Then the spy started laughing. It was infectious, a laugh like...like Clara’s. Jasper picked up his head and looked in amazement at the slim woman, holding her hand over her mouth and giggling. He saw the look that passed between her and Solomon then, and he understood—at last—the whispered conversation he’d overheard, the insistence that the spy get to safety. The bloody spy was a woman! He couldn’t get over that. How had he missed it originally? He shook his head.
It was amazing what love could do.
Once the laughter had started, none of them could resist it. It bubbled up from all of them until they were holding their sides and rolling in the brush, trying to keep from giving shouts that would echo through the trees. The birds alighted in a flock and flew away again, and they laughed, delighted and amazed and alive.
They were alive. Jasper tipped his head back onto the soil and looked up at the early morning clouds blurring and shifting in his tear-filled gaze. He was alive, and he could go back to Clara. And that, he knew now, was the only place he wanted to be.
He just wished that learning it hadn’t been quite so painful.
They pushed themselves up, brushing leaves from their clothing, and stared at one another, chests heaving, and Jasper felt the most peace he’d known in months. He was just relaxing when Solomon swung around to look at Cecelia.
“You’re pregnant?”
“It isn’t real,” Jasper said wearily.
“You don’t have to lie for me,” Cecelia muttered.
“...what?” He looked over at her, frowning.
“But how did you know?” she asked him. “I thought I’d hidden it, but...you said mother knows?”
“Mother knows?”
“Your mother doesn’t—Solomon, just—Cecelia...” Jasper shook his head, and then the truth crashed in on him and he felt his mouth drop open. “You actually are pregnant?”
In the stricken silence that followed, Cecelia turned and heaved the meager contents of her stomach onto the ground.
Chapter 17
“Why did you decide to stay?” Cecelia asked.
Solomon glowered over at her. She had managed to be taken with morning sickness after he demanded the truth, and both Violet and Jasper had taken to shushing him whenever he asked more questions over the sound of her retching. Which, as he had explained multiple times, was immensely unfair—he simply needed to know which boy in Knox to thrash the hide from.
“I always wanted to stay,” Jasper answered her. For all the bruises on his face, he was smiling. He had a look of contentment that Solomon did not think he could have wiped away if he tried. “I just wasn’t sure if I belonged at the farm.”
“You belong wherever your family is,” Cecelia said, with the absolute certainty of the very young. “And we’re your family, aren’t we?”
“You are. You’re right. I shouldn’t have doubted.”
They were locked in easy conversation, and Violet guided her horse back out from between them so that they could ride together.
“I can’t believe she’s—”
“Don’t think about it,” Violet advised. “Let your mother handle it.”
“Why?”
“Because she won’t thrash the man Cecelia’s going to marry,” Violet said, laughing.
“She hasn’t got a ring! No one asked me for permission!”
“This would hardly be the first time a young woman arranged her own marriage plans,” she pointed out. “And nothing’s going to get much better or worse between now and when we get back to the farm, anyway. You know I’m correct.”
“It is one of your most infuriating traits, I will have you know.”
She only laughed, and the sound was like liquid sunlight, pouring over his skin.
“You’re happy,” he observed.