He said the pleasure was entirely his and kissed her hand. Her eyes went brighter. Her mother tittered.
Before the end of their first dance that evening he knew he was in love, though she would later say that he may not have known it until then but she knew he had fallen in love the minute their eyes met. Directly on the heels of his dancefloor insight, however, he had the distressing thought that she might already have a beau—or worse, be betrothed. He could not muster the boldness to ask directly if she were spoken for, and as they waltzed about the floor he was frantic for some clever way to find out.
His worry was more evident than he knew, and she intuited its cause. “If it’s of concern to anyone you know, Mr Wolfe,” she said during a dance, “I’m under no obligation to any party whatever.” He flushed in surprise at both her acuity and her candor. His relief was so manifest she nearly laughed aloud—and so endearing she had to resist the urge to kiss him right there on the dance floor.
Later in the evening they went out to the garden under an oblong ivory moon and followed a winding pathway to a low rock wall bordering the lawn. A mild breeze carried the scents of night flowers and the river, stirring the trees, swaying the shadows. The ballroom music was faint at this distance. Against the house lights filtering through the foliage she was mostly silhouette. An undulant wisp of moonlight played on her hair and glinted on an earring. He said he had heard many an interesting tale of her rowdy tomboy days with the gents of the Adventurers’ Club.
“Oh, those rascals,” she said. “They never did let me be a member, you know.” She leaned closer and said in lowered voice, “But that club was never so interesting as the one I belong to at the seminary. It’s a most clandestine association, so I mustn’t tell you anything of it unless you promise absolutely never to repeat it to a living soul.”
John Roger swore her secret was safe with him.
They were the Sisters of Fortuna, she said, and they performed such rituals as would have surely got them burned for witches not so long ago. He heard a timbre of mischief in her voice and suspected she was having sport with him, yet her daring insinuations at once amused and beguiled him. He asked what sorts of rituals.
She leaned closer still and told him the Sisters met only on nights of the full moon, in a meadow deep in the woods, even on the coldest nights. They would build a large bonfire and then remove their cloaks, under which they wore only thin white nightdresses and black woolen stockings. They would sing hymns to Fortuna and dance like dervishes in a circle round the fire, their loosed hair flinging and nightdresses awhirl.
He felt her perfumed warmth on his face, her breath at his ear as she whispered, “We dance faster and faster, and my heart just pounds against my ribs like . . . like some wild thing in a cage. And then . . .” she took a deep breath, “then we throw off our nightdresses and dance naked but for our stockings. Naked.”
She quickly drew back to look at his face—which felt to him on fire. In a bobbing shard of moonlight he glimpsed a bright eye and flash of grin. Then she kissed him full on the lips—and before he could even think to react she darted away toward the ballroom, glancing back over her shoulder and saying, “Close your mouth, Mr Wolfe, before an insect flies into it. And hurry, or we’ll miss the last dance.”
In the years ahead he would from time to time and with feigned casualness ask her if there had really been a Sisters of Fortuna sorority. And she would each time respond with no more than her smile of secret amusement.
Through the rest of the summer they saw each other every day. They went for walks along the river. They went rowing. They went riding—and yes, she rode astraddle. They went swimming with Jimmy and his latest sweetheart, a girl named Madeline Groom, whose father was a federal judge. Even in her woolen neck-to-ankle bathing outfit Elizabeth Anne easily outdistanced John Roger in a race. “Told you so,” Jimmy said. Out of earshot of the others, Elizabeth Anne said to John Roger, “How mush faster I could swim if I took off this foolish costume. Just imagine it.” He imagined it—and she smiled at the look on his face.
It came as no surprise to him that she was a fine sailor, as he learned at the Rockport estate when they went out on the Hecuba. Or that she was an ace pistolshot, having learned to shoot from Jimmy when she was thirteen. At her suggestion, the three of them spent an afternoon firing the family caplocks at a variety of small targets set upon a fence rail. When she demolished a potato from forty paces, a shot John Roger had just missed, she smiled and blew the powdersmoke from the muzzle as she’d seen trickshooters do at county fairs, then slipped the pistol into the belt of her skirt and stood with hands on hips, grinning at him.
“Humiliating, isn’t it?” Jimmy said. “Bad enough she can outswim us, but outshoot? It’s more than shameful. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to you about it till she beat you too. It’s the same with the Colt. She needs both hands just to aim that monster and still shoots it better than me. I tell you, chum, there’s something supernatural about this wench.”
She affected a ghostly apparition, wriggling the fingers of her raised hands and saying, “Woooooooo.”
They passed the evenings on the Bartlett’s porch glider, holding hands and conversing in low voice, and the next day John Roger would have poor recollection of what they had talked about, so distracted had he been by the nearness of her—and even more so by the kisses they shared at every opportunity. The first time she eased her tongue into his mouth he nearly flinched in his astonishment before going lightheaded with the thrill of it and responding in kind. When they broke for breath, she said she had never kissed anyone that way before but had heard talk of it among some of the Sisters of Fortuna. It was said to be a French innovation. Some of the Sisters had thought the idea vile but most were curious about it. Elizabeth Anne said she herself had been intrigued by it and had made a secret vow to try it sometime.
“Now that you’ve tried it,” he said, “what do you think of it?”
“What do you think I think of it?”
And they did it again. And found it was possible to smile, even giggle, while they were at it. But he was in such a state of arousal—and would be in every instance of such kissing—that he was reluctant to uncross his legs for fear that even in the dim light of the porch she might notice his condition and be repulsed by his baseness.
He proposed to her in early October, during a Bartlett dinner party on an Indian-summer evening. They went out along the moonlit riverbank and he got down on one knee. His heart heaving as much in terror that she would refuse him as with the bedazzling possibility of her acceptance. He stammered on the word “marry” and she covered her smile with her hand. Then lowered the hand to his hair and said, “Of course I will, my beloved.”
He jumped up and they kissed for a time and then rushed hand in hand up the sloping yard and into the house to make the announcement—both of them breathless, Elizabeth Anne radiant, John Roger happy and red-faced and oblivious of her lip paint on his mouth and the mud caked on his knee. The Bartletts were jubilant at the news, so too their guests. Mrs Bartlett wept as she hugged her daughter and John Roger in turn. Elizabeth Anne later joked to him that she suspected her mother’s tears were as much of relief that her errant daughter had managed to attract any husband at all as they were of joy that she had acquired such a prize as John Roger. Sebastian Bartlett pumped John Roger’s hand and welcomed him to the family. Jimmy clapped him on the shoulder and wished him luck, saying that with his sister he would surely need it, and then laughed at Elizabeth Anne’s slap to his arm. The dinner party became a celebration that lasted until dawn.