We’d each left the house that morning alone, weighted by our private afflictions. Fingers laced and feet in step, we return to Pritchett House together. We have made a promise to each other, and our bond needs to be as strong as the stone and mortar that holds us here.

In a first act of faith, Quinn begins to collapse his smokescreens for me. He is relieved to show me the few articles on the Raiders that he has folded into brittle squares and slipped into the pages of his books. I secret one away for my scrapbook before advising him what to do with the rest.

“Dispose of these,” I advise, and though I sense he cannot, I do have his ear on many other aspects of the household.

“You should take Mrs. Sullivan’s key ring” is my first practical suggestion. “As long as she guards our cellar and larder, it is difficult to take inventory.”

“That seems wise.” And not a day later he presents me with the keys like a waggling retriever who has fetched a stick. It is not his only gift to me. One day I find a box of chocolate-covered almonds in my knitting basket. The next day it’s a silky hair ribbon on my dresser. On my pillow that night is a poem clipped from the Atlantic Monthly, with a nosegay. Such devoted attentions and such a wealth of consideration after so little are an unbridled pleasure.

Still, the moments I wait for are not made of flowers and chocolates but our stolen, heated moments in the hall and at the banister, behind the library door, and once in the scullery, when Quinn sweeps me up so that only the tips of my toes touch the ground. His mouth hungry on mine as if seeking something extra, hidden, and secret, past my lips, my name whispered like some kind of elixir. What I had thought was arrogance I now know to be nothing but reserve, and not even much of that anymore.

“You won’t leave me, will you, Fleur?” He often speaks this refrain into my ear as he presses against me.

“Never,” I whisper back, so sure in my answer that I don’t know why he continues to doubt and to ask.

I am no longer a spy. Toby’s ghostly instructions were nothing but my own childish whims. I don’t even care when Mavis shyly reports that she saw us kissing in the corridor.

“See? You’ll be the Missus of the house yet, just as I always said,” she declares. “Though I’m sorry to lose your company, Miss Jennie, it’s the right order of things.”

“As long as Mrs. Sullivan isn’t boxing your ears. Now that I’ve got her precious keys, she’s been in a foul temper.”

Mavis shrugs, and I know that some things haven’t changed.

To my face Mrs. Sullivan is all sullen deference. Re-affixing the Miss to my name and not so quick to serve me the burnt bits of toast or end pieces of meat. But I know that the housekeeper’s resentment brews and that Mavis takes the brunt. There is nothing I can do. As long as Aunt Clara wields the official title of Mrs. Pritchett, Mrs. Sullivan’s position here is all but guaranteed.

But I am gaining strength.

I put my past behind me. I salve my hands with cream twice a day to soften my calluses. Buff my nails and take time with my hair, twisting it into modern styles that I copy from a page in Aunt’s Godey’s Lady’s Book. The day girls carry my washtub to my room again and fill it with steaming hot water and scented salts for my private bath. I don’t protest. I want to look like a lady. For myself and for Quinn. His eyes on me sharpen my senses, and when he is near I feel my blush blooming, heat rising like spring sap in my blood after this long and harrowing winter.

At Quinn’s urging, nights at Pritchett House take on a compatible pattern. Uncle at his desk while Aunt picks her butterfingers over her crewel and Quinn and I sit at the card table, where he teaches me gin, rummy, and as many variations of poker as there are days in the year. In no time I’m skilled in all the daredevil hands from four-card draw to deuces wild. Quinn also shows me tricks he learned from other soldiers how to make a coin disappear, how to fold a paper swan.

One evening Aunt sets aside her needle and hoop and squeezes herself onto her piano stool to plunk out some songs. Aunt hasn’t touched the piano since all three boys had been dispatched. She plays a few hymns, and then the strokes of her fingers on the keys choose Will’s favorite song, “Lilly Dale.” On purpose or by accident, I cannot say.

Tears spring to my eyes. The very walls and corners of the rooms seem to watch me. As Aunt lurches into the third verse, I slip from the room, resolving to come back and steal away the pages from Aunt Clara’s songbook. I don’t want her to play it again. I want to go to the coat closet to be alone, but Quinn catches up with me in the foyer.

“Mother is a foolish, selfish old woman who sees nothing wrong with imposing her sentimental impulses,” Quinn says, taking advantage of my stillness to move close and caress my cheek. “You mustn’t let her come between us.”

“It’s more than that. Will haunts you, too,” I say. “It’s Will who is between us. Not Aunt.”

“Only if you let him.” His arm is encircling me, an antidote to the darkness all around us. His other hand leaves its touch on my cheek as he digs into his trousers’ pocket. “Wear this,” he says. “I found it in Aunt’s jewelry box. But it’s always been your ring, my dear Fleur. And so is the promise that goes with it.”

“Oh.” I am taken aback. “But…”

“Of course I plan to replace it with another a ring that’s meant for only us. But I just need a bit of time, until I begin to make my own money. Until then, you must have something. So that Mother so that everyone understands my intentions.” Quinn’s forehead is creased with worry. “But frankly, it’s the promise that I am hoping for, from you. I want you to be my wife, Jennie. If you’ll have me.”

He slips the ring onto my finger. I blink at the twinkling stones, the garnets and diamond. I am speechless, anxiety stirring as my mind is seized with a memory of that long-ago holiday in Nantucket, the sudden crash of a wave over my head, the hard rush and slam of my body against the sand, the undertow dragging me back as I struggled to move forward to shore.

“Oh, yes,” I say. “Of course, my love.” My voice deliberately raised against my fears as I pull him close against me.


24.