Mrs. Flood waved her gloved fingers at them as they departed.
A bit of cheesecloth tied tight around the neck of the jar came next, and then Agatha was officially possessed of what felt like several pounds of rich, golden bounty.
“Congratulations,” Mrs. Flood said. The two veils between them hid most of her smile from Agatha’s eyes, but it was there in her voice, as lush as the honey weighing down Agatha’s hands.
Agatha stood there with her hands full of wealth, in Mr. Flood’s borrowed clothes, and realized she wasn’t ready to go back to ordinary life. She wanted more of... whatever it was they were doing here. The two of them, together. “Is that it?”
Mrs. Flood stiffened, then turned away to set the skep dome back on the hive to protect the empty jar from sunlight and rain. The laughter had fled from her voice when she finally replied, “It’s really not that difficult a task.”
“No, I meant...” Agatha sighed and set the honey down at her feet. Her gloves came off next, and the veil with them. Color returned to the world around her, painfully vivid, searing her eyes for a moment before they recovered. “You said you have other hives you look after, around Melliton. Couldn’t we... couldn’t I help you with that?” She tugged on the cuffs of Mr. Flood’s jacket. “I’m already dressed for it, after all.”
Oh, it was hard to tell what Mrs. Flood was feeling, behind that muslin veil. But then she lifted it, and her mouth was solemn, but her eyes glowed. “I would like that,” she said. “Very much.”
Agatha bent to pick up the honey jar again. Relief made it weigh half as much as she’d thought before. She felt she could have lifted the world, if she’d been asked. “At your service, Mrs. Flood.”
Mrs. Flood’s mouth crooked at the corners. Those blue eyes moved leisurely down from Agatha’s face, to the blue jacket, to the loose trousers, and the leather boots. Then away.
Agatha shivered, as if the sun had ducked behind a cloud.You’re wearing her husband’s clothes, Agatha reminded herself, and felt extremely queer about it.
They bundled Mrs. Griffin’s dress and petticoats into a cloth bag and added it to the gear in Penelope’s wheelbarrow. They made a brief first stop at Mrs. Stowe’s house, so Mrs. Griffin could leave her things there for the night.
Mrs. Stowe was deadheading her roses. She took her daughter-in-law’s masculine attire in stride and admired the honey, before Mrs. Griffin went inside to ask Miss Coningsby where best to put her things.
“I’d have introduced you years ago,” Mrs. Stowe said, “if I’d known you could make my daughter-in-law a beekeeper so quickly.” She sent Penelope a sidelong wink that made the heat flare up in her face.
Mrs. Griffin returned before Penelope could reply, and Miss Coningsby waved shyly to Penelope from the kitchen window. Then Penelope and Mrs. Griffin were off again.
It was a good day for checking the hives: clear but crisp and not too hot. The spring blooms were yielding pride of place to summer flowers, scents of lilac and cherry blossom fading in favor of lavender and rose. Penelope introduced Mrs. Griffin by name to each cottager—and, just as carefully, to each beehive.
The printer’s eyebrows rose sharply the first time Penelope did this, but over time Mrs. Griffin lapsed into quiet amusement at what she clearly had chosen to perceive as an eccentricity.
They made the whole south circuit together, from Knots Down past Ilford Hall and into the wood. It was the opposite of the order Penelope usually walked it, and it gave her the odd sense that she was winding a clock backward and making the hours run the wrong way round. If they kept this up, she imagined the two of them growing younger and younger with each step—Mrs. Griffin’s hair turning rich black and Penelope’s gold, the creases at the corners of both their eyes and mouths smoothing away, aches and pains and stiff joints loosening as limbs grew lithe with youth again.
Then the wheel of the wheelbarrow struck a rock and jolted Penelope right to her teeth. She stopped for a moment to shake the tingle from her hands, as the full weight of her forty-five years thumped down on her.
Well, it had been a nice daydream while it lasted.
“Shall I take over pushing that for a while?” Mrs. Griffin asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Penelope shook her head. “Oh, no, it’s nothing—I was just distracted for a moment.”
They resumed their walk, and Penelope tried to keep her mind from wandering by fixing it on her companion.
Of course, this risked another kind of distraction.
Agatha Griffin strode with her hands clasped behind her, head tilted back, dark hair balled at the base of her neck. The deep blue of John’s old coat suited her, especially as the climb up the road into the wood brought out the roses in her cheeks and made her breathe rather hard.
At your service, Mrs. Flood.
Oh, would that were true. Or better yet, the other way around—Mrs. Griffin was very obviously what Mrs. Stowe called the managing sort, and in past liaisons Penelope had thoroughly enjoyed being, as it were, managed.
Not that this was a liaison. It still hovered well under the protective aegis offriendship. Some of it Penelope would have been tempted to read as flirtation from other sources, but despite the growing warmth in her letters, Mrs. Griffin seemed more skittish than seductive. Penelope had not missed the way she tugged at the cuffs and collar of her borrowed coat, or how she starched up whenever Penelope brushed cautioning fingertips over her elbow to guide her down a turn of some of the less obvious paths.
Probably just a passing fancy on Penelope’s part. No doubt it would vanish soon enough.
After they left the fourth cottage, whose busily buzzing hives only needed a little trimming of the grass to keep the entrances clear, Penelope turned to her companion. “You know why I talk to the bees, don’t you?”
“Because there’s more bees around here than people?”
