Then I saw Jane, cheeks pink from dancing, standing under a chandelier in her robe à l’anglaise, cream satin brocaded with floral sprays, pleated robings, and striped ribbon rosettes, blooming like a peony in spring. I can see her, even now, turn to walk toward me with her beaming smile. That’s when the idea possessed me.

“I would like to call a dance, Mr. Hewitt. May I?”

“Of course!”

“A minuet, please.”

“But we’ve had our minuets. We’re on to country dances.”

“I’m begging you.”

Hewitt looked around at the paired couples. “I have no one free.”

“Jane is free.”

Jane, three steps away, looked at me, stricken. I offered my hand.

“Please, Jane. This is the dance we learned together. And if ‘there are more Ladies than Gentlemen’—”

“I know the rules, Mary!”

The minuet was struck, the first chords of the violin. The dance floor emptied. Jane glared at me but took my hand. As we moved to the center, I felt the crowd gape at us, but I didn’t care. Step, together. Right, left, right, together. I played the man, but we were mirrors of each other: small, graceful steps in perfect time, the sink, the rise, the giving of our right hands, the giving of our left, never looking down or away, but into the other’s eyes as we were taught.

Every fiber of my being stood at attention, our bodies one, our turns perfect circles.

When the last chord sounded, Jane curtsied politely, as all partners must, then picked up her skirts and fled outside. By the time I caught up with her, she was almost to the stream out back. She turned to me in the jewel light, lungs fanning against her bodice, her face on fire.

“How could you humiliate me in front of all the town?!”

I was winded too, and could hardly form words, but still hoped she’d felt what I had, or that I could persuade her of it. “This ball is beneath you, Jane, beneath all of us. Can’t you see it? Pretending to be something we aren’t, all in service of securing a husband, enthralled by any scarlet uniform, forget what man inhabits it!”

“I’ve told you, Mary. There is no other life!”

On a wild impulse I pulled a straight pin from my dress and pushed its needle tip into the pad of my finger, drawing a dot of crimson blood.

“What are you doing?”

I turned my head to the clear evening sky and spread my arms wide. “From this day I declare that I shall never marry, because there is no man on this globe to whom I will bow down and surrender my soul, not ever!” I turned my pricked finger to her, and held up the pin in a dare. “Pledge with me, Jane. Please. Promise that you will never surrender your will, your happiness, to any man’s.”