Far into the night the merry piping and harping reached. The threshing floor was a hub of golden light, flapping with shadows at every door and window. There had been laughter, there had been fellowship, there had been dancing, there had been husking, and now there was dancing again. It was the harvest festival.

"Get up there." Inspector Dickson nudged Mordred. Mordred, whose face was the color of early spring cress, did not respond. "Go ask her, you silly pup."

The light glistened off Mordred's sweaty cheeks. "What if she says no?"

"Swing her into the dance without asking."

Mordred turned a look of horror on Inspector Dickson.

"You don't have to ask her straight out. See Braegon there? He just offered his hand to Mirda and they stepped in without saying a word."

"She's his sister." Mordred's hands were visibly shaking.

Inspector Dickson groaned. "Give me one good reason why she'd refuse you. Look, she's coming your way this minute."

Mordred simultaneously seemed to shrink back and lean forward, his eyes full of a sheer adoration that no girl with an ounce of brain could mistake. Lethira Gerisson paused at the edge of the dancing circle, about eight feet away from them, her trim figure poised, her fiery hair falling free to her waist and her chin tilted in a question.

Mordred appeared at once enraptured and petrified. He did not move.

Inspector Dickson, at the end of his patience, gave him a violent shove. Mordred whipped around, fixing Inspector Dickson with his most chilling glare. With a toss of the head and an arrogant grace, he strode forward and offered a hand mutely to his would-be lady.

Inspector Dickson smiled. It was mostly a satisfied smile, but as he watched Mordred swing Lethira gently through the steps, eyes ardent and face gallantly unsure, it softened to a pensive gladness. As readily as Mordred smiled and laughed these days, the days of pain were not long gone, and Inspector Dickson had seen their resurgence more than once. It was good to see him learning to be young.

"Saw him off?" Sandy strolled up beside him.

Inspector Dickson snorted. "You wouldn't believe what it's like to live with him right now. His own sister has to practically put the food in his mouth to make him eat; he thinks he can live on thinking and talking about Lethira Gerisson. Look at him now. Have you ever seen such infatuation?"

"Lethira doesn't look too indifferent either," remarked Sandy dryly. "Poor Linda."

Presently she said: "Jonathan and I are disappointed in Mordred. We were just discussing it. He used to be sensible, like us; now he has succumbed to silly romance. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because I never know how seriously to take you," replied Inspector Dickson.

"Do you take Jonathan seriously?" She shrugged without waiting for his reply. "Then take that as seriously as what you would take anything Jonathan said."

Inspector Dickson reflected on this enigmatic statement.

"It's rather sad," Sandy said suddenly. As he glanced at her, jolted from his own musings, she waved her hand out at the rest of the room. "All this celebration, all this fuss. The whole town's abuzz over a harvest that can barely fill one man's barn. One wonders why we're all so happy."

Inspector Dickson looked at Mordred again. But Sandy's gaze was fixed on Fred, who stood with an arm tenderly around his bride of two months, his step even now not quite sure, not quite firm as it had used to be.

"Maybe," he said, his mind running blindly on the tracks of a half-remembered conversation with Mordred the morning after the Leader died, "it's more than that. Maybe more a celebration that there is a harvest at all — there might have been none. People have to laugh, so that the pain can come out..."

"Yes," said Sandy thoughtfully. "That much is true, at least — people have to laugh."

Inspector Dickson noticed a familiar blonde head. "Are Jared and Cecelia ever going to tie it up?" he wondered aloud by way of subject change.

"They're neither one of them one to hurry things," said Sandy, as their eyes both followed the couple in question, who were standing against the wall, largely silent. "Cecelia would probably marry him anytime he asked, but Jared wants to be cautious and she's happy to do what he wants. I wouldn't want to marry a man who nearly ran over me with a horse in the midst of contemplation; but Cecelia likes him for his abstract brains, I guess."

"From what I understand," said Inspector Dickson, feeling it was his due to tease her in turn, "you don't want to marry any man."

