“And I you.”
“So will you marry me?”
“When?”
“As soon as we can arrange it. Tomorrow or Friday. No point dillydallying further. Unless you’re worried a hasty wedding will make people talk.”
“It will, and it doesn’t bother me in the least. I want to marry you.”
“Then it’s settled?” He grinned as she nodded, then, as he pulled her into his lap, he added, “I’m glad you said yes. Because after all that, it would have been mortifying if you’d said no.”
* * *
How efficient they were! By Thursday evening, they had picked her wedding ring, a thin gold band with “Love Is Eternal” engraved on it, arranged for room and board at the Globe Tavern (in her sister Frances’s former room, it turned out), found attendants from among their very surprised friends, and engaged the Reverend Charles Dresser, whose Episcopal church Mary attended, to perform the ceremony.
What she had not done was tell Elizabeth and Ninian that she was marrying. That task she put off until Friday morning when, breakfast having been cleared, she said, “Mr. Lincoln and I are getting married. Tonight.”
Elizabeth put down her coffee with a thump. “Tonight? Where?”
“Church. Mr. Lincoln is no heathen.”
“No gathering afterward? No food?”
“I suppose not.”
“That just won’t do,” Ninian said. “Marry if you wish—but marry from our house as is done among our set. Otherwise, it will seem as if you are marrying in defiance of us, which is hardly the case. Mr. Lincoln is a man of honor and acquitted himself well during the recent unpleasantness involving Mr. Shields.”
So all Lincoln had had to do to gain Ninian Edwards’s approval as a husband was to almost fight a duel? What if he had fought and won? Mary was on the verge of suppressing a smile when her brother-in-law said, “It would certainly be more convenient if you waited a few days, since you are to marry from this house.”
“I will marry today, or not marry from this house.”
“Why, have you even written to our father?”
“He will approve. And if he doesn’t, I will be very sorry for it, but I am of age.”
Her sister cleared her throat. “Mary, I do hope—”
“There is no reason for our haste other than the fact that we love each other and want to become man and wife without further delay.”
“But how long have you been courting?”
“Since July, at Simeon Francis’s house. We met there in secret.”
“And you never thought fit to confide in me.”
Elizabeth looked hurt—so hurt, in fact, that Mary for the first time in the conversation felt ashamed. She embraced her sister. “Dear Elizabeth, after all that happened, we felt it best to keep our courtship secret from all eyes and ears. There was no slight to you intended.”
“Bother the slight to me,” Elizabeth snapped. “The question is, how on earth am I to find time to do all the necessary cooking? I might be forced to send to Old Dickey’s for gingerbread and beer!”
Mary could not resist. “Gingerbread is quite good enough for plebeians, I suppose,” she said, and hurried out the door to find Mr. Lincoln to tell him that the wedding had been moved to the Edwardses’ parlor.
* * *
The guests wouldn’t have to subsist on gingerbread and beer, of course; Elizabeth was too proud of her hostessing skills for that. She set to work on one of her famous cakes, and Frances, summoned by Elizabeth for her assistance, contributed a fine ham. Mary, feeling somewhat guilty about the late notice, offered to help, but as Elizabeth thought this would be bad luck, and seeing Mr. Lincoln would also be bad luck, Mary was relegated to sitting on the sofa where she and Lincoln had spent so much time together and wondering what being a married woman would be like. Would she become as deadly serious as all of her married friends had? How many children would they have?
And of course, there was the marital act with which to concern herself. Mary had heard conflicting reports, none from good authority, about whether it was really worth the while, although she was disposed to think it would be with Mr. Lincoln, given the growing intensity of their encounters at the Francis home. Elizabeth or Frances might have been helpful, but they were far too busy with their cooking. Probably it would be unbecoming to walk to Mercy Conkling’s house and solicit her views on the matter.
Oh, would the evening ever get here? She found herself reciting Juliet’s speech:
Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match
Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.
Needless to say, this was not one of the passages that she and Mr. Lincoln had read to each other.
At last, her bridesmaids—Julia Jayne, Anna Rodney, and her cousin Elizabeth Todd—arrived. Mary had surveyed her dresses and settled on wearing an embroidered muslin that also happened to be white, the color that Queen Victoria had worn to her wedding two years before and thus was especially desirable. Her bridesmaids helped Mary put it on and style her hair; then as she did not require much assistance in that regard, they allowed her to render them the same services. Meanwhile, the guests began arriving, as she ascertained from her small niece Julia, who obligingly ran up and down the stairs to report each arrival. “There is Dr. Wallace! Here come the Stuarts! There’s your family, Elizabeth! There are Mr. and Mrs. Conkling!” At last, Julia poked her head in the door and cried, “And here’s Mr. Lincoln!”
Mary gulped.
Presently, Ninian Edwards came up and led her and her bridesmaids downstairs, where Lincoln stood in the parlor with his own attendants, James Matheny and Beverly Powell. His necktie, which Mary had never seen entirely symmetrical, was immaculately arranged—the handiwork, she supposed, of his landlady, Mrs. Butler, who was unashamedly wiping back tears at the loss of whom she would later tell Mary was the household favorite. As for Lincoln, he looked nervous, but no more nervous than Mary herself.
The Reverend Charles Dresser began to perform the ceremony—a more formal one than their oldest guest, Judge Thomas Brown, appeared to be accustomed to, for Mary could hear him harrumphing behind her from time to time as the couple repeated their vows. Then, as Mary held out her hand, Lincoln said, “With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow—”
“Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty, Lincoln!” Judge Brown’s voice filled the room. “The statute fixes all that!”
Evidently the judge had not sat through an Episcopalian wedding service before. Reverend Dresser struggled to maintain his composure, and Lincoln also fought to suppress a smile as he slipped the ring onto Mary’s hand.