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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Colin searched room after room for his cousin. There was no sign of her on the grounds or in her rooms. None of the servants had seen her since luncheon and not even Dickon had heard from her since she was called in to meet with Lord Craven.

"My father summoned her?" He asked in confusion. "For what purpose?"

At Dickon's shrug, Colin only shook his head. Lord Craven sought Mary out far less than he sought out his son (which was not often)– and Colin could not imagine what he would wish to see his ward for. He resumed his efforts, this time systematically going from room to room.

She was not where he expected her to be and most certainly not behaving as he had ever seen her before. When Colin found her, she was gazing at her reflection in a mirror, her hand lightly touching the diamond necklace around her throat. She looked so old, so much more like a woman and he had never seen her wear jewelry before. It was all wrong, out-of-sorts, and it took him a few moments before he ventured to call out to her.

"What are you doing in here?" He asked.

She did not turn away, instead, her eyes found his reflection in the mirror. They were red and stained by tears. She reached out her other hand and tilted the mirror slightly, just far enough so she could see the rest of him in its glass.

"Do you ever come here?" She asked.

He glanced around at the stale, unused room - it's furnishings covered with white cloth. The servants must come and dust occasionally, but it had never been slept in or aired out. Not once in all the days he could remember.

"No," he answered honestly. He took a tentative step into the room, releasing his hold on the doorway.

She dropped her eyes from him and instead looked down at a small portrait perched on the vanity before her. Two sisters looked back at her, both dressed in white, their expressions as comely as their identical features.

"I come here… sometimes," she said, answering the question he did not ask.

He came close enough to take the gilded frame in his hands and peer into the photograph. The edges of his mouth turned upward.

"You showed me this once, when we were young. Remember? That night?"

She thought of their many shared secrets, hidden by shadows and candlelight. She nodded and drew the photograph away from him, almost possessively. "It's hardly fair."

"What is?"

"You resemble them more than I ever will."

He quirked his head so he could see both their reflections in the mirror. He knew it was true and yet in her tremulous, melancholy mood, he did not think she meant for him to agree with her. Instead, he ran his hand along the clasp of the necklace.

"Did you find this in here?"

"No." She leaned back, then, and rested her head against his shoulder, her eyes shut. "It belonged to her. Your father gave it to me. He thought it would cheer me up."

"But it hasn't?"

"Everyone expects me to be like her… that someday, I will wake up and behave as she did, look like her, fill the spaces she left vacant when she died. I cannot. I hardly even remember what she looked like."

Colin chuckled quietly and reached out to encircle her in his arms. It was an old, familiar gesture from their childhood, one that had continued even as he grew taller and she stopped abruptly. Her willowy edges had slowly grown soft and round and she no longer startled at his touch like a frightened doe. She leaned back into the comfort of his arms.

"I don't," he said. "I am quite content with you as Mary and not as any reincarnation of either of our mothers."

"I know."

She opened her eyes, her hand leaving the necklace to rest on his forearm. "Sometimes, I feel like this room. There is so much hidden under sheets, locked, and shut away and I'm expected to know what it was like before, but I do not. It is almost like a museum without patrons."

"I would describe it more as a mausoleum."

She laughed without humor and leaned even closer against his chest, her eyes searching the room around her through the reflection in the mirror. "I used to think… maybe… after you learned to walk… after the garden door was opened, maybe…this room…"

"You thought my father would open up all the doors and stop hiding behind old tragedies?" Colin finished, his tone dripping with disdain.

"I suppose."

It was his turn to sigh, though the sound was tinged with bitterness - an old, caustic wound which would never fully heal. "I do not think he knows how. I do not think he can ever face this room again without cause any more than he can venture back into the Garden without us forcing him."

"What will you do? Once this house is yours?"

"Whatever would please you, of course. Should I burn it all to the ground and build you something far more majestic and less dreary? Perhaps, we can tear out all the walls of this room to make room for windows and plant oranges and orchids and have cage after cage of scarlet macaws."

"Surely, it is not my decision."

"Isn't it?" He whispered.

Their eyes locked in unspoken communication and unheard promises. Colin's grip around her tightened the slightest amount and he leaned over to place a single kiss against her tear-stained cheek.

"I would have you open all the doors and leave nothing else hidden from sight," she whispered.

"Even the Garden?"

"Especially the Garden."

She rose and walked to the window. Even from this vantage point, she could see the splash of pink of the roses creeping over the walls around their old haven. Old Ben Weatherstaff, ever more bent and grey, slowly weeded a planter nearby. Dickon worked alongside him, his hat tossed on the wheelbarrow as he trimmed a hedge into the shape of a horse. She smiled at the sight of it, grateful for this small piece of familiarity.

So much else had changed.

It was the "War to End all Wars," they said, yet it seemed like the war without an end. It was the war which brought the entire world together – only to tear it apart again.

The newspapers said it was their "duty" and it was all for the "glory and honor of England." Whatever other motivations there were, the end result was half the servants exchanged life on the manor for life in the trenches and more vanished every day – sometimes voluntarily, and sometimes conscripted. Rooms gathered dust as the housekeeping staff dwindled and replacements were harder and harder to find. Fields around Misselthwaite were planted with more crops than flowers and these were tended by women and their children. Even the pasturelands lay strangely still and quiet as their former occupants were called to give their hoofs and backs to the war effort.

Not a single horse would return to Misselthwaite.

Colin would have volunteered for the newly formed Royal Flying Corps - if he had been old enough. He still talked about it, sometimes- the adventure, the glory, the possibilities.

"Imagine! Battle by air – it's like something from a story book! I could learn to fly and see the world and bring about an end to the war," he said, his grey eyes shining wide and bright. In those moments, he looked more the boy than the man and Mary hardly had the heart to scold him.

He did not mention the potential costs. Very few did, not until the death notices flooded in, followed by limping discharged soldiers – those fortunate enough to continue to live, though sometimes their damaged souls wondered if it was those who died which were the lucky ones.

Lord Craven did not approve of his son's aspirations. With a single son and heir, it was understandable. However, it was Colin's age more than his future inheritance which proved the greatest protection for the aspiring pilot.

Lord Craven managed to keep hold of Dickon Sowerby. He argued Dickon's skills were necessary for the war effort and he was better used at Misselthwaite than on the frontlines of a battle. If the war effort wanted horses from Misselthwaite, then they needed Dickon to rear and train them. This argument was enough to delay Dickon's conscription.

His brother was not so fortunate and the Sowerby's numbered one less in years to come.

Lord Craven's frequent travels were curtailed by the rising conflict and he found himself trapped within the borders of England far longer than he was used to. Even trips to London and the seaside towns were put on hold as those received more German attacks than he felt was worth risking for a holiday. Colin's university and Mary's art school were far enough from U-Boats and Zeppelins that he encouraged them to attend classes that coming autumn.

Between rations on bread and butter and the movement to simpler forms of dress, Mary parading before a mirror in a diamond necklace was as disjointed as the thought of Colin in a soldier's uniform practicing drills. Yet, the sight of Ben and Dickon working in the garden was familiar. It was the way it ought to be. She watched them work for a few moments more. Then, she disentangled herself from Colin's embrace and unclasped the necklace. She decided it was time for her to return to the Garden. She had more seeds to plant and the necklace would be of no help there.

Someday, she would wear it, but not now.

Not yet.

Colin returned to Cambridge that fall, but not before gifting his cousin a gilded bird cage.

"It is no robin, but I thought you would enjoy a new feathered companion of your own," he told her.

Within, a brilliant scarlet macaw clung to the cage and whistled to her.

Mary gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. "How beautiful!"

"His name is Joe."

"Joe? Joe? No, it cannot be! A cabby horse is called 'Joe.' A hunting dog or a well-fattened goose. How can you call this magnificent creature by such a common, vulgar name?"

Colin laughed. "You can change his name, if you can convince the lout to answer to any other. He's a stubborn one- nearly as stubborn as you and he knows his name is Joe."

She pouted for only a moment before she threw her arms around him. "Thank you," she said.

"He is only the first. Soon, we will fill that old forgotten bedroom with bird cages," he said, and he winked, his grey eyes alight.

She laughed, as he hoped she would. "He is not a robin, but I will be glad for the company," she said. "Oh, he is a majestic creature! Dickon will be so pleased!"

"Don't you go setting Dickon on him or the next we know Joe will be speaking Yorkshire and riding upon the back of a fox!"

"That would be a sight not easily forgotten!"

"I hope… that I am a sight not so easily forgotten as well," he said, reaching out to clasp her hand in his.

"Of course not," she answered. "I will miss you."

"And I you."

It was not only Colin that Mary would miss. She only had a few days to drink in her fill of the moors and dreary old stones of the manor house before she was off to attend her next session of classes. Her art school filled her days with illustrations and watercolors, oil paintings and still life portraits. Yet, her evenings were filled with pouring through all the books and notes Colin sent her. She found his education much more interesting. He was full of stories of social anthropology and biology and chemistry and physics and philosophy.

"What an age we live in!" He proclaimed. "What advances in knowledge and technology! Science is its own manner of magic and magic its own sort of science. If only we can end this bloody War and get back to the real business of understanding things!"

He wrote to her. Long, eloquent letters filled as much with his latest musings as reminiscences of their shared past. Mary's letters contained far less words and far more drawings. Sketches of flowers and birds' nests and smiles of classmates covered her pages and revealed more about the author than any deluge of words ever could. It was through letters that they celebrated the end of the War and dreamed of what life could look like, now the War was over.

Everyone held hopes that life would return to what it had been like before… but it never could. Too much had changed, too much had broken. They could only move forward – never back. For the young, those without long years of Before the War, it was easier to keep their heads high and fling themselves into the fast-paced, ever moving, swirling currents of change.

The first time Mary wore her mother's jewelry was to the theatre. Colin took her to see Pretty Peggy at the Prince's Theatre. His classes at Cambridge had just enough of a holiday to allow for a reunion in London. The entire theatre was awash in an ocean of sequins and feathers and furs and Mary was no exception. She sparkled just as much as her necklace in the dim theatre light. Colin, dressed in a new suit, sat tall and straight beside her, his head held high.

Mary would never grow into a striking beauty. For all the beauty of her mother, it was her father she favored. While her hair had lost the pale yellowness of her youth, age had only managed to turn it a mute brown. Her eyes remained the unremarkable shade of earth after the rain. Her figure, while well-formed enough, was nothing exceptional. Her complexion never gained the brilliance one could hope for, even with all the improvement gained by the winds and sun of the open moor. While a far cry from the sallow, sour girl she had once been, she would never be praised for her appearance.

However, Lord Craven maintained enough wealth to ensure his niece displayed his status prominently and so she possessed the manner of beauty possessed by the wealthy – that which is purchased and acquired. With all the leisure and resources at their disposal, nature could be supplemented, bent, and enhanced until they were a sight to marvel at, living monuments to the power of wealth. Any could be breathtakingly beautiful, if garbed in enough layers of silk and satin and sequins.

While nature gifted Colin Craven the inherent charms and striking physical appearance his cousin lacked, he never found her wanting. In their hearts, Colin and Mary were very much the same as they ever were. Both of them remained the most selfish creatures in the world. Thus, they understood the other perfectly.

