquet fit for a king. And there'll be music and dancing and girls in their best dresses," he added, cheerfully.

"I don’t like girls," Edmund said. "Except our Laura and Ethel and some of the others. I think I'm a woman-hater, like Mr Dowland."

"No you're not, son," Robert told him, stopping to look down at the boy. "In the first place, it doesn’t mean what you think it means, and in the second place Mr Dowland's no woman-hater either. That's just what some people are making up to blacken his name, and I won't have you repeating it - is that clear?"

Edmund looked back at him, bewildered but loyally determined to do as his father said.

"All right, pa," he agreed, amiably. Then; "What does it mean, then, if it doesn't mean he hates women?"

Robert glanced around himself in despair. It was a bright blue morning, with high clouds and still golden sunshine, the soft green of grass and trees framing the vista of the old church, the clear high call of songbirds already festive on the air. It was too lovely a day to waste any part of it trying to enlighten his son on this particular subject. Not that it could be shirked completely, but it could definitely be postponed at least for the time being.

"That's a discussion for another day," he said, firmly. "Come along, now, and let's get ourselves something to eat."

After breakfast began the long process of getting everybody into their wedding clothes, much complicated by the fact that Miss Margaret was marrying from the Timmins cottage. Robert and Emma's bedroom had been made over to her for the occasion, and Queenie and Emma were constantly in and out to supervise and assist in what seemed to be an inordinately intricate procedure. It was left to Robert, Alf and Twister between them to get the Arless and Timmins children washed and dressed, and even with the able assistance of Edmund and Ethel it seemed to take a very long time and to be far more difficult than any such simple matter should. In the end, almost in despair, Robert left Alf and Edmund to deal with the bootlaces and hair ribbons and walked out along the fence line, hands stuffed in his pockets, to where Twister stood. The old man had, as predicted, put a flower in his coat - a tight yellow rosebud from the abundant rambler that was Queenie's pride and joy. He also had a look on his face betokening the most profound and irremediable depression.

"Oh," he groaned, "how do you stand it, Robert Timmins? Children arguin' an' tusslin' over nothing? 'She got my hair ribbon, I got her boots'? It's enough to drive a man to drink."

"They're over-excited," Robert said, tolerantly, "and their ma's busy. They'll settle down when they're all neat and tidy."

Twister laughed. "I hope they do." He paused. "And how come you're lookin' so prosperous this morning? Miss Margaret give you that, did she?"

James's pearl, speared through Robert's one good piece of neckwear, lent a spurious air of quality to the rest of his ensemble. A man of fashion would never have mixed 'town' with 'country' in such a manner, but as a compliment to Miss Margaret and to the importance of the occasion it could hardly have been improved upon.

"That? Seven shillings on Banbury Market," Robert said, brusquely. "I took it in exchange for a debt."

"Really?" Twister's narrow eyes disbelieved him. "Well, you know your own business."

A wail of distress sounded from inside the Turrill cottage.

"Hadn't you better see what that's about?" Robert asked.

Twister sighed. "I'm going," he acknowledged, moving away at snail's pace. "Can't abide weddin's," he added, in the same misogynistic tone he had used the evening before. "Maybe the women-haters have the right idea."

"Go on, you miserable old swine," Robert told him, without malice. "It's not women you hate, Twister, it's everybody."

"True enough, Robert Timmins," the old man conceded, as he went about his business. "True enough."

Left alone in front of the hives, Robert soon became aware of the patient buzzing of their occupants and took up between finger and thumb the wilted remnants of the wildflower garlands. One shallow saucer still remained outside one of the hives but it was empty; the other had disappeared altogether.

"Well, bees," he said, quietly. "Another day, another wedding."

If he had been of an imaginative turn of mind, he might have fancied he detected an answering increase in their subtle din at this point, a sympathetic note to the quiet hum.

"James is leaving Candleford today," he went on, and it surprised him that he didn't feel even slightly foolish addressing them in this manner. "Did you know how it was going to be with us?"

There was one thing he would be certain never to ask Queenie - just how far in advance she had predicted that he would come to love James. The answer would be bound to make him furious not to have realised it sooner. He had the uneasy notion that Queenie had been waiting for it, watching him, counting off the days and the years to this time ever since he had first set foot in Lark Rise.

"Does Emma know?" he asked them. "Does Laura?"

He tried to imagine his daughter's response, but got no further than a horrified blush. Her shock on realising that her parents still enjoyed marital relations had been great enough; the notion of her beloved pa with a man would surely be impossible to assimilate.

No, there was Dorcas, there was Queenie, and there was Barton - misinformed and so obviously malicious that the one grain of truth in his allegations would be discarded along with all the rest. Somewhere, too, in the wider world, there were men who had been with James and boys who had been with him. Whether or not they remembered and whether or not they would ever care enough to use that information against them was irrevocably beyond his knowledge.

"So," he said, "we're safe. For now. And today it will all be over."

