The churchyard smelled of magnolia and smoke. Lanterns hung from the oak branches, casting shifting gold across the tables set with pies and coffee tins. Music drifted from the fiddle near the porch, soft and slow.

Jasper stood near the edge of it all, gloved hands clasped behind his back, hat tucked under one arm — a soldier trying to remember how to be a boy again. His uniform still looked too new, and every older man who passed gave him a polite nod, half pride and half pity.

He’d been told to mingle. To be seen.

That was when she laughed — light, quick, genuine. Not the giggle of the girls he’d met before, but something unguarded.

He turned before he meant to.

She stood a few yards away, in a pale blue dress, the kind that came from a better seamstress than Houston usually afforded. She was speaking to a woman he never saw.

Then she looked up and caught him watching.

For a heartbeat, he froze. Then, remembering himself, he gave a polite nod — small, proper, military.