When it was, some years later, that the marriage of Colin Craven and his cousin Mary Lennox was announced, Society praised the match. He was the brilliant, young academic and she his curious, supportive wife. The future heir of Misselthwaite married a woman of proper breeding, education, and fortune. Afterall, childhood attachment could cover any number of drawbacks to the match and, really, in all those points that truly mattered, they were well-suited to each other.

Lord Craven and all Misselthwaite welcomed the match, though none could say they were surprised by it.

"From the day that girl arrived, I knew how it would be," Mrs. Medlock declared, to all who would listen. "Have there ever existed two more stubborn children? It is as if they were made for each other!"

Yet, there was one soul in all Misselthwaite who, for all he understood the match, he could not help the waves of regret he felt at knowing it had come to pass.

Of course, Mary Lennox was meant for Colin Craven. It was the way of things. He had always known that – but it did not keep Dickon Sowerby from watching from afar, wishing for what never could be. Dickon hid behind his spade and horse halter, tending to the living things at Misselthwaite, paid to keep the manor alive and growing.

It was a good job and one he was grateful for. Yet, sometimes he wondered if he should leave and try his fortune in the cities, as so many others were wont to do these days. With so many men buried overseas, positions and opportunities abounded. Why work as a servant or field laborer when better paying jobs were clamoring for able-bodied men? Yet, every time he thought of leaving, thought of departing Misselthwaite for good, leaving Mary behind, he knew he couldn't.

Misselthwaite belonged to Mary and he would make sure it bloomed and thrived and remained beautiful.

Just like her.

He remembered her as a girl, under the light of the noonday sun and surrounded by roses in full bloom. He had watched her stumbling steps into womanhood, her uneasy climb into her role as a daughter of the manor. He had seen her cry. Twice. He knew that for the very few she chose to love, she loved as fiercely as a tiger. She was like the wind over the moor- without walls, without limits- and she blew where she wished, upsetting the grasses below her without care.

He watched as she went away to school and was taught how to behave as she ought. They wished to enclose her in walls and gilded cages. They sought to tame her and charm her and make her settle like a well-bred lady. For all her lessons and fine teachers and tight-laced corsets, they never could saddle break her quite the way they wished. For all she looked the part of a fine lady, he could see the restless energy in her eyes, the quivering of internal muscles that sought to break free and gallop across the moor.

He knew Mary... and he knew Colin. He had seen both at their very best... and at their very worst.

Colin, for all his world had expanded, was still an invalid at heart. He had never learned to stretch his muscles of human compassion and tenderness and sympathy. For all he could now walk and run and explore, he was still bound by the same paralysis of heart, the same braces of selfishness, as he had ever been. His dwelling now included great swathes of London, but he was still restricted in his capacity to recognize the importance of anyone but himself.

Both Colin and Mary knew what it was to be unwanted by their parents. They had experienced no poverty but that of affection. They had learned only late in childhood how to exert themselves and the value of other humans for purposes other than in service to themselves- and even then, they had learned to use each other to fill their longstanding drought for attention. They were equally matched in tempers and their explosive arguments could be heard from the house all the way into the gardens.

Neither had learned to bend.

Yet, married as they were, the bough that could not move with the wind would break in the storms that would come and he hoped, when that time came, they were still wick enough to survive.

Chapter Text

Mary Lennox departed her uncle's study, her arms full of her inheritance. When she arrived inside her room, she carefully hid the box under her bed, in the little alcove where she kept all her treasures. Then, she stood. The dark, ornate room appeared exactly the same as the day she first arrived at Misselthwaite. The carved bed, wall hangings, and arrangement of the room revealed no more about the presence of Mary Lennox than any of the rest of the manor. For all the years she had called Misselthwaite home, little had changed in both the house and its inhabitants. She doubted much would change, even years after her departure. There would not even be dust left on the windowsill after her.

It was only under the bed, beneath the oak slats and crevices, that Mary felt she could display her few possessions. There, she kept a box of photographs, adding to their number each year, along with all the letters she received while away at school. She kept some sketch books, a box of art supplies, a few books she purchased with her pocket money, and an old, battered skipping rope – now far too short for her grown limbs. Her greatest treasure she kept in a little wooden chest: a drawing of a missel thrush, a preserved nest, and a container of flower seeds – carefully saved from year to year for the next spring's planting and recorded in the nearby notebook. Between worn pages, she carefully pressed flowers, leaves, and seeds. At the top of each page, she wrote the name of the flower (both common and scientific) and then any observations she had about its growth and planting. Then, she painstakingly painted a picture alongside it. This, she did for every plant in the garden, spending every summer holiday working to complete it. She had not finished yet for there was always a new sapling or sprout she had not recognized from the preceding years.

To all these, she added the box of jewelry. While undoubtedly the item with the greatest monetary value, she did not believe it to be her greatest treasure.

When she emerged from beneath the bed, she stood at the window. Below, in the gardens, she saw old Ben Weatherstaff and Dickon Sowerby working in the grounds. The head gardener leant heavily on a rake and spent more effort directing the broad, tall youth beside him in his efforts than he did working the land himself. A wheelbarrow full of pruned branches lay between them.

There would be no robin to chirrup to them or oversee their efforts.

For a moment, her eyes filled with tears again and she forced her gaze away from the gardeners. There was the beloved wall covered with ivy and path into her favorite place in all the world. She noted that the door to the Secret Garden had been left ajar. For a moment, she considered finding solace within its walls or telling Dickon about the meeting with her uncle. However, she could just as easily tell him later, when he was not needed by Ben. She daren't speak of jewels and finery before the gruff old gardener… or, perhaps, it was the allusions to her mother she wished to avoid before him. She could not tell.

Beyond the grounds of Misselthwaite, out where the manicured gardens and furrowed lands ended and the open moor began, it seemed as if that was the very beginning of the rest of the world. She looked up just as a cloud shifted, shattering a ray of sun into a dozen shards – each distinct and piercing the moor beyond with columns of fragmented light. The sight was so compelling that she pushed open the window and drank in the sweet scent of earth and air and growing things beyond. For a time, she simply watched the shifting pattern of shadow and light dancing across the moor. The longer she lingered, the more the room around her felt all the more constricting, all the more shrouded in darkness and she longed for the fresh air of the moor.

She tore off the fine, neatly pressed clothes she had worn to visit her uncle and quickly changed into an old dress better meant for a day in the garden. Then, she crept out of the house, using back stairways and hidden passages that had become as familiar as the howl of the wind through her windows at night. The proud, grand stables of the manor house welcomed her, but echoed with a foreign emptiness. Stall after stall stood empty. The only horses who remained were those too old or too young to be sent to the War. Similarly, most of the grooms had followed – by choice or by draft- and those who remained sported either white hair or beardless chins. A few of the hardy mares remained – just enough to produce the next generation – but they were so few, such a fraction of what had once frolicked across the pastures and meadows around Misselthwaite.

Her own mare was one fortunate enough to keep her place at Misselthwaite. Queen Elizabeth whinnied when she saw her mistress and was more than eager for an outing. Mary placed the bridle over her horse's head, but did not bother with a saddle. She clambered onto her horse's back and urged the creature into a gallop as soon as there were no obstacles before them, save a fence or two which could easily be jumped.

She knew her uncle and cousin would chide her if they caught her. It was not proper for her to ride alone or astride a horse or without saddle. She almost wished they would see her, just so she could tell them she did not care what they thought. This was the manner Dickon first taught her to ride and, for a moment, she did not wish to pay heed to what was expected of her or what was proper. Instead, she rode as far and as fast as her horse could manage, the view of Misselthwaite gradually melting away, leaving her awash in an ocean of fluctuating grasses and rolling hills, all bare beneath the flickering light of the cloud-broke sun.

With the scent of the crushed grass, the feel of the wind in her hair, and quivering of horse's muscles beneath her legs, she felt free. She felt alive. There were no shadowy secrets here, no dark passageways or stale wardrobes filled with old boxes and locked with old keys.

Her hair fell out of its pins and flowed freely down her back. Slowly, the let her horse calm into a trot and then into a walk. Finally, she pulled the horse to a halt, slid from her back, and let the Queen eat her fill of the sweet summer grasses. Mary lay on a clump of earth, her head pillowed on her hands, and watched the shifting, shimmering clouds sweep across the sky.

Her uncle wished for her to attend art school – more to keep her occupied and out from being underfoot than for any particular talent she possessed or the usefulness of the skills she would acquire – but women were not permitted university degrees and he had no wish for his ward to remain idle around Misselthwaite. Her uncle had many plans for Mary -some spoken and some left unsaid. Colin, too, had his own ideas of how Mary's life ought to be managed. Very few inquired into Mary's thoughts on the matter or what it was she wished to do.

One thing was certain: she did not want to leave.

Not just the moor, but Misselthwaite, her Garden. She treasured these places far too much and she longed for them when she was away. She counted the days till each holiday, longing for the breath of summer, the return to the one place she loved most. She did her best to attend to her studies and do as her uncle wished, but she did not enjoy it. Now, she would be pried away from Misselthwaite again, sent away once more – locked away in a safe deposit box until she was needed again.

There was one more thing she was certain of: she wished to leave more than anything.

The edge of the horizon, the undulating waves of grass beyond called to her, beckoning her to continue in her frantic gallop and leave the rigid, stately old manor house behind.

It was too much. If the death of the robin impacted her so, what would she face when the inevitable occurred and she was forced to face another death? If attachment to such a small, weak creature cut her wide open for injury, for such acute grief, how could she bear any greater loss? Dickon and Colin and Ben and Martha and the Garden and that dark old house with its impenetrable secrets- she had grown to love it all and it was too much for her to bear. How could she face losing any of them, being parted over and over again?

Suddenly, she understood her uncle in a way she never had before. Lord Craven had loved his wife – completely and utterly- and that love destroyed him. He could not bear his wife's loss and each day after became a torment. Lord Craven chose to leave Misselthwaite rather than love and face loss again. He would rather lock his son away than face another loss. He never took another wife, never stayed in a place long enough to grow attached. The only souls around him were those paid to be there. Even after it became clear that Colin would live, Lord Craven never spent more than a handful of days at a time in his son's company. He wandered the world as restlessly as the winter winds across the moor and wore his grief as a shroud about his heart.

Perhaps, there was a certain wisdom in that path. In India, Mary had not felt the death of her parents nor any other. She had not cared. No tears were shed. She had been whole, untouchable. That must be preferable to this ache in her breast, this heaviness in her soul. If she hardened her heart, she would not feel the inevitable loss of a friend or the desperate separation caused by time and distance. Even the Garden could wound her with its absence and tingling promises of beauty she could not possess or keep all as her own. No, it was better to protect herself - to build high, unscalable walls, and ensure no one would come in and no one would come out – and then she would not have to feel such agony again. She decided, then and there, that this would be the last time she cried.

When she returned to Misselthwaite that evening, she knew what she must do. Quietly, she returned Queen Elizabeth to the stables and placed a fond kiss on the horse's nose. Then, she ambled across the gardens until she reached the Garden door. With only the briefest of lingering glances, she shut the door. Then, she returned to her room.

She did not enter the Garden again, nor did she traverse the open moor. She avoided her cousin and Dickon as much as she could, pretending to be much occupied with errands in the village and preparing for her upcoming removal to art school. When the time came, her uncle and cousin deposited her at her school for her first term. She only remained a single night before she vanished, leaving only a note behind.

