“Oh. Got another letter this morning at the library. In all the commotion I forgot to give it to you.” Fred pulled the envelope from his pocket and handed it to her. She recognized the writing immediately and let it fall to the table.

“You not going to read it?”

“It’ll just be about me coming back. Plans and suchlike.”

“You read it. It’s fine.”

While he cleared the plates she opened the envelope, feeling his eyes on her. She scanned it swiftly and shoved it back inside.

“What?”

She looked up.

“Why’d you wince like that?”

She sighed. “Just . . . my mother’s manner of talking.”

He walked back around the table and sat down, taking the letter from the envelope.

“Don’t—”

He pushed her hand away. “Let me.”

She turned away as he read it, frowning.

“What’s this? We will endeavor to forget your latest efforts to embarrass our family. What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just how she is.”

“Did you tell them Van Cleve beat you?”

“No.” She rubbed at her face. “They would probably have assumed it was my own fault.”

“How could it be your fault? A grown man and a bunch of dolls. Jeez. Never heard anything like it.”

“It wasn’t just the dolls.”

Fred looked up.

“He thought—he thought I had tried to corrupt his son.”

“He thought . . . what?”

She was already regretting having spoken.

“C’mon, Alice. We can tell each other anything.”

“I can’t.” She felt her cheeks color. “I can’t tell you.” She took another sip, feeling his gaze rest on her, as if to work something out. Oh, what was the point of hiding it? After today she would never see him again. Finally she blurted out: “I brought home a book that Margery gave me. About married love.”

Fred clenched his jaw a little, as if he didn’t want to think about Alice and Bennett and any kind of intimacy. It took a moment before he spoke. “What would he have to mind about that?”

“He—they both—thought I shouldn’t be reading it.”

“Well, maybe he felt that as you were in your honeymoon period you—”

“But that’s the thing. There was no honeymoon period. I wanted to see if—”

“If?”

“To see . . .” she swallowed “. . . if we had . . .”

“You had what?”

“Done it,” she whispered.

“To see if you had done what?”

She threw her hands up to her face and wailed, “Oh, why are you making me say this?”

“Just trying to understand the facts of it, Alice.”

“If we had done it. Married love.”

Fred put down his glass. A long, painful moment passed before he spoke. “You don’t . . . know?”

“No,” she said miserably.

“Whoa. Whoa. Hold on. You don’t know if you and Bennett . . . consummated your marriage?”

“No. And he wouldn’t talk about it. So I have no way of knowing. And the book told me some things but, to be honest, I still couldn’t be sure. There was a lot of stuff about wafting and rapture. And then it all blew up anyway, and it’s not as if we ever discussed it so I’m still not sure.”

Fred ran his hand over the back of his head. “Well, Alice, I mean—it’s—uh—pretty hard to miss.”

“What is?”

“The— Oh, forget it.” He leaned forward. “You really think you might not have?”

She felt anguished, already regretting that this would be the last thing he remembered of her. “I don’t think so . . . Oh, Lord, you think I’m ridiculous, don’t you? I can’t believe I’m telling you this. You must think—”

Fred stood up from the table abruptly. “No—no, Alice. This is great news!”

She stared at him. “What?”

“This is wonderful!” He grabbed her hand, began to waltz her around the room.

“Fred? What? What are you doing?”

“Get your coat. We’re going to the library.”

* * *

• • •

Five minutes later they were in the little cabin, two oil lamps burning as Fred scanned the shelves. He quickly found what he was looking for and asked her to hold the lamp while he flicked through the heavy leather-bound book. “See?” he said, jabbing at the page. “If you haven’t consummated your marriage, then you’re not married in the eyes of God.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you can have the marriage annulled. And marry who the hell you like. And there’s nothing Van Cleve can do about it.”

She stared at the book, read the words that his finger underlined. She looked up at him, disbelieving. “Really? It doesn’t count?”

“Yes! Hang on—we’ll find another of those legal books, and double-check. That’ll show you. Look! Look, here it is. You’re free to stay, Alice! See? You don’t have to go anywhere! Look! Oh, that poor damn fool Bennett—I could kiss him.”

Alice put down the book and looked at him steadily. “I’d rather you kissed me.”

And so he did.

* * *

• • •

Forty minutes later they lay on the floor of the library on Fred’s jacket, both of them breathing hard and a little in shock at what had just transpired. He turned to her, his eyes searching her face, then took her hand and raised it to his lips.

“Fred?”

“Sweetheart?”

Alice smiled, the slowest, sweetest smile, and when she spoke it was as if her voice dripped honey and was shot through with happiness. “I have definitely never done that.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

   From the body of the loved one’s simple, sweetly colored flesh, which our animal instincts urge us to desire, there springs not only the wonder of a new bodily life, but also the enlargement of the horizon of human sympathy and the glow of spiritual understanding which one could never have attained alone.