"Of course not," Sandy scoffed, "but I don't tell that to people. Isabelle is sure to say, 'Your time will come,' in that frightfully all-knowing way of hers. I've a mind sometimes to be an old maid, just to spite her."

Inspector Dickson laughed. "You know, Miss Sandy Thorne," he said, retaining the bantering mood, "as trying as you are, there's something very winning about you."

She tried not to beam at the compliment, but he saw the pleased glow of her blue eyes and the smug tilt of her lip. "Compliments go to my head, Inspector. You'd better watch out."

Inspector Dickson laughed again. He had never felt so at peace, so at home. "I'll take my chances."

~

"Marianne says it's not polite to tell people that they're not pretty."

Sandy mentally grumbled at Marianne. "Well," she said, "once you get older, people don't take it so well."

"I am getting older," said Jonathan. "In six months I'll be eight."

"One does get older," said Sandy. "It's terribly unfortunate. But I'll tell you what, Jonathan; neither you nor I care if we or anyone else is pretty, so you can talk to me about who's pretty and who's not, all to ourselves."

Jonathan scooted a little closer to her. "Good. Why don't people like it?"

"Because pretty matters something to them. They're worried that if they aren't nice to look at outside, people will think they aren't nice inside."

"But that's silly," said Jonathan. "The inside is way different from the outside."

Sandy thumped him gently on the shoulder, feeling an unusually motherly urge to hug him. "Don't forget that, Jonathan. Don't ever forget it."

"Do you think Mordred is pretty?"

Sandy stifled a giggle. "I think it's called 'handsome' for men."

"Handsome, then."

"Yes, I do."

"Is that why Linda and Lethira watch him?"

Sandy reflected what astonishing perception the boy had. "I really don't doubt it."

"Do all handsome men have to become silly and get married?"

"Well," said Sandy, looking at Fred, "maybe they all have to get married, but not all of them are silly about it."

"Inspector Dickson is a very sensible person, but he's handsome, too."

Inspector Dickson had certainly not been in her consideration of highly attractive men. "I suppose he is. But he's older — thirty at least."

"So maybe he won't get married," said Jonathan confidentially.

She repressed another snigger. "We can hope not."

~

"Tell me about the woman who raised you."

"What?" Inspector Dickson's head turned, his eyes squinting confusedly.

"Sometime way back, you mentioned her. One of those confounded, badgering, trying women—" Sandy flopped on her back in the muddy, thawing grass of March and raised her brows at him.

He shook his head. "Do you remember everything?"

"Try me."

"Did I mention her? We barely knew each other then. I must have been wrought up."

"You definitely were," said Sandy.

She was not sure when studying his face had become such an enjoyable pastime. It was so pleasant to watch the way the cheek ran smoothly into his square jaw, and the small, abrupt curve it made at his eye. The suggestion of a furrow in his forehead, and the tiny creases that came out in the corners of his eyes with his smile. The way his hard mouth tightened when he was thinking or frustrated. It was not an excessively handsome face, but it was a face of clean, decisive lines, and best of all were the eyes themselves: not quite deep-set, keen, bold blue, like the drenched color of a summer sky, and when she was watching them sometimes she forgot to listen to what he was saying, which had just happened again... drat it.

"Your — aunt, did you say?" She scrambled through her memory for words.

"No, my mother. I shouldn't have said that about her, that day. She brought me up to respect women, and I was angry at her then, because I was finding it very hard to respect women."

"Goodness." Sandy rolled her eyes at the half-clouded sky. "If there was ever a woman who deserved disrespect that day, it was me. I'm not a woman, anyway. I'm stuck between old crone and tomboy, and they're both crazy."

A thought struck her. "Is that why you took the dare to walk the fence? I thought it didn't look like you were trying to 'show' me."

He smiled wryly. "That would be why."

"In your dictionary of respect, Inspector, I think you need to learn that sometimes it is necessary to tell a woman 'No'."

"You, of all people, a woman, telling me this?"

