Prince, Cinderella Forsakes You novel · Chapter 29 of 32

Chapter 29: Merriwether in Spring

He didn't say anything.

He looked at my face for a long time. Then down at his hand on my belly.

Then back up.

"Say it again," he said.

"I'm carrying your child."

He sat up so fast he took all the blankets with him.

"In the summer," I said, grabbing for them. "Midsummer, I think. I counted."

He was out of the bed. He was standing in the middle of the cold floor in nothing at all, with his hands in his hair.

"Cassian. It's freezing."

"I don't care," he said. "I don't care. Clem."

He came back and knelt on the floor by the bed and put his face against my stomach, and I felt his shoulders shake.

"Are you crying?"

"No," he said into my nightgown.

"That would have rung."

He laughed, wet, and didn't lift his head for a long time.

By breakfast, the whole Keep knew.

I hadn't told anyone. He'd told the cook, the cook had told the steward, and the steward had told the village by noon.

Dulcie opened a new column on the slate. Boy or girl. Hair or no hair. Lion or not.

"Not funny," her brother said.

"Very funny," said the cook, and put a copper on lion.

The snow went in March.

In April we set the grafts out in the walled orchard on the south slope, in rows where the dead Greythorn Reds had stood.

Two hundred little sticks, each with Dulcie's tag.

The whole valley came to watch. Some of them came back over the border to do it, families who'd left years ago.

Then Dulcie and I went south.

Cassian came with us. He said it was to carry things. He carried me over every puddle between the Keep and the capital.

Merriwether House had a new sign over the gate.

The old foreman had painted it himself, in his big shaky capitals.

THE THORNWOOD ORCHARD HOUSE. NURSERY STOCK. GRAFTING TAUGHT.

The kitchen was full of seed trays. The parlor smelled of sawdust and wax.

The old foreman had slept in the kitchen all winter and pruned every tree in the orchard. He said only because he couldn't bear to watch them go untidy.

He took one look at Dulcie and handed her a knife.

"Show me," he said.

She showed him.

He grunted. "Well. You'll do."

Dulcie went red to the ears and didn't speak for an hour.

On the third morning, a cart came down the lane.

It was a big open cart, pulled by two old horses, driven by a workhouse man in a leather apron.

On the back, roped down, was my father's chair.

His desk. The long kitchen table. The parlor clock. The pictures from the pale squares on the walls.

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