Lord Craven was angry and confused when news of Mary's disappearance reached him.

"Foolish, ungrateful child," he spat. "What is she about?"

Initially, he made some efforts to find his lost niece… perhaps, he might have found her, if he persisted. However, he had very little desire to search out a girl- no a woman- who chose to leave his care of her own accord. After all, she had decided she would look after herself and he would not be put out of his way to change her mind. If she wished to return, she would. It was only another loss, another sadness and he had more than enough of those to bear.

The loss hit Colin Craven much harder. He had always assumed Mary would remain a fixture in his life- in the same way that Misselthwaite Manor remained each generation or the sun in the sky continued to rise. Of course, his cousin would remain – ready to chide and support, cheer up and demolish, entertain him and exhort him and share life together for as long as they lived. Afterall, she was his only true family. His uncle, the doctor, rarely visited and when he did, it was with an irritated, resigned sigh- as if he held Colin personally responsible for existing and insisting on living when it would have been far more convenient for him to die and leave the inheritance of the manor to him. And his father- well- it is hard to the change the patterns accrued over ten years of life and even harder to bring two wounded, isolated souls into true companionship. While leaps and bounds had been made since his days as an invalid, there remained a chasm between father and son that not even a miraculous healing and a living son could heal.

Mary remained the only person in his life he truly loved, and her sudden abandonment and absence felt like he had been impaled on a stick and then relieved of his liver.

Colin nearly failed all this classes that first year of university. He spent all the time he could trying to find her, trying to trace her movements. When he finally discovered she had shipped herself off to the very grounds of the war, he nearly got on a boat to follow after her. He would have, too, if he had been eighteen. Yet, she had always prided in her few extra months of age over him and no matter how much taller and stronger he grew, she would always be the elder. Those few months meant she could leave him behind to where he could not follow.

And while Mary might be mistress of her own fortune, Colin, most decidedly, was not. Until he became the Lord of the Manor in his own right, he was still subservient to his father's wishes- which most decidedly did not involve seeing his young son traipsing across France after his cousin.

It was the greatest grief he had ever known and he hardly knew how to bear it. His Mary chose to leave him, to leave him alone, to cut off all ties. He had never known his mother and so he had never understood his father's grief. He had known so few others. He could not claim to love his servants and they were paid to be with him. Yet, Mary was his. She had to love him. She must! They were the same, she and him, and their fates were intertwined.

Yet, she chose to leave – almost as suddenly as she had stumbled into his life, she carried herself right back out of it again, and he was bereft.

His father chided him for his poor performance at his studies and his lack of motivation. He threatened and pleaded and bribed Colin to attend to his studies and give up his search for his cousin. He could not, however, enter into his son's grief.

Dickon took Mary's absence more as a matter of course than a surprise. Afterall, he had always known she would someday leave. He had prepared himself. Each year as she went away to boarding school and left him behind, he had practiced for the inevitable. He knew how it would be. Either, she would marry her cousin and remain at Misselthwaite or she would marry elsewhere and leave Misselthwaite behind. Either way, she would leave Dickon behind and grow beyond him.

He had noticed Mary's reticence, her avoidance of him over that last month of summer. He assumed it was due to her age and growing up. He was, after all, only a gardener on the estate. Whatever their shared past, their futures could not converge and he assumed the distance was natural.

"Tha' munnot keep them all," his mother told him once, when the healed wing of a sparrow enabled her to take wing again. "Tha' munnot make them stay. Why heal them if not to let them fly? They art wild creatures, Dickon. Tha' canna change that, no matter how tha' wish to."

Yet, he was surprised she left Colin… and the Garden. He knew she loved them. Deeply and completely. To leave without looking back- that was unexpected and it troubled him. Dickon and Colin had never been close. Indeed, Colin was the sort of boy it was hard for anyone to truly be close with. Yet, they were tied together because they both loved Mary and it was this shared love which both unified and divided them and made it impossible for them to truly be friends. Colin was fiercely jealous and possessive of his cousin- he wished to remain the center of her attention, the one to determine the course of her day, her thoughts, her wishes. Yet, Mary was not one to be cowed and ordered about and she did as she pleased – even if it meant seeking out her old companion in the Garden.

Then, in a single moment, Mary Lennox was gone.

Dickon made sure to keep the Garden as clean and well-tended as if she had never left. He kept it alive, in case she ever returned and wished to see it again.

But she never came.

There was a wide world and vast horizons calling to her and she would follow. She would not look back to what she had left behind.

It was late in the war, as losses mounted and fresh conscripts were harder and harder to come by, that women were called on to take up non-combatant roles previously filled by men. If women answered telephones and worked in the mess hall, then the men they replaced could head to the battlelines and fight. Thus, advertisements were sent across England asking women to join. Mary volunteered for the Women's Army Auxillary Corps and found herself in Rouen, France operating telephone lines. Her expensive former education at least provided enough knowledge of French to make her useful and she could direct communications between battle lines and across languages.

There, she stayed, through the rest of the war long after the war ended. The war built and broke and soldered and melted and scorched. There were bombed out cities to clean up and rebuild. There were sick and wounded men to tend and bury. The war cemeteries required gardeners and if there was one thing Mary knew she could do well, it was tend a garden.

Chapter Text

With a deep sigh of contentment, Dickon prepared to walk the five miles home. One day each month, he was freed from his duties at Misselthwaite and could go home. Having spent his entire life in that cottage on the moor, surrounded by his family, he had never known how much he could miss it all until he began to work at Misselthwaite. Now, he counted down the days until he could do as he pleased and make his way across the moor to his family – or, at least, the family that still remained there. Martha had married a farmer in the next town over and moved there six months back and Elizabeth Ellen had taken her place at Misselthwaite. Phil was buried alongside their father in the parish churchyard. The rest of the Sowerbys, all nine children and their mother, remained at home.

Dickon was sore all over from a long day pruning trees and hedges. Mr. Roach was not as young nor as strong as he used to be. It was commonly understood that once the old head gardener retired, Dickon would be the first candidate as his replacement… unless the stablemaster left first. Dickon could just as easily tend roses as foals and both John Young and Luke Roach competed over the time of their young assistant. With so many servants sent off to war, there was more work than any of those left could manage and those who remained could have their pick of positions. This meant Dickon's hours were long and arduous, but it also meant his pay was greater. His mother was more indebted to Lord Craven's efforts at keeping her eldest son out of the War than she was with the extra pay. However, after the death of her husband, Dickon's wages helped keep feet shod and bellies fed and this was another source of comfort to Mrs. Sowerby.

Most days off, Dickon spent his time tending the family's garden, fixing the cottage, and managing any errands in town his mother needed. He was not quite sure what to expect this time, though. It was the news among all the servants at Misselthwaite: how strange the young mistress of the manor had behaved lately… and how she had disappeared three days ago after a summons to her uncle.

"She up an' disappeared," her maid had said in exasperation. "W' nary a word!"

None of the servants knew what bothered Mary Lennox so, well, save for Dickon Sowerby. However, there were quite a few of Mary's secrets only he was privy to and which he dared not speak a word of to another soul. Just as he hid the nest of the missel thrush and the den of the fox, so he would keep Miss Mary's refuge on the open moor to himself.

That was just his way. Dickon always gathered stray creatures around himself - broken wings and abandoned young and injured paws – they came across his path as if he had charmed them and they just knew. That was how he first came upon Mary Lennox. Martha had spoken of the strange new inhabitant of the manor ever since she first turned up on the doorstep of Misselthwaite. The young girl turned that stagnant, old manor upside down with her novelty, her alterations - as if she was the warm breath of spring after a long, unceasing winter. Whenever Martha came home, she overflowed with stories of the little orphaned girl from India and her sour face and strange ways.

"She's plenty enough to say o' her nurse, but no parents. If I hadn't known better, I'd reckon she's never met 'em," Martha said.

"Aye. There're some who're orphaned from birth, even if th' parents still live," their mother said, shaking her head sadly.

It was not only Dickon who had a fondness for lost and broken things. He inherited that trait from his mother. Her heart was as wide and open as the moor, always held open for any living, breathing, weeping, laughing creature. No matter how little food beneath their roof for a meal, she could always add water to the gruel and add a place at the table. No matter how lean the times, she always welcomed the next babe with joy and just as much delight as the one before.

"They are mine an' just as in need o' love an' care as th' rest," she said.

Dickon felt that way the moment he first met Mary. She was his. That poor creature was as abandoned and neglected as her garden – let to run wild and locked up out of the way of everyone else. No one wanted her and they let her be, alone as a chick fallen from its nest. She tossed and flailed on the hard ground; her wings not yet strong enough to let her fly. He befriended her as surely as he did the fox and the crow and the moor ponies. It was the same, after all. Move slowly, do no harm, let her approach him first. Follow her lead. Before long, she was casting her secrets before him as surely as the thrush and the robin and pouring out her heart to him in the shadows of the ancient trees.

He would guard her secrets and never let another soul know what he knew.

She was the first soul to ever call him 'beautiful'… and the last. For all the days he lived, he never forgot the day his sister told him Mary's first impressions. The first time he met a high-born girl, meant for high-born things, and she called him 'beautiful.' True, she called him "queer and common," but also beautiful. And that was that.

For all his friends and family loved him, growing up so close, they knew each other's ways and habits and it was hard to see the forest through the trees sometimes. There was such a thing as knowing each other too well and it was a stranger's eyes that could give a truer perspective at times. She never did hide her thoughts, that Mary. She spoke as she thought and thus, she spoke the truth as she saw it. Yet, she never did see anything the way anyone else did, either. She was all tigers and rajahs and snake charmers and heat and strangeness. For all that her parents were English and kin of Lord Craven, their daughter was more Indian than she was English and she stood out in Yorkshire like a peacock in a chicken yard.

He knew her ravenous need for love and attention. He knew how awkward she felt, how much she did not belong or know her place.

"Lord Craven cannot manage his own son, how is he to take on another?" His mother had protested. "He is no more suited as guardian than I am as King of England."

"Surely he has space enough an' money enough for another mouth to feed," Martha said.

"As if all a child needs were food an' shelter an' clothes without holes! No, th' girl'll know want, o' a different kind. Her clothes'll be fine enough an' her belly full, but a child needs more to grow an' thrive. There's more'n one kind o' poor an' a child can starve for more'n food."

True enough, for all the Sowerbys may not have known what it was to be completely full at meal time, they never found themselves without companionship of some kind. Even more, they each knew their mother loved them and would box their ears if she caught them doing what they ought not. She knew their whereabouts and yet at the same time she gave them space to run wild – wild enough to know their limits.

The young Lennox girl was friends with a robin, a gardener who mostly avoided her, and Martha- who was paid to attend her. If those were her only friends, the only ones to share life with her, Dickon reckoned his mother was right. She was poor, in her own way, and in a way he had never known.

It was not only Dickon who took to the "poor child" (as his mother often referred to her). Martha was just as fond of her and his mother had taken to her before even meeting her. His mother went without tea for a month when she bought the child a skipping-rope. The "poor child" lived at Misselthwaite and had the lord of the manor as her guardian – the lord who would not stop to think of purchasing a skipping rope- for all his gilded edges and fancy carriages and extravagant travels. The same lord who could hardly bear to look upon the face of his own son.

It was not long before Mary Lennox discovered the secret son and pried him out of seclusion.

