“You don’t say,” she answered crossly.

“Oh, good Lord.” Two girls pulled back, grimacing at Alice. “Is that Van Cleve’s English wife?”

Alice felt the people part like waves around her as she drew closer to the stage.

It was a minute before she saw him. Bennett was standing over near the corner of the temporary bar, beaming, a Hudepohl beer in his hand. She stared at him, at his easy smile, his shoulders loose and relaxed in his good blue shirt. She observed, absently, that he seemed so much more at ease when he wasn’t with her. Her surprise at his not being at work after all was slowly replaced by a kind of wistfulness, a remembrance of the man she had fallen in love with. As she watched, wondering whether to walk over and confide in him about her disastrous evening, a girl standing just to his left turned, and held up a bottle of cola. It was Peggy Foreman. She leaned in close and said something that made him laugh, and he nodded, his eyes still on Tex Lafayette, then he looked back at her, and his face creased into a goofy smile. She wanted to run up to him then, to push that girl out of the way. To take her place in the arms of her husband, have him smile tenderly at her as he had before they were married. But even as she stood, people were backing away from her, laughing or muttering: Skunk. She felt her eyes brim with tears and, head down, began to push her way back through the crowd.

“Hey!”

Alice’s jaw jutted as she wound her way through the jostling bodies, ignoring the jeers and laughter that seemed to swell in bursts around her, the music fading into the distance. She was grateful that the dark meant barely anybody could see who it was as she wiped the tears away.

“Good Lord. Did you catch that smell?”

“Hey! . . . Alice!”

Her head spun round and she saw Fred Guisler pushing his way through the crowd toward her, his arm outstretched. “You okay?”

It took him a couple of seconds to register the smell; she saw shock flicker across his features—a silent whoa—and then, almost immediately, his determined attempt to hide it. He placed an arm around her shoulders, resolutely steering her through the crowd. “C’mon. Let’s get you back to the library. Move over there, would you? Coming through.”

It took them ten minutes to walk back up the dark road. As soon as they were out of the center of town, away from the crowds, Alice stepped out of the shelter of his arm and took herself to the side of the road. “You’re very kind. But you really don’t need to.”

“It’s fine. Got almost no sense of smell anyway. First horse I ever broke caught me in the nose with a back foot and I’ve never been the same since.”

She knew he was lying, but it was kind and she shot him a rueful smile. “I couldn’t see for sure, but I think it was a skunk. It just stopped in front of me and—”

“Oh, it was a skunk all right.” He was trying not to laugh.

Alice stared at him, her cheeks flaming. She thought she might actually burst into tears, but something in his expression felled her and, to her surprise, she began to laugh instead.

“Worst thing ever, huh?”

“Truthfully? Not even close.”

“Well, now I’m intrigued. So what was the worst?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Two skunks?”

“You have to stop laughing at me, Mr. Guisler.”

“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Van Cleve. It’s just so unlikely—a girl like you, so pretty and refined and all . . . and that smell . . .”

“You’re not really helping.”

“I’m sorry. Look, come to my house before you go to the library. I can find you some fresh clothes so you can at least get home without causing a commotion.”

* * *

• • •

They walked in silence the last hundred yards, peeling off the main road up the track to Fred Guisler’s house, which, being behind the library and set back from the road, Alice realized she had barely registered until now. There was a light on in the porch and she followed him up the wooden steps, glancing left to where, a hundred yards away, the library light was still on, only visible from this side of the road through a tiny crack in the door. She pictured Sophia in there, hard at work stitching new books out of old, humming along to the music, and then he opened the door and stood back to let her in.

Men who lived alone around Baileyville, as far as she could make out, lived rough lives, their cabins functional and sparsely furnished, their habits basic and hygiene often questionable. Fred’s house had sanded wood floors, waxed and burnished through years of use; a rocker sat in a corner, a blue rag rug in front of it, and a large brass lamp cast a soft glow over a shelf of books. Pictures lined the wall and an upholstered chair stood opposite, with a view out over the rear of the building and Fred’s large barn full of horses. The gramophone was on a highly polished mahogany table and an intricate old quilt lay neatly folded to its side. “But this is beautiful!” she said, realizing as she did the insult in her words.

He didn’t seem to catch it. “Not all my work,” he said. “But I try to keep it nice. Hold on.”

She felt bad, bringing this stench into his sweet-smelling, comfortable home. She crossed her arms and winced as he jogged upstairs, as if that could contain the odor. He was back in minutes, with two dresses across his arm. “One of these should fit.”

She looked up at him. “You have dresses?”

“They were my wife’s.”

She blinked.

“Hand me your clothes out and I’ll douse them in vinegar. That’ll help. When you take them home get Annie to put some baking soda into the washtub with the soap. Oh, and there’s a clean washcloth on the stand.”

She turned and he gestured toward a bathroom, which she entered. She stripped down, pushed her clothes out through a gap in the door, then washed her face and hands, scrubbing at her skin with the washcloth and lye soap. The acrid smell refused to dissipate; in the confines of the warm little room, it almost made her gag and she scrubbed as hard as she could without actually removing a layer of skin. As an afterthought she poured a jug of water over her head, rubbing at her hair with soap and rinsing it, then rough drying it with a towel. Finally she slipped into the green dress. It was what her mother would have called a tea-dress, short-sleeved and floral with a white lace collar, a little loose around the waist, but at least it smelled clean. There was a bottle of scent on top of a cabinet. She sniffed it, then sprayed a little on her wet hair.

She emerged some minutes later to find Fred standing by the window looking down at the illuminated town square. He turned, his mind clearly lost elsewhere, and perhaps because of his wife’s dress, he seemed suddenly shaken. He recovered himself swiftly and handed her a glass of iced tea. “Thought you might need this.”