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“I am considering saying yes,” Kitty corrected, “when you ask me properly, on one knee, somewhere that does not smell of pie.”

“You see what I have to contend with,” Everett said happily.

Laura laughed, feeling the moment settle around her like a warm blanket. She felt the joy of her friends, all they had been through and all they would find in their future. She felt so happy, so free, and so full.

I should wait. But I find I cannot.

She had planned to wait until they were home, until it was quiet, until she had worked out some graceful way of putting it. But Kitty was beaming, and Everett was being absurd, and the river was turning silver in the late afternoon light. Iris’s laughter carried over from the puppet show behind them, and it turned out that the thing she had been holding in for six careful days simply would not be held in any longer.

“I have news as well,” she announced. “Actual news, as it happens.”

Nathaniel turned to her.

“I saw Dr. March on Tuesday.” She felt her eyes grow misty. “He confirmed what I’d suspected for a few weeks. I’m expecting. In the spring. April, he thinks, or thereabouts.”

For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Kitty cried out and threw her arms around her before she had finished speaking, and Everett said something loud and delighted that nobody could hear.

Laura let herself revel in it, laughing and crying at the same time.

Nathaniel had not moved. He simply stared at her, his face entirely still. When she finally extricated herself from Kitty’s grasp and turned to him, she saw that his eyes were wet.

“April,” he said.

“April.”

“Laura.” He took her face in both hands right there, in front of Everett, Kitty, and the ribbon sellers, and kissed her. “April.”

“You’ve said that three times.”

“I intend to say it a great many more times before April.” He pulled her against him, and she felt him exhale unsteadily against her hair. “Are you well? Are you frightened? Tell me honestly.”

“A little frightened,” she said into his coat. “Less than I expected. More on some days than others. It hasn’t been long… I wanted to be sure…” She drew back to look at him. “But I told you once that the danger was never love. It was the silence. And there hasn’t been any silence in that house for months. So, I find I can carry the frightening part, if you’ll help me.”

“You won’t carry any of it alone,” he promised, kissing the top of her head.

“I know,” she murmured. “That’s the reason why I’m not more frightened.”

Iris came pelting back across the grass at that moment with Miss Borden in pursuit, having apparently decided that the puppet show was inferior to whatever the adults were screaming about.

“Why is everyone crying?” she asked, looking around.

“Nobody is crying,” Everett sniffled.

“You are, though,” she said, crossing her arms.

“It’s the wind off the river.”

“There isn’t any wind,” she huffed. “Laura, why is everyone—” She stopped. She looked at Laura. She looked at Nathaniel. She was barely seven years old now and, in Laura’s opinion, had the sharpest eyes of anyone in the family. “Is it a baby?”

Laura stared at her. “How on earth⁠—”

“The cook said something… that you’d gone off eggs and that meant something, and Mrs. Holt told her to hush, which meant it definitely meant something.” Iris’s face lit up. “Is it a baby?”

“It is,” Laura confirmed.

Iris did not shriek, which surprised everyone. She went very quiet instead, in the way she did when something mattered. Then she came forward, put both arms around Laura’s waist, and pressed her face against her middle.

“I’m going to be very good at this,” she declared, her voice muffled. “I’m going to tell the baby everything about Buttons, and the tulips, and the night garden.”