They met at the Guenther home near the mill; in a moment of privacy at the pastry-laden table they spoke in short sentences about Ireland and her people there. They had only so much time. Every second counted. She spoke about her fall on board the Brighton Rose, thrown against a windlass in a great storm and her eyeglasses knocked completely off her head and into the Atlantic. Down, down, to spy on the fishes. How whatever she saw now had a glow, especially Simon, with his spiky, unruly hair.

Simon said, “Where can we find you another pair?”

“Never mind.” She said it with a quick little shake of her head. “Spectacles are so severe and grim and off-putting.” She wore a different dress that day—or it wasn’t a dress, he decided, it was a roundabout jacket in the same material as her skirts. A dark slate gray, and under it a snow-white collar. She had left her hat on top of the Guenthers’ piano. “I can see very well up close. Here, I’ll show you.” They walked over to the piano and she shook out the score. “I can see this perfectly well.” She gazed up at him from the piano bench. “And who are you, then?”

He smiled. “Affectionately yours, I remain, Simon Boudlin.” He pressed the tip of his bow against the first page of the score to keep it from turning. “Sweetheart, listen. I know there are young officers who come to visit the Webbs on the slightest pretext. Among them a quartermaster sergeant. Meager, a meager man, blond. Not that I care.” He tipped his head from one side to the other. “You have to meet others so you can make comparisons and realize that I am a shining example of the perfect husband.”

“Who told you this?” She ran through a melody with her right hand; it was a song he had never heard before.

“Mercedes. We ran into each other at the cathedral. Early Mass. I waylaid her. What’s his name?”

“Oh. Him. He’s a lieutenant now. Jacob Whittaker. And he’s going over Colonel Webb’s accounts with a flea comb.”

“Really. Tell me more.”

“There’s money requisitioned for forage for horses and mules that do not exist. You’d think the colonel had taken lessons from the Irish, the black thief.”

“I am glad to hear this. It makes my heart skip with delight. Maybe he’ll be cashiered. Or hung.”

“And I know you shot an alligator.” She suddenly struck out a chord. A deep, dramatic one. “An alligator!”

“How do you know that?”

“Damon Lessing, the dark man. He met me by chance in the market with his whistles sticking out of his pocket and I said, ‘Tell me about Simon, that he’s not an ax murderer or a womanizer or he makes counterfeit money.’ Oh how he spoke of you, Simon. And him a teacher in a university.”

“He was?”

“Indeed. And Simon, I did not get born aboard ship, you know. In Tralee we have social lives, the young people go about and there were sings and dances . . . but I was taken by the thought of coming to America.” She paused to think. “Even with a war. But it seemed there weren’t any particular battles going on in Texas. So I signed the work contract. And the animals you have! All wild in the earth.” She looked up to him. “I came to the New World and here I have met you.”

He thought about this, about her mental leap from wild animals to himself and the odd haphazard chance of their coming across each other. “We are having the most random conversation here,” he said. He wanted to take her by both shoulders and kiss her forehead and then each cheek and then on the mouth. Then on her white throat. And so on. A person could get seized at the most inopportune moments by sheer animal desire. She ran her finger down the notes and stopped, pretended to find some difficulty.

“There is a key change here,” she said. “And moreover you must not miss this quarter rest.”

He said in a low voice, “Let us be married and go. To the north of Texas.”

She flushed. “I would never be good as a spy,” she said. “I think my face is red. Do hush. And how then would we get there and how would we live? Tell me that.”

He watched her hands on the keys. She would be leaving a known place, even if it was filled with trouble. Still it was a home, still there was the little girl, Jo, that she cared for and was concerned about. Into the great empty spaces of Texas. It might as well have been into the wilds of India or Africa or the great polar sea.

“I own some land. I have four hundred acres on a river called the Red, far to the north of here and . . .”

“Four hundred acres?” Her hands lifted from the wrists with fingers spread in astonishment. “What would you do with it all?”

“Sell some of it for the money to build a house. There’s a seep of rock oil there and cattle get bogged in it and I would sell that section to buy lumber and windows with glass panes. And we will make a home there. A place to come back to. Our place. Our land, our kingdom. Our music.”

Before he could become even more eloquent and convincing, a thin chatty girl in dark green came up to them talking at a great rate and spilled out a long—excuse me excuse me I just have to talk to Miss Dillon for a moment—very long monologue concerning the sale of a German flute.

He left early with his thanks and no differences in how he said goodbye to anyone. A brief bow to Miss Dillon. Mrs. Guenther cried out over his rendition of the Scots slow airs, would recommend him to anyone, and slipped an envelope into his pocket, the contents of which would go into Twohig’s bank in short order. She clasped her hands in delight that Doris Dillon would come to give lessons on piano at her house, a piano tuner must exist somewhere, she would find him if she had to track him down herself!

Christmas came and went, cards were exchanged, New Year’s Eve brought a fusillade of gunfire over the roofs of the town that went on for hours. Simon often found himself exhausted from playing at the Bull’s Head, the Old Stand Saloon, one after another and the Plaza besides, always in search of new strings, rosin, his head ringing from the noise of men shouting and hallooing in close-confined walls, lamp smoke burning his eyes. He found his fiddle case growing heavy with coins once again; much of it went to the bank.

At the Maverick house, a week later, Miss Dillon brought her small charge, Josephina. The girl shook Simon’s hand with a rigid smile and then turned away quickly in a dramatic whirl of skirts. He turned to Doris and she gave him one quick warning glance and then followed the child. Mercedes looked out of the kitchen and hurried after them both.

All around him he heard exclamations about how San Antonio was becoming cultured, as if there were no culture in the city beforehand. No Spanish. Neither fandangos nor watermelon races nor Day of the Dead processions, and he stood unclasping the fiddle case and thought about it but not for long. Doris came back to stand beside him at the buffet and put sweet rolls on a plate.

He downed coffee to listen to her quick, fragmented sentences, about her time with the Little Sisters of the Poor in Waterford learning geography and math and music, to read a score and to play it on the pianoforte. Her parents were not rich, but neither were they penniless, having ten acres with a good title to them all to themselves and privileges of the wood. They intended her for an education, saved every penny to send her to Waterford, and cried in front of the entire population of Tralee when she sailed away. Never did they or the sisters imagine her going to Texas, and in a battle besides. Now, speaking of battles, was he shot or was anybody he knew shot or pierced in some way?

“Not at all,” he said. “Thank you for asking.”

“You’re welcome. Come and hear ‘The Peacock’s Feathers.’” She laid her hand on his arm for a moment. “The one in the minor key.”

And again those moments when they drew out the complex Celtic hornpipe together, missed a phrase, went back and started over, a quick glance into each other’s eyes, a lift of the chin and a fling into the lively melody once again and nods when they got it right. Her breathless laugh, the long note at the end. A smile between the two of them like a deep secret unshared with any other alive on earth.

Later he stood by the little horse’s head, adjusting the bridle. He had become very daring. He had walked out with her to her carriage and helped her and Josephina and Mercedes into it. The driver, a private with the Quartermaster Department, regarded him with a long, slow sober look.

“Leave it alone, would you?” the driver said.