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of the city you were in: manure and garbage, dust and cooking food. “How can I leave a damsel in distress?”
    “With some luck, you can find a white knight to save us.”
    “Mr. Devlin,” I said, turning to face him. “You must believe me when I tell you that I expect nothing from you. You’re very good to want to help, but there’s . . . there’s no need. Please tell me you understand me.”
    Awareness dawned in his gray-green eyes. “My mother’s said something to you.”
    I looked away, toward an elm tree, the shadow of a squirrel racing crazily up its trunk. “Our parents . . .” I could not say more. I would not cry. Not in front of him. “Things are no longer what they were; you must know that. There’s no more Knox’s Clothing Emporium. There’s nothing at all.”
    “What if I told you that didn’t matter to me?”
    “Patrick,”
I said, his Christian name slipping out, what I’d called him always, the boy I’d once known. “I understand you might feel some obligation. Please let me release you from it. You don’t have to pretend.”
    “I’m not pretending,” he said. “I’ve loved you for some time, Grace. How could you not know that? All I’ve been doing is waiting for you.”
    I felt fluttery and weak-kneed; Patrick’s words pierced my heart and stayed there.
    “That can’t be true,” I whispered.
    He stepped toward me, taking my arms, a loose hold, easy to break free if I’d wished it; but just then I didn’t. “It’s true. My mother will tell you so. Nearly every letter I wrote asked after you. I was afraid I’d return too late, that someone else would steal you away.”
    “We hardly know each other—”
    “‘And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest,’” he quoted. “Do you remember?”
    “That’s Percy Shelley.”
    He nodded. “‘I want to be that sky-lark,’ you told me once. ‘To fly ever higher and sing the entire way.’”
    We’d been in this very park. Aidan and Patrick and me. Clouds skimming across a summer sky, and a breeze laden with the scents of mown grass and melting sugar from the confectioner’s on the corner. “I . . . I can’t believe you remember that.”
    “It left an impression,” he said. “Everything you said. I think I know you, Grace. But I begin to wonder if perhaps you don’t quite know me.”
    “You were always Aidan’s friend.”
    “And yours too.”
    “We were children then.”
    “You speak as if you’re a hundred years old instead of just sixteen.”
    “Seventeen,” I corrected distractedly. “In a month.”
    “Seventeen,” he echoed. “June fourteenth.”
    He knew my birthday too. “This is a dream, isn’t it? Pinch me so I wake up.”
    “Do you really want to wake from something so pleasant?”
    “How do you know I find it pleasant?”
    He grinned. “Because you haven’t tried to pull away.”
    “Oh! Oh, I . . .”
    “Don’t pull away, Grace,” he said in a low, sinking voice, and I was mesmerized. I wanted to be in this garden with him forever. He was so much more than I had ever thought possible.
    Patrick reached into the pocket of his coat, drawing out a small chapbook. He pressed it into my hands. “Here. This is the book I promised you. The poet. Read it. I think you’ll like it, and I think it will tell you something about me. If you want to know it.” He paused. His gaze searched mine. “
Do
you want to know it, Grace?”
    And I heard myself saying, without thought, without hesitation, “Yes.”
    His smile was quick and blinding. “My mother plans to ask you and your mother to tea. Please say yes when she does.”
    “I will,” I promised.
    “Thank you.” The relief in his voice surprised me. As had everything else about this night. How fast this was. How very fast.
    Patrick offered his arm. “Can I escort you back inside before they begin to miss us?”
    I nodded. But he didn’t move. When I glanced up at him, his eyes were dark. His gaze slid to my mouth. I