I went up to him and threw my arms around his neck, crooning words of comfort.

Yes, I talked to him as if he were a despondent collie pup. Yes, I voluntarily brought myself within easy stabbing distance of the horn. Yes, I'm an idiot, I admit it, it says so on my driver's license. If you want proof-positive of my stupidity then consider the fact that I went into writing because I wanted a high-paying, glamorous job where everyone respected me and internecine mudslinging just wasn't the Done Thing. But I couldn't turn my back on the poor creature.

"There, there," I said, running my hands through his flossy mane. "She'll be back, you'll see. It's just that she's a little soppy now. Love makes you temporarily brain-dead."

The unicorn looked me in the eye, his gaze eloquent. Don't sugar-coat it, my lady, he seemed to say. You and I both know what love leads to. She may be back, but she won't be the same, and where are we going to find another virgin at this time of year? Those Christmas parties are h.e.l.l on maidenheads.

"You mean that Greta Marie and Wellcome have -- ?" Curse my imagination! The very thought of Wellcome al fresco and taking care of business was enough to purge a catfish. My conscious mind immediately tacked up wall-to-wall signs reading Don't Go There, Girlfriend. Don't Buy the Ticket, Don't Even Ask to See the Full-Color Brochures.

The unicorn flared his nostrils, scorning the whole hideous idea. Ah, true, true: Would he still be hanging around the property if Greta Marie had done the dire deed with Wellcome already? But to judge by his hangdog expression, he figured it was only a matter of time.

"Look, I'm sorry, but what can I do about it!" I told him. "Greta Marie's happy.

I realize she's been neglecting you, but --"

The unicorn snorted again and tossed his head, casting off my paltry attempts at consolation. I watched as he picked his way across the farmyard, heading toward the straggle of apple trees. I thought I glimpsed the images of his two companions in the distance, under the spindly shadow of the branches, but that might have been a trick of light on snow.

I cupped my hands to my mouth. "Don't give up!" I called. "Please don't just walk away! Even if she and Wellcome Fisher do get nasty, it's never going to last. Greta Marie's not stupid and she's not desperate: one day she'll see him for the ego-leech he is, unless he slaps her in the face with it first. That's when she'll really need you. She's been good to you for G.o.d knows how many years; you owe it to her to stick around. Nice unicorns. Good unicorns. Sit!

Stay!"

I was babbling, but it got their attention. Three s.h.i.+very streaks of marine light lifted beneath the barren orchard boughs, three pairs of glowing garnet eyes winked at me once before vanis.h.i.+ng.

I drove back to town alone.

Greta Marie was in the coffee shop, seated on one of the stools at the counter nearest the big display window up front, reading her registered letter over a steaming cup of Muriel's best brew. It was a wonder she could make out the words for all the stars in her eyes. When she saw me come in, she broke from covert in a whir of bliss.

"Babs, it's so wonderful! I do hope you forgive me for not being at home when you called, but it was such a good thing I came to town and got this letter.

Darling Wellcome! I know he meant to give me a few days' notice, but when one is as significant a figure in the field of belies lettres as he, sometimes it's simply impossible to take time for personal matters until the demands of one's career have been met."

Belles lettres? Wellcome? The only demand ever attached to his career was "Please, please, please, don't write another book!" As I seated myself on the stool beside hers, I did a rapid mental translation of Greta Marie's words, allowing for drift, wind resistance, drag, and converting from the Stupid-in-Love scale.

"There's something vitally important in there and he didn't bother mailing it until the last minute?" I presumed, nodding at the letter. Muriel brought me my own cup of coffee, glanced at Greta Marie, then looked at me and raised her eyebrows in a manner that said Lost Cause.

"Oh, I don't mind," Greta Marie chirped, pressing the unfolded sheets of spiral notebook paper to her heart. Wellcome might waste words, ut never stationery.

"He says he's coming up today, and that I'm to meet him here because there's no sense in him driving all the way out to my place and then all the way back into town to the travel agent." She p.r.o.nounced those last two words as if they'd been Holy Grail, fraught and freighted with a deeper meaning than was given mere mortals like me to know.