"Tha's gathered another stray pup, Dickon," Martha teased, after he first met the elusive heir. Yet, it was true enough. For all the boy was to be lord and master of the estate, he was as starved for attention as Mary ever had been.

It was Mary who tied the world together around her. She opened up the Garden and threw open locked doors of the manor house and brought life wherever she walked, without knowing she did it. Dickon never should have seen the upper floors of the manor house any more than he should have known the unguarded, untended moments of Misselthwaite's daughter and son. Yet, for a handful of years, he had known the secret passages of Misselthwaite as well as his own cottage and had joined in the games and adventures of Colin and Mary until the pair was finally separated and sent away to school.

It was the way of things, his mother had chided. The young miss must learn to be a fine lady and put away common things – like running over the moor or leaping onto the back of ponies. No, she must learn to speak proper, stand tall, dress in layers of laces and pearls and curls, and treat him only as a servant. And young Master Colin must learn to be a proper gentleman and follow in the footsteps of Lord Craven. It was the way it was always meant to be.

They had stayed up all night in the garden the night before the separation occurred. Mary and Colin promised to write. They did not understand why Dickon did not write back. How could he explain the cost of postage or, how despite his mother's best efforts, he struggled to form the letters on a paper. He had always preferred the open air and hard manual labor to the work of a school room and, while he could read a little, the words his friends wrote grew longer and more complicated and he could not bear to give an answer in his childish scrawl and common speech.

The long years of separation began and the letters and visits home became fewer and fewer. Each time they returned, Colin and Mary stood taller, walked with greater confidence and elegance, and easily grew into the sphere they were supposed to inhabit. Dickon found it harder and harder to meet their eye and it took longer and longer to resurrect the easier simplicity of their old friendship, of days passed by. It was only late at night, in the Garden, when Colin had taken off his coat and Mary put on her gardening clothes and Dickon was no longer fulfilling his duties as a servant of the manor, that they could meet again as friends. There, they could once again play and laugh and muse over the mysteries of life, as they had done in the past. There, they could pretend to be three friends again sharing a far simpler life together.

However, that in itself was the crux of the problem: pretending to be three friends.

Colin would be lord of the estate. Dickon, if all went well, would serve him all his life. They were never meant to be friends nor equals. They were never meant to share a meal together nor speak of the state of the country or their trials as men. They were meant to inhabit different worlds and remain in the sphere into which they were born. It was and always had been a pretense, an unspoken truth, an impermeable wedge. Colin and Dickon, while reserving an unflinching, terse, and unsteady respect for the other, were equally torn by this shade of things to come. They were never meant to be friends. They would never have come into each other's company if it was not for the third member of their party- and it was only out of their true and unswerving devotion for their beloved linchpin that they would endure each other's continued companionship.

The unspoken truth that simultaneously bound them and divided them was that they both loved Mary Lennox.

Oh, she could be selfish and ill-tempered enough and few could praise her as a beauty, but from the moment he had met the strange daughter of Misselthwaite, Dickon Sowerby had loved her.

Martha had known and chastised him for it. "Best give it up now. It'll end in naught. What's a bird an' a fish to do w' each other? Th' most'll ever come to is some great scandal which would ruin thee an' make tha' lose thy place."

Dickon knew this. He knew she was meant for Colin. Everyone knew that the cousins would eventually wed. It was the way of things. And Colin wasn't so bad, after all, and Colin truly loved his cousin. Anyone could see that. Well, as much as Colin could love anyone. From the stories the servants told about other lords and ladies, it could be far, far worse. Thus, he was resigned, or so he told himself.

Long months passed in which she was away, surrounded by people who would look down upon him and his common Yorkshire ways, teaching her to do the same. He feared that the next time she returned, she would turn up her nose and disdain him, but he still tended her Garden, imagining her delight when next she returned. He watched her window whenever he knew she was home, in hopes of catching a glimpse of her, however small. And he couldn't help waiting in the Garden after hours in hopes she might choose to visit her beloved place, however briefly.

Dickon had been the first to find her - after the robin died. In that moment, she was young Mary Lennox again, the raw, sour little orphan who did not know her place and insisted on opening locked doors, exposing hidden sons, and making people walk who had never walked before. She wept before him and he treasured that moment of seeing her exposed and without the layers of training her education restraining her. Simply Mary, the girl who tamed rajahs and tigers and common little robins and moor boys.

Yet, for all his gifts and talents, not even Dickon Sowerby could raise the dead. He had noted her depression from afar but dared not do anything about it. They were no longer children and it would not be fitting to send her notes nor call upon her as he used to. So, he remained, close to the Garden. But she never came.

Then came the day her uncle summoned her… and she walked away from Misselthwaite and out into the open moor.

Dickon had not thought anything of it. He had seen her, up in her grand room, looking out forlornly across the moor. Thus, he had noted when her pale face disappeared from the window and then he watched her cloaked form disappear over the moor. He was not concerned. He knew, better than most, how she loved the moors. She often confided in him, during those brief stolen moments she accidentally found him in the garden, about how she longed for the moors whenever she was away at school. He knew she could spend hours and hours walking the depth and breadth of them, or simply lying in their grasses, her canvas and paints nearby as she counted the clouds or watched the birds overhead.

He hoped she would find her solace there… and her soul would be revived. He would not speak of where she had gone but turned his head back to his work and kept watch.

Then she failed to return. For long hours, he watched the moor, searching for her familiar figure to make her way back to the manor house. But she never came. Instead, a familiar pony and rider came.

He ran to meet his brother, worried some emergency had occurred at home.

"John, what are tha' doin' here?"

"I've a note for Medlock from Mother."

At his look of confusion, John laughed. "Miss Mary turned up on our doorstep this mornin' an' has taken it into her head to remain for th' night."

John burst into laughter at the expression on his brother's face and continued on to deliver the note to the housekeeper. By all accounts, Medlock gaped like a caught trout when she read it.

"Well, it wouldn't be th' first time th' child did something none could understand," she said.

Lord Craven and Master Colin were away from home and so no one else inquired into the whereabouts of young Mary Lennox. But the servants all talked. They could not understand why the daughter of the house remained from home, in the cottage of the Sowerbys of all places. For one night… two nights… three nights, she remained.

Thus, when the day came for Dickon to return home, his curiosity was just as strong… and his surprise even greater… when he found Mary Lennox outside his childhood home with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, soap suds covering her arms and her skirts drenched with water from the wash basin before her. Her lips were pursed in a familiar expression of determination as she frowned at the rough shirt she scrubbed between her palms. A line of clothes dripped water behind her, each showing evidence of poor washing and even poorer wringing and Dickon stopped in place to laugh out loud at the sight of it all.

At the sound, Mary looked up in surprise and frowned even further, her expression that of a disgruntled empress, causing Dickon to laugh even harder.

"What's this? Miss Mary's left Misselthwaite to be a scullery maid at th' Sowerby house?" He said with a low whistle. "Ben'll never believe me, nor Master Colin."

She splashed a handful of suds at him, wetting his shirt and making him take a step back in surprise.

"It's easier than learning Latin," she answered with a grimace. "I daresay I'd rather conquer a tub of laundry then conjugate Latin verbs any day."

"I'll take tha' word for it," he answered.

His mother emerged from the cottage, then, and embraced him firmly. She placed a kiss on his cheek, though she had to stand on her tip toes to reach him now. At his questioning expression, she laughed.

"Ah, lad! Tha'll get an earful of stories now," she said and ushered him into the cottage for breakfast.

His mother had not exaggerated. His siblings were only too excited to share all the novel experiences they had thrust their young guest into. For all she knew of snake charmers and ocean liners, Mary Lennox had never held a baby nor entertained small children. She'd never kneaded dough nor washed a single dish. She'd never shared a bed nor slept on the floor nor set a fire for herself. She could sew a pretty line and weed a garden well enough, but there were plenty of tasks about the Sowerby house she knew nothing about, despite all her fine education. She insisted on learning how to do everything.

"Martha taught me to dress myself and skip a rope. Teach me," she said. "I wish to learn."

It was the strangest day he could remember – having Mary Lennox there, in his family home. True, she had come to call upon the cottage many times before. She was no stranger to their family or their home, but it had been some years since she had come last… and never quite like this. From morning till evening, she helped in the garden, darned socks, cut onions, and washed floors. Whatever it was Mrs. Sowerby meant to do, Mary did along with her.

Then, Mrs. Sowerby sent her home.

"Tha' must go!" She said with a laugh. "Or Medlock'll be after thee!"

Oooo

Misselthwaite felt all the more desolate when she returned that evening, three days after leaving it behind. After the ceaseless noise and bustle of the Sowerby cottage her own rooms echoed with her footsteps and the silence felt smothering. Colin was away, visiting some school fellow for a time. Her uncle, too, had departed again. She sat on the window seat and looked out over the dark shadows of the moor beyond, the sky spangled with innumerable stars and the eerie glow of the quarter moon. Her back was sore from washing and her hands rubbed raw. A blister on one thumb still burned and she far preferred her soft, empty bed to the harsh, straw mattress on the floor of the Sowerby home.

Yet, she had enjoyed herself more than she would have ever imagined.

Colin had told her, ever since she was young, that he would marry her someday. He knew it as certainly as he knew he would inherit Misselthwaite or that he would wake the next day or that all the servants would heed his every bidding. It was a fact of life, and one she had never thought to question. After all, she had been young and had very little say in where she went or what she did. She never chose to come to Misselthwaite. She did not choose her school or her clothes or where she spent her holidays. She was dependent, for everything, on her uncle and, by extension, her cousin, and those they employed under them. True, she had her own way in small things- such as stealing a garden and filling it with seeds she chose and planted herself and in seeking out Colin and Dickon, but in many ways, she had very little say in what she would do.

What would she do, if given the choice?

Three days before, she had hidden her mother's jewelry beneath her bed, and she began to wonder at the life her uncle chose for her, the life she was born to, and if it was really what she wished to pursue. She did not mind painting, but what was the purpose of sending her to art school? She did not particularly enjoy the fine clothes and gatherings and adornments of Society. She did not admire her uncle's solitary life and she had very little inclination towards the rambunctious, self-important young men that Colin surrounded himself with or their elegant, ambitious female counterparts. Of course, she loved her cousin, but she was happiest at home, at Misselthwaite, in her Garden, while he preferred the bustling activity of London and Cambridge and Bath.

In thinking over the people and places she had learned to cherish most, she thought of the robin again… and she thought of her first friends: of Ben Weatherstaff and Martha and Dickon. This, of course, made her think of Susan Sowerby and the matron's perpetual kindness. Her visits to the cottage over the years with Mrs. Sowerby had always taught her something, grown her, challenged her, encouraged her in ways no one else could. For all the woman was full of her own cares, she had always made time for the cares of others – whether elderly neighbors or sick children or orphaned girls from India. The life she had forged for herself might appear common enough, but it was fuller than that of anyone else Mary had ever met.

And Mrs. Sowerby was no stranger to grief and loss. The churchyard at the parish church was testament to that with the little row of Sowerbys found buried there. Yet, despite her acquaintance with loss, she still managed to live and cherish her family that remained and that was something her uncle had never managed to achieve. It was something Mary decided she needed to learn for herself. Thus, she hid away her little jewelry box and set out with determined steps in the direction of the Sowerby cottage.

