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finality of it had the same intensity as the closure of a coffin.
    “No?” she repeated.
    He took her hand.
    “I think announcing our engagement at such a public event is a mistake. You’re right, I should have convinced you to tell months ago, but it was wrong of me to not go through the pretense of asking Mr. Forrest for your hand. I want to do this the time-honored way and ask for you.”
    “That just adds more time to everything! I don’t want to wait any longer.”
    “Somerset, your pedigree could be fancier but with little chance. The letter of the law matters a great deal at Orchard Rest, whether you want to believe it or not.”
    “No one will be surprised if we announce it tonight,” pleaded Somerset. “We’ve been courting for a long time now. Everyone knows you escort me to functions. My family will be happy that I’m engaged.”
    “They will be happy, but we need to do this the proper way. Openly flouting tradition under their roof is not the way I’m going to begin a new relationship with them.”
    “I don’t want to—”
    Sawyer placed a finger over her lips.
    “Shh. Trust me. You’ll be relieved at the way things work out if we don’t announce this tonight.”
    Sawyer raised his eyes again to meet hers and they looked miserable. Somerset choked back everything she needed to say.
    “I’m going around the house to use the front door like a decent man. You go back through the window if no one is in the room.”
    He squeezed her fist and strode back down the portico with his quick and easy gait.
    ***
    Blanche later said supper was her most successful postwar function yet. Somerset knew it was because she had not been her usual vivacious self, and Joseph, worried for her, had been quieter than usual. For once Blanche had a table of her children behaving as she wished, and she was elated that Dr. Harlow’s son, Holt, seemed to take interest in Victoria, who had difficulty attracting a beau of her own.
    The only thing that mattered to Somerset was that she caught up with Sawyer as he left the library after port with Joseph and her papa. She found him in the foyer just before the clock struck nine. She was mindful that Bess or Tuck could come by as they cleared the dining room.
    “You’ll meet me?” she implored.
    “Yes,” he said, indecision enveloping the word. He put on his hat and did not meet her gaze.
    Somerset opened her mouth to tell him she loved him but he was gone.
    ***

Chapter 3
    Waiting for Fairlee’s arrival made for an interminable week. Joseph had Jim help him dress in the same two shirts and pants over and over again and asked Somerset and Victoria which suited him better as often as he changed. When he wasn’t wearing Jim out over his lack of wardrobe, he sat on the porch with a glass of whiskey, rereading the telegram and calling to anyone passing through the front parlor about current train schedules. Victoria, nerves spent but too polite to say so, took Warren to the peach grove behind the house and spent entire days filling cane baskets even though she despised the work of preserving them. Somerset was too preoccupied with Sawyer’s sudden evasive behavior to be bothered by Joseph, and everyone else was too tired to notice her lack of appetite and moodiness. Blanche had hoped for matrimony during Fairlee’s visit, but, realizing that the happy couple might ask to live at Orchard Rest, she changed her mind and wished instead that Joseph would be well enough to leave the plantation soon of his own accord.
    On the day before Fairlee’s arrival, Dr. Harlow came to see Joseph’s leg and declared the infection was starting to subside. He tsk ed over it several times as he cleaned the viscous custard drainage and said that it was too soon to be putting his full weight upon it. He added that he certainly couldn’t go about normal activities for at least a month. Joseph railed against the instructions as fiercely as he had battled the notion of losing his limb, and Dr.