And she was looking right at him.
Her eyes were blue. A darker blue than the small bouquet of cornflowers she’d picked. The little clutch of them had been laid to one side of the picnic blanket in favor of dozens of daisies, their glowing yellow centers like tiny suns amidst the frothy white petals.
While he’d been napping, the girls had been making daisy chains. Their laps were overflowing with flowers, and each of them wore a cheerful crown of daisies woven amongst the bright golden locks of their hair. They were chattering and laughing, their voices floating high above the trees and brushing the edges of the wispy clouds in the sky until they became a part of the air itself.
He and Hattie stared at each other, his heart beating a wild tattoo in his chest, but she didn’t speak to him, and after a moment he ducked back behind the branches and flopped onto his back with a thud.
Daisy crowns, of all stupid things. What use was a daisy crown? Even if he could have had one of his own, he wouldn’t want it. He’d never liked daisies, anyway. He despised them, and he despised Kent, and he despised Lord Balfour and Mrs. Byrne, and he despised Lord Melrose’s stupid sisters, too.
He despised this tree, and he was never going to come here again.
But most of all, he despised his father, because no matter how strong he was, or how clever he became, or how tall he grew, he wasn’t ever going to be good enough for the Earl of Windham.
His mother was gone. She’d died several months ago, and he didn’t have sisters or brothers. As for his father, he might as well not have had one at all, for all the attention the earl paid him.
He didn’t have anyone.
The sisters packed up their basket and disappeared not long after that, back to their happy home where they probably did nothing but eat cakes and laugh together all day. It seemed much quieter after they’d gone. So quiet, his ears rang with silence, and his chest heaved with it.
When his eyes began to sting, he stumbled to his feet and dragged his arm across his damp cheeks before emerging from the shelter of the tree.
That was when he found it.
Just on the other side of the curtain of branches, so close he nearly stepped on it was a daisy crown, and beside it, wrapped in a cloth napkin was one of the cakes from the picnic basket, the white icing melting in the sun.
That was how it began, in the summer of eighteen-hundred and seven, the summer Cassian Fitzgerald turned eleven years old.
That was the summer he first laid eyes on Hattie Parrish. A summer of heat and dragonflies and the marshy scent of the pond, her shoulder touching his as they lay on their backs under Lord Melrose’s ancient beech tree, the spreading branches swaying over their heads.
It was the best summer of his life, but he didn’t know it, then.
He only realized it months later, after his father’s servant came back for him, and he left Kent and Hattie Parrish behind.
But by then, it was too late.
By then, she was already a part of him.
