“I shall not hold that against you, so long as you do not mind that I am a lawyer. Not, I hasten to say, a successful one, because I like to think of the law as my amusement rather than as my profession, by which I mean that I do a little probate work when it is plainly unavoidable.” Delaney was being deliberately modest, for his flourishing practice was being nurtured by an acute political sensibility and an almost Jesuitical discretion. Belvedere Delaney did not believe in airing his clients’ dirty linen in open court and thus did his subtle work in the quiet back rooms of the Capitol Building, or in the city’s dining clubs or in the elegant drawing rooms of the big houses on Grace Street and Clay Street. He was privy to the secrets of half Virginia’s lawmakers and was reckoned to be a rising power in the Virginian capital. He told Starbuck that he had met Thaddeus Bird at the University of Virginia and that the two men had been friends ever since. “You shall both come and have dinner with me,” Delaney insisted.

“On the contrary,” Bird said, “you shall have dinner with me.”

“My dear Bird!” Delaney pretended horror. “I cannot afford to eat on a country schoolmaster’s salary! The horrors of secession have stirred my appetites, and my delicate constitution requires only the richest of foods and the finest of wines. No, no! You shall eat with me, as will you, Mister Starbuck, for I am determined to hear all your father’s secret faults. Does he drink? Does he consort with evil women in the vestry? Reassure me on these matters, I beg you.”

“You shall dine with me,” Bird insisted, “and you will have the finest wine in the Spotswood’s cellars because, my dear Bird, it is not I who shall pay, but Washington Faulconer.”

“We are to eat on Faulconer’s account?” Delaney asked in delight.

“We are indeed,” Bird answered with relish.

“Then my business with Shaffer’s will wait for the morrow. Lead me to the trough! Lead on, dear Bird, lead on! Let us make gluttons of ourselves, let us redefine greed, let us consume comestibles as they have never been consumed before, let us wallow in the wines of France, and let us gossip. Above all, let us have gossip.”

“I’m supposed to be buying petticoats,” Starbuck demurred.

“I suspect you look better in trousers,” Delaney said sternly, “and besides, petticoats, like duty, can wait till the morrow. Pleasure summons us, Starbuck, pleasure summons us, let us surrender to its call.”

Seven Springs, Washington...