"My uncle says I must not weep," she told Mrs. Sowerby. The pair sat alongside the fire inside the cottage while Dickon's three-legged cat lay on Mary's lap. Mary held her head high and repeated the words her uncle had told her. "It is not proper to weep so for a bird. Then, he gave me some things which once belonged to my mother… and grandmother. I hardly remember my mother. I never knew my grandmother. And the robin is gone. I ought to be grateful for his gift and I ought not weep so for a bird, but I cannot help it."

"Ah, child!" Mrs. Sowerby cried, her voice warm and dripping with honeyed affection. She reached out to clasp Mary's hands in her own - the poor, motherless child! Susan Sowerby had always longed to take her in her arms and coddle her. She settled for squeezing Mary's hands. "It is a terrible gift, to love. I have loved each o' my thirteen children - enough to die for each an' every one o' 'em. I wouldn't exchange it, not for all that's whole an' hale an' fine. When they was hurt o' lost o' walk away, I feel it to my soul, but I wouldn't exchange it. I loved my husband w' all my heart. He was not a perfect man, but he was my husband an' not a day goes by that I don't wish he was still w' us."

"My uncle would rather run away and keep his distance."

"That he would."

"Wouldn't it have been easier to not love his wife so much?"

"Easier? P'raps. But not as worthwhile. Do I wish a mother had the power to stop wars an' minin' accidents an' send diseases to the pit of hell from whence they first begun? Yes. Eh, th' bulbs tha' plant in thy garden each spring, would it be easier to leave 'em on th' shelf o' the gardener's shed? Yes. To dig holes for 'em, hide 'em away in the dark an' cold an' danger o' rooting hogs an' wiley creatures, why, it were a risk and many'll not survive it. But, oh, what'd become of spring without those bulbs bein' planted in the ground? How would tha' see th' flowers? Tha' munnot be afraid or tha'll never watch the daffydowndillies bloom."

"But it is hard!"

"That it is. We all must die, like th' robin, someday. P'raps before thee, p'raps after. It is th' way o' things. Even if they live, some might disappoint thee o' forsake thee, but, oh! How empty life'd be without sharing it w' a few others! Thy heart will grow an' expand, even w' tears, but tha' must be brave, young Mary. To love, an' to continue loving, is th' most dangerous, difficult, painful thing tha' can do- but also th' best, an' th' most worthwhile."

She thought about those words in the days that followed.

She had sought out the Sowerby home ostensibly to learn from its matron, but she stayed on to delight in the family as a whole. She was used to isolating herself, hiding behind tall walls forged of silence and selfishness. She rarely attempted to peek over the tops of those fences to see the human beings on the other side. Now, though, she tried. Awkwardly and with great effort, she tried to speak with the Sowerby children, to learn from them, and partake in their tasks each day. She was rewarded for her efforts. After their initial hesitation and shyness was past, she could not remember ever laughing so hard as she did in those few days. Each day, she woke surrounded by others who took joy in seeing her wake alongside them. Even if meals were scant, they were taken in shared affection, and though work was hard and tiresome, she found it far more fulfilling than a long day of leisure all alone.

Then Dickon came.

That beautiful, exceptional boy.

She had loved Dickon as much as she had loved the robin, she realized, the moment she heard him laugh as though he would burst from the effort, his blue eyes glistening with warmth and humor, his dimpled cheeks red and merry.

In Mary's early years, she had never learned to see beauty any more than she had learned to recognize the value of human beings. It was the robin who first broke open her heart, but he had been followed after so closely by Dickon… and then the Garden… so that the three were forever intertwined in her mind and heart. Dickon's friendship had been as immediate and uncompromising as the robin's and she had never questioned it, though, perhaps she should have.

It was not the way of things. So few people in her life had taken her as she was, sour face and dour heart and all, and simply accepted her and determined to be friends. As if she did not need to do anything or change anything or become anything else. They were wild things who chose her and remained loyally alongside her.

And it was beautiful.

She delighted in seeing Dickon, whenever she was home from school. However, he could not spend all day by her side as he could when they were children… and they were different now. They were older. He had duties to attend and he worked for her uncle, now. She knew things must change, or so Colin reminded her.

However, it was somehow different. Seeing him again, now, in his home, surrounded by his family, settling into the ease and familiarity of the place he belonged, with the people he loved and who loved him.

And she was overcome with a jealousy like she had never quite experienced before. She wanted it. She wanted to keep it all. She wanted a place to belong. She wished she had her own place in this family, with these people. She wanted to have a family who glowed in delight when she came home, who threw their arms around her and spoke with voices full of happiness because she had come back to them and had been missed. She wanted to be wanted. However, it was more than that. It was Dickon, too. She was jealous not only for his place and his acceptance, but that his family had their own claim on him, too. She wished to wrap him up and keep him in her box of treasured things, to make sure he was always there for her to come home to, his laughter there to soften the edges of the sharpest of days.

It was a burning in her heart such as she had never experienced before and she was overcome with a need to watch him, to know where he was, to follow him from the cottage to the garden to watch him work. It was nearly intoxicating –spending the entire day together like that. Each glance, each shared memory, each bout of laughter, she felt her heart warm as if to bursting.

Then the day ended. She returned to Misselthwaite. To that cold, dreary house and those paid servants and a box of jewelry that felt more like a noose or a bridle than adornments.

She spent the night tossing and turning, her mind in whirl, and when she rose the next morning, she put on her gardening clothes and went out to spend her energy on the garden in hopes she would find more clarity there. By late afternoon, her hands were torn from thorns and dirt covered her stockings and arms and she had a new cut across her skirt from where she was caught in a bramble, but she felt energized and alive in the way only growing things can cause.

How she loved to watch things grow and change and shift!

She watched the squirrels and the garden hedgehog and the fish in the pond. She listened to the sparrow's song and the coo of the afternoon doves. Then, she watched the missel thrush and its mate flit about on the ground, seeking insects in the brush together. She knew how to recognize their call and their nest, now, because Dickon had taught her.

It was nearing twilight when she heard the gate open and saw a familiar figure emerge into the garden. Dickon took in all she had done and whistled in approval.

"Tha's done well, Miss Mary," he said, his face breaking into a wide grin.

He began to gather the cut branches and piles of leaves while Mary helped gather tools into a wheelbarrow. They were nearly done when Dickon pointed over at the old swing.

"Ben Weatherstaff put in fresh ropes," he told her. "It'll hold even me now."

She laughed. "They must be strong ropes indeed then! Come, let us test it out!"

At her bidding, he got on the old swing and allowed her to push him. His long legs nearly brushed the ground with each thrust of the swing, making it harder to gain momentum. With glee, she pushed him until he was laughing with her, swinging his way through the vines of summer roses. After a few moments, she slowed the swing.

"I wish to try," she said, but she hurriedly motioned for him to remain on the swing. After tying a rope to a nearby tree, she climbed onto the swing along with him, her feet facing the opposite direction on the swing, their arms intertwined as each clasped the ropes. The swing was far smaller than it had been, in those days long past when they were children, playing in just such a way on a summer's eve and he hardly dared to move or look over to where she sat alongside him, far closer than she ought. With the rope in her hand, she gave it a gentle tug and the swing began to drift through the air again. Back and forth, the swing rushed gently through the trees. She looked over at him with a victorious smile.

"It is strong enough for both of us," she said.

"Aye, strong enough – though not quite large enough," he answered.

"It used to be…Do you remember… the day Colin found the camera…and we sat like this…," she said, forcing him to look up and meet her eyes.

"I never could forget," he answered, a blush painting his cheeks as he sat torn between his memories of the past and the emotion of the moment. He could not look away – not anymore now than he could back then.

"I'm glad… he's not here tonight…," she said. Then, she leaned forward to place a kiss on his lips and he was glad for his grip on the ropes of the swing or he would have toppled over in surprise. He answered eagerly enough, each abandoning the momentum needed to keep the swing in motion and it settled still, surrounded only by the roses and the hoot of an owl and chorus of crickets in the ivy. He thought he must have fallen asleep and was dreaming in the garden but he failed to wake and still Mary remained with him.

It was far later when they finally left the garden, each flushed and glittering and overflowing with a storehouse of new memories and shared secrets.

"Will you come again tomorrow?" She whispered, before she reached the door.

He knew he ought to say no. He knew it was a terrible idea and he ought never have stayed once the work was done. Yet, Dickon Sowerby had thought about that moment on the swing since he was thirteen years old… And the next day... and the day after... and the day after... the Garden found them both within, lingering in the shadows of twilight, forgetting they were no longer children or that there was a world outside themselves to contend with.

oooooo

Susan Sowerby heart had been full of worries and cares the day she sent Mary Lennox back to Misselthwaite. For all she had enjoyed the unexpected visit from the girl, it was Dickon's arrival that made Susan's heart twist and turn and protest.

Oh, her dear, sweet, overly loyal child! She had always known he cared about the little orphaned girl… perhaps even harbored a small infatuation for her. For a boy his age to spend so much time with a girl, well, it was bound to happen. She knew he would grow out of it eventually, that he would someday accept the impossibilities of it all, and that would be that. Well, until it wasn't.

Watching the bright, earnest, adoring gaze of Lord Craven's niece following after her son all day left Susan in a turmoil of worry. It was one thing for her son to pine after his old friend from the garden and watch her from the stable yard. It was quite another for her to reciprocate and follow after him around the manor. Now, she worried – both for him and her. Dry ground too eagerly soaked up rain and that love-starved child would too eagerly drink all her son had to give and Dickon's heart was boundless. But what could she give him in return but heartache? Susan had done her best to teach her son good principles and good sense, but he was full young still, and he was a man and Mary Lennox was now a young woman. Susan could hope that somewhere in her fine, costly education, someone had instructed Mary in the ways of a man with a woman, because it was no good leaving such things to Mrs. Medlock, or heaven forbid, Colin Craven. However, if she was still ignorant and uninformed… and as headstrong as ever, it could all end poorly.

She was a young woman who knew nothing about life, for all her wealth and travels and education, and Dickon knew only too much of some things, not enough of others. They were unequal in all ways, and there were some heart aches she would spare her son, if she could. Some hurts he did not need to experience. Yet, as the day he fell from the apple tree she told him not to climb, there were some lessons which must be learned the hard way.

Susan Sowerby heard little in the days that followed. Her eldest son remained at Misselthwaite and Mary Lennox did not appear on her doorstep again. She hoped it had all come to naught. Her hopes were quelled when she came home from Thwaite to find her son sitting on the front steps of the cottage, his cap in his hands and his face drawn.

"I'm so sorry, mother," he said, as soon as he saw her approach.

"What has happened?"

"I've lost my place at Misselthwaite."

She inhaled sharply. Anxiety over what such a loss would entail to their family warred with her desire to comfort her son and her confusion… but the confusion was short-lasting. If he had been let go, she could only think of one possible reason.

"It is because of Mary Lennox."

He deflated further, slouching into himself, his head in his hands. He gave a single nod.

"Oh, Dickon," she said, torn between comforting him and chastising him. Instead, she moved to sit beside him, placing her arms around his thick, broad shoulders and feeling the shuddering of his breath in her arms.

