“Looks like a common pansy,” I said, studying the fine ink drawing she was just starting to fill in with touches of purple, both subtle and bold.

“Love-in-idleness is the name I prefer, but lady-in-waiting, kiss-her-in-the-buttery, heartsease, if you must. Though there’s nothing common about the pansy.” Fanny commanded a room when she talked about her plants. “Even Shakespeare exploited its magical power to alter the course of true love.”

“What a terrible affliction,” I said.

“But it’s also its own cure, strangely enough. And my favorite of all the flowers.”

I leaned my head on her bony shoulder. “I like it for you. It’s who you are. Delicacy, with power. But magic most of all.”

She sighed lightly. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be one’s own cure?”

I thought she meant her illness, but we rarely spoke of it. She hated to.

“I think we’re so often the cause of our own suffering,” she said. “The things we let wound us, the indecencies that offend our beings, the injustices.”

“But those things are real, and outside of us.”

“I know. But what if our real power—the one we’re born with, which we rarely assume—lies in altering our sensibility to the things that aggrieve us?” She tucked her paintbrush behind her ear. “Imagine,” she said, “if we could heal ourselves.”

I knew she was talking about me. She had none of my animus, even if she marveled at it sometimes. Fanny accepted things I never could. She believed we could be content with the gifts we are given.

“What flower would you think for me?” I asked her.

She turned her head to study me, then leaned over and dug from a pile of discarded drawings on the floor. She handed one to me.

“The nigella?”

“Devil-in-the-bush, ragged lady, love-in-a-mist if you prefer. Can thrive in the most neglected patches of land.”

“Its leaves look like spiky thorns. Its petals have claws!”

“So do you, Mary. But in fact they’re soft and delicate. And though they favor a brilliant purple, they can be every variety of white and pink, lavender and blue. Like your many moods.”

I studied the flower, trying to see myself in it as she did. Our silences were snug and easy. We had no need to fill the empty space with unnecessary words. But Skeys’s letter still hung in the air between us.

“He says he’s ready for marriage,” she said at last. “That his business in Lisbon is secure enough to support a family. To support me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I feel humiliated by him. All these years, waiting, hoping. And then losing hope. And how many years has it been since I’ve set eyes on the man? I don’t even remember what he looks like. Probably old and fat by now.”