Yet when she was claimed by her next partner, Mr. Stephen Douglas, who danced so well that Mary scarcely noticed his almost comically small stature, Mary found herself looking around the room for Mr. Lincoln. It was almost worth hazarding her slippers once more.
Though Mr. Lincoln had not paid much attention to her gown, which so enticingly displayed her shoulders and a hint of bosom, the other bachelors in the room apparently did, so Mary was engaged for the entire evening. As this was her first ball in Springfield, normally she would have been gratified by this, but her mind was on Mr. Lincoln and, when she could manage it discreetly, her eyes as well. She was able to learn through her observations that he did not drink, though he made no point of his abstemiousness but stood laughing amid his companions, some of whom had clearly overindulged in spirits. This pleased Mary; though no Kentucky girl expected men to avoid liquor entirely, she disliked drunkenness. If she shared any trait of her stepmother’s, it was the way they both watched her brother Levi anxiously at gatherings, counting his drinks and praying that he would not pass beyond the stage of amiable intoxication.
Mr. Lincoln was not dressed badly, although his sleeves and pantaloons were a bit too short, and there was nothing in the cut of his garment to recommend his tailor. What a proper wife could do for him in that regard!
Elizabeth glided behind her, nearly causing her to drop the cup of punch she held. “Do stop staring at Mr. Lincoln,” she hissed in French, continuing a habit the sisters had found useful on a number of occasions. “If it makes you feel better, though, he has asked to call tomorrow, and I have granted his wish. You may gaze at him all you like then.”
* * *
Mr. Lincoln bounded into the parlor the next afternoon, on time and not showing any signs of fatigue or dissipation, although the cotillion had still been going on when Mary and the Edwardses had left in the small hours. When he had taken his seat on a horsehair sofa beside Mary, she said, “Now, Mr. Lincoln, you really must tell me all the ins and outs of how you moved the legislature to Springfield. There is ample time for it today, and I insist.”
“I will obey, Miss Todd, but tell me: What got you interested in politics?”
“Goodness, Mr. Lincoln, I hardly know. It almost seems as if I have always been. But if I had to assign a cause—and if you ask, I must”—Mary smiled in a manner she knew would show a dimple—“my mother died when I was quite young, and I felt the loss very keenly. You know how a parent wishes to indulge a child in such a situation.”
“Well, no,” Mr. Lincoln said dryly.
“A girl child, then, Mr. Lincoln. In any case, I liked to sit with my father when he was at home, and he would allow me to remain in the room for an hour or two while he talked to his friends, on the condition that I remained absolutely quiet. Naturally, their conversations would turn to politics, and as I could do nothing but listen, I did, and learned a great deal. And what great men I had to learn from! Henry Clay among them.”
“Henry Clay? Why, he is my hero, Miss Todd. And you know him?”
“Indeed she does,” Elizabeth, who had been knitting on the matching sofa across the room, put in. “Why, she made a perfect nuisance of herself one day at his house.”
“I did not; he was charmed.” Mary glared at her sister, then turned to Mr. Lincoln. “When I was quite a young thing, you see, I took it in my head to ride my new pony to Ashland, his estate, and show it to him. Who in the county was a better judge of horseflesh? Well, he was entertaining some gentlemen, but being the soul of courtesy, he kindly invited me in, and I had a simply delightful time listening to them. When there was an opening in the conversation—I did not interrupt, Elizabeth, as everyone insists—I told Mr. Clay that my father thought he, Mr. Clay that is, would someday be the president, and that I would dearly like to live in the White House myself.”
“I wonder what Mrs. Clay thought of that, sister.”
“Goodness, I wasn’t proposing to marry Mr. Clay. That would be shocking. I was merely stating a fact. In any case, Mr. Clay assured me that if he were ever president, I would be one of his first guests. And as far as I know, the invitation still stands, so I took it downright personally when he lost the nomination this year.”
As Mary and Mr. Lincoln began bewailing Mr. Clay’s loss, Elizabeth yawned once, then twice, and soon found an excuse to slip out of the room, leaving the pair to move to the subject of the relocation of the capital and, gradually, an inch or two closer together. They were still chattering away—or to be precise, Mary was chattering and Mr. Lincoln was listening—when the sounds and smells of dinner being prepared began to intrude upon their conversation, followed by Elizabeth’s reappearance. “Mr. Lincoln, we would be delighted to have you stay to dine with us.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Edwards, but it’s going to be a busy day tomorrow. Got to do a little work tonight.” He stole a look at Mary. “I hope I might call again on— I mean, at this house.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said.
* * *
From that day on, Mr. Lincoln appeared at the Edwards house every few days, taking the same place beside Mary. Sometimes they would talk politics; other times they would take a book from Ninian Edwards’s well-stocked (if not exactly well-thumbed) library and have one read it to the other.
He knew far more about her than she did about him; all the scant details of his family she had garnered from others. His mother had died when he was young. He had not been exactly poor as a child but had never been comfortable either; his father had moved from place to place, looking for a propitious place to settle but never quite finding it. Like Mary, he was a Kentuckian, but the log cabin of his birth might have been separated from the gracious house of Mary’s birth by an ocean. He had started out doing manual labor and had somehow wandered into New Salem, where he had blundered into co-owning a store, which had foundered when his partner had died of drink. With some fellows from New Salem, he had served in the Black Hawk War, which in a way had been his making, for it had brought him into contact with Mary’s cousin John Stuart, who had encouraged him to read the law and eventually had taken him on as a partner. And, in all that, he had found his way into politics.
Anything more, she would have to pry out of him, she supposed.
Were they courting? Goodness, she wasn’t sure even of that! He had the regularity of a lover, for certain, but not the mannerisms of one, and while he sat as close to her on the sofa as her skirts would allow, that was the only liberty he took, if it could be called that. Not that she wanted him to behave in an ungentlemanly manner, but a kiss, or even some hand-holding, would have been welcome. She had consulted Mercy, her guide to all things involving courtship (neither of her sisters would really do under the circumstances), and Mercy had agreed that something a little more should be happening. Why, her dear James had left her positively flustered the other day.
Surely Mr. Lincoln didn’t find her unattractive, did he? Mary looked at herself in the mirror critically. She would never credit herself with beauty, but with her perfect complexion and her bright-blue eyes, there was certainly nothing in her face to make a man avert his.