Collis, smiling, glanced at Hannah again and took her hand. She looked prettier than ever in the reflected sunlight of noon, proud and elegant and strong. He thought to himself as he caressed her fingers, and the new gold band which he had given her only an hour ago: I don’t know you yet, Mrs Edmonds. I don’t know you at all. But I feel sure that I’m going to find out.

He looked across the table, across the silverware and candles and decanters of wine, and caught Theodore’s eye. Theodore held his gaze for a moment, and then deliberately turned away.

His rooms on J Street he had never really thought of as home, until tonight. His landlord’s wife, an impossibly talkative woman who always wore an old-style Shaker bonnet, year in, year out, inside the house or out, had ‘prettified’ the sitting-room and the bedroom for him and his bride, with fresh flowers and wax polish, and put up a rather depressing print of Daniel Boone leading settlers through the Cumberland Gap, which she and her husband had given to Collis as a wedding gift.

Collis carried Hannah over the threshold, and set her down, a little short of breath, on the sofa. She smiled and reached up her arms for him, and he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

‘Well, Mrs Collis Edmonds,’ he said.

‘Well, Mr Collis Edmonds,’ she answered him.

He sat down beside her. ‘Would you care for a sherry? Or I could ask Mrs Hawkins to bring up some tea.’

Hannah shook her head. ‘Right now, my darling, the only refreshment I need is you.’

He kissed her again. ‘If all your talk for all the years of our marriage is going to be as pretty as that, then I think I’m going to be happy.’

‘You think?’

He grinned. ‘I know for certain.’

He stood up and walked across to the window. Outside, on the dusty sidewalks of J Street, a group of children were playing hop-and-jump, and laughing.

‘We didn’t talk about progeny, did we?’ he asked. He turned so that she could see he was only half-serious. ‘I mean, before we decided to marry, we didn’t even give them a thought.’

She stood up, too, and walked across the patterned rug to stand beside him. She linked her arm with his, gently, as if she had been doing it for years.

‘They’ll come in time, if the Lord wills it,’ she said.

‘I was kind of surprised that you didn’t — well, that you and Walter didn’t have any. You were together for nearly two years, after all.’

She lowered her eyes. Her eyelashes shone blonde in the late sunlight. On the figured walnut table beside her, a vase of spring flowers cast a shadow like an old woman’s silhouette.

‘Walter — wasn’t very good at that kind of thing,’ she said, in a tone as soft as the sunlight.