One morning she and Jason were together when Piet and Jesus brought in the first shipment of iris of the spring. They all crowded around the flowers, touching the delicate petals. It was like dipping their fingers into rainbows, for there were irises of every color ranging from deep violet to swan white.

"I've always identified with the iris," Jason said, his voice serious for once. "It's the perfect flower. Complete. I mean s.e.xually. The sword-shaped leaves surrounding the curved flower. The three upright, erect, masculine petals, inside the three opened, falling, surrendering feminine petals. Male and female combined. See what I mean?"

Catherine didn't reply. She was lightly running her fingers over the sweetly tickling fur of the beard of a dark iris. Jason's words and the sticky silk in the throat of the flower made her shiver with desire. Jason went quiet. She could feel Piet watching her.

"I've got work to do," she said brusquely, and hurried to the refuge of her office. Slamming the door shut, she leaned against it and surrendered to memory: Kit's body, Ned's breath, her own heat and ecstasy. The luxuriance of love-would it ever be hers again?

A knock sounded behind her; gathering herself, she opened the door.

"Yes?" she said, all business.

Piet stood there, holding two dozen luscious iris in his arms.

"I bought these. For you."

"Piet-"

He thrust the bundle into her arms. She felt the chill of the flowers, the heat of his hands.

"You wanted them. You should have them," Piet said.

Catherine stared at him, almost crushing the flowers against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Piet," Sandra called. "Telephone!"

"Coming," Piet yelled back, and went off, but not before nodding at Catherine, as if to confirm an agreement they had silently just now made.

Such self-indulgent moments were rare for her. Blooms was busy, which was good, but Catherine was overworked, restless, irritable. There were no more moments alone with Piet. The thought of England refreshed her, and in May she told Ann she wanted to take her to Everly as a graduation present.

"Oh, Catherine, that's fabulous!" Ann cried, hugging her sister. Then her face fell. "But it means being away from Troy."

"We'll only be gone twelve days, Ann. I can't leave Blooms for longer than that."

Ann looked conflicted, but she smiled in spite of herself. "I know I'll miss Troy-but I want to go! Oh, thank you, Catherine!"

Being with her sister was a pure pleasure that spring, and Catherine often spent Sunday driving in the Blooms van up to Fairington, where she'd pick Ann up and take her out to dinner at the local inn or to a movie.

One Sunday in May as they were driving through Fairington, Catherine met Troy. "There's Troy!" Ann squealed. "Stop, Catherine, oh, stop, just let me say h.e.l.lo. h.e.l.lo!"

Catherine pulled the van over to the curb next to Troy's motorcycle. Troy stuck his head in the window on Ann's side, nodding abruptly at Catherine as Ann introduced them. He was certainly handsome. He wore his s.e.xuality like a second skin; it was almost as visible as the spots on a dalmatian or long hair on a Himalayan cat. His dark, blatant, intense attractiveness was much like Piet's, and like Piet's it held a hint, a hue the eye could almost see, of danger.

They drove away. Ann was flushed and animated, yet at the same time serene; she licked her lips slowly and smiled to herself. Which of us is the wiser? Catherine wondered. Ann, who was so completely lost in perilous love, who would someday weep in anguish at her loss, or Catherine, gripping the steering wheel, fighting to remain in some kind of control?

By the time the end of June came, Catherine was exhausted. Blooms seemed to have been chosen to do the flowers for every June wedding in New York City, and while she was of course pleased by that, she had gone into a state of overdrive that kept her from feeling pleasure, from tasting the food she ate or resting while she slept.

Piet would be in charge of Blooms while she was gone.

"Don't you worry about this shop while you're in jolly ol' England," Jason told her. "You just have yourself a jolly ol' time."

"I'll probably be bored to tears," Catherine replied, slamming desk drawers open and shut, trying to discover anything she'd forgotten. "I'm only going because I have to take my sister. It'll probably rain the entire time, and I'll come back with pneumonia."

During the flight Catherine was wretchedly uncomfortable. When she finally fell asleep, she was awakened after a few minutes by a stewardess offering breakfast just two hours after they'd had dinner.

Ned met them at Heathrow. Beautiful, dazzling Ned. In the past four years he'd taken on a firmness, an adult solidity; beneath his gray tweed jacket his shoulders were broader, and his movements as he greeted them and handed them into the old Bentley were polished and a.s.sured.

"My G.o.d! You both look gorgeous! Wait till you see Hortense, she's turned out rather nicely, too. The old house is packed, and Hortense is slaving away in the gardens like crazy today so she'll be able to have some free time to spend with you. How are you? How's your grandmother?"

