When guests began arriving to the new Dublin Assembly Rooms at quarter past ten, Lady K, decked out like a wedding cake, took her position at the entrance to the ballroom to greet them, but Margaret had not yet appeared. It was required in a coming-out that she stand by her mother’s side to welcome guests, and take their compliments. Lady K grabbed my elbow and commanded me to go find her at once. But as I turned to take the flight of marble stairs, I heard a collective gasp rise behind me. I looked up to see Margaret on the landing above, posing like a statue, head in profile, nose turned to the ceiling, shoulders thrust back, a hand on one hip. Her hair was braided in a queue, tied with a simple black ribbon. And instead of her dress, she wore her older brother’s fancy suit of breeches, waistcoat and frock coat in blue damask moire, a cravat at her neck, and a frill of sleeve at her wrist.

Margaret King had arrived.

When we returned to Mitchelstown abruptly the next day, Margaret was banished to her room for a month—no walks, no lessons, no books, no company, and gruel for each of her meals. She could look out the window if she liked, but only because Lady K believed it would punctuate her isolation. The cruelty of it was hard for me to bear. Of course Lady K blamed me, accused me of plotting with Margaret to ruin the ball, which was the same as ruining her future prospects, which, she said, was my clear intent from the start.

“She has a mind of her own that is not mine at all,” I said.

“But you have taught that her mind is her own to make up, in contradiction to everything her family stands for.”

Lady K barely spoke to me or looked at me for the first two weeks of her daughter’s exile. I took the opportunity to finish my book, little by little each night, after I’d finished pinning up Caroline’s and Mary’s hair, and washing them in the customary milk of roses. We had been told we weren’t allowed to speak Margaret’s name. The girls were desperate to know whether their sister would survive her ordeal, but terrified to disobey their mother. Instead I invented a governess named Mrs. Mason who had the sole care of two young girls, an amalgamation of the three King sisters, but the eldest most like Margaret in curiosity and temperament.

“But what about their parents?” asked little Mary.

“Oh, no parents,” I said, making a sorry face. “Both dead.”

“So Mrs. Mason, then, she can do whatever she wants with them?” said Caroline. “Teach them all sorts of things, have adventures outside, and never has to worry that they will be struck with a switch or shut up in their rooms eating gruel for an entire month?”