That third hour of walking was very damp, the sun hardly showing through the canopy of leaves above, the track slippery from moss and mud and decaying forest detritus. When the first leech dropped on her and immediately attached its skinny slimy wriggling body to her hand, Missy’s impulse was to screech and run in demented circles, especially after all her frantic efforts to dislodge it proved vain. But she made herself stand absolutely still and absolutely silent until the hair on her neck and arms subsided, then she gave herself a severe lecture; if these disgusting things lived in John Smith’s forest, then she must cope with them in a way that would not brand her in his eyes as a silly woman. The leech had begun to swell up plumply, and, as she discovered when she began to feel areas of exposed skin on neck and face, had been joined by several equally vampirish brothers. Wretched things! They wouldn’t let go! So she moved on in the hope that she would encounter fewer leeches moving than standing in one spot, a hope that was right. Replete, the first one to land detached itself without fuss and flopped to the ground, as did its brothers. She then learned that staunch the wounds as she would, they kept on bleeding away. What a sight she must look! Covered in blood. Lesson number one about dreams versus reality.

Shortly afterwards the sound of the river began to fill the distance, and Missy’s courage started to bleed away as rapidly as her leech wounds; it took more resolution and strength to walk those last few hundred yards than to mount the whole expedition.

There it was, just around the next bend. A low small cabin built of wattle-and-daub, with a roof of wooden shingles and a lean-to off to one side that looked to be of more recent construction. However, the cabin had a sandstone chimney, and a thin blur of smoke smudged the perfect blue of the sky. He was home, then!

Since it was no part of her plan to pounce on him unaware, Missy stopped at the edge of the clearing and called his name several times in her loudest voice. Two horses grazing in a fenced-off yard lifted their heads to gaze at her curiously before going back to the endless business of feeding, but of John Smith there was no sign. He must be off somewhere, then. She sat down on a convenient tree stump to wait.

The wait wasn’t long, for she arrived a little before one o’clock, and he came merrily whistling back to the cabin to get himself some lunch. Even after he entered the clearing he didn’t see her; she was sitting in line with the horses, where he struck off towards the river flowing in noisy cascades behind the cabin.

“Mr. Smith!” she called.

He stopped in his tracks, did not move for a moment, then turned. “Oh, bloody hell!” he said.

When he reached her, he scowled at her horribly, not a scrap of welcome in his eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

Missy gulped in a big breath of much-needed air; it was now or never. “Will you marry me, Mr. Smith?” she asked, enunciating very distinctly.

His anger fled at once, replaced by unconcealed mirth. “It’s a long walk down, so you’d better come in and have a cup of tea, Miss Wright,” he said, eyes dancing. A finger flicked at the blood on her face. “Leeches, eh? I’m surprised you lasted the distance.”

His hand went under her elbow and he walked her at a sedate pace across the clearing without saying another word, just muffling his laughter. The cabin had no verandah, unusual in that part of the world, and, as Missy saw when she entered its dimness, the floor was of packed earth, the fittings spartan. However, for a bachelor establishment it looked remarkably neat and clean, no dirty dishes, no untidiness. A new cast-iron cooking range filled half the chimney, an open fireplace the other half; there was a wooden bench for his washing-up dish, as well as a long rough-hewn table and two straight kitchen chairs. He had made his bed from timber slabs, piled what looked like at least three mattresses on top, and a feather quilt that ought to keep him warm in any weather. Some cow hide stretched across a chunky wooden frame served him as an easy-chair, and his clothing hung on wooden pegs hammered into the wall next to his bed. There were no curtains on the one window, which looked as if it had been recently glazed.

“But why have curtains?” Missy asked aloud.

“Eh?” In the act of lighting two kerosene lamps from a spill he had thrust into the stove, he looked at her.

“How splendid to live in a house that doesn’t need any curtains,” said Missy.

He put one lamp on the table and the other on an orange crate beside his bed, then busied himself making tea.

“There’s really enough light,” said Missy, “without lamps.”

“You’re sitting in front of the window, Miss Wright, and I want some light on your face.”

So Missy lapsed into silence, letting her eyes wander wherever they chose, from John Smith to his dwelling and back again. As usual he smelled clean, though dust and earth on his clothing and arms suggested that he had been doing something fairly strenuous all morning, as did a long superficial graze on the back of his left hand and wrist.

He served the tea in enamel mugs and the biscuits still in their huge gaudy tin, but he did everything without apology and with no physical awkwardness. After he had served her and she had indicated she wished for nothing else, he carried his mug and a fistful of biscuits to the leather easy-chair, which he pulled round so he could sit facing her at close quarters.

“Why on earth, Miss Wright, would you want to marry me?”

“Because I love you!” said Missy, her tone astonished.

This answer threw him into confusion; as if suddenly he didn’t wish her to see what might lie in his eyes, he removed his gaze from her person to the window behind her, frowning.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said at last, chewing his lip.

“I would have said it was obvious.”

“You can’t possibly love someone you don’t even know, woman! It’s ridiculous.”

“I know quite enough about you to love you,” she said earnestly. “I know that you’re very kind. You’re strong on the inside. You’re clean. You’re different. And you – you have enough poetry in you to want to live here of all places.”

He blinked. “Christ!” he exclaimed, and laughed. “I must say that’s the most interesting catalogue of virtues I’ve ever been privileged to hear. I like the clean bit best.”

“It’s important,” said Missy gravely.

For a moment he looked as if amusement might get the better of him again, but with an effort he remained sober, and said, “I’m afraid I can’t marry you, Miss Wright.”

“Why?”

“Why? I’ll tell you why,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “You are looking at a man who has found happiness for the first time in his life! If I were twenty, that would be a stupid statement, but I’m pushing fifty, Miss Wright, and that means I’m entitled to some happiness. I’m finally doing all the things I’ve always wanted to do and never had the time or the chance – and I’m alone! No wife, no relations, no dependents of any kind. Not even a dog. Just me. And I love it! To have to share it would spoil it. In fact, I’m going to put a bloody great gate across the top of my road and keep the whole world out. Marriage? Not in a fit!”

“It wouldn’t be for very long,” said Missy quietly.

“A day would be too long, Miss Wright.”

“I understand how you feel, Mr. Smith, and I do mean that most sincerely. I too have spent a confined life, I too have chafed against it. But I cannot imagine for a moment that your life has been as dull, as drab and uneventful as mine has always been. Oh, I don’t wish to imply that I’ve been mistreated, or treated one iota worse than the other ladies of Missalonghi. We all live the same dull drab uneventful life. But I am tired of it, Mr. Smith! I want to live a little before I die! Can you understand that?”