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That won him a full smile. With teeth. His heart soared. His chest filled as if beautiful, warm light was pouring through him. Oh god, he really did love her, didn’t he? What had taken him so long to accept it?
He reached in his pocket and removed the ring his grandfather sent him from Europe. “This I requested. From my other family, who it turns out I misjudged as well. I’ve been on a bit of an apology tour.” He tugged at his hair. “This one is the most important one.”
Amalia didn’t say anything. She just stared at the small, plain gold band that used to be his grandmother’s, her grayish eyes wide.
“You don’t have to take it. It’s your choice.” It truly was. It had to be mutual. “I’ll understand if you don’t—coverture and the potential for being an abandoned wife and all. We can be part of a family some other way. That’s the advantage of me being a radical and all.”
She threw him another smile that rivaled the brightest sunshine and giggled a little. “I do enjoy that about you. For some odd reason it makes me, well...we’ll have that discussion when my mother and Isaac aren’t in the other room.” Amalia reached up and wiped something from his eye. “I love you, have always loved you, and just want to find a way to be with you, but so neither of us is at a disadvantage, where neither of us has to change too much. I want us to build a world together, not fit into each other’s, to be a family, no matter what we call it.”
Her hands shook so hard he had to clasp them in his again. He rubbed them with his. “I want that too. I love you, Amalia, for who you really are, how you argue and push and challenge me. How you try to make the world a better place but still remind me to laugh and enjoy a good cup of coffee and watching you in a pretty gown. And more, I love who I am with you. How you make each day better and easier. And I want the whole world to know that. I want to be able to call you my wife.”
“Really?” she whispered.
“Really.” And he’d do his darnedest to show he meant that.
“Oh good, because I want that too.” She ran a hand through his hair, searching his eyes. “You’d be willing to be husband number three?”
“I’d be honored.” In any way, in any story.
She wrinkled her nose. “That feels like such a dubious title.”
“I like it. It’s a bit risqué. I feel like that Italian fellow your brother and Will discussed. What’s his name?” David kissed the back of her hand once more, a million lustful thoughts already sprouting in his head. “Casanova. That’s the one.”
“Rabbi Casanova. Scandalous.” Amalia snickered at her own joke. “You really are going to challenge me for the ‘naughty’ title, aren’t you?” She scooted onto his lap and wrapped an arm around his neck, tugging him closer. He growled a little and caught her free hand, pressing a kiss onto the ribbon of skin between her glove and cuff. And licked.
She, in turn, nipped his ear, which didn’t at all make him near go mad with lust. Her mother and Isaac were leaving soon, weren’t they?
“You bet your bloomers,” he said. “Or are they knickers?” He stroked her cheek and she burrowed herself against him. He bent down and she tilted her chin up at him, those deep red lips, so tempting. He brushed them with his, just a little, before pulling back. “But yes, I will compete with you for that, every day for the rest of our lives.”
“Good,” she said and before he could respond she was kissing him right back, with all the passion and joy and love he could ever want. Oh yes, she was the best kind of trouble, and he’d enjoy every moment of it.
* * *
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Author’s Note
As in all my books, for Dalliances & Devotion, I blended history and fiction, taking occasional liberties. Much of the historical detail is grounded in fact, but modified for the story. Rabbi David Einhorn, Rabbi Sabato Morais, General Gouverneur K. Warren, Lieutenant Charles Hazlett, and Lieutenant Benjamin Rittenhouse were all real people. Bedford Springs most certainly existed and still exists, under different ownership. As for the springs, visitors have to test those for themselves.
One of the interesting thoughts I had while writing Dalliances & Devotion, comparing it to Appetites & Vices, the first in the series, is how this book has very little anti-Semitism on the page, and yet, anti-Semitism didn’t decrease between 1841 and 1871.
One can attribute some of that difference to power dynamics. Appetites & Vices takes place in mostly non-Jewish spaces with more non-Jewish than Jewish characters in speaking roles. Dalliances & Devotion is the opposite.
Further, Appetites & Vices takes place at an earlier time, when people like the fictional Ursula Nunes worked to build the foundation for an American Jewish community, a community with a plethora of institutions where Jewish identity can be celebrated while still being part of the larger American community—something that had not truly existed anywhere else for some time. While in Dalliances & Devotion, those efforts are beginning to bear fruit.
As David and Amalia discuss, America is different for Jews. It permitted rights and privileges much earlier than Europe and in more expansive ways than the former Ottoman Empire.
It was never perfect. As alluded to in the book, many scary anti-Semitic incidents occurred, not the least of which was General Ulysses S. Grant seeking to expel Jews from certain areas of the north during the Civil War. The measure was stopped by Abraham Lincoln and there was a backlash.
Grant spent quite a bit of his career apologizing. He also carried a significant majority of the Jewish vote in both his presidential elections and appointed several Jews to cabinet positions. Something that almost certainly would not have occurred anywhere in Europe during that time period.
And yet, at the same time, the Ku Klux Klan formed, there were sustained attacks on the ability of black men to vote, and Andrew King proposed a constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriage.
When I was drafting this book, two events occurred. First, a pipe bomb was delivered to Jewish philanthropist and Holocaust survivor George Soros’s home as part of a series of terroristic attacks primarily targeting elected democratic leaders. Soros has spent most of his adult life and considerable fortune promoting causes like human rights, public health, and freedom of the press—trying to make the world a better place for all people. Much like the real Nathan Mayer Rothschild and the fictional Ursula Nunes, he has been the relentless target of anti-Semitic caricatures and threats.
Five days after the assassination attempt on George Soros, twelve Jews were murdered in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Though common throughout history in other parts of the world, this was the first successful synagogue attack in the United States. In this case, the members of the Tree of Life Synagogue were targeted not only because they were Jews, but because the shooter resented the work of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS.
