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he might continue to scout the passing faces. There was no danger in such a public place, but such habits died hard.
    “I know what you wish for, John Falconer,” Serafina told him. “I have wished that I could give it to you.”
    “You do not love me.” The words dropped from his mouth with the dull weight of frozen stones.
    “There are two issues, and both stand against us. The first is my affection, which is great for you. As great as for any I have ever known since Luca.” She stopped then. “Luca. How I screamed and cried that name aloud and in my heart. How can so much poison be held within so few letters?”
    “At least he made it possible for us to meet.” Falconer’s voice was so low she leaned forward slightly.
    Her gaze was calm, deep. A woman’s gaze, to match the loving concern within her voice. “What an awful price to pay for coming to know my dearest friend. I never thought I could thank God for such agony. But the Bible says He will sift out the gold from all our dross. And He has. Even here.”
    “You said there were two problems.”
    “Yes, dear Falconer. Even if I cared for you . . .”
    “Romantically.”
    “Even then, there would still be my parents. With God’s help, I shall never go against their will a second time. And they . . . well, you see how they are.”
    “I am not suitable.”
    Serafina remained silent in a woman’s fashion, allowing her stillness to answer for her. Then, “A part of me had hoped they would change with the passage of these weeks and months.”
    “As had I.”
    “But they have not. I shall honor them, John Falconer, in my choice of husband. After all the suffering I have caused them, I must. You see this, do you not?”
    He had so many things he wished to say. Confessions of love, yearnings for what was being denied him. All his vast strength was useless here. He felt like a hulking brute brought by some vast error of fate into an alien world. And here before him sat all that he could never claim as his own. Of course he saw. Yet just then his throat was caught in a vise grip of regret, and he could say nothing.
    Falconer rose to his feet. He opened his mouth, but the words would not come. He bowed to her, bidding farewell to all his futile dreams. Then he did the hardest thing of a hard and brutal life.
    He turned and walked away.

Chapter 4
    The Gavis’ move to their new quarters was delayed a week by a late snowstorm. Washington was an odd sort of place when it came to weather. One day seemed firmly wedded to the southern states, particularly the fiercely hot summers when the wet air clung like damp blankets to the skin. In the depths of winter a south wind could blow in several days of piercing blue sky and temperatures that had people speaking of spring in January. The next day, however, a gale could arrive from Connecticut. The wind would slice through the thickest coats. The poor of Washington suffered hard on such days. The missions were packed, and famished children flocked to the back roads where the constables did not patrol, begging for pennies.
    That week a blizzard cut Washington off from the rest of the nation. The turnpikes both north and south were shut. A ship arriving from Charleston carried the astonishing news that even the ports of Savannah and Jacksonville had been blanketed by snow. Food was growing scarce. Then suddenly the sun emerged, and within two days the snow was a memory. The city roads that were not bricked turned to bogs. Streams ran down the center of some avenues. All of Virginia’s and Maryland’s rivers broke their banks. But the sun remained strong. By week’s end some of the most hardy dogwoods were beginning to show the first buds of spring.
    The Gavis’ house stood four down from one formerly owned by Dolley Madison. Their new home, the smallest on Lafayette Square, had been erected to fit into a very narrow lot, one of the square’s last free spaces. But the stone and brick edifice held a warm artistry, a