“Certainly.”
Mr. Lincoln laughed and bent to kiss her as he departed. “Poor Shields. Getting it from all sides—and both sexes. How will the poor man’s vanity stand it?”
It did not, as Mary found the next week. She was in her bedroom, secretly admiring her printed verse for about the twentieth time or so (despite her anonymity, it was a fine thing to be published), when Elizabeth knocked. “Have you heard the news about that Mr. Lincoln?”
Since Mr. Lincoln had ceased to frequent the Edwards residence, he had become “that” Mr. Lincoln. Normally this annoyed Mary, but Elizabeth’s smug look alarmed her. “What news?”
“James Shields challenged him to a duel, and he has accepted.”
“A duel? But whatever for?” She glanced at the paper in her hand. “For these?”
“Yes, for all of those insulting pieces in the Journal. They say Mr. Lincoln wrote them all.”
“He did not!”
“Mind you, I certainly don’t approve of dueling, but what was the man thinking? In Lexington he’d been challenged after the very first piece. But if he wants to be treated as a gentleman, he must settle his disputes as one. Not that Mr. Shields is exactly what I would call a gentle—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, who cares who is a gentleman? And why did Mr. Lincoln tell me nothing of this? I must see him.” She grabbed up her skirts and hurried down the stairs, not bothering to put on her bonnet.
“Wait! Are you seeing Mr. Lincoln again? I had no ink—”
But Mary was already scurrying in the direction of Simeon Francis’s house.
She had no reason, other than hope, to expect that Mr. Lincoln would be there, but there he was, engaged in a grave conversation with Simeon Francis. “Mr. Lincoln! Is it true?”
“Yes, Molly. I seem to have got myself in a heap of trouble.”
Mary commenced to wailing.
“Come, come,” Mr. Lincoln finally said, and led her into the parlor. “Molly, there’s nothing to fear.”
“But a duel! You will be shot!” She began to wail harder. “And I am the cause of it!”
“No, no, Molly. Please, woman, stop crying! The verses and Miss Jayne’s letter…they irritated him, but it was my own letter that angered him the most. You’ve got nothing to blame yourself for.”
She dabbed at her eyes, her mood switching to indignation. “And were you not going to tell me of this?”
“I got his challenge when I was out of town. I—and my friends—have been working mightily to settle with him so there’d be nothing to tell you, but he hasn’t seen reason, so as you know as well as I do, I’m honor-bound to fight him.”
Mary nodded grimly. Having grown up in Lexington, with its notoriously prickly male tempers, she was well aware of the code of honor. She had hoped to see less of it in Springfield.
“But, Molly, I’m not going to get killed by Shields. Not a chance. Under the rules, I have the privilege of choosing the weapons, and I will choose broadswords, with each of us standing within a space with a plank in between us. The advantage all goes to the man with the longest reach and”—Mr. Lincoln swung his arm out—“that’s me, of course. I’ll do all I can to disarm him, and I have no desire to kill him.”
“I am not the least concerned about the welfare of that vile man.”
“Well, for my sake you should be, because I don’t want him on my conscience. Molly, I can’t stay. There’s a chance I might get arrested if I don’t leave town, so I need to get out at the crack of dawn. Besides, the broadswords I want are at Jacksonville.”
“Where is this…affair…going to be?”
“Missouri, across the river from Alton.”
“But won’t you have to leave town if you win?” That was the practice of the bloods of Lexington, who would disappear after a duel, then turn up a couple of years later as if they had merely been on an overnight excursion. But Mr. Lincoln, without a monied family to support him, might never return from whatever new life he made for himself in exile. “What if…what if I never you see again? One way or another.”
“Don’t fret, Molly.”
But fret she did, for three solid days until the gossip came to Springfield that at the last minute, the would-be duelists’ seconds had settled the matter. Still, she would not rest secure until both Lincoln and Mr. Shields came home intact, Mr. Lincoln sheepish but in good spirits, Shields in bad spirits and so itching for a duel that he promptly challenged Lincoln’s friend William Butler. Shields’s second managed to avert violence, but then issued a challenge of his own. Fortunately, it too went nowhere, and the male population of Springfield remained intact.
With all this turmoil within her social circle, Elizabeth had little time to worry about Mary’s relationship with Lincoln, and Mary resumed her trips to the Francis house undisturbed.
At the beginning of November, Mary sat in her hosts’ parlor, reading from Childe Harold. Lincoln listened attentively at first, then reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a well-worn letter. Out of the corner of her eye, Mary saw him read it once, then again. Finally, he coughed. “Molly. You know Joshua Speed’s been married for a few months now.”
“Yes. He is doing well?”
“He’s happy. He writes in this letter to tell me he is. I was afraid he wouldn’t be.”
“Why? Did they appear to be incompatible?”
“No, not at all. But I was worried anyway. I guess I was wondering whether a man could be truly happy in marriage, whether it would be too much of a jolt. And I was also wondering whether a man could make a wife truly happy.” He stared at the letter. “He had doubts about marrying Fanny, you know. I had to keep reminding him what a fine woman she was.”
“Really, Mr. Lincoln. You and he are quite peculiar.”
“I know! I feel like a fool trying to explain it all to you now. You’d think it would be simple: a man meets a woman, falls in love with her, wins her affection, asks her to marry him, gets accepted, and gets to the preacher. But it wasn’t for me, and if I hadn’t practically pushed the man to the altar—as best as I could by mail, anyway—it wouldn’t have been for Speed either. But to bring all of this to a logical conclusion, I’m asking you to marry me.”
“Is this Mr. Speed’s doing now, or yours?”
“All mine, Molly. All mine. Do you remember when I told you I wanted to dance with you in the worst way?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, now I want to marry you in the worst way. I love you, Molly.”