His eyes were the color of violets. He'd let his black hair grow romantically long, curling down over his shirt collar. He looked like a poet. Catherine looked sideways at Ann's face. Her eyes were shining. Catherine got in the back of the car and let Ann sit next to Ned. Suddenly she was overcome with drowsiness. She slept all the way to Everly, and when she arrived she excused herself after greeting everyone and went up to her room, where she fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. Ann couldn't get her to wake up for tea or for supper, and she slept on, coma-deep, until late the next afternoon.

"Where have you been? I thought you'd died!" Ann cried, leaping up from the garden path. She was wearing a blue shirt and white shorts. Her knees were crisscrossed from kneeling on the white pebbles next to Hortense.

"I had the most marvelous sleep! I couldn't wake up!" Catherine said, stretching, yawning.

"You missed breakfast!" Ann scolded. "And lunch."

Hortense rose, pulling off her gardening gloves and dropping them in the basket. She'd been working on the roses, inspecting, spraying, feeding. She hugged Catherine and kissed her.

"We'll find some tea for you. And biscuits. Or would you rather have coffee? Proper tea's only about an hour away."

"Are you okay? I couldn't get you to wake up last night. It was scary!" Ann said.

"Jet lag, that's all. And I'm very tired, Ann, I've told you that. My shop was so busy recently, I haven't had time to scratch my nose. It's lovely to be lazy. Tea would be fine, Hortense, but don't go to any trouble. I can find something-"

"Nonsense. Go sit on that bench and smell the roses. Come on, Ann, you can help."

Hortense had become a beauty, Catherine thought as she followed the path to a marble bench next to the brick wall almost hidden by tumbling wisteria. The air was sweet and hot as honey. Catherine put her feet up on the bench, tossed the skirt of her sundress over her legs, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She leaned her head back, throat exposed to the heat of the sun. Closing her eyes, she inhaled the perfume of hundreds of roses.

"Tea, ducks," Hortense said.

"Did you fall asleep again?" Ann asked.

"I'm just relaxing. It's heaven here."

"Come on, Ann. Help me with the watering. Let your sister have some peace."

Hortense set a tray on the bench next to Catherine, then the girls went chattering off together. Catherine smiled. Hortense didn't seem to realize how lovely she'd become. She must have gotten contact lenses, for she no longer wore gla.s.ses. But her glossy dark hair was pulled back in one lop-sided unruly braid, she wore no makeup, and her clothes were disheveled. It was not just that she was working, for Catherine remembered Hortense looking much the same the previous night when she'd briefly said h.e.l.lo to everyone. She'd met everyone again last night, she'd even met Elizabeth's fiance, Tom. But she had been so exhausted that now they blurred in her memory.

The tea was hot and smoky, the cream thick, the crumbly biscuit topped with sweet jam. She licked her fingers. Birds chirped from trees and bushes. The girls must have gone to a completely different part of the garden, for she couldn't hear their voices anymore. Bees droned. Catherine felt the pace of her heart slow inside her. She set the tray on the ground and stretched her legs out on the bench. The marble arm behind her was not soft, but it was strong, and she leaned against it. There was something to be said for having an ocean between you and your business, she thought. Between you and your real life. If she were at Kathryn's Everly, her mind wouldn't rest; she'd be mentally listing all the things that needed doing, all the improvements that could be made. Here none of it was her responsibility, and there was something rea.s.suring, even optimistic, in knowing that a young woman like Hortense, energetic, serene, capable, was in charge of the gardens.

I think like a woman one hundred years old, Catherine thought. She nestled her head and shoulder against the back of the bench. From a distance the wisteria looked lavender, but now as she studied the long drooping cl.u.s.ters nearly touching her nose, she saw how the blossoms subtly slipped through shades of white, lilac, amethyst. Some of the pod-shaped blossoms were closed like lockets, some opened like wings. It was so quiet, she thought she could hear the tight buds of the roses unfurling in the sun.

Later, she heard distant laughter from the other side of the brick wall. Hortense and Ann.

Later still, the girls swooped down to bring her inside for tea.

The days slipped past Catherine like flowered silk. She rediscovered the pleasures of leisure. Now she ate slowly, savoring flavors, and sat for long quiet hours in the gardens, without a thought in her head. Whenever Ned suggested they all see a movie, she couldn't be bothered. She let Ann go off with Elizabeth and Tom and Hortense and Ned while she stayed at Everly, in their small music room, listening to their library of cla.s.sical records. Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann. When had she had time to sit so calmly, listening to music, letting it lift and sweep her into pure peace? Never before in her life. Every night she went to bed feeling physically enriched, as if she'd eaten jewels.

