I don’t know why Father let me go, except that it seemed he wanted the town’s acceptance as much as I did. He washed and dressed every day, took his London papers, joined the conversations at coffeehouses, drank at the more respectable inns. A strange peace descended on our house. Father had long ago stopped raising his hand to me, and without Henry to pummel, found Eliza and Everina too docile to bother with. He showed affection, at times, to young James and Charles, was solicitous of our one new housemaid, Lucy, who was a pleasant presence, and even stopped his nightly punishments on Mama. (I believed it was a credit to me: that he knew he would have to step over me to get to her.)

But the lessons became the centerpiece of my life. That, and Jane’s friendship. We took walks, arm in arm, on my darling Westwood Common, our lungs breathing the same bracing air. It was hard to keep my shoes and stockings on, but I might lose her if I didn’t. I slowed my gait instead, content to share with her my ease among the woods and windmills, the names of trees that tumbled off my tongue—grey alder, beech, wild privet, yew. I pointed out the shapes in clouds, hoping she saw the world as I did.

Jane lifted her skirts and stepped over things I wouldn’t consider puddles, wanted to talk about anything aside from the day’s lesson, but mostly her circle of friends. I asked about them each: Which was the one with the sweet upturned nose? The striped bonnet? That one with hair the color of pennies? She had command of their details, their fine points and foibles, the sort of man each imagined for her future, as if Jane were a registry of all the young Beverley women who mattered, and all the men who might marry them. She asked in turn about my family, my father and mother. I spun a tale about the silk weavers of Spitalfields, mostly true, how we had come from money, what my father aspired to. I heard myself repeating his lies, amplifying his prospects. I didn’t mention Henry. But Jane seemed satisfied to know a girl so different from herself—as if I were the exotic creature—and that was enough.