“Well, a bit of English,” I said, in hopes of making him laugh, which he did. “A smattering of French, pinch of Portuguese. But I’ll teach myself. Any language you require.”

“What about conduct books, making ready for the marriage market, for the lady readers. Is that something you might do?” His eyebrows punctuated the question.

I hesitated, knowing he held my fate in his hands. “Honestly, I should as soon throw myself off Blackfriars Bridge.”

He laughed again. “Exactly what I hoped you’d say. Now, tell me where you’re staying.”

How the heart soars and dips, little bird. He must’ve seen my panic because he stood abruptly and put his hand on a pile of books, as if taking a pledge.

“Here. That’s where you’re staying. Until we can find you something better. Unless, that is, you would be scandalized by a single man and a single woman sleeping under the same roof without supervision.”

“I have no worries how I’ll be judged, as I’ve never considered myself on the marriage market, or intend to be. Surely I’m a spinster by now.”

“Then we’ll be spinsters together,” he said.

He showed me the two floors above his print- and bookshop, where he lived. They were not elegant at all—tilting floors, low ceilings, rough walls at odd angles, with only books to anchor them, as if words and leather spines held the whole enterprise upright. Even the dining room had volunteered as a makeshift library, though the table and chairs looked well sat-in, and on one wall loomed a large painting I couldn’t make out in the half-dark. I saw the occasional chintz, yes, but this was a home fashioned most of all for thinking.

He showed me a bedchamber and introduced me to a servant, an old woman, not unlike our Mrs. B, who would help me with a bath, if I so desired. Oh, glorious bath! She poured warm water over my hair, my back and shoulders, cleansing me of Mitchelstown. It felt like a baptism. I missed my Margaret, but she would never be mine. I was twenty-eight years old. Unmarried by choice, without children. I had debts to repay, sisters who begged to be cared for, Fanny’s family always in need, and guilt about all of them. But when that old woman scrubbed my body dry with a coarse towel, it felt like a new skin. For the first time in my life, and no one to care, I climbed between the summer bedsheets with nothing on—not a stitch—and slept like a sailor home from sea.