They are up in the boys’ bedroom. Asia’s lying on John’s empty bed with Edwin’s pillow under her head, watching as Edwin packs. He’s recently been in Boston (where Louisa May Alcott saw him perform and liked him better than his father) and is now headed for New York.

After the years of larking about in California, Edwin has gotten more serious. He has a manager, Benjamin Baker, or Uncle Ben, as he likes to be called. Uncle Ben has great plans (and, it will turn out, sticky fingers). But all Edwin knows now is that he’s managed to book a two-week run at Burton’s Theatre.

Out in the dark, it’s raining hard, a spring rain, the thunder loud and close, the lightning in glaring sheets. Lear weather.

Two lamps are lit in the bedroom but their light doesn’t reach the corners. Periodically the window blazes, sharp and dazzling, followed by a drum roll of thunder and a purple square of afterimage. Edwin remembers Coleridge’s line about reading Shakespeare by lightning flashes.

Asia is telling him about an acquaintance, a Colonel Green who claims to be married, but Asia thinks he’s not. She is laying out her evidence. First off: the state of his collars.

Edwin has never met Colonel Green and isn’t listening. He’s thinking about a girl. A few months back, during his Richmond engagement, a sixteen-year-old named Mary Devlin had played Juliet to his Romeo, Katherine to his Petruchio. At her young age, she was already a professional—a member of the John Ford’s Marshall Theatre company, brown-haired and brown-eyed, not beautiful, but pretty and soft-spoken. She’d only recently acted with the great Edwin Forrest, and yet she’d said she could have acted with Edwin Booth forever. They read each other’s minds. It was a dance.

Edwin had been flattered by the implied besting of the man he was named for. He’d liked the way she allowed herself to be led. His usual leading lady was much older and much more experienced than he. These accomplished actresses hit their marks, achieved their moments. His job was to keep up.

Mary Devlin was unspoiled and charming. Yet an attempt on his part to nudge the relationship forward had been sweetly but cleanly rebuffed. She had genuine suitors and he’d had no serious intent. Quite the opposite. Never would he marry an actress!

Probably he wouldn’t marry at all. I will live and die an old maid, he thought experimentally, just to see how it felt. If Rosalie can do it, why not Edwin? They can slide into their dotage together.