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high since the war, and my little income is hardly enough to cover it all.”
    “At least I’m not alone in my predicament.”
    “No. There’s a hundred in the same boat with you. Regrettably, few of them are desperate enough to marry a viper-tongued wench.”
    When Lady Kirwan awoke from her afternoon nap, she greeted Mr. Mochrie and pressed him to stay for dinner. “My neighbor below stairs thanks you,” he said with a bow.
    “Why should he?” David Mochrie could always make her laugh.
    “I’ve been cadging dinners off him for the past three nights. He knows when my quarter-day pay rolls in I’ll repay him twice over, but three nights in a row is a bit far to stretch anyone’s good fellowship.”
    “Not ours,” Lady Kirwan said. “I hope you’ll dine with us whenever it pleases you. There is always room at this table for friends of Nick’s,”
    “You’ll see a lot of me here,” he said, inhaling the steam spiraling up from the soup. “Especially if you give me such wonderful things to eat.”
    Nick admitted that David earned his soup. He kept up a stream of jokes, gossip, and inconsequential chatter that kept his mother laughing and even caused Emma to look up and give a slight, watery smile. Nick was distressed to see by her swollen eyes and red nose that she had been crying.
    When Lady Kirwan took David outside to hold her basket while she cut some roses, Nick sought Emma. He found her in the morning room, sewing desultorily at a worn sock. When he touched it to admire the work, he found it damp, as if she’d dabbed at her tears with it.
    “I suppose,” she said with a sniffle, “that Mother has told you all about it.”
    “Something of it.”
    “No doubt she’s shown Robbie in the worst possible light.”
    “I wouldn’t say that.”
    “Oh, I don’t blame her. He hasn’t always been wise in the things he’s done. He’s often played the fool. But I believe he can change. He’s promised me that he will.”
    “His family doesn’t seem to believe it. Why else would they send him so far away?”
    Emma’s chin trembled as she tried to keep from breaking down again. “He doesn’t mind that. He’s even glad of it. You don’t know what it has been like for him, living here. Everyone knows that he hasn’t been a satisfactory son and sometimes it is as if everyone in the world has heard the gossip about that girl from Westport.”
    “You defend him very ably.”
    “I just don’t understand why people can’t be fair. How can he prove himself a changed man if no one will give him a chance? They all look at him as if just waiting for him to make another mistake. He’s not the kind of man who can stand up under that.”
    “And you think he’ll be more likely to change his manner of living in Boston?”
    “Isn’t that what a colony is for? A place where people prove themselves?”
    “I doubt our American cousins would describe their nation in just those terms, but there is some justice in what you say.”
    He touched her hot cheek. “But if Robbie’s going to America, what comes to you?”
    “He promises he’ll send for me as soon as he has the money. If only I had it right now. I’d go with him. You see, I know him so well ... he’s not strong like you are. He means to be but he loses his head when he’s in company. He spends too much time and money on that lot of sluggards who call themselves his friends. But are they at his side when he needs help? Not they. But if I’m with him, I can help him.”
    Nick shook his head slowly and Emma grasped his sleeve. “He’s not a bad man,” she said with a tight desperation in her voice. “There’s such sweetness and even poetry in him. He’s almost like a boy, a boy who needs my help and guidance. If I let him go to America alone, I daren’t think what trouble he’ll get into. He’s sure to fall in with bad companions. But if I were there, too, to work with him, to plan with him, I know he’ll be respectable and happy.”
    He