“And what, pray, is a state of Jezebel?”

The dapper little fellow laughed aloud, then stopped abruptly and turned away. Why? He was afraid. Of what?

“Pardon my French,” said the Englishman. “In London we are not so pure as the gentlefolk of New England. When Napoleon took over France and proceeded to annex the bulk of Europe, there were few places for the displaced aristocracy and royalty to go. London is crawling with French visitors, and suddenly French words are chic. Oops, there I go again.”

“You still have not told me what the French word meant. ‘Cheek,’ however, I understand—it is a characteristic that your whole company here seems to have.”

The barrister chuckled. “I would say that it’s yourself that takes a cheeky tone with strangers, if it were not such an improper thing to say to a young lady to whom I have not been introduced. I pray you, tell me the name of your father and where he lives so I can inquire after your health.”

“My father is dead,” she said, and then added, despite her own sense of panic as she did so, “He was hanged as a witch in Netticut.”

They fell silent, all of them, and it made her uneasy, for they had nothing like the reaction she expected. Not revulsion at her confession of such indecent family connections; rather they all simply closed off and looked another way.

“Well, I’m sorry to remind you of such a tragic event,” said the Englishman.

“Please don’t be. I never knew him. I only just realized what his fate must have been. You don’t imagine that anyone at the orphanage would tell me such a thing outright!”

“But you are a lady, aren’t you?” asked the Englishman. “There’s nothing of the schoolgirl about you.”

“Being an orphan does not stop when you come of age,” said Purity. “But I will serve myself as father and mother, and give you my consent to introduce yourself to me.”

The Englishman bowed deeply. “My name is Verily Cooper,” he said. “And my company at the moment consists of Mike Fink, who has been in the waterborne transportation business but is on a leave-of-absence, and my dear friend John-James Audubon, who is mute.”

“No he’s not,” said Purity. For she saw in both Cooper and Audubon himself that the statement was a lie. “You really mustn’t lie to strangers. It starts things off in such an unfortunate way.”

“I assure you, madam,” said Cooper, “that in New England, he is and shall remain completely mute.”

And with that slight change, she could see in both of them that the statement was now true. “So you choose to be mute here in New England. Let me puzzle this out. You dare not open your mouth; therefore your very speech must put you in a bad light. No, in outright danger, for I think none of you cares much about public opinion. And what could endanger a man, just by speaking? The accent of a forbidden nation. A papist nation, I daresay. And the name being Audubon, and your manners toward a woman being tinged with unspeakable presumptions, I would guess that you are French.”