SEVENTY-ONE

But I was wrong.

Society was only content to keep me a widow for just so long. They might not have wanted me to go out on New Year’s Eve, they might have resented my putting a new luster in the dining room—a great big chandelier decorated with massive cut-glass prisms—not to mention the fairy lamps I’d installed in both parlors, but they did not want to keep me alone forever. Apparently, the idea of me being paired with someone other than John was more palatable to those in my orbit than the idea of having an uneven number of people sit down to dinner. Further, not only was my single status numerically inconvenient, but, given my relatively young age for widowhood, my solitary presence served as a bothersome reminder that what had happened to me could befall any one of the others. Oh, not the gruesome murder of a spouse, perhaps; but rather, the accidental death or death due to untimely illness, leaving one to be a social question mark.

It was thus then that, after a suitable length of time, my friends began gently prodding me toward becoming one half of an even whole again. To my great surprise, even John’s sisters became most interested in seeing me paired off with someone new.

Victoria: “You are still so frightfully young, Emma.”

Elizabeth: “John would not want you to be alone forever.”

Ruth (most surprising of all): “I know a man who…”

It was all I could do not to allow them to persuade me to spend time with the plethora of unattached men they all suddenly seemed to know.

Honestly, you would think they would be more interested in preserving their brother’s memory!

“‘I know a man who…’” Chance mimicked a high falsetto as I lay in his arms in his mean little room.

Enough time had passed that I felt safe visiting him. I reached out now, swatting his shoulder playfully with the back of my hand. “It is not funny,” I said, trying hard not to laugh. “You should see some of these men they bring to me as so many leftovers after everyone else has eaten the best of the feast: a baker who smells of yeast; a butcher who smells of raw meat; why, the other day they even brought me a would-be writer who says he never reads!”

“These are the men John’s sisters propose for a woman of your station?” Chance queried.

“Perhaps I exaggerate,” I said.

“Or perhaps”—he smiled wryly—“they fear your situation is more desperate than they let on. Next, they may come at you with the fishmonger.”

“The fish—”

He silenced my lips with his finger. “Your greatest mistakes, Emma, are always the ones you make when you do not take me at my word.”

“Pardon me?”

“I meant what I said: ‘I know a man who…’”

“Would you care to rephrase whatever you are saying in terms that I can understand?”

“It is just that: I know a man who…me.”

This time, I merely raised my eyebrows at him, waiting for him to elucidate.

“If your friends and even John’s family deem it time you find a man to replace the one you’ve…lost, then it means they are also quite ready for me.”

Of course, it was not quite that easy, despite Chance’s insistence it should be so.

First off, my behavior had to appear natural. I could not very well introduce him into my world abruptly, nor would it be seemly, when I did introduce him, to present him as someone I had developed a great and sudden passion for, despite that being the truth.

Addressing the latter clause first, I thought it best to actually talk to some of the stray men my friends and relatives kept showing up with, if only so that later on it could not be said I had acted impulsively. As can be imagined, Chance did not love this idea, but he could be persuaded to see the wisdom behind it.

“Very well, Emma,” he said, “entertain these others, if you must. But do not let any of them inside your skirts.” He reached a possessive hand toward my face. “Or your mouth.”

It was a piece of advice he needn’t have stressed so. I was no more interested in the company of the available-men parade than he was interested in having me be in their company. Listening to each for the bare minimum amount of time politeness demanded, I saw them back to the door so quickly that Penelope, keeping faith for Odysseus, would have been proud.

The second problem was the appearance of Chance himself. Handsome enough—sometimes too handsome, if my reactions were anything to go by—his attire was still wrong. Well, that was easily enough mended. John’s money was now my money and if I wanted to use it to re-outfit Chance from hat to boots, there was no longer anyone to say I couldn’t.

Clad in his new attire, no one would ever question his right to appear in any drawing room. We did consider working out some of the rougher edges of his personality, but then, we thought: Why? After all, it was in part those rougher edges that had so greatly charmed me. Surely, they might have the same effect on others as well? It was enough he kept up with the newspapers, was able to converse with authority on any subjects that might arise.

“A job, Emma,” he prompted. “I still need a job so your friends will think me respectable.”

“Hmm…” That was a puzzle.

“It should be something no one can trace.”

“Hmm…”

“I know!” He spoke as if the idea had just come to him. “I could be in publishing! That editor of John’s,”—he snapped his fingers impatiently—“what was his name again?”

“Connor?”

“That’s right: Connor!”

“What about him?”

“Well, you did once say none in your circle had ever met him, despite the efforts of some of your would-be-author friends to persuade John to do so. Could I not be some associate of his you had been introduced to?”

“I suppose…”

He was excited now. “That’s right. I could be some associate who had made his own rags-to-riches fortune in publishing in some other country—oh, say, Italy—and had now returned to London a wealthy man—”

“—who had been so successful, he now no longer had any need to work!” I finished for him, caught up in the wave of his enthusiasm.

He grabbed my hands. “It could work,” he said.

“It could,” I agreed.

“If only we can be smart enough not to rush things.”

It occurred to me I was on the edge of happy then, in a way I could not recall ever having been before, save at times with Weston. But this was a different kind of happy. It was a dizzy, giddy, almost scary happy. Despite everything that had happened, despite everything I had lost and everything I had done, it was a sheer joy to physically be in a room with a mind that so delighted my own, with a person I had wholly chosen for myself.