"Planning a little trip, hm?" I asked, striving to keep it casual.

"A very special sort of trip, Babs dear." She blushed. "I do think he's coming up to ask me...to ask me if I would consent to become...if I would consent to become his --"

"There you are!" Wellcome Fisher burst into the coffee shop with the elan of a juggernaut. He shouldered his way between us, nearly shoving me off my stool without so much as a word of greeting. Usually it is a fair treat to be ignored by Wellcome Fisher, but not when it means you've been relegated to the role of superfluous stage-dressing. I was miffed. I got up and moved, taking my cup with me.

Wellcome slithered onto the stool I had vacated. He looked Greta Marie up and down, his gaze severe and judgmental. "You're not prepared," he accused.

"Prepared, dear?" It was sickening to see the way Greta Marie went into mouse-mode at the sound of her master's voice. "But -- but I'm here. You did say to meet you here, didn't y -- ?"

"Ye G.o.ds, and was that all I said?"

Greta Marie cringed, but she summoned up the gumption to reply, "Well...yes.

That and the part about going to the travel agent." She extended the letter for his inspection and added, "See, darling?"

He rolled his eyes, playing the martyr so broadly that I wondered whether he had a pack of stick-on stigmata hidden in the pocket of his anorak. "Merciful powers above, you're a supposedly intelligent wench: Do I have to spell out everything for you, chapter and verse? Are you that literal-minded? Are you incapable of basic inference?" He paused, striking a toplofty pose, apparently waiting for the applause of the mult.i.tude.

Now mind you, the hour of Wellcome's self-styled Calvary was lunchtime and the coffee shop was packed to the gussets with the usual Natives, alt of whom knew and respected Greta Marie Bowman. It was out of this selfsame respect that they went deaf, dumb and blind by common consent. They understood that she had fallen in with this acerbic yahoo of her own free will, they realized that she had brought all her sufferings down upon her own head voluntarily, they were firm in the belief that she should have known better, but d.a.m.ned if they were going to underwrite her humiliation, deserved or not. No one present reacted to Wellcome's words with so much as a glance in his general direction. In fact, as far as the good folk of Bowman's Ridge were concerned, Wellcome wasn't even there. They didn't just ignore him, they nullified him.

Gadfly that he was, Wellcome did not take kindly to being overlooked. The Natives' lack of cooperation irked him. He took a deep breath and brought his fist down on the countertop just as he bellowed, "You peruse, but you do not read. Have you no grasp of subtext?"

Poor Greta Marie. I could see her lips begin to tremble, her eyes to s.h.i.+ne with tears that didn't spring from joy. "I'm -- I'm sorry, dear," she said, her voice all quavery. "I -- I suppose you mean I ought to be prepared for -- for our trip, yes?"

Wellcome slapped his brow and let his celluloid smile glide across the room.

"Finally!" he informed the audience. They gave no sign that he had spoken. "At the very least, I expected you to be packed."

"Packed? But -- but how could I? I wouldn't know what to bring. We haven't even discussed where we'll be going."

His shoulders sagged. Now he was both martyr and victim. "I thought you listened to me," he complained, wounded to the marrow. "Haven't I said time and time again how the winter weather affects my artistic spirit? Haven't I spoken of my very deep, very basic need to follow the sun?"

"You did mention something about visiting your aunt in Tampa every year, but -- ".

"Well, my dear Auntie Clarice has just written to say that she is going off on a holiday cruise this coming week, and that we may have the use of the condo in her absence, with her blessing." He beamed at her as if he'd just laid the crown jewels of Zanzibar at her feet.

Greta Marie turned pale. "Oh no," she said, hands fluttering before her face.

"This coming week? Oh no, it's much too soon. I couldn't possibly make all the arrangements. Reverend Fenster is too taken up with the Christmas season, and we Bowmans have always been married from the Congregational church. Besides, there's simply nowhere we could book a large enough hall for the reception, let alone arrange for refreshments, and what about the blood test and the license and my gown and -- "

Wellcome's brows rose and came together until he was glaring at Greta Marie from beneath the shelter of a hairy circ.u.mflex. "What the devil are you jawing about?" he demanded. "Since when does one need a blood test to go to Tampa?"

