Meg March longed for a wardrobe full of silk dresses, flounces trimmed with velvet or French lace, the ivory buttons carved with snow-drops. She wanted a drawer where pair after pair of kid gloves nestled, each with a perfect pearl button, at least two pair with a saucy tassel; not one would be stained with lemonade or tea, stretched by her sister's slightly squarer palm. She dreamed of rainbows within the house—jewels and bonnets, ribbons, dozens of handkerchiefs each bearing her monogram and a scalloped hem. She imagined candlelight and balls, a chandelier hung with a hundred prisms, wit and merriment and gallantry, beauty and brilliance acceptably equal to virtue.
Meg Brooke had a garden with blue gentians and tall asters, a rose arbor where Beth's favorite noisette white roses twined, irises and lilies and violets all charmingly arranged. The house had come with the garden half-begun and she had endeavored, year after year, to improve it. She edged a border with pansies for Jo, who always enjoyed their thoughtful, open faces. She grew bleeding hearts and Sweet William and pinks. She hadn't had much luck with bluebells but she persevered in a wide-brimmed straw hat and a worn apron not even good enough for baking. Her home was small and the furnishings were not elegant, but she filled the rooms with flowers— apricot rosebuds in a small vase, a frilled peony floating in a glass dish on the polished dining table. She kept the most fragrant blossoms for their plain bedroom, to let the scent fill the late spring nights with the moonlight as partner.
Meg brought fresh nosegays to Sallie Moffat's teas, a cluster of cheerful yellow dahlias at her sash. She was poor but proud and she never forgot how Sallie helped her when she was a new bride. She took Demi and Daisy into the garden with her, first bundled together in the basket they happily shared, now with their own small trowels and buckets. They quickly learned not to try to eat the worms they discovered. Meg embroidered Daisy's dresses with her namesake and Demi's collars had laurel leaves or round clover carefully scattered. In the winter, she tended clay pots filled with herbs and Laurie had given her amaryllis bulbs to force every Christmas since he first called upon Mrs. John Brooke and saw how she managed. He also gave her a pair of new kid gloves at every birthday. John did not take offense when she told him of how Laurie had squired her to her first ball, how she had hidden the soiled glove so shyly, how she had called Laurie to account when he erred as he had done with her.
She had not thought she could be satisfied to be the wife of a poor man but she was pleased to be wrong. John was the best of men and would always find a way to help someone who approached him, always made sure everything needful was taken care of at home. He gave much and asked very little. John never said anything when he woke from a nightmare of the War, although it always woke her as well, his choked cries and his frantic voice reciting the names of the other men of his company; she had had to draw him to her night after night before he began to lay his tear-stained face on her breast of his own accord. In the morning, she would wake to find him regarding her with such gentle gratitude for what she knew deserved no thanks. He gave her the same admiring look when she wore a muslin wrapper to tend to a feverish child or when she dressed for church in the finest dress she had. He simply didn't see the difference between calico and taffeta and Meg knew she should not either, or should not care. She reminded herself the rose's petal and the violet's were each lovely, though one grew wild. She'd resolved she would never mismanage her household after the day John came home without his coat and she'd wept in his arms before he'd finally starting kissing her seriously enough to stop her shamed tears. She became even more clever than she thought she could be, contriving suitable clothes for the children and how to buy them the books they needed. Her father tutored her son and she kept her rosy-cheeked daughter close by, made her a fine little pinafore and humbly accepted Amy's cast-off sketchbooks and chalks for her own budding artist.
She never expected John to bring her the new bonnet, chip straw lined in flowered silk with two long pale gold ribbons meant to tie beneath one ear in a splendid, floppy bow. The children had been hungry when he arrived home, a little later than usual, and loudly clamoring for their supper; she had been striving to emulate the equanimity Marmee always displayed and had hardly noticed the box she'd taken from John's hands when she greeted him at the front door. He'd had to prompt her to open it, after she'd sat down wearily in her chair in the parlor; Demi had asked a number of questions about the robin's nest in the maple's boughs and she had had a hard time settling him but hadn't wanted to call John who had been working even longer hours recently. Daisy had watched her while cuddling a rag doll named Charlotte Elise and Meg had wondered what she would remember when she was older, a young woman and a mother herself. Meg had started to take up her sewing, a shirt of Demi's that needed the cuffs darned before she returned to smocking a new dress for Daisy, when John got up and brought the gaily wrapped box over to her. She was flustered, more than she thought a wife of several years could be, and John saw it, knelt beside her low chair and left a hand on her knee. He watched her so carefully as she opened the gift but she could not school her expression enough despite her awareness of his dark blue eyes on her.
"I have waited too long," he said and she heard something unfamiliar, that he thought he had failed her.
"No, John dear, you've done nothing that wasn't just as it should be," she said quickly, hoping to unfurrow his brow, take the shadow from his gaze.
"That's not true, Meg. I saw the look in your eyes, the surprise…I can give explanations, tell you that I don't notice what you wear, you are always just my dearest wife, but it's not enough. I vowed to love you and keep you and I have not given you your due- even as I see how hard you work, how you have made our home so beautiful, how good a mother you are. How well you care for us all and how gracefully."
"John, you needn't," Meg said, but her hand traced the fine edge of the bonnet's brim, felt the richness of the new silk and imagined it against her cheeks, cool and luxurious.
"I need a wife who knows she is loved for herself, not for her virtue alone, who knows her husband finds her the loveliest, most beautiful woman in the world," he said earnestly and touched her hand where it held the silk ribbon.
"Who knows the pleasure she will give her husband by putting on a long overdue new bonnet right away, this very minute, so he can see if he chose correctly," John added more playfully. She put the bonnet on, tied the ribbons as best she could without a looking-glass, and gave him, a little uncertainly, the coquette's glance she'd only used a few times and never with him.
"May I?" he asked, rising up a little, his hands outstretched as if he would adjust the bow or angle the brim just a little. She nodded and she felt his hands on her cheeks briefly before she felt his kiss, a serious, intent kiss that promised much more, a lengthier embrace in the privacy of their room, the eager lover only she ever saw. She did worry about him so, the long hours he kept, but not now, not when she saw how bright his eyes had become. He had risen and reached to a hand to help her up; it was not so very late but night had fallen. There was a posy of stock and clove pinks in their bedroom that would have filled the air with their spicy perfume. Meg began to unknot the silk ribbons and was startled when John grasped her hand in his to still her movement.
"Would you be very shocked if I told you to leave it?" he asked and for a moment, she could not understand him. When she did, she could not stop the blush that stained her cheeks.
"Oh, John!" she exclaimed, unable to stop the vision he had evoked. He laughed, his gaze telling her he loved her attempts to flirt and just as much, her disconcerted reaction to his provocation.
"I see, I… retract that. It will be enough for us both to know that I asked you, how you blushed and how well I liked it," he said.
"Liked it? The bonnet, you mean?" Meg said, trying to be a little arch, a little more the experienced wife she was.
"The bonnet and the blush, and you in both," he said, sincere and amused and desirous, a John even she saw only rarely. "I wish you knew without asking…I mean to make you know, Meg."
Meg March Brooke had a garden and a closet with five dresses and one was a mourning dress she had made when Beth died. She had two pairs of gloves and a second-hand collection of Dickens in her parlor, calluses on her slender hands. She had a new bonnet and a dozen blooming hollyhock and a husband who whispered to her, "You're like a rose, a damask rose, my Meg," in their candlelit bed before he stopped saying anything more.