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white tulle atop my hat was tickling Jim’s chin and he tilted his head, angling to avoid it, but it was just too much.
    “Although that hat frames a face as pretty as a picture, would you mind taking it off, my dear? The tulle is rather ticklish,” he said.
    I laughed in sheer delight and instantly complied.
    “Daisies.” Jim smiled at the silk flowers tumbling haphazardly over the brim. “You remind me of Mr. James’s Daisy Miller . ‘She was the most beautiful young lady I ever saw, and the most amiable.... She was also the most innocent.’ ”
    I smiled and sighed, “Oh, Jim!” as though it were the first time I had received this pretty compliment when in truth it must have been the thousandth; my beaus were always comparing me to the impetuous and innocent madcap Miss Miller, the free, frank, and unfettered American girl traipsing across Europe with her mother and brother in tow.
    The door opened before us and I found myself staring into a face rigid as a marble soldier’s, so frigidly strict and superior beneath its tight, smooth-lacquered mahogany-red coiffure that I felt instantly inferior, as though I had just been found guilty of the most grievous offense and was about to be stood up against a wall and shot. I blinked and blinked again, then sighed with relief. The face I now saw before me was smiling, gracious, and inviting. I must have been more tired than I realized. Or it was just a trick of the light.
    “Welcome,” she said, stepping back and ushering us into the oak-paneled entrance hall. “Welcome to Battlecrease House!”
    “Didn’t I tell you Matilda was a marvel?” Jim smiled as he set me down.
    I couldn’t answer him; the sedate opulence that surrounded me had quite stolen my voice away. I was standing on a Turkish carpet, an oriental fantasy worked in deep red and antique gold, and right beside me, within fainting distance, was a beautiful oak sofa carved with an intricate pattern of clinging vines and flowers, upholstered in deep crimson, echoing the leaf pattern of the paneling and the crimson damask covering the walls.
    In those, my first moments inside Battlecrease House, a sort of magic was at work. This was my home and I never wanted to leave it. I felt the most enchanting, wonderful contentment falling like fairy dust from the ceiling onto me, seeping through my skin straight into my soul. If a fairy had emerged from the woodwork right then and asked me my wish I would have instantly replied, To live and love here forever with Jim . No girl had ever been as lucky as me.
    Like a child on a treasure hunt, I wanted to explore every nook and cranny, but Jim’s hand was gently cupping my elbow, guiding me into the parlor.
    Here all was royal-blue and white damask rococo splendor, as though Jim and I were a pair of lovers walking right into the Blue Willow pattern. There were sofas and chairs and footstools with ball and claw feet, all upholstered with blue and white damask, rich royal-blue velvet curtains trimmed with silk bobbles, tables and cabinets of gleaming dark mahogany, and an impressive array of gold-rimmed Blue Willow china pieces on display. Presiding regally over the mantel of a fireplace set with porcelain tiles illustrating the ancient love story that had inspired the famous pattern was a beautiful statue of the Chinese Goddess of Mercy mantled in rich blue and gowned in white with a fat black-haired almond-eyed baby in her arms. And a big blue and white Buddha sat cross-legged with a lotus blossom blooming out of his outstretched palms on the tea table.
    I stood there awestruck, no doubt giving a fine imitation of a slack-jawed country yokel who had never seen the inside of a fine house before. It wasn’t that I was unaccustomed to such opulence. Far from it, I had never known anything but the finest things in life, in the various plantations, town houses, mansions, chateaux, country estates, seaside castles, baronial manors, and hotels I had stayed at throughout the