A few moments later, footsteps sounded on the porch, attempted tiptoe; they paused outside the kitchen window above the drainboard. She stepped up and stared without pleasure at Sunny’s face, craning around and peering in. He jerked back as he saw her, then whispered, “Are you alone?”

“For now.”

He nodded and nipped in through the back door. She regarded him, testing her feelings. Straw-gold hair still curled around his head in soft locks, his eyes were still bright blue, his skin fair and fine and summer-flushed, his shoulders broad, his muscular arms, tanned where his sleeves were rolled up, coated with a shimmer of gold hairs that had always seemed to make him gleam in sunlight. His physical charm was unchanged, and she wondered how it was that she was now so wholly unmoved by it, who had once trembled beneath it in a wheatfield in such wild, flattered elation.

His daughter would have been a pretty girl. The thought twisted in her like a knife, and she fought to set it aside.

“Where is everyone?” he asked cautiously, looking around again.

“Papa and the boys are up cutting hay, Mama is out giving the chickens a dusting with that antilice powder she got from your uncle, and Aunt Nattie’s bad knee hurt so she went to lie down after lunch.”

“Nattie’s blind, she won’t see me anyhow. Good.” He loomed nearer, staring hard at her. No—just at her belly. She resisted an impulse to slump and push it out.

His head cocked. “As little as you are, I’d have thought you’d be popping out by now. Clover sure would have bleated about it if she’d noticed.”

“You talk to her?”

“Saw her at noon, down in the village.” He shifted restlessly. “It’s all the talk there, you turning up again.” He turned again, scowling. “So, did you come back to fuss at me some more? It won’t do you any good. I’m betrothed to Violet now.”

“So I heard,” said Fawn, in a flat voice. “I actually hadn’t planned to see you at all. We wouldn’t have stayed on today except for Dag’s broken arm.”

“Yeah, Clover said you had some Lakewalker fellow trailing you. Tall as a flagpole, with one arm wooden and the other broke, who didn’t hardly say boo. Sounds about useless. You been running around alone with him for three or four weeks, seemingly.” He wet his lips. “So, what’s your plan? Switching horses in the middle of the river? Going to tell him the baby is his and hope he can’t count too good?”

A cast-iron frying pan was sitting on the drainboard. Swung in an appropriate arc, it would just fit Sunny’s round face, Fawn thought through a red haze. “No.”