Violet knew it was a mistake, letting Edmund Bliss hold her hand. Not holding her hand⁠—only cradling her fingertips. It was most unlike him, yet like him all the same. This was how it would be, she told herself, to be married to him: a vague, tentative, fingertipping sort of love. If she ever married Edmund, it would mean she had become vague and tentative herself. It didn’t bear thinking about. She continued thinking about it as she searched for her mother, stopping to gaze all about her and seeing the couple from the marquee, the man with the wet dark hair and the cap that clapped at the seat of his trousers, and the woman with the red wrap that licked. The cap was placid on his head now, and the wrap lay quiescent. Violet saw that the man and woman were also altered: gentle, talking closely and quietly, him with his hands in his pockets, thumbs stretched on the outside, and her with arms lightly folded, head tilted back. Violet wondered about them again, with that guilty, jealous ache.