“I’ve a carriage for us just here.” Martin leads us to an ebony-hued buggy hitched to an even blacker horse that waits curbside. The driver opens the door for me and I step inside. Martin climbs in to sit across from me.

As the carriage begins to move, he asks if my travel was acceptable.

“Yes, thank you. It was.”

He nods.

“Is Kat waiting for us to return after . . . after our errand?” I ask.

“Yes.”

And then, because I must, I ask Martin if he has changed his mind about anything we’d agreed upon in our previous correspondence.

“I have not,” he replies. “Have you?”

“No.”

“Then we’re settled.”

“Yes.”

And then, since we are apparently all set, Martin casts his gaze out the carriage window.

I had expected nervous conversation in the carriage or a string of questions politely thrown in my direction or perhaps a steady stream of information from him about his daughter or maybe even his dead wife. But Martin doesn’t speak as the carriage makes its way to the courthouse. Perhaps he is shy around women? Or maybe he is choosing to mask any nervousness with silence, just as I am. Some minutes later the carriage comes to a stop.

“You can leave your travel bag,” Martin says as he reaches for the handle. “The driver is going to wait.” Martin steps out and then assists me. The combined courthouse and city hall looms in front of us like an opulent palace, with great columns of carved marble and a sparkling dome that is half-blanketed in light mist and twilight.

Inside, we walk swiftly through the echoing foyer and toward the offices of the justice of the peace, the heels of my shoes clicking on the marble flooring.

We enter a courtroom where another civil ceremony appears to have just concluded. The black-robed judge, graying and portly, is shuffling papers behind his tall desk, and at a table next to him a woman in a dark blue dress is showing the newlywed couple’s witnesses where to sign the certificate of marriage. A photographer is taking a portrait of the bride and groom. The bride is wearing a canary yellow shirtwaist, and her new husband a gray suit the color of thunderclouds. The two of them look like sunshine and rain, but they are beaming—joyful and clearly in love. A trio of lilies rests in the crook of the woman’s arm.

“Next couple, please?” The clerk of the court—a lean, bespectacled man—looks past the freshly married couple to where we stand. “Mr. Hocking and Miss Whelan?”

“Yes, we’re here.” Martin reaches for my hand and leads me forward to stand in front of the justice’s immense oaken desk.

“Stand right here,” the clerk says. “If you have rings, get them ready. The judge will address you in just a moment.”

“Thank you,” Martin replies, without a hint of uneasiness.

“No witnesses of your own?” the clerk asks in a bored tone.

“No. It’s just us.”