I silently berated myself for my transparency, for losing my precious fan, for slipping into the solitary darkness of the balcony with a stranger. What was I doing?
The night was cold. We stood by the railing, which had been festooned with pine wreaths, and stared at the figures moving past the windows inside the room. The music whirred behind the panes. I felt very far away from everything. The sea wind rose and I began to shiver. My stammer had been in hibernation for almost a year, but last winter it had showed up on the eve of my coming out and remained throughout my first season, turning it into a perdition. I shook now as much from fear of its return as from the frigid air.
“You’re chilled,” he said, removing his coat and draping it about me in gentlemanly fashion. “How is it we’ve not been introduced until now?”
Williams. I didn’t recognize his family name. Charleston’s social pyramid was ruthlessly defended by the aristocratic planters at the top—the Middletons, Pinckneys, Heywards, Draytons, Smiths, Manigaults, Russells, Alstons, Grimkés, and so on. Below them dwelled the mercantile class, wherein a little social mobility was sometimes possible, and it occurred to me that Mr. Williams was from this secondary tier, having slipped into society through an opportune crevice, or perhaps he was a visitor to the city.
“Are you visiting here?” I asked.
“Not at all, my family’s home is on Vanderhorst. But I can read your thoughts. You’re trying to place my family. Williams, Williams, wherefore art thou Williams?” He laughed. “If you’re like the others, you’re worried I’m an artisan or a laborer, or worse, an aspirer.”
I caught my breath. “Oh, I didn’t mean—I’m not concerned with that sort of thing.”
“It’s all in jest—I can see you’re not like the others. Unless, of course, you’re off-put to learn my family runs the silversmith shop on Queen Street. I’ll inherit it one day.”
“I’m not off-put, I’m not at all,” I said, then added, “I’ve been in your shop.”
I didn’t say that shopping for silver irked me no end, as did most everything I was forced to do as a wife-in-training. Oh, the days Mother had forced me to hand Nina over to Binah and sit with Mary, doing handwork samplers, hoop after hoop of white-on-white, cross stitch, and crewel, and if not handwork, then painting, and if not painting, then visitations, and if not visitations, then shopping in the somber shops of silversmiths, where my mother and sister swooned over a sterling nutmeg grater, or some such.
I’d fallen silent, uneasy with where our conversation had led, and I turned toward the garden, looking down into the faded black shadows. The pear trees were bare, their limbs spread open like the viscera of a parasol. Stretching into the darkness beyond, the single houses, double houses, and villas were lined up in cramped, neat rows which ran toward the tip of the peninsula.
“I see I’ve offended you,” he said. “I intended to be charming, but I’ve been mocking instead. It’s because my station is an awkward topic for me. I’m ill at ease with it.”
I turned back to him, astonished that he’d been so free with his thoughts. I hadn’t known a young man to display this kind of vulnerability. “I’m not offended. I’m—charmed like you said.”
“I thank you, then.”
“No, I should be the one to thank you. The clumsiness in the drawing room—that was mine. And you—”
“I could claim I was trying to be gallant, but in truth, I wanted to impress you. I’d been watching you. I was about to introduce myself when you whirled about and it rained punch.”
I laughed, more startled than amused. Young men did not watch me.
“You created a brilliant spectacle,” he was saying. “Don’t you think?”
Regrettably, we were veering into the hazards of flirting. I’d always been feeble at it.
“Yes. I-I try.”
“And do you create these spectacles often?” he asked.
“I try.”
“You’ve succeeded well. The ladies on the dance floor recoiled with such shock I thought a turban might sail off and injure someone.”
“Ah, but—the injury would’ve been laid at your feet, not mine. I mean, it was you who claimed responsibility for the whole thing.” Where had that come from?
He bowed, conceding.
“We should return to the party,” I told him, peeling his coat from my shoulders, wanting to end the banter on a high note, but worried, too, we might be missed.
“If you insist, but I would rather not share you. You’re the loveliest lady I’ve met this