"Will there be a child?" She asked, not wishing for details, but wondering just how far things had progressed. She knew she would love her grandchildren as much as her children, but she knew how it was in those fine houses with those wealthy families. They would send the mother and babe away for a time and the babe would never be seen or heard from again. It would kill Dickon and break her own heart, if such was the case, but there was little they could do about it.

His head swung up, his blue eyes growing impossibly wide. "No… it did not get so far as that… at least… not before we was seen."

Susan sighed in relief. It was less of a scandal than she feared. "What happened?"

"She found me in the Garden…"

"Did she find thee o' tha' waited for her there?" His mother pressed; one eyebrow raised in question.

He looked as if he was about to protest, but then he shrugged. It was no use denying it. She knew he worked the Garden more than any other in hopes of crossing paths with its mistress there. He would work over time for weeks simply because she loved that garden and he loved her. No matter how many months passed without her stepping foot inside, he would just as diligently care for it.

"And someone else found thee?" She finished for him.

He nodded.

"I won't ask who started things for I have an inklin' tha' are both as guilty as th' other. Who found thee?"

"Colin."

She groaned and reached out to take his hand. It was the worst possible person. Ben or Medlock would have groused and chided, possibly given subtle hints to Lord Craven, but they would have shielded Dickon best they could. Colin, for all his years of "friendship" with Dickon was fiercely jealous of his cousin, his own affection as apparent as Dickon's and yet his claim far more legitimate in the eyes of society. The heir of Misselthwaite was not known for his forgiveness nor his temper. There was no way Dickon would be permitted to set foot on the estate after being caught in a compromising position with the future master's intended wife. No, Dickon would not find work in the county after that but would have to move on.

It broke her heart.

It broke his heart.

But what else could be done?

Tears dripped freely off his nose- her big, strong, kind-hearted boy-turned-man. It always was his compassion, his love, that was his greatest weakness.

"I'm sorry, Mother. I do not know what's t' be done."

"Shhh, Dickon. We'll manage. Tha' munnot worry."

They stayed up late, saying little. She made him tea and sat alongside him. She could see the sadness, the heartache, the shame warring within him and these were emotions that were hard for any mother to bear for her children, but especially him. He had taken on so much, after his father died, and he worked so hard. He had so much promise. He had planned to work at Misselthwaite till he was old and aged. It was a good position with a kind master and so close to home. It was more than most could ask for.

And now it was gone.

She knew he would not sleep that night, so she was not surprised to find him heading out to the moor, fox and raven and pony alongside him as he disappeared into the darkness.

What Susan Sowerby did not expect was the appearance of Mary Lennox on her doorstep the very next morning, though, in hindsight, she should have expected it. It was hardly past dawn when the child appeared – a bedraggled creature with a stubborn glint in her eye and a determined cast to her expression.

"Where is he?" she demanded, without so much of a greeting or explanation to any of the household who gawked at her from the doors and overflowed from the windows.

Mrs. Sowerby pointed to the garden, where she could see Dickon pouring out all his frustration into the earth with a hoe among rows of potatoes.

Mary nodded in thanks. Then, she marched right up to him, grabbed him by both shoulders, stood on her tip toes, and kissed him in view of the entire house. Then, she placed her hands on her hips, her eyes glaring up at him, her lips turned down in a frown.

"Tha' left," she demanded, stamping one foot into the ground.

"I was sent away."

"Tha' left without speakin' w' me."

"Colin forbid it."

"T' hell w' Colin. Don't tha' walk away from me like that again, Dickon Sowerby!" and then she grabbed his collar, and kissed him again, even more forcefully this time so that the hat toppled from his head and he nearly stumbled with the force of it.

"Miss Mary…," he protested.

"Mary," she hissed, before kissing him once more.

He took a step back, holding her away. "Miss Mary… we munnot… thy cousin… thy uncle…"

"Tha've been let go. What else can th' do?" she argued.

"Th' don't approve."

"I don't care."

"Mary, I cannot."

At this, she paused her argument long enough to take a step back and look at him properly. With his flushed cheeks and wide eyes and stumbling, slightly breathless expression he was more boy than man for all he towered over her. "Dickon Sowerby, do tha' love me?"

Slowly, he nodded once. "Tha' know I do."

"Good. So, what then?"

"There is nothin'. What do tha' want me to do? I cannot gallivant around w' thee in th' shadows. What kind o' life'd that be? Besides, I must away to find work now."

"Then I will come with thee."

"Mary, tha's returning t'school."

"No, I'm comin' w' thee."

"Comin' w' me where?" He answered. She glared at him defiantly until he exhaled deeply, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "Mary, what can I give thee?" he said, opening his arms wide to gesture towards the house and the open moor. "I can hardly support my mother an' brothers and sisters an' keep 'em fed. Tha's never known hunger nor had to work for thy bread. I cannot give thee th' life tha's born for and there's nothin' for thee w' me."

"There's thee."

He snorted. "Fine comfort, that."

"I can work."

"Mary, tha's never worked a day in thy life."

"I've worked in the garden."

"Tha' were born to grow roses, not potatoes."

"I can learn."

"And then tha'd regret it all the days of thy life. Colin wishes for thee t' wed him. He's wanted that since tha' were young. Tha' knows this. He can give you everythin'. Tha' were meant to be a fine lady, not a common moor wife."

"So, that's it, then. Tha' won't even try?"

"Try what? Mary, I can never belong to the people thy belongs to. I'll never be accepted. I cannot change my speech nor my manners. I'm a Yorkshire lad, born an' bred an' no amount o' fine clothes an' schoolin' would make me accepted, even if I had 'em."

"So, I will have t' join thee."

"Mary, tha' do not know what tha's askin'."

"Tha' don't think I can do it?" She spat, her hands on her hips and her eyes angry, defiant flames.

He wanted to kiss her again. Heaven above, he wanted to do more than that.

But he did not think she could do it, that she could survive a year living his life. She was not thinking clearly. Not now. She would regret it, she would regret him, in future. He knew it.

At his expression, she turned away.

"I'll prove it t' thee," she said and she walked away, back over the moor.

Oooo

Mary Lennox left Misselthwaite Manor five days later. Stories flew through the servants about the shouting matches and terse arguments that preceded her departure and then about the foul mood of Colin Craven that followed. She refused to accede and he refused to bend and thus Mary Lennox packed all her belongings into a trunk and took herself to the train station in time for the 9am departure.

She sent a single note to the Sowerby cottage before she left. On it was drawn a perfect sketch of a pair of missel thrushes on their nest. Then, Mary Lennox was gone… and Dickon Sowerby was soon to follow her example.

Chapter Text

The war still raged, opening opportunities for women around England to fill roles and learn skills previously left to the men.  For the duration of the war, it was up to the women to run the farms and grow the food and so the Women's Land Army taught them how to go about it.  Mary Lennox signed herself up and was shipped off to a farm in the English countryside for six weeks of training in agriculture.

Letter after letter arrived in Thwaite, addressed to Dickon Sowerby.

"You did not believe I could do it," she wrote to him, in her neat, well-schooled script. "I will prove you that I can."

It was true. If he had not learned it before, Mary's actions after she left Thwaite reminded him not to underestimate Mary Lennox.

Mary wrote how she learned to milk a cow and shoe a horse and plow a field. She spoke of planting potatoes and turnips and harvesting lettuce. She complained of sore arms and blistered hands and trodden feet and, mostly, she complained that she wished he was there to labor alongside her.

Dickon was still uncertain about writing her back, unable to believe she could be constant and unchanging in her affections, that he was anything but a passing fancy. However, the letters kept coming so he answered, as well as he could, with his simple words. There was little enough to write back. His letters lacked her enthusiasm for planting potatoes and harvesting crops.

He needed to find work, but with the loss of his position at Misselthwaite, it would be hard. With so many men off at war, there were positions enough, especially in the cities. However, without the protection of Lord Craven and his place at Misselthwaite, it was only a matter of time before Dickon would be forced into the war effort himself. He knew this. His mother knew this. He doubted Mary recognized his danger.

There was some wisdom in Mary's proactive stance. He could wait to be drafted into a place and position he did not choose himself, or he could follow Mary's example and sign himself up for a position of his choosing. Thus, he followed her example. The Royal Army Veterinary Core still required men to tend to the horses, cats, and dogs used in the war effort and they would send him through basic field medic training at the veterinary school in Aldershot. With his experience and background, he was immediately accepted and sent through the training program.

Mary was furious with him, when he told her. "How dare you!" She wrote next. "You cannot leave England to go to the front lines, even if it is only to tend to horses! You could be killed! What are you thinking?"

He could only sigh and shake his head and wonder what she thought he ought to have done instead.

For the first time in his life, he left Yorkshire. He saw the ocean and he travelled all the way to France.  The next he knew, he found himself tending the army of animals who served alongside the troops in the trenches. Cats were required to keep the rodents down. Dogs were used to bring supplies to wounded men and to find men in need of aid. Horses, well, horses had the worst of it all. It was terrible work. Between mange, bullet wounds, broken limbs, and mustard gas, he rushed to tend those he could help. The delicate, fierce animals he poured so much into came back as shattered and broken as the men they supported.

Worst of all, when the war ended, it was deemed better to put an end to all the horses rather than ship them home. For the remainder of his days, he had nightmares about those last days and the end of all those valiant horses.

Dickon's tenure on the battlefield was short-lived. The peace came. The war ended. The world would never be the same again.

Dickon was good at what he did and he did not step foot back on English soil before he had a job opportunity with one of the veterinarians returning from the war.

"You are a good worker and have skills with animals. I could use you in my surgery," Mr. Andrews told him with a warm, confident smile.

Mary was delighted with the idea.

"You would be a wonderful veterinary surgeon!" Mary wrote in her next letter and she encouraged him to attend a formal veterinary training college. The shame of it nearly burned him through. How could he explain that he could never manage it? He had learned to read well enough to please his mother, read the Bible, and manage a map, but those veterinary training textbooks? They were thick enough to rival a cement block and filled with more Latin than English. Even if the exams could be taken orally, he did not know how to manage the texts to prepare for them.

She could not understand this, of course. She had gone to a proper school and received an education meant for a woman of her station. She knew multiple languages and had never learned to be looked down on for her way of speaking.

Still, his training with the RVAC was enough to please Mr. Andrews. Not enough men had returned home from the war and those who did come home could have their pick of jobs. Mr. Andrews was more than happy to keep Dickon on in his practice in the market town of Longtown, Cumbria. The sheep farmers were always in need of assistance and Mr. Andrews appreciated the extra set of hands during lambing season.

He was given a spare room in Mr. Andrews' home over the surgery. His salary was greater than he had received at Misselthwaite. Yet, it was not quite enough to support a wife.

Mary was not pleased when he informed her, they could not marry immediately.

"I've nowt t'keep thee, lass. Just wait a bit. I'm still pickin' twigs t'build tha' a proper nest someday," he told her.

Mary stomped her feet and grumbled over how far away he still was and how she wished she could have crossed paths with him in London before he went up north, but there was little she could do about it now. No, with the war over, everything had changed. Again.

Mary was still determined to prove herself to Dickon. He did not think she could make it on her own and so she would prove him wrong. Mary took up a position as a secretary for a businessman in London and set out to prove she could support herself. Away from the rigors of her farm training, London provided an entirely new set of challenges.

Oh, she had spent time in London before — at parties and concerts and museums with Collin. She had never tried to manage the city on her own or in the manner of living she must accustom herself to now.

