Nine Moons Wasted — Marianne Lamont

Barbary Graham at fifteen envisions a life of horseback riding at her father's side as being far preferable to sewing in the company of her mother and sisters. Then Gray Drummond appears. When they meet on a hill outside her home, when he appears over the horizons, he seems to her to be authoritative, intelligent, yet coarse. To him, she is not a girl at all, but rather, a boy. When he discovers she is in fact a young woman, a woman dressed as a boy, a tomboy, of fifteen, her brash tone convinces him she is a woman of spirit, a woman to match his own energies. He asks her father for her hand in marriage.

She realized suddenly that she could not remember his face, however hard she tried. She endeavored to summon up even a shadow of his features, but there was nothing in her mind she could recognize. She looked at him then, seeing the bony protuberances and hollows, the shape of his mouth, as though for the first time. His light hair lifted for a moment in a draught of air, showing her the firm line of throat and neck, his eyes lost in their dusky cavities. She thought, inconsequentially, that she had never know their color, had never wanted to discover. She did now, if only for the fact that a wife should know such things. It could not matter. Conscious, belatedly, of her contemplation, he raised his head and smiled. They were no color she could think of, not blue, not brown, nor even gray, but they were expressive enough. She looked away quickly, recognizing the desire he had not been able to disguise in time.