He was anxious, he realized as he swept the schoolhouse in preparation for the trek home. Anxious because his sister had been pestering him, and he’d run out of room for temporizing. "Who was she kissing?" Whimsy had demanded. "Mother. Who was it?" She’d wanted them to find out, and he had been rather surprised by the degree of adventurousness involved in her plan. "Go through Mom's things," she had said, her eyes alight with a conspiratorial gleam. "We'll find something. Probably a love letter."

  "What have you been reading?" he'd asked her. Well, he knew, and that was part of the problem.

  When he got home, he knew they were going to do it. Even if not today, then soon. With Uncle Impetuous visiting, they had the perfect cover. Impetuous was playing the part of the confident, lounging guest, sprawled on the deck furniture like some sort of giant, ill-tempered cat. If Whimsy distracted Ma, then in theory, there shouldn’t be anything preventing Dalliance from going through her things. Fine, he thought, a familiar sense of resignation settling over him. He didn’t want to know, but Whimsy was insistent.

  Class had wrapped up late, and, the chores done, the whole gang trooped home behind Miss Thicket Wimple's cart. Earnest trailed uncharacteristically far behind the pack, ignoring Dalliance’s questioning glances. It wasn’t like him—but as they neared his family's farm, Dalliance put it from his mind, peeling off from the group, mind already on the task ahead of him. He was surprised to hear Miss Thicket Wimple's voice call out behind him.

  "Dalliance, boy! Stay a moment."

  Unsure what to expect, he turned immediately and walked back to the cart. "Miss Thicket Wimple, ma'am?"

  "I saw you," she said, "at lunch. Holding court and praying to the goddess." Her voice was low, confidential. "That Charity is a nice girl. She doesn't have a lot of friends."

  Charity had been dropped off a half-mile earlier. Dalliance assumed Miss Wimple wouldn't have felt so free to say this otherwise. As a matter of fact, he and Earnest were the only ones close enough to hear, and only because Earnest had passed the now-stopped cart to go ahead to his own family’s farm, which was just next door. His eyes stayed on the ground, and his freckles were standing out more sharply than normal. Perhaps he wasn’t feeling well.

  "I'm just saying," she continued, her gaze meaningful, "be the young gentleman that I know you can be, as regards Miss Charity."

  It was a perplexed Dalliance Rather who walked the rest of the way back home, where the familiar smells of hickory smoke and salted pork greeted his nose. With Uncle here, food had been served earlier and more generously than was typical. Dalliance suspected this was because his uncle typically went to bed unreasonably early, and as he didn't force that routine onto Dalliance's plate, Dalliance saw only upsides to the arrangement.

  And then, it was time.

  Dalliance left the kitchen table with meat juice still around his mouth and the solemn promise to "wash his face," going directly upstairs to the bedroom shared by his parents.

  The washbasin allowed him to perform an approximation of his ablutions. Freshly "clean," he glanced around the room for anything that might qualify as Whimsy's "stack of letters." Then, because she would surely ask, he checked under the bed.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  What was that? In his mother's coat pocket, hanging on a peg by the door. Oh no.

  He snatched it out, a single, folded piece of paper. He stuffed it up one trouser leg and under the hem of his sock. He had just made it to the bottom of the stairs before he ran into the woman herself.

  She inspected his face critically with a mother's eye. "It's not healthy to let oil sit on your skin," she told him, her voice sharp. “Wash your mouth again.”

  And that was it.

  If his uncle or father noticed his sister peeling away to join him on his way out the front door, they gave no sign.

  The old oak near the cattle-pond was his go-to for reading, when it was nice out, his version of Earnest’s loft. It had once been too high for Whimsy to climb, and too covered with ants, on the lower branches, for his brothers to bother with. Since he’d put the points in Grit, Dalliance hadn’t even noticed the insects, though. The points in Might likewise propelled his spare frame up the tree like a squirrel might climb, rather than the boy he still felt himself to be.

  Whimsy huffed, left behind, and he’d had time to puzzle out the harder words by the time she’d caught up with him on the broad bough overhanging the pond. Brown cow-eyes blinked beneath broom-bristle lashes, and tails flicked lazily below. His audience awaited, the cattle content, his sister vibrating with anxiety.

  My Dearest Chastity, it began.

  Your last note found me in a state of agitation—not from its contents, but from the distress they must have caused you. To think of a single shadow falling upon your radiant brow on account of such base speculations is a torment to me.

  Do not grant the stirring of idle tongues the dignity of your concern. When the commons see a garden flower in bloom but find themselves unable to comprehend its beauty, they instead fixate upon its planting. Let us not speak of the children, or the speculations of the commons. Let us speak, always and only, of us.

  It is with this—the preservation of that sacred us—that my thoughts are now consumed. Alas, the hounds are up, and though they hie upon phantasms, we must not give them a true scent to follow. My love, we must be paragons of discretion. For a short while, we must become as ghosts in our own city. Our meetings, which are the very air I breathe, must become rarer, more precious for their scarcity.

  Though our passions burn true as banked flame, yet we must assay considered measures, promoting heads above hearts. Liken it to the patience of a hunter who waits for the perfect moment to claim his prize. Let the gossips grow bored. Let the watchmen fall asleep. We are playing for a lifetime, not a single season.

  Do not for a moment mistake my caution for a cooling of my ardour. It is the very opposite. The distance I propose is a furnace in which my devotion is forged. In my solitude, my imagination is a fever. I picture you again beneath the spreading boughs of a great oak. I would ravish you there, amidst the scents of springtime blooms—there, my hart, I would be your devoted huntsman, and the chase would end in a surrender more glorious than any victory.

  That is the moment for which we must now be clever; the future we guard with our present prudence.

  Trust in my foresight as you trust in my devotion. Burn this letter, but keep its memory in your bosom.

  Yours, in undiminished adoration,

  Parsimony P.

  Dalliance read it aloud, then, at Whimsy’s insistence, did so again.

  “Shit,” she said at last.