She shared lodgings with three other women, young like herself, also trying to make their way in the city. They informed her, in not very gentle terms, how little she knew about living on her own… without an army of servants to take care of her. She needed to learn to cook, shop, keep accounts, and tidy up for herself – skills she had never acquired as a daughter of Misselthwaite.

She wrote to Dickon of long days at a typewriter and the adventures sharing a flat. She wrote of the chaos of London and all the opportunities available for young people from around the country. Dickon wrote about the winters near the Scottish border and the challenges of the canine distemper crisis. He told her about the local farmers and how few of their sons returned from the war. It was left to the very old, very young, and their female relations to keep the farms and flocks afloat. Change was everywhere and it impacted Dickon and Mary as much as anyone.

oooo

When they finally met again, nearly a year had passed since Mary had stomped off from the Sowerby cottage in a temper. Dickon met her at the train station near Longtown. He had to brace himself as Mary flung herself into his arms, nearly toppling him over with her unexpected assault.

"Tell me I'm wonderful," she whispered, between panting breaths and fervent kisses. "Tell me you are as delighted to see me as I am to see you."

"Tha' knows I'm nowt good w' words," he answered, though he eagerly clasped her in his arms and could hardly tear his eyes away from her smiling face.

"But sometimes I need your words, Dickon. I cannot know what you are thinking. Does tha' like me?" she asked.

"Eh!" he answered heartily, "that I does. I likes thee wonderful."

"Am I the only one who has wished for this moment every single day we have been apart?"

He pulled her against him, her head nestled against his chest, his lips continuing to caress the top of her head.

"No. Tha's not alone in that… But I've been on me own in thinkin' it could ne'er be… that it'd all end up naught."

"What can you mean?"

"Miss Mary, I've loved thee since nearly t' first moment I set eyes on thee, likely t' same time t' robin picked thee as his own. But I've always known, I can never keep summat wild. They don't belong to me."

"But I choose you."

"Aye. It's that what I can't believe and it's summat I struggle t' accept."

"So, it is not that I am unwanted but that you still do not believe I will reciprocate?"

"Aye. Tha's not unwanted. Never unwanted."

She cast him a sweet smile — that same one she granted when she first saw the daffydowndillys bloom and held his fox kit in her arms. It was a manner of smile which transformed her plain face into something altogether lovely to behold.

"Tha's a reet gradely sight, lass," he said and offered her a wide smile of his own.

oooo

It was the end of Mary's visit to Longtown when she cornered Dickon in the library of Mr. Andrew's house. She commanded him to sit and then placed a series of papers in his hands.

"Wha's this then?" Dickon asked.

"The title deed."

"T'what?"

"Our house."

At his confused expression, she laughed and leaned over to kiss him. "I bought the sweetest little farmhouse, not two miles from here. You will love it! There is plenty of land for a garden and any animals we wish to keep, and it is not far from town."

He gaped at her, still unspeaking. She continued, her eyes falling bashfully to the paper in his hand.

"My parents left me some good bit of property in India. I sold it. It was enough for the house with more leftover. It is enough to cover veterinary college, too. Do you not see? We can marry. We need not wait any longer," she said, her smile growing the more she spoke.

Dickon's eyes grew wide and he continued to stare at her, mouth open. Finally, he shook himself, looked down at the deed, and rubbed at his temples.

"Mary, dun't tha' think tha' should 'a spoke to me first?"

"Why?" She asked, genuinely confused.

"Aye, what 'bout me? What if I see it different-like?"

"Why would you? And, it is my money. I can do with it what I like and this is perfect for us."

"An' after we're wed? Mary, it isn't right, tha knows. If we're t'marry, there'll be both of us, not just thee alone."

"You do not wish to marry me?" She asked, her voice taking on a fragile, uncertain quality. "Or you do not wish for us to settle in Longtown? I thought you liked working with Mr. Andrews… and he praised you as a wonderful veterinarian's assistant! He could not speak enough about what an excellent veterinary surgeon you would make."

Dickon sighed. "Mary, I'm not thy servant or thy gardener that tha' can just order 'round and do as tha' please! Don't tha' see? I may be common, but if we get wed, I'll be thy husband and thy me missus."

"I do not see how it is any different!"

"An' that's th' trouble! Mary, 'ast tha' any idea what it's like t' live together as man an' wife, as a mother t' a little'un wi' nowt but us? T' keep a farm goin'?" He said.

"Haven't I proved to you that I can do it? What else do I have to do to make you understand? I have learned to farm, to keep books, to live on my own! Yet, still, it is not enough for you! What is it you are waiting for?"

"Tha' thinks th' only thing keepin' us apart is brass. That brass'll fix everything. It won't. No matter 'ow many quid and shillin's tha' throws at me, it won't change nowt about t'different sorts we come from. In th' eyes of everyone, we shouldn't be together."

"Is that what you want, Dickon Sowerby? You agree with everyone and you think we ought not be together?" She asked, her lips pressed into a fierce, defiant line.

He sighed again and hung his head. "I don't know what t' think. I keep thinkin' each letter'll be th' last, that each time'll be th' last an' then tha'll tire o' me an' go back t' Misselthwaite an' thy uncle. Mary, th' life I can offer thee… it can't compare t' what thou ought t' have."

"Fine," she said. "If that is what you want, then I cannot change your mind." She turned to leave, but paused at the door, not looking back. "Dickon, you speak of all you can and cannot offer me… and yet you do not stop to ask what it is that I want. You, Colin, my uncle — you are all alike, in that. You tell me where to go and what I ought to want and what I ought to do and yet no one will listen when I say what it is I wish for. Here, you only dwell on what it is that you can offer me… but what of me? I have given you everything I have and still it is not enough… it is never enough. Still, you doubt me. I do not know what else it is I can do."

Then, she was gone.

He still held a title deed in his hand… and he was left to wrestle with the question of just what it was he wanted.

He walked by that brown and red farmhouse every day for a week and watched as the wind swept over the tall grass and through the old oak trees. It was a fine piece of property with enough land to keep a horse or two and maybe a few sheep. It would never support them fully, but with his salary with Mr. Andrews, it might be enough.

He hoped it would be enough.

He still feared it might not be.

oooo

The day Dickon Sowerby wed Mary Lennox at that little church in Longtown, Susan Sowerby wept. It is not that she was unsurprised or unhappy, but that she did not envy her son the battles he would face before him in his chosen life.

Dickon always loved his wild and broken creatures, Susan Sowerby thought to herself. And Mary Lennox Sowerby still must learn to bend, to fight, and to break before they can reach an accord between them.

Many of the Longtown farmers and shopkeepers came to attend the wedding. Susan came with all the children she could gather and bring along with her, though only half could make it. While Mary's flat mates from London and her friends from her agricultural training came, neither of her relatives would acknowledge the marriage.

Lord Craven and Master Colin were furious. Lord Craven told her he would no longer permit her to visit Misselthwaite if this was the direction she chose to go. Her room was closed up, the Garden would have been, too, if not for Colin's insistence it remain open.

Colin was hardly better, though Lord Craven's threats were in earnest while Colin's proved much shorter lived. For a time, Colin was so devastated, he could hardly manage for a time. He travelled, as his father before him had done, and he joined in the parade of society. With enough fine ladies and actresses and heiresses around him, he learned to manage well-enough. He had been terribly jealous and hurt but he loved Dickon and Mary too much to let it linger. Within a year of their marriage, he turned up on their doorstep as if nothing had ever happened. He was full of stories of a trip to America and all the adventures he had there and that was that. He continued to turn up randomly whenever they least expected it. He never spoke of the breach nor her uncle's disavowal. He just went on as if nothing had changed.

In many ways, it hadn't. At least, not for Colin.

oooo

After the war, women were expected to go back home. Especially, after marriage, it was not fitting for a middle-class woman to work. With the rising cost of servants, women took on more and more of the housework they used to give out to servants. Yet, it was not fitting to show how much of the work they did themselves. Thus, the fine white gloves hid their hands. They changed out of their work clothes and aprons for visitors and dared not show how they spent their long mornings or what was accomplished by "dailies" versus themselves.

Class differences impacted marriages. Women of Dickon's class married for security —to have a place and an income and to ensure their children would have bread. Women of Mary's class were far more complicated. With debates over the right to vote, contraception, marriage vows, and the ability for women to divorce their husbands for infidelity, ideas of marriage were changing rapidly. The rich could afford complications and were less likely to require stability. The endless parade of partners was as expected as the never-ending exchange of houses and cars and positions. For those of the lower classes, they were far too busy trying to survive and keep mouths fed to bother with such complications. Yet, in the world of eugenics where it was espoused that people ought to try to breed for wealth and intelligence and positive traits, it was the poor who ought not breed, or so the intellectuals argued.

Mary scandalized everyone. She married down, she worked alongside her husband openly and proudly, and she easily floated between social classes… while fitting into none. Mr. Andrews eagerly put her in charge of the accounts and the office of the practice. She kept track of all payments and clients and ensured fresh flowers were always on the front entryway table. She brought the men lunch during calving season and permitted the ever more diverse gaggle of creatures to fill their home and outbuildings until the place looked more of a zoo than a home.

And then the children came. Full of noise and bustle and mess and life. They toddled amongst the lambs and leapt over the stiles and chased the pups through the yard. They assisted their father in the fields and pastures, and they could ride a pony before they learned to read.

"We're buildin' a nest, too, now," Dickon told her, blue eyes alight in delight when she first set up a nursery in their little farmhouse.

He was determined that each child would know they were wanted. Because they were. Each and every one of the dear little lives that sprouted from theirs was precious and beloved, just as he had been. They created their own little world, their own set of walls, their own garden. None were allowed in and none were allowed out. It was their own. And it was beautiful.

It was hard sometimes. Money was short all around, those years after the war, especially after the stock market crashed and many of the farmers could not pay their bills. The practice struggled, but so did everyone. It was not an easy life, for farmers or veterinary surgeons. Gifts of eggs and bacon and crotchet blankets constantly adorned the front porch of the Sowerby home in place of the money the farmers did not have to pay their bill that month. However, Dickon's skills were always in need, and he could afford more food and clothes for his family than he had known as a child. They never knew hunger nor true lack, but it was no fine life of beauty and leisure, like Mary had known at Misselthwaite.

Mary continued to encourage him to attend a veterinary college. He did not tell her how he had spoken with the college in Liverpool and they had refused him admittance. He would not tell her how he could not pass the entry exams.

"Nay now, Mary," is all he could answer, though it never grew easier to admit. When she finally discovered the truth of the matter, she insisted on interfering. Tirelessly, she read aloud textbooks to Dickon and helped him through each course of the veterinary college in Edinburgh until he could pass the oral examination. Then, when Mr. Andrews retired, the veterinary practice passed on to the care of the Sowerby's. After so many years of study alongside her husband, Mary grew nearly as knowledgeable as Dickon and could assist him in his work.