And, after all, safety was what he had wanted - or at least what he had said he wanted. It was not James who had sought the dangerously public embraces. It was not James who had the wife and family to protect. Robert was the one with most to lose, and Robert was the one who had taken the greatest risks. He had come perilously close to throwing everything away for James's sake, to abandoning hearth and home in defiance of the world; it was a temptation against which he would always struggle as long as James was nearby. From today, however, that temptation should be very much easier to resist.

He only wished that he had it in his heart to be properly grateful for it.

The entire population of Lark Rise and half of Candleford had turned out to see Miss Ellison united to Thomas Brown; it was like a Fair Day out on the green in front of the church, with people in their best clothes greeting one another in excitement. Some few minutes before the service was due to start Miss Margaret had still not arrived, and Robert lounged against the churchyard wall exchanging the occasional pleasantry with his neighbours. He had assembled all the children and marched them up to Fordlow in due state, and was now waiting for Emma and Queenie to join him. However he was jolted out of his reverie by the distant sight of a tall man leading a horse down through the village, and clinging devotedly to his arm was a small woman in a flowered bonnet. So preoccupied had he been, both with the wedding preparations and with the turmoil in his own heart, that it had never for one moment occurred to him that James would want to bid goodbye to Queenie before leaving, or that if he did so their paths would inevitably cross again.

Neither of them so much as glanced in Robert's direction, although it was obvious they knew he was there. For himself, he was mesmerised; James was all he could see, all that tall elegance so neatly arrayed in the well-cut clothing, the tightly-fitting breeches which had fired Robert's dormant imagination little more than a week ago. The journey the two of them had undertaken together had brought them now to a parting of the ways, but surely they had travelled further in that relatively short space of time than most men do in a whole lifetime. Everything that he was wanted to reach out to James, here and now, despite the occasion, despite their friends and neighbours all round them, and he could answer neither for the expression on his face nor for the way his body turned and his feet moved automatically in James's direction. He took two, three, four steps, then halted and simply allowed himself to observe the man from a safe distance.

"Pa?" Laura was saying, but Dorcas Lane's voice cut her off.

"Oh, Laura, just a moment … "

He did not hear the rest of their conversation. He was too busy watching James.

James bade Queenie goodbye with an affectionate kiss. She held his stirrup for him as he swung up into the saddle, and after exchanging a few parting words with her he rode down the slope and quietly over the greensward towards Robert.

Robert held his breath. The world had stopped turning; their eyes locked and held, and James was smiling. It was the same smile he had worn on Saturday evening, when he had fallen at last into Robert's embrace. That moment, that first naked touch of flesh on flesh, had been sought so earnestly by them both that in terms of sheer contentment it had almost surpassed the satisfaction of their bodily lusts. A physical need could always, somehow, be assuaged; an emotional one could only find its answer in a kindred soul. What they had recognised in one other was more important than the simple act of coition, and the look that passed between them now had little to do with lust and everything to do with love.

James halted his horse beside Robert and leaned down from his saddle, bending low and speaking so quietly that only Robert could hear him.

"Well," he said, "goodbye, my rustic poet."

Robert's smile was indulgent. There was a softness in his eyes when he looked at James that many of those around him would have found both unfamiliar and slightly alarming.

"Goodbye, love." Not words, so much as silent shapes of the mouth.

"Send for me if you need me."

"I will."

James nodded. "Then I'll go," he said, simply. "As you took the trouble to remind me, 'I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul'."

"You are, James," Robert agreed, with considerable emphasis. "You most certainly are."

James straightened his back, smiled once again, touched his hat respectfully, and with obvious reluctance turned his horse's head away.

Robert stood watching him leave. His mouth had compressed into a strong line and his eyes were sharp with unshed tears. Somewhere at hand Laura said "Pa?" again, and once more Dorcas silenced her. And Queenie was there, too, and Emma, and who knew what others? Had the rumours about James reached the Miss Pratts in their identical outfits, or little Minnie from the Post Office, and were they even now so fixated on uncovering the truth that they were observing his every move? Was every man he spoke to suspect? Was half of Lark Rise, just at this moment, distracted from its duty and, whether it understood the reason for it or not, mesmerised by the sight of Robert Timmins watching his lover ride away?

He honestly could not bring himself to care.

"Pa," said Laura, for the third time, and this time Dorcas did not stop her, "here's Miss Ellison."

Robert recollected himself and turned towards her, nodding his thanks. By the time the hired fly had drawn to a halt outside the churchyard gates he was there to hand Miss Margaret down from it and to watch as Laura and Minnie rearranged her costume and settled her veil. The congregation had somehow found its way into the church and the choir had already begun to sing. James Dowland was out of sight, around the corner in the road, and the world had started turning again.

Robert took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and offered his arm to Miss Margaret. She placed her hand on it, gripping more tightly than was strictly necessary, and with a considerable effort of will he put aside his own concerns, pulled himself together sternly, smiled into her uncertain eyes and prepared to lead her into the church.

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