We laughed, but Fanny dissolved into a coughing fit. Her shawl fell away. There was blood on her kerchief. I’d pretended that Fanny was invincible—now that we had the life together we’d dreamed of—that she would naturally gain strength and health from it. I pulled her shawl back over her shoulder, waiting for her lungs to settle.

“And I would hardly call it an inspired proposal.” She reached for my hand, braided her fingers with mine. “But more than that, I don’t think I can leave you, Mary.”

I looked down at her hand, skin so thin it seemed barely to cover her bird bones underneath. I spun the silver band of her carnelian ring around easily with my thumb, and remembered her telling me that the Egyptians thought the stone protected the dead in the journey to the afterlife. I felt my stomach tighten, and wanted to cry.

“We have no choice, Fanny,” I said. “You must write to him, and accept.”

She retrieved the paintbrush from behind her ear.

“Portugal. A world away from you. I can no longer imagine what it could possibly hold for me.”

“Hugh Skeys,” I said. “Remember, you told me you might come to love him?”

“I don’t remember, Mary. I hardly remember the why of anything, but certainly not the why of Portugal.”

“Health,” I said. “Life.”

She squeezed her kerchief in her palm. It was always tucked into her sleeve, at the ready. Coughing was her constant companion, and messy.

“What is my life without you? Without my family, who need me?”

“I’ll look after them,” I said. “I give you my solemn word. But you’re of no use to any of us if you continue this way.”

“You mean dead. Just say it.”

“You need dry air, hot breezes, sunlight.”

“It was you who tried to persuade me against it! Against Hugh Skeys altogether.”

I was aware we’d changed places, each adopting the other’s view. But that’s how it had become between us. Merging easily one into the other, a united soul, if sometimes a divided heart. I didn’t want to lose her, but the choice was stark: accept Skeys’ proposal and sail for Portugal to be married, and recover her health, or refuse him, stay in London, and die.

For me the answer was simple. I would rather lose her to marriage than to death.

Mrs. B

September 4, 1797

A loud bang on the door, like a thunderclap. Mrs. B heaved herself from the sink of her own feather mattress, between a groan and a sigh, strung a shawl across her shoulders, reached blindly for her spectacles, and pushed them onto her face. It was still dark in the house; the fire in the hearth had expired, but she had a sense of dim first light when she opened the door to a driver in livery, who wasted no time.

“Blenkinsop, yup?”