She spent some few hours of the day talking with the various Boxworthys. Elizabeth especially claimed her attention, wanting to tell her about Tom and their wedding plans. They sat on the third floor, in Elizabeth's room, fingering the b.u.t.tery satin she was using to make her wedding gown.

"Tom's so good," Elizabeth confided, enraptured, "so kind, so intelligent! He's not like Ned, all fast and quick and brittle. He's deep. And so wondrously handsome. I never dreamed I'd marry such a handsome man."

Catherine smiled, amused and touched. Actually, at his best Tom could be called pleasant-looking. He had brown hair, brown eyes, pointed ears, and a nose that was rather too large for his face, and he was slender, but not muscular. Catherine thought he looked soft and would be pudgy by forty. The most attractive thing about him was how happy he looked when he talked to Elizabeth. Sometimes when they were all together having tea, Catherine would see the two lovers glance at each other across the room, smile their conspirators' smile, and then Tom would blush, a rosy hue spreading from his collar up and out to his glowing ears.

Elizabeth at twenty-three was still soft and gentle, her light brown hair waving around her face to her shoulders, her gray-blue eyes bright; she looked like one of G.o.d's milder angels. Her body was full, gracefully curving and sloping. Undoubtedly the lucky Tom found her voluptuous.

For Elizabeth and Tom were already lovers, and clearly that made everything in life worthwhile. Catherine listened while Elizabeth spoke of love, of feeling that profound certainty that this person was the right, the only, person, that the world had been created solely for the purpose of their meeting and loving.

This was how Catherine had felt with Kit. She was flushed with memory. She dreamed of him. When Elizabeth spoke of love, there was nothing in her voice to suggest the obscene or extreme, no danger, no terror, no challenge. Their love was as safe as cream in a pitcher.

But Kit was marrying-had married, by now-Haley Hilton. Yet here in England, Catherine did not feel the pain as piercingly. Here she felt protected.

They were to stay at Everly for ten days, and by the seventh Catherine began to sense her body filling up with energy, strength, renewed desire, as if she were a wilting plant placed in a bowl of water, drawing nourishment up through her roots. One night it rained, and Ned entertained the guests and his family by reading poetry in the library, where a fire burned, warming the chilly room. Catherine had seen little of Ned during her stay. He was not around during the day; busy working in the office on the accounts, she supposed. At night he always took a group into town for a movie or to visit the most picturesque pubs, but she'd never gone along. Her experiment with Ann appeared to be working; Ann was nearly drooling as she watched Ned read, and whenever Ned looked at her, Ann's cheeks flamed.

" 'Though nothing can bring back the hour/ Of splendor in the gra.s.s, of glory in the flower;/ We will grieve not, rather find/ Strength in what remains behind ...' "

As Ned read Wordsworth's words, Catherine pondered them. Surely she had not had her hour of splendor in the gra.s.s. The time with Kit had been so brief-and in the end, so false! She was only twenty-five and not ready to live the rest of her life muddling on with only strength.

The next morning, after breakfast, when Ann had gone off with Hortense to the gardens, Catherine was surprised to have Ned gently take her by the arm as she was leaving the dining room.

"I haven't had a chance to talk to you during this visit," he said, "and you're here only for two more days. Have you been purposely avoiding me? Be honest."

"Oh, no, Ned. I've just been very tired. I spend so much of my life surrounded by people, it's been a luxury to be by myself."

"Ah. I thought perhaps there was a man in your life, a jealous man, who might not appreciate any attentions you'd pay to your old friend."

"No. There's no man in my life, jealous or otherwise."

"Then spend the day with me. I thought we could take a picnic lunch and walk up the back hill. You can see all over the world from up there, and it's a glorious day."

"That sounds wonderful. I'll put on my walking shoes."

"I'll get a picnic ready and meet you here in thirty minutes."

They walked through Everly's formal gardens, which ended with a wall of green boxwood, pa.s.sed through the arched doorway cut into the hedge and out into open fields. The land rolled gradually down to a stream, then gently ascended again. It was a nice k.n.o.bby hill, undulating, fallow, the young gra.s.s only ankle-high. Catherine and Ned walked companionably, matching their strides in an easy cadence, taking their time, huffing slightly, for the hill was higher and steeper than it looked. Ned carried a wicker basket with him, Catherine the blanket he'd given her.

"We're lucky in the weather this year," Catherine said.

"You've changed since you were here last," Ned told her.

"I'm older. We're both older."

"Yes, but I don't think I've changed as drastically as you have. Do you?"

Catherine smiled at him. "No. You're the same. Happy Ned. Well, I bought a business. When I came last time I was only a little shop girl, and now I'm the owner of a very successful flower shop. I wish you could see it, Ned. Blooms is a marvelous place. I have four full-time employees and hire others seasonally, I've made enough money to buy my own apartment in New York ..."

