haze of smoke from fireplaces hung at roof level. It had been a gray day, and was a black night, with a thick bank of clouds obscuring the moon and the stars. They walked in silence, holding hands, enjoying each other’s company. They strolled past the public jail, and the Coke Garrett House at the corner of Nicholson and Waller. Candles flickered in the windows of Campbell’s Tavern.
“That would be a nice place for a wedding,” Pat said, pointing to the tavern. As soon as he said it, he stopped dead in his tracks. “Oh, damn, now they’ve got me doing it!”
Megan huddled deeper into her coat. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Do you?”
“No!” she practically shouted. If they talked about it, they’d have to
They followed the dirt path that led around the Capitol building. Oxen lowed not far off, and Megan wondered where the oxen and horses were stabled for the night. She liked animals. When she settled down she was going to have a whole passel of them. One of everything.A dog, a cat, a horse, a rhinoceros.
There was a horse on her rented farm, but she didn’t get to see much of it. It kept to itself in the far reaches of the pasture or hid in the barn. Its owner came regularly to feed and groom it, but she never rode it. Megan didn’t know much about horses, but this one looked sluggish and obese, with a big barrel belly and sleepy eyes.
“Do you know anything about horses?” she asked Pat.
“I know one when I see one.”
She linked her arm through his. “There’s this horse living in my barn.”
“I’ve seen it from a distance.”
“There’s something odd about it. I don’t think it feels well, and it looks much too fat. Someday I’m going to have a horse, and I’m going to keep him nice and sleek.”
Pat couldn’t help wondering if she intended to have children riding on this sleek horse. And did she expect those children to be his? She didn’t want to discuss their trumped up wedding, but she wasn’t denying it as a possibility, either. He suspected they were both struggling through the twilight zone of self doubt, coming at the problem from opposite ends. Something in her past had turned her against marriage, and many things in his future gave him cause for concern.
He watched the bobbing lights of a Lanthorn tour making its way down Duke of Gloucester Street and slipped his arm around Megan’s shoulders. He was reluctant to start a conversation that might provoke questions he’d rather not answer just then, but his curiosity was getting the better of him.
“Megan Murphy, why are you against marriage?”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about this.”
“We’re not going to talk about
“I’m not against marriage,” she said. “I think marriage is great. It’s just not great for me.”
“Is this a recent decision? Do I detect a broken heart hanging in your closet?”
“How do you know about my closet? Have you been snooping?”
Pat stopped in front of the apothecary shop and faced her. “It’s an expression, Megan. Just an expression. What the devil have you got in your closet, anyway?”
“Never mind about my closet.” She tipped her face up into the cold air and walked away from him. “And I don’t have a broken heart,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ve been engaged three times, and I didn’t love any of them enough to get a broken heart. Maybe it got a little cracked and shrunken, but it never broke.”
Pat had to jog to catch her. “Three times?”
“Probably we shouldn’t count the first time. I was five years old, and I got engaged to Jimmy Fee. Two weeks later I caught him carrying Mary Lee Barnard’s lunch box for her. It’s just that it set a precedent.”
Was she serious? he wondered. A precedent at five years old? He was in love with a crazy person.
“My senior year in college,” she went on, “I got engaged to Steve. I didn’t really want to get married, and I especially didn’t want to get married to Steve, but my parents kept pushing.
“There was this philosophy in my house that a girl went to college to catch a husband. If you didn’t get him by the time you graduated, you were destined for spinsterhood and you’d wasted your parents’ hard – earned money on a mere education.
“I can’t even remember how it happened, but suddenly I was engaged. Fortunately, Steve realized his error and skipped town. Took the ring off my finger one day when I fell asleep in the library and left me a note saying he was joining the foreign legion.
“Then there was Dave. My parents thought Dave was the best thing since macaroni. Dave wasn’t really such a bad guy. It’s just that he was in love with my parents, not me. He liked my mom’s cooking and my dad’s choice of television shows.
“We got all the way to the altar. I stood there in my white satin gown with twelve hundred seed pearls embroidered on the bodice, in front of an audience of two hundred friends and relatives, and I turned to Dave and wondered what on earth I was doing there. Dave looked at me, then walked down the aisle and out of the church. Two days later he came over to the house to apologize and watch the ball game with my dad.”
“Are you making this up?” Pat asked.
Her eyes filled with tears. “It was awful.”
He gathered her into his arms and held her close, not knowing what to say. The thought of Megan’s being left at the altar made his stomach contract into painful knots. He stroked her silky red hair and rested his chin against her head. He wanted to ask her to marry him. He wanted to ask her to come live in his little cottage, where he could keep her safe and secure and loved, but he was afraid of committing the very crime he wanted to prevent. He was afraid he’d hurt her. He wasn’t going to make a very good husband for the next two years.
What were the alternatives? Break off with her? He’d sooner chop off an arm or a leg. A prolonged engagement? If things didn’t work out it would be the third time she’d had to give back a ring. He couldn’t do that to her. Live together? Nope. He was a pediatrician in a small town. He had to set an example. They could be friends. They could have a long, old fashioned courtship. He sighed. They were way past courtship. “Oh, hell.”
She snuggled into him. “Don’t worry about Dave. I’m fine now. It all worked out for the best.”
“Damn right. If you’d married Dave, I’d have to eat all those turkey leftovers by myself.”
Megan pulled away. She slid her hand into his and started down Duke of Gloucester Street. He was a slippery one, she thought. He was a master at extricating himself from tender moments. They’d talked about her past, but they hadn’t talked about his. She was beginning to wonder how many women Patrick Hunter had left at the altar.
“You ever been engaged?”
“Nope.”
A horrible possibility flashed through her mind. “You ever been married?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “No time. No money.” He squeezed her hand. “No Megan.”
“Hmmm.”
“There’s that ‘hmmm’ again. Am I in trouble?”
