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A lice generally looked forward to her Sunday afternoon walk toward Killeshandra.

For those few hours she had sole claim on Isaac Dancy's time and attention.

For that brief time each week she could imagine he fancied her, that he thought her more than merely a friend.

Walking the road as they wound about the lakes felt like coming home.

But, standing with her childhood friend, Billy Kettle, waiting for Isaac to arrive, Alice couldn't summon enough enthusiasm to even smile. Her favorite time in the entire week and she was dreading it.

"Why do ya have to go, Alice? Can't ya stay here?

We could have fun." Billy asked the same question and made the same arguments every week.

He generally did so in the first moments after she left her grandparents' home and long before she left the street where both their families lived.

He'd been more overset than usual that day and had followed her all the way to Farnham Street. "No one will feed the ducks with me."

She patted his hand. When they were both little she would pat his shoulder, but he'd grown far too tall. "The ducks have all flown away now. They'll not be back until spring."

" Ducks go away. You go away." His forehead creased deeply as he pouted. Though he had the look and build of a grown man, little else about him had changed over the years. "I don't like all the going away."

He kicked a pebble with the toe of his boot, his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. Poor lad. ’Twas the same difficulty, the same sadness every week. The only thing that changed was how easily he could be reassured.

She looked up into his handsome face and almost painfully innocent eyes. "I'll be back on Saturday as usual. We'll have grand fun then, we will."

"How far away is Saturday?"

"But six days. Not even a whole week. And yer Da says he's found a bit of work for ya to do." She smiled encouragingly. "Ye'll be quite busy, and I'll be back before ya even have time to miss me."

His mouth twisted about, brow still furrowed. "I can miss ya fast."

He'd always been so sweetly loving, like a dear younger brother.

Billy's worried pout transformed instantly to a laughing grin. "Here comes yer beau."

He'd teased her about Isaac from the very first time he saw her arrive in Cavan with him. Billy gave her a quick hug, laughing like a child who'd heard a particularly entertaining tale. She couldn't help smiling at his antics. He rushed away, throwing grins back at her as he did.

She yet had a smile on her face when Isaac arrived at her side. Thank the heavens for Billy. She'd not have been able to greet Isaac with anything resembling cheerfulness without him.

"Who was that?" Isaac motioned with a small twitch of his head in the direction Billy had gone.

Had he never met Billy? Alice couldn’t remember introducing the two. “He’s Billy, m’ dear friend.”

“Yer dear friend is he?” Isaac’s mouth pulled down, his eyes narrowed, still not looking at her.

Feminine instinct can be a wonderful thing.

Useful, at the very least. The man, Alice realized on the instant, was a touch jealous.

And if he could be jealous of her friendship with another man, he couldn’t be quite as determined to court Sophia Kilchrest as he professed to be.

Part of him, at least, must have some feelings for her .

Alice clasped her hands behind her back and walked slowly down the road, not looking back, but certain he would follow. “Aye, my dear, dear friend. He welcomes me to Cavan Town each Saturday and sees me off every Sunday.”

Isaac caught up to her. “Why is it I’ve never seen him?” He looked back over his shoulder several times.

She shrugged. “Ye’ve been a bit distracted, ya must admit. Fighting off hordes of fellow knights in shining armor takes all the concentration a man can muster.”

“But ye’ve never even mentioned him.”

Aye, jealous he was and no doubting it. “I’m certain I have.”

She kept up her somewhat brisk pace, quickly leaving behind the outskirts of Cavan. That Isaac kept up with her without protest seemed a good sign.

Alice picked up a topic other than Billy. ’Twould do Isaac a world of good to let things spin about in his mind a while. “You were to have a monumental weekend if memory serves. How did things go with Miss Kilchrest?”

She’d dreaded the conversation for two days, but found herself equal to it. Perhaps she hadn’t lost her opportunity after all.

He buttoned his coat higher as they walked further from town, the chill of approaching winter stronger even than it had been the day before. “I had a chance to speak with her during that bit of rain we got yesterday.”

Alice’s heart stumbled a bit in her chest. She did her utmost to keep her expression and her tone light and unconcerned. “A proposal in the rain? Tis hard to set a more romantic scene than that. Perhaps if ye’d arranged for a dusting of snow.”

Isaac yet watched her with creased brow. “Yer dear friend, he is?”

