The Flaming Corsage Read Online Free Page B

just begun to flatter you. I have just begun to worship you.”

I N THE MONTHS that followed his rediscovery of Katrina, Edward took a leave from The Argus and devoted his days to the final research and writing
of his Erie Canal novel. He finished by late summer 1885, and began, with great earnestness, a campaign to have himself invited to all social events he knew Katrina would attend. Katrina’s
mother noted this.
    “That man is a pest,” Geraldine said.
    “He’s a perfect gentleman, and very intelligent,” Katrina said. “I’m always happy to see him.”
    “I don’t care how intelligent he is, he’s not the right sort for you,” her mother said.
    September’s major social event was the ball for the coming-out of Felicity Grenville, held in Bleecker Hall on Maiden Lane. Edward found Katrina besieged by suitors and only at the
cotillion did he discover she had saved a place for him on her dance card. As soon as they were arm in arm in the dance he said to her, “I’ve decided. Yes, I’ve made the
decision.”
    “Oh? And what did you decide?”
    “To ask you to marry me.”
    “I believe I knew that.”
    “Wasn’t that presumptuous of you?”
    “I’m a student of love, Edward, and you seem to be a proper subject for my scrutiny.”
    “You considered my proposal even before you heard it.”
    “I wouldn’t have dared.”
    “But in your scrutiny you had passing thoughts. Is your answer yes?”
    “No.”
    “Is it no?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Not a very satisfactory response.”
    “You have no right to an instant answer to that question.”
    “But you expected the question.”
    “Yes, but I must confirm the reality.”
    “How do you do that?”
    “By testing myself. For instance, how do I know if I should marry you when I haven’t even kissed you?”
    “I could rectify that immediately. Here and now.”
    “It would cause a scandal. ‘Woe be to him who gives scandal to my brethren.’ ”
    “Upstairs, then? Downstairs? Outside?”
    “If it happens, I don’t want even the birds to see.”
    “I’ll find a secret place where we can be alone.”
    “I’ll find it when the time is right,” Katrina said.

E DWARD WALKED THE three miles up Broadway from The Argus to Black Jack’s saloon, marking the trail through the North End with whatever
psychic spoor it is that would-be bridegrooms create when they make plans to abandon home territory. He came to where the pavement used to abruptly end: at the carriageway into the pasture of the
Patroon’s Manor House (where his mother had worked as a cook for the last Patroon’s widow). The Manor House was the northern boundary of civilization as Albany’s roadbuilders
judged it, and after it you entered the wild Irish neighborhood where Edward was raised, and for which plank roads and mud had sufficed.
    Now new granite pavement continued past the Manor entrance, past the gasworks. And where the molders and lumber handlers of the North End had built their houses, slate sidewalks covered the old
dirt paths. It pleased Edward to have been partially responsible for this, though the public heroes of upgraded life were Father Loonan and especially Jack McCall, who, in return for staging the
rally that reversed the voting slide toward Blaine, had been named Democratic Leader of the Ninth Ward.
    Jack had been born into saloon life. His father, Butter McCall, ran the Bull’s Head tavern on the Troy Road until his liver stiffened, whereupon he sold the place, outraging Jack, who
considered the Bull’s Head his future; so Jack then opened his own saloon on Broadway, now headquarters for anyone seeking favor with the Democratic party.
    “Short one,” Edward said to Jack, who was talking to Maginn. Jack, behind the bar in white apron and collarless white shirt, was a formidable presence, thick head of hair, Roman
nose, cleanshaven, and muscular from hefting beer barrels, first at the Bull’s Head, then for the Quinn and Nolan brewery. The