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I burned the eggs for the first time in my life.

“You’re watching me rather intently,” she said, not turning around. “I can feel it.”

“I’m appraising. It’s a professional skill.”

She laughed, doubled over the teapot. I stood in front of my ruined eggs in my kitchen and knew that I would be burning eggs on a regular basis for the rest of my life. I made peace with it and got out a second pan.

The rumble had stopped being an event. That was the change I noticed first. It had run most of the night. It ran while she poured tea. It ran while she stole the least-burnt bit of egg off my plate. And it ran when she passed behind my chair and put her hand on the back of my neck for no reason at all except that she could now. She’d stopped teasing me about it and started leaning into it, and my chest decided it was happy shouting. Content. Content. Content.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked as she sat back in her chair and rubbed her belly.

“Spring plantings. I’ll be dividing the long field. Squash in one place, root vegetables in another, and along the south side, where the sun reaches longest, I’m putting in a proper herb bed dug and framed so you’ll have your moonbell close instead of further away.”

“Ah.” Her eyes filled with tears. “You want me to stay.”

“More than anything.”

We needed a proper bathing room off the back wall. With a stone floor. A tub big enough for two. I’d plumb in water from the creek and heat it with a stove at the same time. Four weeks’ worth of work before the hard frost if I started soon.

Perhaps a second bedroom next year. A deck on the back where we could sit and watch the sun set.

“You’re thinking about more than gardens,” she said, watching me over her cup. “I think your mind’s gone to the lumberyard.”

“Hm.”

“You’ll tell me when it’s happening, I assume.”

The last thought I kept from my face. It came to me on the drive into town, both of us on the bench, her shoulder against my ribs, the early snow melting off the fields in the sun.

The creek field flooded every spring. My father cursed it for forty years, though the creek didn’t seem to care. It was the worst plowland on the farm, a hand’s depth of water standing through the spring thaw. I studied it above her dark head as we passed.

A child would like that. Mud to the ankles, warm as bathwater. Frogs.

Best field I owned. I had to hold the reins very still for a while.

An ogre chooses once. I’d known my choosing for two years. But knowing a beam and standing under it loaded were different things.

“You’ve gone quiet even for you,” Rain said.

“Sometimes that fits best.”

“I’m sure it does.” She wound her arm through mine.

Rufus stepped out of the Silver Bell to refuse my coin before I’d offered it. Mrs. Piddock’s mother waved her funeral brooch at us from a window. At the shop, three grannies arrived within the first hour on errands they appeared to forget. One purchased a single teaspoon of honey, and each of them patted my forearm on the way out.

I learned the betting book had paid out, and they’d opened a new one. Nobody would tell me what the fresh page was for. Nastru Weatherby started to, but Struan put a hand over his brother’s mouth and walked him backward out of the shop.

I was stacking my delivery crates in Rain’s back room when she called out.

“What’s today’s date?”

When I told her, she got very quiet.

She appeared in the doorway with the account ledger open on her arm, one finger holding a page, wearing a look I imagine she gave a brew that failed to behave.

“The storm was the first week of the last moon,” she said. “Melissant’s meeting was the morning after. Rufus stood up in front of the tavern, right after the teaspoon discussion, and said he’d do the repairs to my roof. We placed a shingle order that should’ve been delivered in ten days. The framing could be done inside the month, making the quarters upstairs livable by first snow. Goran, first snow was last night. I watched it fall on your fields.”

“The roads to the dales are good this season,” I said, working it out in my mind. “There’s been no flooding. No cart trouble I’ve heard of. Timber’s moved fine for the Healing House. The beams came through in a week.”