"I have been thinking about them for a year."
And then at last he smiled. It was not the almost; it was the whole of it. And it changed his face entirely, and she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful on a hillside in her life.
"I love you," he said. "I have loved you since you told my footman to put the fire out. I should have knocked on that door. I shall knock on every door you ever go behind for the rest of my life, if you'll let me."
She put her hand up to his face. His cheek was rough, because he had still not found time to shave, and warm. "I love you, too," she said. "I think I began on the terrace, when you asked if the bee was hurt."
And he drew her close there on the old stone bench above the valley, and kissed her very gently at first, and then not gently at all. Down at the ford, the inn door banged and somebody laughed, and neither of them heard it.
"Well," said Kezia from the doorway. Neither of them had heard her come. "You'll have to tell the bees."
Isabel laughed with her head against his shoulder. "Kezia, it's nearly dark."
"And if you don't tell them, they'll take offense and leave, and then where will you be? You tell bees everything: a death, a birth, a wedding. You knock on the skep and you tell them. Your mother knew that. Go on, the pair of you. I'll not have my bees insulted on my own hill."
So they went along the row of skeps in the dusk, hand in hand, with the old woman watching from the lit doorway. At the first skep, Isabel stopped. She did not knock; she looked at him instead.
The Duke of Hensley, who had once stood outside a door in the dark and not dared, raised his hand. He knocked on the straw three times, clear and firm. The hum inside rose and settled.