A smile tipped one side of her mouth. The situation wasn’t entirely hopeless. “Never ya mind about Billy. Tell me how Miss Kilchrest answered yer question. Has yer courtship become etched in stone?”

Please say no. Please say no.

“Well...” He didn’t seem to know just how to answer. “I asked if she’d consider me her one and only suitor and...” Again his face twisted in thought. “She didn’t say ‘no.’”

“Did she ‘yes,’ then?”

Isaac shook his head.

“Not yes, but not no.” Alice took some comfort in that. “And ya mean to ask again, do ya?” But how soon? How insistent did he mean to be?

“I mean to go back and try my hand again.” He gave her a quick but earnest look.

“Even if she makes that effort difficult?”

“The difficult things are often the most worthwhile.” He nodded just off the path in the direction of the lake.

“Like this here.” He stepped off the path and bent over, plucking a bright yellow flower from the ground.

“Blooming so late in the season is hardly an easy thing, and yet this daisy here has managed it.”

“Tis a sowthistle.” She smiled through the light correction.

The look he gave her was utterly amused. “Daisy. Sowthistle. Colaimbín . Ya can’t expect a man to know the difference.”

“Perhaps that is yer problem with Miss Kilchrest. Perhaps she’s a flower expert and is disheartened by yer ignorance.”

Isaac eyed her hair a moment. Her hair? What was the man about? He pulled a few low leaves off the stem of the sowthistle he’d picked and tucked the flower into her bun. Alice ordered her cheeks not to heat, but they only paid her the tiniest heed.

A tender gesture it was. A man couldn’t be entirely indifferent to a woman and have such a thought even cross his mind.

Isaac didn’t linger over the moment as Alice would have loved him to do. He simply nodded and continued on down the road.

“Ye’ll help me, won’t ya?” he asked.

Alice shook off her scrambled thoughts. “Help ya with what?” She lightly fingered the flower in her hair. She’d never look on a sowthistle the same way again.

“Help me work out just what will turn Miss Kilchrest’s head? I’m all at sea in this.”

He wasn’t the only one. How could the man act so fond of her in one moment—acting jealous of another man, picking wildflowers for her—and be determined to claim Sophia Kilchrest’s hand in the very next instance? It seemed men were thicker in the head than she realized.

“Ya wish me to help ya win her over?” Her heart dropped at the thought.

He nodded enthusiastically. “What better person to help me than you? Ye’re a woman.”

“Noticed that, did ya?” she muttered.

“So what do ya suggest?”

Thick-headed, foolish man!

She picked up her pace, tension pushing her ahead. “I’ve no advice for ya, Isaac. Ye’ll have to sort this one out on yer own.”

“No advice, at all?” He spoke from a bit behind her, no longer keeping pace. “Because ya can’t think of anything? Or because ya don’t want to help me?”

Not want to help him? He made her sound selfish, petty.

Could he not even guess at her reasons? She was jealous and heartbroken.

But she was also worried. She didn’t know Sophia Kilchrest personally, but there was something about her she didn’t like.

But she did like Isaac, more than seemed advisable in fact.

She slowed her steps enough for him to reach her side again. “Can ya tell me what it is about Miss Kilchrest that has captured ya?”

Something like relief entered his expression. He thought her question a sign she meant to help rather than a moment of self-inflicted pain. To know why she’d been passed over wouldn’t necessarily help ease her regrets. She only hoped knowing the whys would lead to some degree of acceptance.

“Well,” Isaac said, his tone filled with pondering, “she’s beautiful.”

There was no arguing with that. Alice knew she was no beauty, though she’d not thought herself wholly plain.

“And she is genteel and sophisticated.”

All things Alice knew she was not, and yet that ought to have been an argument in her favor. “What in heaven’s name is a genteel and sophisticated woman going to do living on a farm?”

He shook his head firmly, eyes turned directly ahead. “Ya make me sound as though I live in a tiny crofter’s cottage on a half-acre of barren soil.”

“I said nothing of the sort.” She’d learned over the four months she’d known Isaac Dancy that he could be a bit touchy about his land.

“I know ya have some of the best land in all of County Cavan. And I further know ya’ve built a fine home for yerself.

But, in the mind of a woman like Sophia Kilchrest, who has lived all her life in a town the size of Cavan in a fancy house with all the comforts she must have there, the life of a farmer’s wife will be entirely foreign to her. ”