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set the sweating tumbler on the rough-hewn wooden table in front of me.
    “Thank you,” I said as I took a small, grateful sip.
    “Anytime,” the barmaid said, her crinoline skirts swishing over her hips. I watched her retreating back. All the women in the tavern, even those with loose reputations, were more interesting than Rosalyn. But no matter who I glanced at, the only image that filled my mind was Katherine’s face.
    “Alice likes you,” Damon observed.
    I shook my head. “You know I can’t look. By the end of summer, I’ll be a married man. You, meanwhile, are free to do as you please.” I’d meant it to be an observation, but the words came out as a judgment.
    “That’s true,” Damon said. “But you do know you don’t
have
to do something just because Father says so, right?”
    “It’s not that simple.” I clenched my jaw. Damon couldn’t understand because he was wild and untamable—so much so that Father had entrusted me, the younger brother, with the future of Veritas, a role I now found stifling.
    A sliver of betrayal shot through me at this thought—that it was Damon’s fault I had to shoulder so much responsibility. I shook my head, as if trying to remove the idea from it, and took another drink of whiskey.
    “It’s very simple,” Damon said, oblivious to my momentary annoyance. “Just tell him you are not in love with Rosalyn. That you need to find your own place in the world and can’t just follow someone’s orders blindly. That’s what I learned in the army: You have to believe in what you do. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
    I shook my head. “I’m not like you. I trust Father. And I know he only wants the best. It’s just that I wish … I wish I had more time,” I said finally. It was true. Maybe I could grow to love Rosalyn, but the thought that I could be married and have a child in just one short year filled me with dread. “But it’ll be fine,” I said with finality. It
had
to be.
    “What do you think of our new houseguest?” I said, changing the subject.
    Damon smiled. “Katherine,” he said, drawing the name into the full three syllables, as if he could taste it on his tongue. “Now, she’s a girl who’s difficult to figure out, don’t you agree?”
    “I suppose,” I said, glad that Damon didn’t know that I was dreaming of Katherine at night, and by day pausing at the door to the carriage house to see if I could hear her laughing with her maid; once I even stopped by the stableto smell the broad back of her horse, Clover, just to see if her lemon and ginger scent had lingered. It hadn’t, and at that moment, in the barn surrounded by the horses, I’d realized how unbalanced I was becoming.
    “They don’t make girls like her in Mystic Falls. Do you think she has a soldier somewhere?” Damon asked.
    “No!” I said, annoyed once again. “She’s in
mourning
for her
parents
. I hardly think she’s looking for a beau.”
    “Of course.” Damon knit his eyebrows together contritely. “And I wasn’t presuming anything. But if she needs a shoulder to cry on, I’d be happy to lend it to her.”
    I shrugged. Even though I’d brought up the subject, I was no longer sure I wanted to hear what Damon thought of her. In fact, as beautiful as she was, I almost wished that some far-flung relatives from Charleston or Richmond or Atlanta would step forward to invite her to live with them. If she were out of sight, then maybe I could somehow force myself to love Rosalyn.
    Damon stared at me, and I knew in that moment how miserable I must have looked. “Cheer up, brother,” he said. “The night is young, and the whiskey’s on me.”
    But there wasn’t enough whiskey in all of Virginia to make me love Rosalyn … or forget about Katherine.

6
    T he weather didn’t break by my engagement dinner a few days later, and even at five o’clock in the afternoon the air was hot and humid. In the kitchen, I’d overheard the servants gossiping that the strange,