Some days, Mary threw up her hands in exasperation. A pup chewed on her one pair of good shoes and the pet ravens messed her tea tray, just when the visitors were meant to come. Dickon’s manners were incorrigible and how could she teach the children to eat properly if their father insisted on setting a poor example? Some days, she tired of the company of farmers and shopkeepers and she longed for the old London dinner parties and evenings spent discussing art and music rather than sheep and turnips. She bemoaned that she never did manage more than a pair of rose bushes in their garden, though the crocuses and irises bloomed beautifully. Still, some days she missed the order and quiet and grandeur of Misselthwaite and visits to the Garden were fewer than she might have wished. She missed her old army of servants and gardeners the most when her every limb ached with pregnancy and still there was work she must do. Colin’s many tales of his travels made her sometimes sigh and wish Dickon could manage a trip to the sea again, but it was hard to leave Longtown for any great length of time.

The work was hard. Her hands were rough from washing and planting. Her skin was browned and freckled and her hair blew askew in the strong winds. There was no silk nor satin nor finery to be seen – other than a simple gold chain with a flower locket on it. Dickon had saved for months for that. He gave it to her on their fifth anniversary. It was the one indulgence he would grant his lady, the one nod to all she should have had that he could never give her. She never took it off but wore it till it broke and then she had it fixed and wore it till she rubbed all the flowers off the gold entirely.

Dickon remained as solid and unflinchingly patient as he had ever been. His gentle tongue could break a bone. The calming tone of his voice could settle the most furious of her tempers and keep her from rearing and kicking and frothing at the bit. Then, he would settle his forehead against hers, in the very same manner as the wild horse, and take in the scent of her, the feel of her, immerse himself in her breaths and the energy they pulled around them. They had to build a world between them. Theirs was a life full of secrets – secret nests and secret hiding places- and it was all their own.

ooooo

It was strange to stay as a guest at Misselthwaite in the proper guest rooms and to dine at the formal table and not use the servants' entrance. Dickon never could feel fully at ease there, not like Mary. Inevitably, whenever Colin ceased his travels and returned to Misselthwaite without his father, he invited the Sowerby's to visit. Sometimes, they could manage to leave Longtown long enough to stay for a few days. Dickon preferred to stay with his mother, but Mary was correct. When each year or two added a new young Sowerby to their number, Misselthwaite offered more beds to keep them all so as time passed, he agreed to stay at the manor more often.

Collin made Dickon wear a fine tuxedo once to a dinner he held. He bought Mary a dress, too. She sparkled in the candlelight and her long gloves hid the work-worn hands. Her hair was styled like a fine lady, and she wore a necklace she inherited from her mother. They drank champagne and ate caviar. Even with so many going hungry around the country, Colin Craven need not deprive himself nor his guests of any luxury.

It was a stark reminder of the vast chasm that existed between the world of his wife and himself.

Dickon did not know how to use the overabundance of forks and spoons. He had never learned the steps to their dances. When it was Colin who danced with Mary in his place, he nearly burned with shame. Colin meant no harm. He simply wished for Mary's presence. She was still his beloved cousin, after all, and he had a claim on her. And she was strong enough, fierce enough, untouched enough not to mind the subtle sneers and aversions of the fine company towards the strange relation, the daughter of the manor who "married down".

But Dickon was ever conscious of it.

"As soon as I start talkin', they'll judge me right poorly. They'll think I'm thick 'cos I don't talk like them schooled lads, like them grand folk. I'd shame thee, I would."

"But you know more than any of them!"

" P'raps 'bout t' cattle an' chucks. Not about owt they'll find reight interestin'. I can't change me speech no more than a robin can change its tune."

"I love your voice, your way of speaking"

"Tha' may, but nobody else will."

He attended the dinner because it pleased his wife. However, he was relieved when he could remove the uncomfortable suit and return to the simplicity of their own home again. Colin promised to invite them to his next grand dinner party and Dickon promised Mary he would avoid it if at all possible.

"Thou mun come! If I ask it, wilt thou come?" She asked, shifting her speech into broad Yorkshire. He flushed, as he always did, when she spoke to him like that.

"Aye, lass. Tha' knows I mun," he answered, with a resigned sigh.

Thankfully, she did not ask it of him and so he was not forced to face such a dinner party again.

Colin could not understand it, but then again, neither of them expected him to. After all, Colin never married. He said he could not be bothered and preferred to travel the world and do as he pleased.

"I do not need a woman to tell me what I can and cannot do," he said, with a wink at Mary. "Besides, you have enough children for the both of us."

With six little Sowerby's underfoot, there were plenty of children to keep "Uncle Colin" busy when he came to visit. Colin came and went. He always brought gifts for the children and often borrowed one or two to keep him company at Misselthwaite. For all his grumbling and teasing, he adored them. Yet, he was only too happy to send them back home at the end of their visits.

"I'm entirely worn out and it is only tea time. You need a governess or to send them away to school, Mary," he chastised with a long-suffering sigh.

Governesses cost more than the Sowerby's could afford. The local school and Mary's own tutelage would have to be enough. Mary gratefully acquired various brothers and sisters from the Sowerby home in Thwaite to come and stay with them for months… or years… at a time and this helped keep both the veterinary practice and the household together. Especially when Susan Anne arrived and, during her stay in Longtown, came under the notice of one of the handsome, young farmers. She married Mr. Cook and settled a mile away from her brother and sister-in-law, filling Longtown with local cousins for the Sowerby children to play with.

Colin Craven was not pleased with their living situation. When he came to visit Longtown and saw Mary's coarse hands, the dark shadows beneath her eyes, the noise and chaos of the six children in their modest home, he protested all of it.

"You were meant for more, for better. I could have given you everything. You would have never had to work like this," he said, on an evening he came home a little too worse for drink, and a little too steeped in nostalgia. His grey eyes were sad and pleading.

She chastised him for such talk and for coming home in such a state. She rarely thought of manors or gardens or boxes of jewelry these days, so immersed was she in the sowing of potatoes and mending of trousers and tallying the cost of horseshoes.

He did not bring it up again and she did not tell Dickon about Colin's lapse into regret. She did not mind it when Colin came and brought gifts for the children or helped meet a bill they could not pay. Dickon, however, did mind and she knew he would not like Colin falling into such talk.

"Mary, thou can't be runnin' to thy cousin every time we need owt," Dickon complained.

"Why not? He is family," she said with a shrug.

"Cause we can either scrape through or manage without. We don't want owt charity o' Colin Craven."

"It is not charity if it comes from family."

"How can I make tha' see? Tha' make me out t' be less o' a man if tha' do it like that. Colin wanted t' marry thee. He'll never quite forgive tha' chose me. This runnin' t' him wi' thy troubles makes it look tha' regrets this, regrets me, an' wishes it were him."

"But I do not."

"I know, lass."

It was true now. Despite his niggling insecurities, enough life had passed between them, enough shared sorrows and joys, that Dickon Sowerby finally believed her.

ooooo

The world was changing all around them. Cars and planes and vaccines and towering buildings and spreading empires and telephones. Why, it was a wonder to be a part of it all. To give their children another world to grow in than the one they had known as children.

Yet, there was a dark side to that progress and a terrible price paid by all. Another war came. All of life in Longtown focused towards the impending, looming spectre of the war and fathers who fought in the "War to End All Wars" saw their sons pick up arms to fight again in their generation.

Dickon was one year over the conscription age… but Colin Craven was not. Colin joined his eldest nephew in France. Colin made it through the war. Philip Sowerby did not.

Mary added her own little grave marker to the row of Sowerby's at the church cemetery in Thwaite. After the funeral was over and well-wishers had gone away, Mary disappeared and could not be found anywhere near the church or the Sowerby home.

It was Dickon who found her, though he did not have to look very hard. He found her in the Garden. Still in her funeral clothes, she had cast off her hat onto a rose bush and thrown herself onto the grass, her shoulders heaving with her sobs.

Dickon Sowerby had lost count of the number of times he had seen his wife cry. While still one of the fiercest, most obstinate women he knew, the passing years had taught her both to openly laugh and to weep.

"Miss Mary, why does tha' cry?" Dickon asked, his voice as gentle as if he was coaxing a wild fox pup out of its den.

"He is gone. My baby is gone. Before me," she cried, when she felt his hand on her shoulder. "Do not tell me not to cry, Dickon Sowerby," she said, turning over to glare at him.

"I daren't," he answered, his own tears streaming down his face. Then, he opened his arms to embrace her and she exchanged the soft grass for the strength of his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head while she wept and then let her fall asleep on his shoulder, under the shade of the dwindling roses of the Garden.

"Come, let's visit Mother," he said, when she had roused herself again. "She'll be a proper comfort to us both."

Mary nodded and let him help her to her feet again. He was right, of course, and Susan Sowerby was just the person she needed on a day like that, on a day she needed someone who understood.

Ooooo

Years passed by and children grew. The Sowerby’s glistened more silver with each. Change was inevitable.

It was Mary who made Dickon buy that first truck. Dickon would have remained content with a horse and cart forever, if not for the insistence of his wife. He grumbled and complained but did as she wished. He had to admit, it was convenient. But it had no soul. He preferred a horse. He always would.

It was Mary who came home with that first radio and connected their small part of the world to the far stretches of the empire. It was Mary who came home with book after book and read out loud to him every night. She knew so many stories and she made them all come alive – stories of tigers and rajahs and mysterious ruins and monkeys and magic. She made him learn new dances, try new clothes, travel to the edges of the country and beyond.

It was she who was the magic— the force for change, the force for growth. It was Mary's impressive will and determination that made things come alive, that forced Dickon out of himself and into the world beyond. It was as if teaching a butterfly to love a stone. He eventually gave up worrying about it and simply settled into the nearly unbelievable knowledge that this wild creature had chosen him and would stay alongside him.

It was a year or two after India gained independence, when the British Empire began to unravel and crumble away, that Colin Craven summoned Mary and Dickon to Misselthwaite. His father, while insisting on living longer than anyone believed possible, had no wish to lock himself away in the old manor house. He had settled himself in a villa in the warmth of the Mediterranean and long since granted Colin full ownership of the estate.

"I'm selling Misselthwaite," Colin told Mary and Dickon, once they had arrived and settled into the drawing room.

At their aghast expressions, he laughed heartily. "This old place is far too large for an old bachelor like myself and the days of the country estate are gone. It is more of a liability than an asset now. No, better let it be used for something productive. Misselthwaite will be turned into a fine school - one such as I wish all your children might have attended... but now, it must be up to your grandchildren to study here."

"But… but…" Mary began to protest, and he held up one hand to stop her.

"The Garden is yours. It will always be yours," he said. "I have already begun the paperwork to transfer full ownership to yourself."

She smiled faintly and grew quiet for a moment before shaking her head. "No, Colin. Let it be made into a park. Let the children of the school use it. Let the entire village go into it. Let its magic be shared by all."

"You are sure?"

"Quite."

Thus, the Secret Garden was made a permanent park, and it was many a Sunday afternoon which found the walled garden bursting with village children and school picnics and merrymakers. It was many a lovely village maid who donned its roses in her hair to a dance and many a besotted lad who proposed to his lady under its floral branches.

Mary and Dickon watched this all in quiet amusement. Their own grandchildren played amidst the branches and asked to be told the story of the garden and the manor house again and again and again.

"Did you really live in that great house, grandmother?"

"Was this garden really a secret?"

"Tell us again about the magic!"

So, she did. She told the stories to each set of grandchildren that came. Each generation needed to learn the secret of the Garden – that between the strands of change and tradition, love and loss, wildness and cultivation dwellt a fullness of life. And each and every spring, the flowers insisted on blooming all over again.

oooo