"Oh," said Greta Marie softly. She folded her hands above her bosom and repeated, "Oh." Her head bowed like a flower on a broken stalk. "I thought you meant we were going to be -- " she began, then sank into silence.

"What? To be what?" Wellcome was mystified. For one fleeting moment he seemed rapt by words that were not his own as he attempted to solve this present conundrum. "Do you imply -- ? That marriage twaddle you were spouting about your ancestors and the First Congregational Church -- ? Surely you weren't serious?"

Without waiting for her reply, he dismissed the very possibility with a brief wave of his hand. "No, no, you couldn't have been; something else must be nibbling your liver. Spit it out, woman! I don't indulge in telepathy."

Greta Marie set her hands firmly on the edge of the counter. I swear that I could see the ranks of Bowmans long gone form up in ghostly phalanx behind her and then, one by one, add their ectoplasmic mite to the stiffening of her backbone. By degrees she sat up taller, straighter, prouder, looked Wellcome in the eye and coldly said, "I thought you were a gentleman."

There could be no greater condemnation uttered by a woman of Greta Marie's age and station. For all his failings, Wellcome was not slow on the uptake; the penny dropped, the "marriage twaddle" that he had dismissed as ridiculous returned to leer at him, nose to nose. I saw the flickering play of emotions over his countenance: shock, comprehension, a smidgen of shame, and then the urgent realization that if he didn't act fast, he was in peril of losing face before the one earthly creature he loved above all others.

If you think the creature in question was Greta Marie, you haven't been paying attention.

Frost crackled at the corners of his mouth as he smiled thinly and said, "Well.

Here's a surprise. Don't tell me that you still cherish orange blossom dreams at your age?"

Greta Marie jerked her head back as if she'd been slapped. His words jarred her to the core, that much was plain to see, but the old blood bred hardy souls. She drew her mouth into a tight little line and refused to give him the satisfaction of a reply.

This sat ill with Wellcome, who would have preferred more concrete evidence that his words had hit the mark. "And I thought we understood each other," he said, reloading his figurative blowpipe with a freshly venomed dart. "What a sorry disappointment you are. I expected more of you. I believed that you were different, that you were a woman of perception, a woman of spirit, one to whom the petty constraints and empty rituals of society mean nothing so long as she can serve Art."

That did it. That was my limit. "Art my a.s.s," I blurted out. "You just want to get laid."

Wellcome curled his lip at me. "Enter the white knight," he drawled. "And what concern of yours is this? Barbara Barclay, champion of Romance! I should think you'd want to encourage your friend to seize the golden opportunity I'm offering her. Do you honestly believe she'll get many more like it on this side of the grave? If she ever got any before."

"I don't have to sit here and listen to this!" Greta Marie stood up and started for the door, but Wellcome blocked her escape.

"I urge you to reconsider," he counseled her. "I've always been pa.s.sably fond of you, you know, especially your good sense. Certainly a woman like you, wise enough to perceive the rich aesthetic contributions of my work to world literature, must also see that I have only your best interests at heart in proposing cette pet.i.te affaire. Tampa is lovely at this time of year. Do you want to end your days as a hollow husk, a topshelf virgin whose life will be forever incomplete without so much as the memory of a man's attentions? I'll spare you that horrible fate, but you're going to have to be a good girl and -- ".

Greta Marie just gave him a look; a look that plugged his chatter snugger than jamming a badger in a bunghole; a disinterested, calculating look such as a farmer might give a stubborn tree stump, mentally debating which was the best crack into which to jam the dynamite.

"My ancestor, Captain lames Resurrection Bowman, received a grant of land in this town as a reward for his heroism in the Revolutionary War," she said. "A friend of his received a similar grant, except his was much smaller and located on Manhattan Island. He offered to swap, Captain James chose to decline. In retrospect it was a stupid choice, but it was his own. All my life I have followed Captain James' example; I have always made my own choices. If I remain a virgin until I marry, it will not be for lack of such...generous offers as yours, but because that is my decision to make and no one else's."

"Talk about stupid choices," Wellcome snarled.