Page 153 of Eleanor’s Earrings

“I thought you were forgetting how to count.”

“Never.”

She kissed him gently. “Ask me soon.”

“Tomorrow.”

“That is very specific.”

“I have made a plan.”

Eleanor laughed. “Plans sometimes change.”

“Not this one.”

On the evening of April twenty-second, before the next crossing, the sisters held what Lydia called a council of future husbands.

Eleanor refused to participate.

This did not prevent them from holding it around her.

“Caroline requires a man who owns maps,” Lydia said.

Caroline did not look up from the route notes. “I require no man.”

Thomas Reed, seated ten feet away, became intensely interested in sharpening a pencil.

Rebecca noticed.

“So,” she said, much too loudly, “maps.”

Caroline kicked her.

“Ow.”

“You imagined it.”

Charlotte turned a page in the inventory. “If Caroline marries a mapmaker, we may save money on guidebooks.”

Caroline looked at her. “You are supposed to be the quiet one.”

“I am quiet. I am not harmless.”

Lydia pointed at Rebecca. “Rebecca needs a man who understands that livestock will always rank above him.”

“Incorrect,” Rebecca said.

“Oh?”

“Horses will rank above him. Oxen will depend on temperament.”

Grace laughed.

“Martha needs someone who will eat whatever she puts in front of him,” Lucy said.

Martha considered. “That is simply good sense.”

“And someone who knows when not to talk,” Eleanor added.