She beamed with pleasure. The work on the sword had kept her busy, but she’d also liked it. A lot. Enough to make her hope that it might keep her busy some more in the future. “Johnny and I work well together,” she said with a wink in Johnny’s direction.
They already had plans for a few more. Thom would be busy in the months ahead readying for war and so would she. She’d found a cure for her restlessness—although she suspected it might have something to do with the man at her side as well.
“I hope I did the words right,” Johnny said. “Lady Elizabeth”—she cleared her voice and he smiled sheepishly—“Ella said you had an affinity for French.”
Elizabeth was trying not to laugh.
Thommy shot her a look. “She did, did she?”
“It says ‘Climb high where honor leads,’ ” she translated.
Their eyes held. “It’s perfect,” he said, his voice thick. “Thank you.”
She nodded. Seeing how moved he was, her chest swelled to bursting. But then one of the maidservants passed by with a tray of mutton and it was her stomach that swelled—and turned upside down. The wave of nausea hit her so hard she had to grab the edge of the table to steady herself.
Thom reached for her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“The smell,” she said, fighting to keep the contents of her stomach in place.
Thom must have looked so worried that Jo took pity on him—on both of them because Elizabeth was just as unaware of what was going on as Thom.
“I think you might need to move up the wedding a week or two,” Jo said to her husband.
“Why?” Jamie asked.
Jo looked around at all of them as if she couldn’t believe they could be so dense. Only Thom’s father seemed to have guessed, and he was almost as pale as Elizabeth.
“Because as it is, your first nephew or niece is going to be awfully big for eight months.”
Elizabeth was stunned, but she recovered quickly. Her future husband, future brother-in-law, future father-in-law, and brother, however, didn’t demonstrate such resilience. Good gracious, she had never seen so many big men look close to fainting before!
“Will they be all right?” she asked Jo worriedly.
“In about eight months give or take. Just get ready for the—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish before the fussing started. Thom growled for someone to get her a pillow—ten pillows, damn it!—not listening when she said she didn’t need one; Jamie called for wine, whether it was for himself or for her, she wasn’t sure; and Johnny and Big Thom took turns asking her if she needed anything and if she felt okay—every five minutes.
It was going to be a long eight months.
But the good news was that a few days later, she found herself standing before a priest with Thom—her brother and sister-in-law at their side just as they’d been all those years ago—repeating the vows that would bind her to the noble man who’d captured her heart when he’d rescued her from a tree.
It had taken her awhile to recognize it, but she would never forget it again. Thom had always been her rock, and she would hold on to him forever.
