“This is not rumor, it is direct from Broughton Street!”

“Those in the very eye of the storm cannot see when it is passing. Now, come. I love you for being concerned for me, but I am going only for a day or so, three at most, and I have had word that the worst of the fever is over. I shall do what I go to do. I shall keep clear of the danger, if there still is any. And I shall return, and we shall smile over this anxiety together, you and I.”

“The letter said—oh, it sounds so very dreadful, Adam—that the gas works had failed from the hurricane, and the city was in darkness.”

“I shall do my work only in daylight hours.”

“Don’t make fun of me—”

“That I do not, and never shall do. Rachel, I don’t think you foolish, dearest love—but only a little overanxious—because I am your dearest love. But I shall go.”

“Adam! I want, I want—”

He pulled her to him and closed her mouth with his.

13

Lauretta fretted with a piece of embroidery as she sat on the porch between Nell and Penelope, who had gone to sleep slumped in their rocking chairs. It was the worst time of day: the middle of the afternoon. Rain was needed. Trees and grass looked heavy and dull with dust, and the air was thick with dust motes. Pursing her lips, Lauretta looked down at her piece of embroidery and decided that she had used the wrong shade of thread for the bird’s breast feathers. She disengaged the circular wooden hoops that held the picture tracing taut, managing to drop one of the hoops which bounced lightly on the floor before rolling off the porch into the yard. She would have cursed but that she did not wish to wake her companions. Her solicitude was not, however, for them; it was for herself. She had nothing ready to say to them, no smile to warm their chill boredom. She rose from her chair silently and tiptoed until she was safely in the yard.

She found the vagrant hoop easily enough and slipped it over her hand and wrist. It was like a bracelet, only too large. She pushed it up on the sleeve of her dress where it held for a moment and then dropped down. Safely out of sight of the porch now, she sailed the silly hoop through the air, watching with satisfaction as it landed in a rose bush, shaking petals loose from an overblown rose, abjectly surrendering to the end of summer. Let someone find it there and wonder what in hell’s name it was! Two embroidery hoops were easy enough to identify, fitting as they did neatly one inside the other. But one hoop needed explaining, provided a puzzle.