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Juliet tilted her head. “Which kind?”

Eloise stopped and turned back. “There is more than one kind of buttercup?” Her confusion was clear in her tone.

“Oh, there are several,” Juliet supplied, and Eloise stood in pensive contemplation.

“Uncle Daniel’s book only showed the one,” she said finally, and Juliet nodded, conceding the point.

“Then Lord Honeysett’s book requires a supplement,” she told her, watching Eloise crouch in front of it with renewed suspicion and look at it for a long time.

Then she looked up. “Well, which kind is it then?”

Juliet bent to boop her on the nose, affection spilling from the gesture. “Meadow buttercup. The stem does not branch low down, and the sepals sit flat against the petals. If they curl away, it is more likely creeping buttercup.”

Eloise twisted to look at her. “How do you know all of this?”

“My mother’s garden… and a great deal of unsupervised childhood.”

They soon walked on, and Eloise pointed at a tall spike of purple flowers. “I do not know that one.”

“Knapweed. The bees are extremely fond of it.”

At that, a bumblebee landed on the nearest flower head and set about its work with great single-mindedness.

Eloise watched it. “We have a book at the house with a picture of a bee,” she said. “Miss Green would not let me keep it open. She said the illustration made me morbidly preoccupied with insects.” She relayed this without complaint, in a tone reserved for facts one finds absurd but has ceased contesting. “I thought the bee was rather magnificent.”

“It is rather magnificent,” Juliet said. “There are two hundred and fifty species of bee in Britain alone.”

Eloise stopped walking entirely and turned to look at her. “Two hundred and fifty!”

“At least,” Juliet agreed.

“And Miss Green would not let me look at one picture…” Eloise complained, and Juliet thought that that was too much censure for a curious child like Eloise; she would have to have a word with the governess one of these days.

“Some people believe too much information is a danger,” she said now.

“Do you?” Eloise was looking up at her with eyes wide with tentative wariness.

“No.” Juliet smiled at the girl beside her. “I think the more you understand a thing, the less it can frighten you.”

The sun was serious now, the grass pale at the tips from the dry spell. Juliet’s bonnet was doing nothing for the warmth gathered at the back of her neck.

They came through a stand of old beeches, the ground sloping. At the bottom of the slope lay the lake; it was a clear, still body of water, larger than Juliet had realized the estate contained, with reeds at the far edge. As if inviting a romantic atmosphere, a pair of swans moved slowly in the far distance. Shade from the beeches fell in a long band along the near shore where the ground leveled.

But Eloise stopped at the top of the slope. “We should not be here,” she said, her tone foreboding.

Juliet looked at her, taken aback. “Why not?”

“I am not allowed.” Eloise was looking at the water, not at her.

“Who told you that?”

“Papa.” She paused. “He says I am not to come this way.”

Juliet’s curiosity piqued. “Did he say why?”

The girl’s shoulders lifted. “He did not. He only said not to.”

Juliet considered the strip of shade below the beeches, and the flat, bright surface of the water beyond it. The air had already cooled by a degree or two from descending the slope.