He laughed. “You’ll have the finest house between here and Denver by the time our first baby comes, if I have anything to say about it. Maybe even one of those sent-for places Miss June-bug always talks about, with the pipes and the hot water tank.”

She loved him so much in that moment she thought she would perish from the very intensity of it, and the best part was knowing that she and Scully hadn’t even scratched the surface of what they would have together, what they could build over the years, working side by side.

Somehow, they got through supper, and through the ritual of putting Abigail to bed, attended by the wooden horse and Hortense, of course, on a cot in Jacob and June-bug’s own room. The bridal chamber was a rustic cubicle at the very back of the station, rarely used and selected, Evangeline blushed to realize, for its discreet distance from the rest of the building.

There was a single lamp burning on the bedside table when they entered, and June-bug had put crisply fresh linens on the bed and turned back the covers. There was a bouquet of colorful wildflowers next to the lamp, in a fruit-jar vase, and the window sill was raised a few inches, letting in fresh air. Even hot water had been provided; there was a bucketful steaming beside the rickety washtable, along with a basin, soap and towels.

The accommodations were simple ones, but to Evangeline, that room was as good as any they could have had in a grand Philadelphia hotel. There, she would finally give herself to Scully, for that night and for all of time. It was more than a rite of love, it was a communion of sorts, a fusion of two souls into one.

She’d had a bath before the wedding, as had Scully, but she went to the washstand anyway, and made a great business of splashing her face. Now that she was right up close to the experience she wanted so much, she was strangely shy and hesitant, just as though she were a virgin bride, and not an erstwhile widow with a six-year-old child. Needless to say, things had been very different with Charles; on their wedding night, he’d sent her to bed in her old room behind the kitchen and climbed the stairs to his own chamber without so much as pecking her on the cheek.

Scully took her gently by the shoulders, turned her around, and kissed her, first on the mouth, then on each eyelid, then each cheekbone, then along the edge of her jaw and the length of her neck. She trembled as he let down her hair.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, on a long breath.

“Could we turn out the lamp?” she asked. Her voice quavered a little.

He smiled. “No,” he answered. And just like that, he began removing her clothes, garment by garment, layer by layer, until she stood naked before him, the cool spring air raising gooseflesh. A huge silver moon peeped at them through the one high window, with its fluttering cloth curtains.