“I have no idea. I really don’t care. I thought they grew because your aunt liked them.”
Ginny let out a shuddering laugh. “Two acres of tulips? No. They’ve been here for centuries. Old Farwell Barrett was a modest tradesman who thought to make his fortune on one simple gamble. So he sold his fine home, and a good bit of land beside. He sunk the entirety of his funds into an investment that—he was sure—could not lose: tulip bulbs. Which, at the time, were selling for an ungodly sum of money, the price going up on a daily basis.” She laughed again, and wished she could feel the humor. “Six weeks later, everyone realized how ridiculous it was to go mad over tulips, and the price plummeted. In a fit of pique, he planted every one of those bulbs here. And that is why the cottage is called Barrett’s Folly.”
“Hm,” he said, sounding unconvinced.
“Marrying you would have been the sort of thing that a mad Barrett would do. Trading on hope and delusions. If I had married you, your parents would have been right about me. I’d have been a foolish, impecunious schemer, just like my forebears. I told you I wouldn’t marry a poor man.”
He leaned forward and touched one finger to her chin. “And what do you think of me now, then?”
“You’re every bit as bad as you were before.”
“Yes, but…”
“If I had somehow missed your fashionable hat and your cunning cuff links, I would have noticed your pronouncement yesterday. Also, I do read the newspapers, and from time to time they make comments about wealthy, eligible bachelors. Come, Simon. You did not use to be so gauche as to wear jewels simply to impress a woman.”
He colored faintly, but leaned in. “Maybe it’s because nothing else about me ever impressed you enough.”
Even after seven years, Ginny recognized that this was one of those things that Simon said, hoping to be contradicted. So she simply furrowed her brow. “True.”
His eyes narrowed and he started toward her. “Why, you little baggage. I ought to—”
She shook one finger at him. “You’ve only got two days, Simon. You can’t afford to waste a single hour remonstrating with me.”
He didn’t stop. Instead, he took her arms and pulled her close. “And what did you think I was threatening to do?” Her belly fluttered. He reached up and set his thumb against her lips. “I know all too well I can’t argue with you. You’d never admit it when I won.”
“That’s not true.”
“All I can say is that you are not a mad Barrett. You are the most—”
“I am mad,” Ginny told him. “I am just like them. Oh, God, Simon. These last weeks… I’m selling my tulips, that’s how close things have come.”
His arm settled around her and he pulled her close. “Shh,” he said. “Shh. It will all come out right.”
“I know that,” Ginny said, her voice muffled by his chest. “I know that now. But for a while there, before you came… You have no idea how much I risked. It was close. I thought I might have to sell Barrett’s Folly, too.”
It was the height of foolishness to let him hold her. To let the warmth of his arms come around her and to draw strength from him. But then, for all the pain that he’d caused her once, he’d also been her best friend. Her only true confidant. There had been a time when his embrace would have healed any wound. They’d had games and they’d had Simon’s brash arrogance. But she’d loved him most for this—for this certainty that everything would come out right, so long as he was near. She’d missed him.
He gently stepped away from her. “We haven’t come to the oak yet,” he said. “I’m on a schedule. I’m not supposed to kiss you until we reach the oak.”
Ten years ago, when she was fifteen, everything had changed. By that time, they’d been friends for years, and—as his parents had realized with dawning horror sometime during the first week of summer—they were rather too old to be wandering about alone. Why, anything could happen!
They had talked with Ginny’s aunt. It had been agreed by all the adults that they weren’t to see each other unchaperoned any longer. But Simon had pooh-poohed the very idea. What, he had said scornfully, were those old biddies imagining? Really?
What indeed? she had echoed, just as scornfully. But inside, she’d cringed just a little. She had just begun to imagine things that brought a blush to her face.
They’d become rather adept at sneaking out. Just to fish, he’d said. And climb trees. And walk. But over the course of the summer, Ginny had fallen secretly, passionately, horribly in love with him. She didn’t dare mention it—she was sure he would have laughed at her, if he’d known. She’d kept the emotion to herself through their morning walks and their dares. She’d not said anything, not even when they met late one night to watch a meteor shower.