The Invention of Wings(56)

            “I accept your proposal,” I said, smiling at him, overwhelmed with a queer mixture of jubilation and relief. I would be married! I would not end up like Aunt Amelia Jane.

            He was right, though, Mother would be horrified I’d answered without her say-so, but I didn’t doubt my parents’ response. After swallowing their disapproval, they would seize upon the miracle of Burke Williams’ proposal like it was the cure for a dread disease.

            We walked along the carriage way, my arm looped in his. A little tremor was running rib to rib to rib inside of me. Abruptly, he steered me off the path toward a camellia grove. We disappeared into the shadows that hung in swaths between the huge, flowering bushes, and without preamble, he kissed me full on the mouth. I reared back. “. . . Why . . . why, you surprise me.”

            “My Love, we’re engaged now, such liberties are allowed.”

            He drew me to him and kissed me again. His fingers moved along the edge of my décolletage, brushing my skin. I didn’t entirely surrender, but I allowed Burke Williams a great amount of freedom during that small peccadillo in the camellia grove. When I mustered myself finally, pulling from his embrace, he said he hoped I didn’t hold his ardor against him. I did not. I adjusted my dress. I tucked vagrant pieces of hair back into my upswept coif. Such liberties are allowed now.

            As we walked back to the house, I fixed my eyes on the path, how it was riddled with peacock excrement and pebbles shining in the moon’s light. This marriage, it would be life-enough, wouldn’t it? Surely. Burke was speaking about the necessity of a long engagement. A year, he said.

            As we drew near the porch, a horse whinnied, and then a man stepped from the front door and lit his pipe. It was Mr. Drayton, Thomas’ father-in-law.

            “Sarah?” he said. “Is that you?” His eyes shifted to Burke and back to me. A lock of my hair fluttered guiltily at my shoulder. “Where’ve you been?” I heard the reproof, the alarm. “Are you all right?”

            “. . . I am . . . we are engaged.” My parents weren’t yet informed, and I’d heralded the news to Mr. Drayton, whom I barely knew, hoping it would excuse whatever his mind imagined we were doing out there.

            “We took a quick turn in the night air,” Burke said, trying, it seemed, to bring some normalcy to the moment.

            Mr. Drayton was no fool. He gazed at me, plain Sarah, returning from a “turn in the night” with a startlingly handsome man, looking flushed and slightly unkempt. “Well, then, congratulations. Your happiness must be a welcome respite for your family given this recent trouble of your father’s.”

            Was Father’s trouble common knowledge, then?

            “Has some misfortune fallen upon Judge Grimké?” Burke asked.

            “Sarah hasn’t told you?”

            “. . . I suppose I’ve been too distressed to speak of it,” I said. “. . . But please, sir, inform him on my behalf. It would be a service to me.”

            Mr. Drayton took a draught from his pipe and blew the spicy smoke into the night. “I regret to say the judge’s enemies seek to remove him from the court. Impeachment charges have been brought.”

            I let my breath out. I couldn’t imagine a greater humiliation for our father.

            “On what grounds?” Burke asked, properly outraged.

            “They say he has grown biased and overly righteous in his judgments.” He hesitated. “They charge incompetence. Ah, but it is all politics.” He waved his hand dismissively, and I watched the bowl of his pipe flare in the small wind.



            Any flicker of gladness I might’ve hoped for from my family about my engagement, any retribution I might’ve feared for accepting the proposal without permission, was swallowed by Father’s trial. Mother’s reaction to my announcement was simply, “Well done, Sarah,” as if reviewing one of my embroidery samplers. Father did not respond at all.