"Maybe not very often." Sandy grinned saucily at him. "But sometimes, in retrospect, yes."

"What are you two doing over here?" Isabelle's voice came around the corner of the house. "I've been talking to Laufeia for half an hour. It's high time we were heading home, Sandy."

"Yes, ma'am," said Sandy, rather more explosively than she meant to. Really, if Isabelle had wanted her sooner, she could have come!

"Do you like that Inspector fellow?"

"No," said Sandy vehemently, and shocked herself by realizing that she had never told a bigger lie in her life.

~

"I think I may be in love with you."

The matter-of-fact, unblushing announcement took Inspector Dickson wholly aback. He stared at Sandy wordlessly, unsure he quite believed his ears.

Sandy met his gaze composedly. "I thought it was only fair to let you know."

"Yes, well — what happens now?"

"I'm sure I don't know. After all, I said I may be in love with you, which means I also may not. We shall have to wait and see if it stays around."

Inspector Dickson was quite sure that Mordred had never had such an odd conversation with Lethira. "And if it does stay?" he said.

"Then it would be nice if you felt the same. If not, I daresay I shall either get over it and find someone else, or nurse the affection jealously to my deathbed. You can't know how dreadfully uncomfortable it is to be talking like this," Sandy added, not looking uncomfortable at all. "It was far preferable to be oblivious."

"I'm old," said Inspector Dickson, feeling this was a prickly fact that needed to be faced. At Sandy's derisive snort, he went on: "Old enough to be your father."

"Eighteen-from-thirty-three makes fifteen. Only barely. People marry thirty-year-olds all the time, and worse. Do you think we aren't suited for each other?" demanded Sandy with a fine indignant flare of spirit. "You don't behave like a father to me at all, and you certainly don't behave like my real father. Stop spouting this nonsense."

"All right." Inspector Dickson held up his hand. "If you don't care, then I suppose it really doesn't matter, 'twas just a thought that occurred to me."

"Thirty isn't even old," muttered Sandy, evidently determined to have the last word.

"I can't deny, Sandy" — for the first time it felt wrong to address her with "Miss" — "that I've grown very fond of you. But I feel compelled to admit, I've never wanted to marry anybody before, and I haven't much of an idea what it feels like."

"Me neither," said Sandy.

"So, we had better start figuring it out."

~

Inspector Dickson leaned an elbow on the hitching-post. The mid-June sun was warm on his back, carrying the scent of cow dung and hay. In front of him yawned the barn doorway, dark and musty and cool, and there was a figure standing by Runa's stall.

"Sandy," he said. He felt very tired and did not know how to say it.

She turned around. Her nose was red. "I knew it was going to happen a few weeks ago," she said. "I don't know how. I told Fred then, just to be safe."

"I should have gone in the beginning," he said. Should never have let this staunch, loving village grow into a home. Should never have stayed with Mordred, Mordred who was trying so hard not to let Inspector Dickson see how much it hurt to let him go. "We have all grown too close—" Enough tears had been shed, he would not weep now. Yet thinking of Mordred, he could not go on. "Should have gone then," he muttered thickly.

"Then you wouldn't have me, you goose." Sandy pulled his hand down from his eyes.

"Mordred says — that Fred said — that you would follow me to the ends of the earth." He felt foolish saying it, but it had to be said somehow, and he was not quite brave enough to ask outright.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, her pale braid untidy, her features sharp, jutting, and in no sense beautiful. "I would," she said.

"So." A settledness washed against the dragging pain. "We'd better hurry up and get married."

"You have to promise me one thing."

"What thing?"

A wickedly playful light entered Sandy's eyes. "To plant me a flower bed in front of our house when we arrive."

"Not the usual hobby... for a man." He laughed. "It's already there."

***

Okay I feel unshakably happy. I wrote over 3000 words in a day. And I don't hate all of it.

*will probably hate it in a few days but hey enjoy the moment*

Anyway, did y'all like it? I got a kick out of writing that Mordred-in-love bit. Might be my favorite part.