"When did she say it?"
"A year ago, on a terrace." He looked at the shut door and away again. "I have been carrying water to other people's bees for a twelvemonth, ma'am. All over England. In most places, they thought I was out of my wits."
"And were you?"
He gave the question the grave attention he might have given a bishop. "Somewhat," he said.
He split kindling for her after that, because she asked him to, and he did it neatly and stacked it by the door. He carried a heavy stone that she wanted moved from one side of the garden to the other, and then back again because she had changed her mind, and he did not say a word about it.
The whole of that long, bright afternoon, he kept working, and all the while he kept his eyes off the cottage window, and all the while Kezia could see that the whole of him was turned toward it, the way a plant on a sill leans toward the glass.
Toward evening, she got up off the bench, which took some doing, and went inside.
The kitchen was dim and cool after the sun. Isabel was sitting at the table with a jar of honey in front of her that she had not opened, and her hands flat on either side of it. She had been sitting like that, Kezia thought, for a very long time. She had taken the veil off at last. Her face was white under the brown.
"Well," said Kezia, "your gentleman has filled my trough, and split my kindling, and carried my stone twice. And he's put stones in the water for the bees to stand on, which I never told him."
Isabel did not look up. "I told him at Elmfern."
"So he says. He remembers every word you ever said to him, seemingly." Kezia lowered herself onto the other stool. "He's been at it three hours, child. He's not eaten. He's not asked me a single question about you. And he's not once looked at this window, which a man only does when he's trying very hard not to look at it. What does he want?"