“I haven’t lost a spouse,” he said. “Lost two sons, though, and that was plenty. George, he was an infant, barely two months. Influenza. But William. He drowned in the Thames. Eleven, he was.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“I’ve two daughters, though, Matilda and Margaret. They look after me, get me through it. Good ones, they are.”

“’S right to count blessings. To think what we have and not what we’ve lost.”

He looked at Mrs. B, his hooded eyes filled all the way with tears.

“You never get over it, Mrs. Blenkinsop. Not ever.”

He sat for a while, then tottered to his bag, pulling out a small amber bottle. “Twenty drops of laudanum ought to get her through the night.”

Mrs. B shook her head. “None of that, sir. She won’t have it.”

“Well, then. Let’s hope for some rest for her. I’ll be back in the morning.”

He snapped his bag shut and started to go.

“Will you tell Mr. Godwin? Before you leave?”

Fordyce stood on the threshold and considered it. “We mustn’t tell Godwin, not yet. But in the morning, let’s start her on a wine diet, shall we? The least we can do is ease her way.”

Mary W

I am broken, little bird, and Paris is broken with me.

“Be my eyes and ears,” said Johnson. But I’m on the outside looking in, or rather, the inside looking out, deep in the Marais, closed up on the sixth floor of 22 rue Meslée, tall shuttered doors and iron-grilled windows, with a cold that consumes me. My hosts, called away unexpectedly, have left me with a surfeit of servants who think it a favor to give me peace, quiet, and not just a room but a whole floor of my own, when what I’m desperate to have is conversation. But what would I do with it? All my fine French phrases fly away, while theirs swirl so fast around me I can’t catch them. If I can barely ask for a baguette and some butter, how will I ever form sentences on this great turnabout in human affairs? I know I’ve sought refuge in another country to heal my wounded heart and lose myself in the grand sweep of history. I tell myself that dreary winter must give way to spring, and if men and women can reimagine the world, why not I reimagine my life?