She groaned with both the shock of desire and the hammer-blow of guilt: such wicked thoughts were forbidden, more than forbidden; their very existence was iniquity. The Bible from which her husband read to their family every day barred not only actual adultery; it inveighed against mental adultery too. She was as scarlet a woman for entertaining such scandalous fantasies as any Magdalene.

But her heated body led her down still more prohibited avenues: was there not perhaps a world in which she, Jacob, and the girls could make an alternative life together, one in which she would be free to enjoy his caresses? She knew too little of geography to imagine his home country of Austria, as much a fairy tale to her as the stories she read her daughters, but a picture pushed into her mind: herself and Jacob, strolling in a foreign fir-smelling forest, hands interlocked, pausing to kiss: what if he gently opened her mouth so she could feel the moisture and press of his tongue? What would those lips and tongue feel like on her breasts?

At this, Charlotte sat bolt upright in horror at her own thoughts. She was a married woman, the wife of a clergyman, outwardly and inwardly respectable. Her vows had been explicit: to be faithful until death parted her from her husband. But that set off a far worse train of thought: if she were to be widowed, then perhaps … and the illicit images began their shadowplay on her inner lids again. Again she felt Jacob’s mouth on her skin, and now it was compounded with all the other times he had supported her physically, his supple, strong arm around her waist, his warmth, his slightly peppery scent as she took his arm while walking: what would these translate into, if they could be alone together? She had a vivid memory of his laughter in the garden, the brown of his skin transitioning sharply to white at the borders of the V formed by the neck of his shirt, the notch like a thumb-print at the base of his throat. What if she could press her lips to that inch of his skin?

She lifted her hand and gazed down at the subtle tracks of blue at her wrist, her pulse visibly thudding in the veins. There his mouth had rested, there it had pressed. She found herself kissing the same spot, placing her mouth where his had been, a means of returning his kiss. One last lasting kiss – and then she caught at herself. Such fantasies entailed wishing her husband – her harmless, oblivious, loyal husband – dead. They meant wishing her daughters fatherless; and at that, she slid to her knees by the side of her bed, and prayed most heartily for forgiveness. What if some imp, some evil embodiment of fate, caught her ignoble thoughts and struck her husband down?