Excerpt from Courting Mr. Lincoln by Louis Bayard, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Ah ."

The silence came rolling back. Sulfurous.

"But of course," she rallied, "my cousin is a fine judge of character, so it may be that you ... you undervalue yourself... ."

Perhaps Cousin John had actually said that.

"Isn't it funny?" she said, galloping ahead. "We have never met before and yet you—you surely live here in Springfield."

"That is so."

"And I have been in your charming city since only—"

"Last fall," he said.

"Well, yes."He studied the flounce of her dress. "The thing is, Miss Todd, I'm on the circuits quite a bit."

"Oh, yes. Like Mr. Conkling."

"And then, you know, I've got that pesky body politic's interests to attend to."

It was such an oblique way to come at the subject that she was a long time following him there.

"Of course," she said, with something like release. "You are one of Ninian's comrades in arms. In the statehouse."

"Guilty again."

"I believe, in fact, you are a member of the Long Nine."

The first stirrings of a smile on his face. "The longest of the nine."

"So I see," she answered, in a lighter voice. "It seems that, whenever I pass our new capitol, I shall have you to thank for bringing it here."

His head tipped toward his shoulder, and the words came scattering out like loose pennies.

"I'm sorry?" she said.

"I said it was a whole team of oxen. Dragging that particular plow."

"Ah, well. Let us hope we can"—she plucked softly at her throat—"devise a better metaphor for you, Mr. Lincoln, than oxen."

"I think the plainer you come at me, the better."

Silence once more. A great cloud of it, leaching out their last native spark. He had just enough volition left to mutter the words "very pleased to" ... but not enough to finish them. With a bow, he angled his body away and then left the room, maneuvering around each guest in the manner of a barge navigating sandbars.

Elizabeth sidled up a minute later, her arm softly hooking through her sister's .

"I despair of you," she whispered. "You turn up your nose at a Webb and take up with a Lincoln."

" Take up? Heaven shield me, I was making conversation. Under great duress, I might add."

"I have told you before that, if you don't wish a man to be your suitor, you must confine yourself to the fewest possible words."

"And so I did."

"Let us hope so."

With a single motion, Elizabeth unhooked her arm and tacked straight for the foyer. Leaving behind a trail of some mystery. Why was she being so preemptive? Had Mary missed, perhaps, some essential fact about the stranger? A foundational bit of gossip? Were the hens of Springfield even now clucking in timbres outside her range of hearing?

For the next two hours, she alternated between dancing and eyeing the periphery, waiting for the Longest of the Nine to rise up once more, but he never reemerged. Impossible, surely, that he should be able to conceal him-self. More likely that he had hied himself home. Wherever that was.

Mr. Speed showed up promptly for his dance at seven minutes to ten. There was a touch of self-mockery, she thought, in the way he bowed his head and led her to the floor. She had deliberately left open the waltz to see how he would respond to close quarters. But if his hands were longing to tighten their grip on hers or curl more tightly around her waist or draw her closer with each measure, they held off. The only suggestion of pleasure she could find was in his eyes, which were as agreeable as at the moment of their meeting.

"What did you think of Lincoln?" he asked.

She pondered for three turns before answering.

I can only hope that, his waters being so very still, they also run deep."

She could not tell if she had erred, for Mr. Speed said nothing.

Excerpted from Courting Mr. Lincoln by Pierre Bayard. Copyright © 2019 by Pierre Bayard. Excerpted by permission of Algonquin Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.