Page 74 of Threads that Remain

“Sarah?”

She laughed. “There you are.”

He stared at her again. This could not be the same Sarah.

The Sarah he remembered had been thirteen when he left: forever covered in grass stains, forever appearing where she ought not to be. She had raced through the orchards, climbed trees, chased the dogs, and come to dinner with her hair escaping its ribbons.

She had been all elbows and knees and enthusiasm.

She had once fallen into the pond attempting to rescue a duckling, then blamed the duckling for the entire affair.

And now—

Now she was eighteen … and beautiful.

The realisation came with such force that Henry forgot, for one perilous second, to look away. His gaze moved over her face, her composed figure, the graceful line of her shoulders. When he finally remembered himself, Sarah was watching him with an amusement that did not quite conceal her awareness.

Heat gathered beneath his collar.

“Well,” said she, looking him up and down, “these years have changed you.”

“As they have apparently changed you.”

“Have they?”

“Quite considerably.”

She glanced down at her gown.

“I suppose you mean I have finally learned to dress myself.”

“I was thinking more of the fact that you are standing still.”

Sarah laughed.

The sound was the same. It reached him with the ease of an old memory, while everything else about her seemed newly dangerous. He felt his mouth curve before he could stop it. “I remember you being incapable of standing still for more than ten seconds.”

“I was thirteen.”

“You were more often up a tree than on the ground.”

“You encouraged me.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You taught me to climb the old oak.”

“Because you insisted.”

“You pushed me up the first branch.”

“Because you were so determined.”

“I was,” she laughed.

“Are you still climbing trees?”

“Now that is something a gentleman should never ask a lady of eighteen.”