New Kid in Town

She had never regretted marrying him. He was the loveliest man, and certainly she had nothing to complain about. If any man knew how to treat a woman like a queen. Nothing too good for her, nothing she could ask for that wasn’t forthcoming at once; and there was little to ask for, as there was little he hadn’t already thought of himself and seen to. How could a woman complain about a man like that?

He was good company, too. He was certainly the most intelligent man she had ever known, and better still, he had never lost that sense of humor that had attracted her to him in the first place. Contrary to what most men believed, it really was not the handsomest man that caught a woman’s fancy. A woman likes a man who makes her laugh. She had always thought that old rogue Don Juan was probably a better wit than he was a lover.

And successful. Everyone knew him, or knew of him at any rate. And everyone looked up to him. Women eyed him favorably and men respected him. If you judged a man by how others saw him, you would have to say he was unquestionably the lord of his domain.

“Long day today,” he said, stripping off his clothes. “Getting those fellows to agree on anything. A dozen of them, and a dozen different opinions.”

“You should lay down the law,” she said. “You are the one who decides things, after all.”

“Oh, I like them to feel they’re a part of everything, you know what I mean? I want them to feel that we’re all equals. That’s why the table’s the way it is.”

He leaned down to kiss her cheek fondly, and put out the light, and got onto his side of the bed. She waited, not moving herself, not wanting to seem demanding, or needy; but he did not turn toward her.

She suppressed a sigh. Well, there was that: it was no good denying it, he was old. Of course, that was not why she had married him, but still, she was young, young enough to miss what was increasingly lacking in their marriage.

She thought he was already drifting off to sleep, but he surprised her by asking, “What did you think of the new man?”

She hesitated. Had he seen the looks that passed between them? But what were looks, anyway, where was the sin of looking? Still, she picked her words carefully.

“He seems earnest,” she said.

“Earnest?” He laughed softly. “Yes, he’s that all right. A real hell brand, looks like to me. I expect I’ll have my hands full with that young man, keeping him on a leash.”

After a moment, she asked, in the most careful tone she could muster, “What did you say his name was?”

“Lancelot,” he said.

Lancelot. She smiled into the darkness and turned the name over and about in her mind. It had a musical lilt to it, didn’t it? Lancelot.