“Of course,” I said, embarrassed and grateful, a mélange of feelings unknown to me. I started to untie the ribbon from my neck. “Thank you for allowing me—”

“No, please. Consider it yours. I’ve more quizzing glasses than any one man should, and I’m afraid Jane’s had her fill of them. I’ve got her every color of ribbon known to man, and still she refuses to wear them. I cannot keep up with what’s au courant.”

I wrapped my hand around it, clutched it to my chest. “I shall treasure it.”

“Don’t treasure it, Miss Wollstonecraft, just look through it every chance you get.” He took the glass in his hand, and wiped it with his kerchief. “But best keep the fingers away from the glass itself.”

I was mortified that I didn’t have gloves on. But he skipped right past it, breathing his fog on the glass and wiping it clear. “You want clarity above all. You’ll be startled by what you see.”

I had never been so near a man who was not my father or brother, neither of whom had ever treated me with the regard I felt from John Arden in that moment. I realized I had never felt regard before at all. I mumbled a thank-you, bade a clumsy good-bye, and started for the door.

“Miss Wollstonecraft!” he called from behind. I turned back.

“Never worry. Ideas will find you, wherever you are.”

If only you could see me, little bird, clutching my brother’s kerchief so tight I almost forgot what was inside, my anger at Ned mingling with my envy of Jane, and my longing for her father’s regard. I wished I didn’t have feelings at all. But when I broke free of rough ground, the soft loam bulged between my toes and filled the arches of my feet. The sky threw a glimpse of morning the color of seawater. Even if I couldn’t see it—had never seen the sea—I smelled and tasted it on my lips. It stirred everything in me. I was thirteen, yes, but I was a soul, could feel it rising inside me like high tide, feel the pull of it in my belly.

Nature was my only home on earth, a place to rest, unbound.