Louisa and Experience had repeated this story often—it was always whispered when Alma Curtis walked by.

I had asked, “But how long did he wait to say yes?”

Louisa had blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Did he agree right away? Or did he make her wait?” I thought of a long silence in the hall, Alma Curtis holding her breath while her husband decided her fate, the flowers on the wedding bower shivering around them. And then I laughed. “It sure was clever of her, to ask for permission in front of a crowd like that.”

I had meant it in an admiring way. I had thought, What a slick woman! in the same way that, back home, Lenore applauded the barn cats when one of them swiped the biggest fish head.

But Louisa had looked at me coolly. “What a cynic you are,” she had said. “I happen to find it romantic.”

So I had learned another rule I had gotten wrong, and every time I looked at Alma Curtis, I tried to imagine her as an agent of romance—invisible cherubs and steadfast ivy curling around her everywhere she went. Which was difficult to think of, because Alma Curtis’s broad, jaundiced, straightforward face seemed to discourage anything like that.

I thought of this as I sat at the table, watching the other girls work together to clear the plates and food. When the room was nearly empty, when it had gone from quiet to silent, Alma Curtis sat on the bench across from me.

“We must discuss your performance, Libertie,” she said with unbearable kindness. “The other deans, they were hesitant to take on a young lady in the men’s course. They were not sure if she would be able to keep up. But your mother assured us, we were all assured, that you were capable. I personally intervened with President Curtis and asked that you be placed in the men’s course. And your work, when you turn it in, is passable. So, then, what is distracting you?”

I could not exactly answer. I could only swallow and say, “I am unsure. If you would give me more time. Perhaps it is being so far from home.”

She said, “You spend an awful lot of time in the music room.”

We let this sit between us for a moment.

“Yes. Yes. You see …” I licked my lips, readying for the lie. “You see, I’ve come to a sort of conclusion.”

Alma Curtis looked at me skeptically.

“The Graces—that is, Louisa and Experience—they mentioned that President Curtis wished for them to found a chorale. In the mode of the Jubilee Singers in Tennessee.”

“Yes,” she said. “I am aware.”

“And Miss Experience,” I said. I figured the formal address would help my cause. “Miss Experience was uncertain about performing the slave songs for a different audience. For our white friends.”

Alma Curtis looked unconvinced.

“She says she would feel distressed,” I said, “to sing the slave songs in front of them.”