The fire had gone out, but dapples of sun and shadow spattered the walls high up, moving across the wooden ceiling like the reflection of water. Tamsin yawned, rubbed her eyes and stretched luxuriously, flinging the blanket off and crossing the floor to look out of the window, her feet sinking into a brightly patterned woollen rug then traversing floorboards. She felt alert and alive this morning, though there was still that faint sense of shock and unreality. She had no idea if Jed had stuck to his intention to share the bed with her: she had slept so deeply and totally that she had no impressions of the previous night, not even the shred of a fading dream. A huge walnut tree framed the window, a faint breeze stirring its leaves and making the shadows shift and weave. Beyond that stretched a mass of daffodils, their radiant yellow dancing in the sunlight all the way down to the distant shoreline, beyond which the sea was a silver strip, polished to blinding brilliance and calm as a pond.
