“Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like some help?” she asked Mr.Taylor again. He had both leather travel cases tucked under his arms.
“You concentrate on walking.” He frowned at her linen boots. “Those shoes look like more trouble than they’re worth.”
The minister led the way, muttering what sounded more like complaints and curses than prayers for their safe arrival. The two boys from the roof darted about in the fields, playing tag and whooping it up. Meanwhile, the lady’s maid and the elderly woman brought up the rear, convinced they were about to be hunted down like foxes by highwaymen.
“Would you say this is your worst day ever?” Lizzy asked him. “It seems to be the case for everyone else on this road at the moment.”
“What? That wheel back there?” Mr.Taylor made a wry face. “Nah, a minor inconvenience at best. My legs were cramped. A walk feels good.” He adjusted the portmanteaus for balance. “As a matter of fact, this is what I’d call a good day.”
“A bold claim. Why would that be?”
“I don’t like to sit and worry. Moving feels good. Feels like we’re doing something, even though I don’t know what that something is.”
She nodded. “I’m like that too. Sitting and waiting and hoping for a change? I’ve done that long enough.”
“And there’s the matter of the company. It’s not half bad.”
“Oh.” She pointed at herself. “Is that meant to mean me?”
“You? You’re a pain. I meant the nose-picker and the snorer. They were great. Life of the party.”
Her mouth turned up despite herself.
“I suppose I should work on getting to know you better, seeing as you are about to become my husband.”
“That’s up to you,” he said. “I know plenty of married folks that don’t know anything about the other. My parents, for example. I bet if you asked my dad what my mom’s favorite color is, he wouldn’t have a clue. Her middle name? Favorite food? They’vebeen married thirty years, and I’d bet real money he couldn’t tell you.”
“That’s horrible.” Her heart ached at the thought.
“He likes getting taken care of, and she likes doing the caring. It’s not how I ever want to be.”
“Lavender,” she said.
“What?”
“Lavender is my favorite color,” she answered simply. “And to be specific, not the color they use for dresses or ribbons. It’s close but it’s never quite right. I mean the color of a lavender sprig plucked right from the bush. Someday—”
“When you’re a widow,” he said, finishing her thought.
“Yes, exactly. I want to have a field of lavender. I’ll go out in it at sunset and sit and write and never have to talk to another person if I don’t feel like doing so.”
“What’s your middle name?”
“Oh no, no, no.” A nervous laugh escaped her. “I prefer not to say.”
“Well, now you have to.”
“I don’t have to do anything of the sort. You may guess. But I’ll not do it of my own free will.”
“Mary?” he ventured, his eyes narrowed in thought.
She made a face. “Far too easy and common. No, of course not.”
“Penelope, Mabel, Scarlet, Josephine,” he rattled off.
“No, no, no, and no.”
He shrugged, a hint of discomfort in the motion. “Favorite food?”
