Elizabeth allowed it, watching as he tugged lightly, then examined the result with interest.
“You are improving the gown,” she said.
He made a small sound that might have been agreement.
Elizabeth leaned back slightly, letting her head rest against the chair.
The room was quiet.
Somewhere beyond the walls, the house continued in its usual rhythm—voices, footsteps, the faint movement of doors. But here, in this smaller space, the world narrowed to something simpler.
Thomas shifted again, pressing his head briefly beneath her chin.
Elizabeth’s hand moved almost without thought, smoothing the soft curls at the back of his head.
There was a comfort in it she could not easily describe.
He did not see her as altered.
He did not measure what she could or could not do.
To him, she was simply Lizzy.
She drew a slow breath.
“I think,” she said, “that you will grow to be a most determined gentleman.”
He did not answer, being occupied with the ribbon.
Elizabeth smiled faintly.
She had not allowed herself to dwell often on such thoughts—not in any sustained way. There was too much else to be done, too much to manage, too much to accept.
But here—
Here, with the weight of him settled comfortably against her, with the soft rise and fall of his breath so near—she could not entirely prevent it.
The imagining.
A child of her own.
The thought came gently, almost tentatively, as though uncertain of its welcome.
She made no effort to push it away.
Instead, she allowed it to remain, just for a moment.
A small hand in hers. A voice calling her name, and a life that might have been shaped not by necessity or adjustment, but by something quieter, something chosen.
Elizabeth’s fingers stilled briefly in Thomas’s hair.
The thought did not ache. Not sharply. It was not a wound. But it was…present. A space where something might have been.
Thomas shifted again, pulling himself upright in her lap. He reached for her face then, his small fingers brushing her cheek with careless affection.
Elizabeth smiled at once.
“Yes?” she said softly.
