“Well … I have a feeling that if we do have a girl, David, we’d have to name her after either your mother or my mother,” Pernille remarked after a few more minutes of silence. She squeezed Therese’ arm in a friendly way.  They exchanged brief smiles.

David picked his snifter up and took a sip. He sighed with satisfaction as the fiery liquid slid down his throat.  “Well, P, if you had the freedom to, what would you call our daughter, if we do have a girl, and neither your mother or my mother hounded us about naming her?”  he asked  good-naturedly.  He offered a sympathetic smile to Therese when she turned her head and shifted her glance from Pernille to David.  She nodded her acknowledgement.

“Well, David, I can imagine a happy little Aerin bouncing around the Central Park penthouse that you and I have agreed we should purchase from the Astors.”

“Aerin, huh?”

“Yes … Aerin.”

Brad nodded, slightly buzzed from drinking cognac he was unused to imbibing. “That is a nice name.”

“And Aerin would have to love poetry the way Pernille now does, I should think,” Therese joined in, shaking off the momentary melancholia that had inexplicably overtaken her.

David groaned. “Yes, I’ve heard all about the Emily Dickinson, Wordsworth, and that ilk, Therese.  Those … how many now?  Three books? … that you’ve given my beloved has her quoting poems at the oddest times.”

Therese chuckled, smirking at Pernille. “Like when?”

“Dinner with David’s parents the other night.”

“Completely befuddled them,” David groaned. “Sometimes I think you do that purposely, Pernille.  Dazzle but confuse them like that.  Because it convinces mother that you’re clever and can therefore handle me; and it keeps father wrapped around your little finger.”

“You’re not really complaining are you, David?” Pernille asked her fiancé sweetly.

He groaned again.

Therese smiled as she watched them mock-argue.

“Because if you are complaining, why do you love me?”

“Why do I love you?” he asked, as he set the snifter down again, and turned in his seat to gaze at Pernille. “You tell me.”

Pernille smiled at him coquettishly, and turned to look at Therese, instead of answering.

“That was the poem, by the way.”

Therese knit her eyebrows, wondering about what poem Pernille was talking about. After a few beats, it dawned on her.  She snapped her fingers excitedly.  “I got it, “Why do I love” You, Sir?” by Emily Dickinson?”