His assurance that I'll disagree with him gets me to laugh. I snuggle closer to him, still in my travelling clothes. Ah well.

"Perhaps I'll agree just to keep you guessing," I retort and tilt my head up to kiss the corner of his mouth. The sudden wave of emotion seems to be dying down. I'm more than relieved. "Everything will be fine and our son will be born and Luke'll finally get to be an older brother. Oh, he'll love that."

And the neighbors, of course, will find reason to gossip when I begin to show. Glen of Saint Catherine is a small town and most of the residents know us up in the Torchwood House well enough. Many of the elder ones - my generation, in an odd sort of thought - still disprove of the lack of marriage. I know they talk about us: the professor and his nosy girlfriend who moved up to Scotland one day without any sort of warning.

"Mrs Ackart will begin to talk again, you know."