As she talked about Blooms, strange shoots of sensation pierced Catherine, and she realized with a smile that what she was feeling was homesickness. She was so utterly engrossed in her thoughts of the flower shop that she was surprised when Ned said, "But what about men? True love? No marriage in sight? No Prince Charmings in hot pursuit?"

Catherine laughed. What if she were to tell Ned she hadn't slept with any man since she'd slept with him here at Everly? He'd probably faint with fear, thinking she'd placed too much importance on their little amorous episode.

"No men. I've been too busy. I see some men, of course, but really, Ned, I work so hard, and believe it or not, it's possible for a woman to be happy without a man in her life."

They had reached the top of the hill now. Together they spread the blanket over the soft gra.s.s, then stretched out on it.

"What a wonderful view! You can see all over the world from here!" Catherine said, looking down at the fields of jade and emerald, which unfurled like banners in all directions. Everly was a spot of chimneys hidden behind trees. In the distance a ribbon of road wound past, dotted with an occasional bright spot of car.

Ned set out the picnic things: watercress sandwiches, ham and tomato and cheese sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, pears, chocolate bars. From thick white linen napkins, he unrolled champagne and two crystal gla.s.ses.

"How lovely! How elegant!" Catherine cried. After they'd toasted and sipped, she asked, "And what about you? And women, I mean. You're my age, twenty-five, and I don't see any sweet young thing wearing your engagement ring."

"I imagine it will be a long time before I find the perfect girl," Ned said, leaning back on his elbows. "I believe in love, of course, but it would be nice to fall in love with a girl with money. To help out poor Everly."

"What if you fall in love with a girl with an Everly of her own? Her own estate to keep up?"

"That wouldn't work at all. The woman I marry must be willing to spend her life here, to devote her life to Everly. I'm the oldest son, I'll inherit, this is my home, and it's up to me to live here and take care of the place, and, eventually, my mother."

"You mean you couldn't ever leave Everly to live somewhere else if you wanted to?"

"Why would I want to?"

"That's not the point. I mean, don't you feel a little imprisoned by all this? A bit like a sacrificial lamb?"

"G.o.d, no! I feel incredibly lucky. As for love and marriage, what woman wouldn't be proud and honored to live here? I'm glad I have such a home and such a family to support. I only wish I did it better. I'd like to take some of the burden off Mother. She's almost sixty now and shouldn't have to work so hard."

Men and their families, Catherine thought, thinking of Kit. Some men, some families. Her father didn't feel that way about the American Everly, and Sh.e.l.ly certainly felt no responsibility toward his parents.

They continued talking as they ate their lunch, then lay back drowsily on the blanket in the heat of the sun. It was a good thing she didn't love Ned, Catherine thought. As much as she loved the British Everly, she'd never want to give up Blooms, and she'd never be able to submit her life to the needs of Ned's family and his family's house.

Closing her eyes, she stretched languorously. The champagne and the sun's heat made her feel as if she were melting. Then Ned rolled close to her and kissed her full on the mouth. At first it was a friendly kiss, then it became more serious.

"Ned!" she said, opening her eyes, pushing him away. "We can't! Not up here, not out in the open!"

"Why not? Who in the world could see us? No one! Look, we're on top of the world. It would take anyone half an hour to climb up here, and I can see all the way around, no one's in sight."

"Ned-"

But she was too aroused to protest further. Fully clothed, he lay on top of her, kissing her, moving against her, and then he shoved her skirt up around her hips and gently pulled off her underpants.

"Unb.u.t.ton your dress, Catherine. Let me see your b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

She unb.u.t.toned her dress. He unb.u.t.toned his shirt and undid his trousers. The ground was hard and unyielding beneath Catherine's back, and a pebble dug uncomfortably into her shoulder. It had been so long since she'd made love with a man that at first it was unpleasant, almost painful. But Ned was beautiful and sweet and gentle in his lovemaking. She loved having her arms and legs wrapped around this hard man, loved the rush of breath against her cheek, on her neck, in her ear, loved the heat and push of his body. The smell of his clean hair and skin mingled with the fragrance of the sweet gra.s.s they were crushing. Above Ned's shoulders, high in the blue sky, swallows wheeled and soared. Closing her eyes, Catherine was lost to the birds' shrill cries and Ned's deep, gruff, gasping pleasure. Then he collapsed against her, nuzzling her neck, telling her how lovely she was, and there on top of a hill in England, in the hot quiet bright light of the summer sun, Catherine did feel completely lovely.